The Darkest Heart (16 page)

He saw a man who was preparing to attack us.

‘Stay where you are.' Leonardo lifted his pistol, gripping it with both hands as he pointed it at the nervous, angular man.

I put out a hand to stop him, reaching over the pistol and pushing it down, but the fisherman flinched back in surprise, lifting both hands in a natural act of self-protection. As he stepped away, though, he caught his left heel on the snout of the catfish lying dead in the bottom of the boat. He slipped backwards, his legs collapsing beneath him, the barrel of the shotgun lifting.

His weapon discharged with a loud, flat boom.

Out there in the silence of the river, it was like thunder.

Both Leonardo and I ducked behind the gunwale and there was a sound of heavy rain as the swarm of shot flew high and wide of us, peppering the treetops on the bank behind the
Deus.
We stared at each other for a fraction of a second, assessing the situation, then we both popped up, into the cloud of smoke, weapons trained on the boat.

A small group of blue macaws, startled by the commotion, had taken to the sky with harsh calls that faded as they distanced themselves from us, and then everything was mute. Even the insects were dumb.

We looked down at the man lying back in the boat, his partner white eyed and open mouthed. As soon as he recovered from the shock, he dropped the shotgun and held up both hands to show it was an accident. He hadn't meant for this to happen.

I allowed myself to breathe, lowering my pistol.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Sorry. I didn't mean to ... Please don't—'

Leonardo fired four times.

His first two shots struck the man with the shotgun, pushing him against the slatted seat. Holes appeared in his white T-shirt, right over his heart, and blood puffed from the wounds, soaking
into the material and spreading as his life evaporated into the scorching afternoon.

The unarmed man operating the outboard hardly even had the chance to begin to stand before Leonardo's third shot hit him in the face.

The lead caught him at an angle across the bridge of his nose, knocking his head back and to the side as it gouged through the cartilage and collapsed his right eye, shattering the bone around the socket. He screamed once in pain before Leonardo's fourth shot silenced him.

20

The gunshots didn't echo. They didn't linger or call their triumph. They just sank into the water, rose to the heavens and vanished into the hot air around us.

The smell of cartridge propellant hung above the gunwale in the dissipating cloud from the shotgun and the wisps of spectral smoke from Leonardo's pistol. The blue tendrils twisted in the stillness, breaking up, drifting, and becoming nothing. My ears rang with a high-pitched mosquito whine, and my head was filled with a million thoughts as I looked down into the boat where the men lay dead.

I stared in silence for what felt like a long time before I turned to Leonardo, seeing the way his eyes grew wide and then narrowed again, his pupils dilated, his Adam's apple rising and falling in his throat.

His mouth opened a touch, the tip of his tongue snaking out to wet his lips then darting back in again, and I knew that he had enjoyed the killing.

The moment had given him a feeling of power and I could see in him the surge of the thrill, the rush of pointing and squeezing. For him, there had been a moment of joy in taking those lives – ending them in a twitch of time so brief it was impossible to measure.

I had seen people before who enjoyed it the way Leonardo did; people who took more from it than just a feeling of power.

Taking a deep breath sucked the gunsmoke into my nostrils, and I tasted it in the back of my throat. ‘He slipped,' I said. ‘That's all. He slipped. He slipped and you killed them.'

Raul remained behind the wheel, waiting for the next move. I willed him without words to hold onto Rocky and keep his hands away from the revolver tucked under the dash. I didn't want this to escalate. No more blood needed to be spilled here.

‘What the hell did you do that for?' I was controlling my anger. There was nothing I could do now.

‘He nearly killed us.' Leonardo's dry mouth clicked. ‘Nearly blew our damn heads off.'

‘He slipped,' I said again. ‘It was an accident.'

Beside us, the door to the covered section scraped open. The squeal of the rusted hinge was like a scream in the calm. Shrill and sharp.

‘What happened?' Daniella's words were tentative and softly spoken.

I held out my left hand, fingers spread wide, signalling for her to stay where she was. ‘You didn't need to do that,' I said to Leonardo.

