Life Expectancy

"You don't understand because you're not an artist."
        That didn't clarify anything for me, but we were already moving on to a spacious nineteenth-century dumbwaiter with a folding brass gate instead of a door. Driven by pulleys and counterweights, it had the capacity and leverage to accommodate the handcart with all the boxes of cash.
        We climbed four flights of stairs to the kitchen at the back of the house, on the main floor. The flashlight beams flared off white ceramic-tile counters, polished copper, and the beveled glass in French-pane cabinet doors.
        I spotted a large polished-granite insert in one tile counter, the perfect surface on which to work dough for pies and tarts. Even if Cornelius had been the greedy, exploiting, blood-sucking, black-hearted, running-dog, drooling, baby-eating pig that Crinkles had described, he could not have been all bad if he'd had a particular liking for pastries.
        Honker said, "Look at this great old iron stove."
        Crinkles said, "Food tasted real coming out of that baby."
        "Because it was authentic," Punchinello said.
        Honker put his flashlight on a counter and worked the crank that operated the dumbwaiter cable drive, bringing the proceeds of the bank robbery to the kitchen.
        Crinkles set his flashlight aside, too, folded open the brass gate, and pulled the cart into the kitchen.
        Punchinello shot Honker in the chest, Crinkles in the back, then pumped two more rounds into each of them as they thrashed, screaming, on the floor.
        The unexpectedness and ferocity of these murders shocked silence into Lorrie, but I think that I screamed. I can't be sure because the screams of the victims, although brief, were ghastly and louder than whatever half-throttled screech might or might not have escaped me.
        I do know that I almost threw up. Nausea rolled through me, and a sudden flood of bitter saliva insulated my mouth against the acidic rush from my stomach.
        Clenching my teeth, taking deep rapid breaths, I swallowed hard and quelled the nausea largely by opening the tap of anger.
        These killings sickened, frightened, and enraged me even more than did the murder of Lionel Davis, our librarian. I cannot say with any certainty why this should be the case.
        I was physically closer to these victims than to Lionel, who had collapsed out of sight behind his desk instantly upon being shot. Maybe that was it: a proximity that forced upon me the very smell of death, not just the subtle odor of blood but also the reek of one victim's bowels loosened in his final agonized spasms.
        Or perhaps I was so powerfully affected because the killer and his two accomplices had been conversing with evident mutual affection such a short time before he had blown them away.
        The victims were men of low character, no question about that, but so was Punchinello. No matter what breed of miserable lost soul you might be, you deserved at least the safe community of your own kind.
        Wolves do not kill wolves. Vipers don't attack vipers.
        Only in the various communities of human beings must brother be on guard against brother.
        That lesson had been so vividly delivered with six bullets that I felt hammered by cold truth. As the shock knocked the wind out of my lungs, another exhalation escaped my spirit, leaving me two kinds of breathless.
        Ejecting the magazine that now contained four rounds, inserting a fresh one in the pistol, Punchinello misread our reactions. He grinned, pleased with himself, assuming that we also were pleased with him.
        "Surprised you, huh? Bet you thought I'd clip them only when we were loaded in the van and out of town with the money. But trust me, this was the best moment."
        Perhaps if Lorrie and I had never stumbled into this caper, he would have murdered his companions at this very place. Three million dollars is a powerful motivator.
        If he could so coldly execute these men who had seemed like uncles to him, however, betraying his promise to us would trouble him no more than jaywalking.
        "My wedding gift to you," he said, as if he had given us a toaster oven or a tea set and would, in due course, expect a handwritten thank-you note.
        To have called him mad or evil, to have registered revulsion or anger at his ruthlessness, might have invited instant execution. When balancing a bottle of