the barrel with the notch in the back sight, and started shooting at the face leering in the rear window.
Three slugs splattered the rear windshield.
They were playing hardball. The sedan slammed to a stop and I could hear the driver slapping it into
reverse. Before he could let out the clutch I heard a cannon explode at the other end of the alley. It
exploded three times. Two shots blew out the rest of the rear glass. The third one streaked off the rear
bumper, an inch above the gas tank.
Stick?s voice yelled down the alley:
“Go for the tires!”
Followed by another blast that sparked off the cobblestones barely an inch off target.
That whiskey-troubled voice was the sweetest sound I have ever heard.
“It?s okay,” I told DeeDee. “It?s Stick. We?re home free.”
I lined up my little green sights and put two slugs into the left rear. The tire blew like a hand grenade
going off. The driver shifted gears and roared off in retreat, the deflating tire peeling off the rim and
the steel hub shrieking along the street. The hubcap spun off and clattered loudly against one wall.
The ruined sedan ploughed into the garbage cans, showered them into street and river, screeched
around the corner, and was swallowed by the fog.
I turned back to DeeDee, who was leaning against the metal door. Her eyes were the size of full
moons.
“Okay?” I asked.
She stared at me for several seconds and then nodded furiously. “Are you good on numbers?”
“I w-w-work in a b-b-bank, remember,” she stammered. “B-C-O-3-9-6,” I said.
She repeated it. “Is that the license?” she asked.
“Right.”
A moment later the Stick came running up, his .357 in hand.
“You two okay?” he asked breathlessly.
I threw my arms around him.
“Yeah, and damn am I glad to see you,” I said, bear-hugging him. “Where the hell did you come
from?”
“When we left the place there was a joker standing up the street under a light,” Stick answered. “So
we stopped at the edge of the park for a couple of minutes, just in case.”
“So that?s what that was all about,” Lark pouted as she brought up the rear. “I thought it was love.”
Stick gave her that crazy look of his. “It was both, darlin?,” he said. “I doubled up.”
“Whatever that means,” she said.