He sniffed, turning his head to look at me. His hands were still raised, the automatic still pointed at the boat on the water below us.

‘There was no reason to kill them.' I spoke through my teeth, desperate to stay calm. My fingers were tight around the handle of my pistol.

‘Kill who?' Daniella asked. ‘What—'

‘What's done is done.' Leonardo snorted hard and turned towards me. He lowered his weapon, but both hands still gripped it, ready to raise it again in a heartbeat. ‘We going to have a problem about this?' he asked, not taking his eyes from mine.

‘You're a liability,' I said. ‘Those men ... You didn't need to do that.' I glanced down at his pistol then looked back at his eyes once more. His pupils were still dilated and he had a crazed appearance. Something about Leonardo felt even more dangerous and unpredictable than before. It wasn't just that he had shot the men in the boat, it was something else. His movements were more exaggerated; his words were spoken more quickly.

Beside us, Daniella shifted, as if to come and look, but her
movement alarmed Leonardo and he jerked in her direction, the pistol raising.

She stopped and flinched away, surprised by his sudden reaction.

‘It's all right.' I held up a hand. ‘It's all right. Daniella's not going anywhere.'

Daniella took a step back and Leonardo nodded. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as if trying to collect his thoughts.

‘So,' he said, looking at me again.
‘Are
we going to have a problem about this?'

‘No. What's done is done.' I repeated his own words, keen to calm him down. The way he was, I was worried he might try to kill the rest of us.

‘Then it's time to go, right?'

‘Not yet.' I swallowed away the bad taste in my mouth. ‘We need to clear this up. We don't want someone coming past here and finding this.'

‘No time. We need to make our delivery by—'

‘We have to make time,' I said, keeping my voice steady. ‘Or we deliver late. Either way, we need to clear this up. We don't want someone following us, looking for murderers.'

‘There's no one out here. Look at this place.'

‘We don't know that.'

He thought about it, eyes shifting to look at Daniella, then back at me again.

‘And I'm going to need your weapon,' I told him. ‘No one carries on this boat but me.'

Leonardo drew in a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. He tilted his head to one side as if he had an itch but didn't want to take his hands from his weapon in order to scratch it.

‘We'll clean up,' he said after a moment. ‘Maybe you're right about that, but if you want this gun, you'll have to take it from me. And the only way that's going to happen is if I'm dead.'

I relaxed my right arm, tightened my finger on the trigger of the pistol. I could try it. I might be quicker. I might be able to raise my weapon high enough to hit him somewhere below the
waist. His feet, his knees, maybe his groin. But he might react too quickly. He might see it in my eyes, see the movement of my arm. And then I would be gone and Raul and Daniella would be alone with him.

‘I can see what you're thinking, Zico. Don't do it.'

‘OK,' I nodded. Together.'

‘Together.'

I began to raise my revolver, slowly, turning it to the side, pointing it away from Leonardo. He did the same thing, lifting his pistol until both our weapons were pointing at the sky. Together, we placed our thumbs over the hammer, releasing and easing them back into position.

‘We done with this?' he asked me.

‘You tell me.'

‘OK,' he said. ‘We're done with this.' And, as if nothing had happened, he tucked away his pistol and turned to lean on the gunwale. ‘We better get this mess cleared up, then.'

‘Yeah,' I said, holstering my revolver. ‘Let's do that.'

21

Daniella was paler than I'd ever seen her. Paler even than the time she'd had food poisoning that kept her in bed a week. The colour of her skin was leached of all its beauty. She had started to shake as she stared down at the boat, but was unable to look away. Human nature is human nature. We subject ourselves to things we know we might not be able to endure. We do it to test ourselves, to scratch an itch, to punish ourselves. Whatever the reason, we can't help but look at atrocity. Even if it's only to reassure ourselves that our own life could always be worse.

I pulled her away from the gunwale, away from the tableau of death on the small boat, and buried her face against my shoulder.

