“What’s with the silent treatment, buddy? Do you even understand English? Are you mute?”

He turns to look at me.

“Huh? Get me? What are they paying you? I’ll give you ten times what they’re paying you. What’s your price? Name it. Just name it. I’ve got the money. A lot of money. Everyone has their price. Tell me what it is.”

Can you run back time? Can you do that? Are you a mage, a necromancer?

“What have you done with my clothes? I want my clothes. I want my goddamn clothes!” he shouts, furious, stubborn.

Naked in, amigo, and perhaps if things don’t go well, naked out.

Even so, when the gun waggles he keeps walking.

“What is this? I want my clothes!”

The echo back over the lake opens the floodgates.

“This is insane! This is crazy!” he yells. “You can’t shoot me, you can’t. You can’t shoot me. You can’t. I haven’t done anything. You got the wrong man. This is a goddamn misunderstanding.”

I’m not going to shoot you. That would be far too easy. That would not give us sufficient comfort in the long years ahead.

“Listen to me, listen to me. I know you’re not mute and I know you can hear me. Say something. Speak. You think you’re being so smart. You’re not. I want you to speak. I’m ordering you to speak. Speak to me!”

You want part of it? How about this: enshrined within the Colonial Spanish penal code is the Latin maxim talem qualem, which means you take your victim as you find him. American cops call it the eggshell skull rule. Slap someone with a delicate cranium, break it, and they’ll still charge you with murder. Talem qualem. Take your victim as you find him. In other words, be careful who you kill. Be careful who you kill, friend.

“Madness. This is madness. You’ve obviously made some kind of mistake. I’m not loaded. You want to go to Watson, he’s worth a billion. I’ll show you. I’ll show you. He’s got a van Gogh, a Matisse. Him, not me. Dammit, talk to me! Who do you think I am? What is this? Who do you think I am?”