drawing down on me, you gonna stand around yelling Haiee-ya! maybe break a plank with your head? Uh-uh. Not how I work. You’re going to take the gun, you’re going to fire the gun until you know what the fuck you’re doing, and then you are going to take the gun home so you can stay alive until this is over and keep me alive if it comes to it.” He pointed to the far end of the basement where life-sized silhouettes of men were taped to the walls.
“A practice range?” I asked.
Ryan went to the nearest wall and pulled away the curtain to reveal what looked like sheets of egg cartons. “It’s pretty soundproof.” One of the silhouettes had a black and white photo where the face would be. “Recognize him?”
I did. It was Stewart McClelland, chair of TFTOC, the Task Force on Traditional Organized Crime. “We call it Tough Talk,” Ryan said, “because that’s all they fuckin’ do.” He racked the slide on the Beretta, pushed off the safety and pumped three shots where the heart would have been. The three holes he made were close together; any one of them would have been a kill shot.
He handed me the gun again. This time I took it. “Aim for the chest,” he said.
I closed my hand on it and felt the weight. About the same as the one I’d once carried, one and three-quarter pounds. It had been so long since I had held one. So many years ago. So many dreams.
“Don’t stand stiff-legged,” he said. “It’s okay to crouch a little like you’re in a batting cage. You lefty or righty?”
“Lefty.”
“Don’t pull the trigger, just squeeze it. And don’t forget to breathe. It’s not healthy.”
I remembered Roni Galil saying the same thing to me. With his heavy Israeli accent it came out “breeze.” Breeze, Yonah, before you shooting. Don’t forget to breeze.
I remembered lying in bed Tuesday night, feeling pain where Marco had cut me, feeling alone and vulnerable and wishing I had a gun. Now I did and I felt worse.
I took a breath and settled into the modified Weaver stance Roni had taught me. Left hand holding the gun, left arm extended, right hand cupped around the left, right elbow tucked against my body. Right leg forward, right knee bent, weight evenly placed. Centred. Rock solid. Back on the bike.
I pictured Marco up there instead of Stewart McClelland. Marco standing over Lucas Silver with that stiletto of his, pulling Lucas’s head back by the hair to expose his throat all soft, all white. I pictured the mother screaming and Marco smiling, the knife going toward the boy’s jugular and me the only one who could stop him. I exhaled and fired at the centre mass of the silhouette in front of me. And kept firing until the clip was empty.
CHAPTER 29
Buffalo: the previous March
“ How much do I owe you?” said the woman at the door.
“Lady, you have no idea,” said Ricky Messina, his face breaking into a wide grin. “No idea at all.”
He put his hand in the vinyl warmer and brought out his High Standard Victor. An absolute beauty, five and a half inches of blue steel with gold-plate detailing. She didn’t seem to care for it much, but that was fine by Ricky. Her scared eyes and open mouth just added to her allure, which was considerable, even though she was on the old side for Ricky, letting her hair go grey.
“Who else is in the house?” he asked.
She glanced around wildly, a pulse beating visibly in her throat. He laid the barrel of the gun against where it beat. “Tell me how many,” he said. “Or you’ll be one less.”
“Two,” she said quickly.
“Men?”
“Yes,” she said.
“They have guns?”
“I–I don’t-”
“Strictly yes or no,” Ricky said.
“No.”
“Where are they?”
“The den. Right there.” She indicated a closed door with a nod of her head.
“Knock.”
She swallowed as if trying to wet her throat enough to speak.
“Knock, I said. Now.”
She rapped on the door with the heel of her hand. “Barry?” she called.
“Just a sec,” a man answered.
Ricky heard footsteps on the hardwood floor, two sets, and a high-pitched giggle. When the door opened, he saw two men in their fifties: a Mutt ‘n’ Jeff act, one of them tall and thin with longish grey hair, the other shorter, rounder, balder. Both froze when they saw the gun pointed at Amy.
“Let’s adjourn to the living room, shall we?” Ricky said.
Neither one moved.
He pushed the gun into the soft tissue of her throat, making her gag. When he pulled it away, the suppressor at the end had left a circular imprint. “Fucking adjourn, I said.”
“Okay, okay,” the tall one said, his hands up-though he hadn’t been told to put them up. The pear-shaped one followed him out of the den.
“Either one of you assholes her husband?” Ricky asked.
The tall one took long enough to say, “Me.”
“I don’t know,” Ricky said to the woman. “Couldn’t a cute girl like you have done better?”
This was working out beautifully. He could have found himself up against real heavies like he had at other times, gun-nut bikers or connected shitheads with ambition. But here were two softies, grey old farts looking like they’d die of fright before he had a chance to kill anyone.
In the living room, he made them sit together on the couch, bunched together like they were in the back seat of a small car. He stayed standing, the gun held casually in their direction without pointing at anyone in particular.
“Look, man,” the tall one said.
“Don’t call me man, man,” Ricky said. “My name is Ricky. And you are?”
No one on the couch answered.
He pointed the Victor squarely at the tall man. “Did you not hear me ask your name?”
“Barry,” said the tall man.
“Barry what?”
“Aiken.”
“And you?” he asked the woman.
“Amy Farber.”
“You didn’t take his name?” Ricky asked.
“No.”
“Just as well. You might not be married much longer. What about you, pudge?”
“Richard Leckie,” the chub said, looking down at the ground.
“Another Richard!” Ricky exclaimed. “You don’t by any chance go by Ricky, do you?”
“No,” he stammered. “Rich, mostly.”
“That’s good, Rich,” Ricky said. “You might have just saved your own life, ’cause there’s only room for one Ricky and that would be me.”
“Um… Ricky?” Barry said. “We have some cash in the house. And a laptop and a digital camera and an iPod, the four-gig nano.”
“You think I’m here to rob you?” Ricky said.
“I guess-”
“You calling me a thief?”
