voice, getting closer to the room:
“Hey, Nicky, bom dia, how ya do at the track?”
It was Tagliani?s voice; I?d heard it on tape enough times to know.
“I dropped a bundle.” Stinetto?s voice.
“How the flick you lose? It was a fix.. I gave it to yuh just this morning. Didn?t I tell yuh, it?s on for
the four horse, third heat. Huh?”
“Ya tol? me. Too bad the other seven heats wasn?t fixed.”
Laughter. “I don? believe yuh. I give you a sure thing, you turn right aro—”
At that point there was a sound of? glass crashing, a lot of jumbled noise, swearing and yelling.
Tagliani: “God—no, no..”
Stinetto: “Motherfu—”
Several shots, from two different gulls.
A man?s scream.
“Nicky
Brrrddt. A muffled rapid-fire gun, probably a submachine gun. It fired so fast it sounded like a
dentist?s drill.
Two screams; terrible, terrified, haunting screams.
Two more shots.
Bang.. . bang. Something heavy, a .357 maybe.
Somebody gagged.
Something heavy hit the floor, crunching glass as it fell.
Two more shots, spaced.
Bang... bang!
Footsteps running and the sound of something else hitting the floor.
The something else was sizzling.
A woman?s voice,
screaming,
getting closer,
entering the room.
Baroomf!
The explosion blew out the mike. Dutch punched the off button.
“That?s it,” he said.
Charlie One Ear said, “Utterly charming. Too bad about the woman.”
