Life Expectancy

that she appeared to be unharmed.
        She said, "I never again want to hear that song "Send in the Clowns."
        Not for the first time, I stood uncomprehending before her. Indicating the man slumped in the driver's seat beside her, Lorrie said,
        "Punchinello's daddy."
        Amazed, leaning into the SUV, I pulled off his toboggan cap to examine him. "I guess he looks a little like Konrad Beezo…"
        "Twenty-four years and plastic surgery," she explained.
        I put my chilled fingertips to his throat, feeling for a pulse. His heartbeat was slow and steady.
        "What's he doing here?" I asked.
        "Soliciting donations for UNICEF. Plus he wanted our baby."
        My heart dropped, my stomach turned, something seemed to be wringing my bladder: a major rearrangement of internal organs. "The baby?"
        "I'll tell you later. Jimmy, the contractions aren't more frequent but they sure are a lot more painful, and I'm way cold."
        Her words scared me more than gunfire. Beezo had been subdued; but we were a long way from a hospital delivery room.
        "I'll shackle him with the tow cable, put him in the backseat," I told her.
        "Can we drive out of here?"
        "I don't think so."
        "Neither do I. But we've got to try, don't we?"
        "Yeah."
        She probably wouldn't make it to the top on foot. Too far, too steep.
        In her condition, if she slipped and took a bad fall, she'd probably start to hemorrhage.
        "If we're going to drive," she said, "I don't want him in here with us."
        "He'll be restrained."
        "Famous last words. He's not just your ordinary maniac. If he was your ordinary maniac, he could sit on my lap and I'd feed him Life Savers. But he's the great Beezo. I don't want him in here."
        I could sympathize with her position. "All right, I'll shackle him to a tree."
        "Good."
        "As soon as we reach the hospital, I'll inform the police, and they can come back here for him. But it's awful cold, and maybe he's had a concussion, so he might not survive."
        Staring at the unconscious Beezo with a ferocity I hoped never to see directed at me, Lorrie said, "Baby, if I had a nail gun, I'd crucify him to the tree and never tell anyone."
        Here was an important lesson for villains who hoped for a long career in lawbreaking. The maternal instinct to protect offspring is an awesome thing. Never threaten an expectant mother with the theft of her precious child, especially not if she is the daughter of a snake handler.
        I took the assault rifle to the back of the Explorer, opened the tailgate, and put the weapon inside.
        The toolbox contained the coiled tow cable. Each end featured a snap link with a locking sleeve.
        Up front, Lorrie cried out urgently, "Jimmy! He's waking up."
        When I hurried around to the open driver's door, I found Beezo groaning, rolling his head back and forth.
        He muttered fearfully, "Vivacemente."
        Earlier, feeling for his pulse, I had put the rock on the seat beside him. I picked it up and tapped him solidly on the forehead.
        His right hand fluttered up from his side, fumbling feebly against his face, and he mumbled, "Syphilitic weasel, swine of swines…"
        The first tap I had administered had been too restrained. I rapped him harder with the rock, and he slumped unconscious once more.
        Having been reluctantly pushed to violence by Punchinello more than four years previously, my ruthlessness didn't surprise me, but I was disturbed to find I enjoyed it. A warm satisfaction flushed my winter-bitten face, and I was tempted to smack him again, though I did not.
        My restraint seemed admirable and a consequence of the wholesome values with which I had been raised, but a part of me believed then-and still believes-that a restrained response to evil is not moral. Revenge and justice are twin braids in a line as thin as the high wire that an aerialist must walk, and if you can't keep your balance, then you are doomed- and damned-regardless of whether you fall to the left or to the right of the line.
        I hauled Konrad Beezo out of the Explorer and dragged him to a suitable pine tree. He was a difficult package to handle, but that was even more true when he was conscious.
        After propping him against the pine, I opened his coat, quickly fed the tow cable up the left sleeve, across