Four to Score

I didn't know what was going on, but it didn't feel healthy to hang around in Betty's kitchen. So I bolted for the back door.

BANG! A bullet sailed past my ear and embedded itself in the doorjamb.

'Stop!' Leo shouted. 'Stop right where you are.'

He'd dropped the box he'd been carrying, and he was aiming a semiautomatic at me. And he was looking much more professional with a gun in his hand than Sugar had looked.

'You touch that back door, and I'll shoot you,' Leo said. 'And before you die I'll chop your fingers off.'

I stared at him bug-eyed and open-mouthed.

Betty rolled her eyes. 'You and those fingers,' she said to Leo.

'Hey, it's my trademark, okay?'

'I think it's silly. And beside, they did it in that movie about that short person. Everyone will think you're a copycat.'

'Well, they're wrong. I did it first. I was clipping fingers years ago in Detroit.'

Betty retrieved the box Leo had dropped, carted it into the kitchen and set it on the counter. I read the printing on the side. It was a new chain saw. Black and Decker, 120 horsepower, portable.

Eek.

'You're not going to believe this,' I said, 'but there's a dead guy in your cellar. Probably you should call the police.'

'You know when things start to go wrong, it all turns to crapola,' Leo said. 'You ever notice that?'

'Who is he?' I asked. 'The man down there.'

'Nathan Russo. Not that it matters to you. He was my partner, and he got nervous. I had to settle his nerves.'

My phone rang inside my shoulder bag.

'Christ,' Leo said, 'what is that? One of those cellular phones?'

'Yeah. I should probably answer it. It might be my mother.'

'Put your bag on the counter.'

I put it on the counter. Leo rummaged through it with his free hand, found the phone and shut it off.

'This is a real pain in the ass now,' Leo said. 'Bad enough I have to get rid of one body. Now I have to get rid of two.'

'I told you not to do it in the cellar,' Betty said. 'I told you.'

'I was busy,' Leo said. 'I didn't have a lot of time. I didn't notice you helping any to get the money together. You think it's easy to get all that money?'

'I know this is a sort of dumb question,' I said. 'But what happened to Eddie?'

'Eddie!' Leo threw his hands in the air. 'None of this would have happened if it wasn't for that bum!'

'He's just young,' Betty said. 'He's not a bad person.'

'Young? He ruined me! My life's work . . . pooof! If he was here I'd kill him, too.'

'I don't want to hear that kind of talk,' Betty said. 'He's blood.'

'Hah. Wait until you're out on the street because your no-good nephew blew our pension plan. Wait until you need to get into a nursing home. You think they're gonna let you into assisted living on your good looks? No sirree.'

Betty put her grocery bag on the small kitchen table and started to unpack. Orange juice, bread, bran flakes, a box of three-ply jumbo-sized trash bags. 'We should have gotten two boxes of these trash bags,' she said.

This made me swallow hard. I had a pretty good idea what they were going to do with the trash bags and chain saw.

'So go back to the store,' Leo said. 'I'll start downstairs, and you can go get more bags. We forgot to get steak sauce anyway. I was gonna grill steaks tonight.'

'My God,' I said. 'How can you think of grilling steaks when you've got a dead man in your basement?'

'You gotta eat,' Leo said.

Betty and Leo were standing with their backs to the side window. I looked over Leo's shoulder and saw Lula bob up and look in the window at us, her hair beads flopping around.

'Do you hear funny clicking sounds?' Leo asked Betty.

'No.'

They both stood listening.

Lula bobbed up a second time.

'There it is again!'

Leo turned, but Lula was gone from the window.

'You're hearing things,' Betty said. 'It's all this stress. We should take a vacation. We should go to someplace