The Woman Who Married a Bear by John Straley Page B

hammer snapped down and pierced the skin.
    I kneed him in the testicles. There was a long phlegm-choked gasp, and then some gagging.
    My hand was bleeding a little and I freed my skin from the gun. I opened the cylinder and ejected all the rounds onto the floor.
    He started to move in a crouch toward the stairs and I brought the handle down on the top of his head. One of the walnut grips split off and fell over the edge of the staircase landing.
    It’s a lot harder to knock a man unconscious than most people think. And it’s kind of a spooky thing to nudge a person that close to death or permanent brain damage. But I tapped him twice. His body went limp. I picked up his hand and grabbed him by his hair and dragged him to the door of my room.
    I fumbled with my key, pushed the door open, and dragged Emanuel in. Tightly wedged between the plywood wardrobe and the foot of the bed, his head came to rest next to the radiator, which was banging and rattling as if someone in the basement were sending a frantic message.
    I tried to fill an ice bucket from the stove-sink-refrigerator unit and got about a cup of rusty water. I threw it on his face anyway. He didn’t move but his eyelids fluttered. I squatted above his chest and put my face very near his nose.
    â€œI’m going to listen very carefully to your explanation of who paid you to kill me. Then I’m going to decide whether I need to kill you or not.”
    â€œIt’s the truth, man. I don’t know. Hey, I was only going to scare you, you know?”
    â€œWhere’s the money?”
    He pointed to his inside jacket pocket. Then his hand shifted down his leg. I jerked the knife out of his boot. It had an eight-inch black blade. Electrician’s tape was wrapped around the tang for a handle. I pressed it against his throat. His pulse fluttered through his skin at the edge of the blade. I reached in his jacket and pulled out an envelope that held a fat stack of one hundred dollar bills.
    â€œNo one gave you this much money to scare me. You have several serious problems, Emanuel, and credibility is not the least of them. Now, who hired you? Think about it. It’s important and it has a bearing on your future.”
    The skin broke under the blade of his knife. A thin line of blood trickled down his neck.
    â€œI swear to God, man, I don’t know.” His eyes were glazed, his head was shaking slightly, back and forth.
    I patted him gently on the shoulder, then I took the knife from his throat and threw it in the sink. Coercion never works in real life like it does on TV.
    â€œI believe you, Emanuel. I really do. But I can’t have you following me around.”
    I put the envelope of money in my back pocket and I swung the butt of the pistol across his forehead. He moaned and lay back.
    He kept moaning and his eyes kept fluttering like aspen leaves as I dragged his body parallel to the window and the bed. Now his feet were even with the edge of the radiator. What I wanted to do was set both legs up on the radiator pipe, wedging them firmly between the pipe and the wall. With his torso flat on the floor—head rocking back and forth, moaning—I could stand up on the bed, bounce twice on the mattress, vault forward and land just above his knees. I imagined that they would support me briefly, then snap like pieces of kindling.
    But I didn’t. Even if Emanuel was a scumbag who was trying to kill me, I kind of liked him. So I stuck his gun in the top of his pants and threw him down the stairs.

EIGHT
    WHENTHE POLICE arrived and found him on the second-floor landing, they arrested him on the spot, knowing, of course, that he was a criminal. Their investigation would fill in the details. They’d ask a few questions, and Emanuel might talk, but not about me. He had been half-smart shooting his mouth off in the bar about a contract killing, because it would look improbable, he hoped, that he would be the one to actually do it.