Ice Be Gone

Rick claimed he’d been born with a fever, and that he’d had it all his life. “You hear about those abandoned mining towns where a fire starts underground and then goes for years and years? Nobody can put it out?” he told me once, over a beer. “That’s me.”

I never took his temperature to confirm, and I didn’t have to. The man ran hot. He packed two extra shirts every day the thermometer ran past 60 degrees, because he was bound to sweat through at least one. And in the winter? He’d wear a simple long-sleeve shirt and take a jog through the polar vortex.

And that’s what he wore when he met up with me at the picnic table in Hellwood Park in the middle of a damn blizzard: a long-sleeve t-shirt, plain white, the color of a polar bear, though I doubted even one of them would step foot into this.

“Christ, Rick,” I said, shaking against the storm. I wore a winter coat over a sweater, snow pants, mittens, a face mask, and long underwear, and still I was freezing. “Maybe next time you got something you need to share with me, we could head to the lake, choose an ice-fishing hole, and just jump in there for a quick talk.”

“It’s not so bad out of the wind,” Rick said. He raised his voice to be heard over the gusts, but otherwise showed no awareness of the weather.

“You know what’s out of the wind, Rick?” I said. “Inside my house, talking to you on the phone.”

“Can’t risk talking about this on the phone,” Rick said.

“So say it already,” I nearly shouted, “before my ears go numb and the world goes quiet.”

“It’s about your little brother,” Rick said. “Benny’s in trouble, Vince. Robbed a card game, not realizing it was part of Jack Luce’s empire. Not a lot of money, but a good helping of embarrassment. And you know how Luce feels about being embarrassed. Anyway, he wants to make an example of Benny. Word is he has Jens Nilsson after him.” When I didn’t respond, he said: “That’s the Malmö Mortician, Vince.”

“I’m aware,” I said. And I was, not just of who he was but what he was. Jens Nilsson worked in our city’s expansive criminal underbelly, a place with no shortage of people whose specialty involved manufacturing people into bodies. In a crowded circle of killers like that, can you imagine the kinds of things you’d need to do to get ‘the mortician’ as a nickname? He was an industry leader, approaching Xerox territory in his field. Soon we’d all start saying, “He’s been Jensed” instead of “He’s been murdered,” like it was in the dictionary or something.

Making an example was right. Sending the Malmö Mortician after a dipshit like my little brother Benny was like ordering a machete to open a ziplock bag.

“I’m done with stuff like this, Rick,” I said. “You know that. I cleaned up, and I’m not getting dirty again. Benny made his bed; now he can sleep in it.”

Rick shrugged. “If you say so. But, Vince? If you let him lie down, it’s not gonna be for a short nap, that’s for sure.”

I cursed under my breath. Of course, Rick knew what he was doing. Just telling me, he’d already dragged me into this mess. Benny was an idiot, but he was my idiot.

“Fine, fine. Let me put some feelers out,” I said. “But to do that, I ought to go somewhere where I can regain feeling in my face. Let’s go to Willy’s for coffee, see what he’s heard.”

[Editor’s note: On his way to and from this meet-up, Vince used one of these ice scrapers to clear off his car.]