‘Don't look at them,' I said. ‘Go up there with Raul and help keep Rocky out of the way – I don't want her making Leonardo angry. The way he is, he might go off again at any moment.'

She stayed like that, breathing against me. Her whole body was trembling, and I tried to imagine what she was feeling. For me, this sight was not new. I had seen all manner of death. Daniella, though, would not be accustomed to it and the image would be burned into her mind. Perhaps she didn't know
what
to feel. Revulsion, fear, sadness, anger. Maybe she felt all those things at once.

‘Can you do that for me?' I asked. ‘Stay with Rocky?'

Daniella leaned back. ‘Did you ... is this what you ... ?'

‘I didn't do this.'

Daniella nodded, an almost imperceptible movement, and reached up to touch my face. Her fingers paused against my cheek before she snatched them away. It was as if she had connected
with my skin and seen what was in my head. I had not done
this
– what she had seen today – but she knew I must have done things like it. The old man brought me on the boat to protect him. I was armed. There were whispered rumours in Piratinga that linked me to men like Costa and the Branquinos, so Daniella knew this kind of violence was not beyond me. I wanted to reassure her; to tell her I had never done it like this. I wanted to explain that I didn't gun men down for the enjoyment of it, that I had never killed a man who didn't deserve it, but there were no words that could diminish the horror she had just witnessed. And there was a newspaper clipping in my shirt pocket, giving presence to a woman whose death would make me just like Leonardo. Perhaps worse.

‘Go with Raul,' I said to her. ‘Sit with him a while.'

The old man extended his hand and took Daniella's, encouraging her to follow him. He led her past the wheelhouse, going to sit at the bow and look out across the river. Rocky sat with them as he spoke to her, his voice a low murmur in the quiet air. I couldn't hear what he was saying but the sounds were temperate and soothing.

I watched them a while, sitting together, the old man stooped in sickness, Daniella rigid with shock and revulsion.

Beneath us, the boat moved gently with the current of the river.

‘It's difficult for some people,' Leonardo said. ‘They're not like us. This doesn't bother us like it bothers them.'

‘You don't know anything about me.' My words were whispered over a dry throat and formed by a dry tongue. I was filled with concern for Daniella and anger at Leonardo. There was a frustration at the hopelessness of my situation; that I could have done nothing to prevent him from his murderous actions. It was the same feeling that had burned in me when I found Antonio. The same I had felt when I found Sofia.

‘I know you've killed people,' he said. ‘I can see it in you.'

‘We are not alike.'

‘You've done this before,' he prodded. ‘You've killed people.'

‘I never killed a man who asked me for water.' My lips hardly moved as I spoke.

‘What difference does that make?' Leonardo shrugged.

‘Don't compare us,' I said. ‘We're not alike. These men ... didn't need to die. They were thirsty, that's all.'

They're not thirsty now,' Leonardo smirked.

‘Don't joke about the dead.'

‘That some country superstition?'

‘And don't try to piss me off more than you already have.'

Leonardo's face fell, the smile dropping from his lips like an unwanted annoyance. ‘You sure we're not going to have a problem about this?' he said, moving a hand towards his waist.

‘No,' I told him, staying his hand and looking him in the eye. ‘We're not. There's money coming our way, so we're going to get this job done and you're going to pay us.'

His smile edged back.

In his mind, he was in charge now.

My mind was on other things, though. I was wondering how long Leonardo and I could be together on this boat before one of us killed the other.

22

Out there, in the middle of the river, it was like no place on earth. It was an inferno. A place of suffering. There was no sound but the gentle wash of the water against the two boats. The occasional knock as they came together and separated. Came together and separated.

Without shade, the sun was almost unbearable. Even with the day beginning to wane, it was hot and without mercy. Heat like that could drive a man to insanity. It seared the skin and tortured the mind. No one could survive long in a place like that.

Already, the insects had come. It was impossible to know how they had sensed it or where they had come from, but they had caught scent of what had happened here and had gathered to take their nutrition from it.