I put two more into her. She fell on her face. The pistol dropped from her hand.
I ran over, reached under her arm and rolled her over. Her yellow turtleneck was still clean— I couldn't see where the bullets had gone in. 'You're liars,' she said, voice drained. 'Dirty fucking liars, all of you.'
I picked up Morales' revolver, knelt down by Belinda. Her raptor's eyes flamed at me. I pointed Morales' pistol at her forehead, squeezed the trigger. The explosion shut off my hearing. Her forehead disappeared.
I ran then, ran hard. Across the roof, down the stairs, Morales' pistol held ahead of me like a talisman against evil. The apartment door was standing open. I found Morales, still in the same position, knelt next to him.
'She's dead,' I told him. 'I shot her with your throw–down gun. I put another one into her with this,' I said, holding up his pistol so he could see it. 'I'm taking off— the cops'll be here in a minute.'
'I didn't…call,' he said. 'I waited…in case you could— '
'Give me five minutes, then,' I said. 'I'm going back out over the roof.'
'You…got it,' he grunted— in pain, but he was going to make it, I could see.
'I'm out of here,' I told him, standing up.
'Your prints…'he whispered.
'I was covered,' I told him, spreading my hands so he could see the gloves.
'Give me my piece,' he said, craning his neck so he could look up at me.
I bent down, handed it over. He took it. Carefully wrapped his hand around the butt, slipped his finger into the trigger guard. '
I went back to the roof, moved shadowy past Belinda's body Her eyes were open but the light was out. I walked softly, the tiny flash out in front of me, going from roof to roof. I was almost to the end of the block when I heard the sirens.
I stopped in an alley, reached down, pulled the detachable soles and heels off my boots and walked away on the new ones. A few blocks over, I dropped the pull–aways down a gutter sewer.
A few blocks later, I took off the gloves and tossed them into a Dumpster. Once I slipped a token into the slot for the Spring Street subway, I was gone.
Hauser never got his story. By the time he came back from Chicago, it was all over the news. TV, radio, the papers, everything. Hero cop Jorge Morales had cracked a serial murder case….A rogue female detective was the culprit, and he'd taken her out in a vicious gun battle that saw him catch a slug in the chest. He lost a lung, but he was going to make it. Politicians knocked each other over trying for photo ops standing next to his hospital bed. NYPD loved him. If they had questions about the bootleg cellular phone or the extra gun, they kept them to themselves.
I called Helene from a pay phone. 'The contract's back on,' is all I said.
When Hauser called the prison to set up another interview with Piersall, they told him Piersall wasn't going to be having any visitors. Seems he was out of PC only one day when somebody shanked him— he was DOA by the time they got him to the prison infirmary.
Frankie's got another fight coming up in ninety days— Ristone got him a match with a tomato can. The big buildup had already started. No more real fights for Frankie until he had a string of setup KOs under his belt.
Hauser told me he wasn't done. 'This Adelnaws Foundation stinks,' he said. 'Did you know this guy Capshaw had a conviction for child molesting? Almost forty years ago, in Toronto. And this foundation, it's on the Internet, the server's over in Finland somewhere. I'm gonna take a look.'
'Be yourself,' I told him.
It was good advice I gave Hauser. But it was a couple more weeks before I took it myself. Vyra called from the Vista. And I climbed in the Plymouth and drove over to see her new shoes.
