forgetting to put your pants on.”
“You’re still all right, Al,” Calesian said. But he was thinking hard, trying to work it out, and he was wondering if Lozini was maybe saying that he was quitting. Was that it? He’d come here to turn in his resignation, to ask to be allowed to retire with no trouble. Believing that, beginning to feel less tense, Calesian said, “You’re still fine, Al, you’ve got years in you.”
“I’m past the bullshit, Harold,” Lozini said. “I’m almost ready to quit, walk away from it.” His lips curling, he added, “Go play shuffleboard.”
Calesian watched him, intent on every word. “Almost?” he said.
“That’s right, Harold.” Lozini reached inside his jacket so slowly, moving so unemotionally, that Calesian couldn’t believe he was actually reaching for a gun until the thing was out and aimed at Calesian’s eyes.
Calesian’s hands splayed out atop the attache case. He made no head or shoulder movements. He said, “Take it easy, Al.”
“I’ll go out,” Lozini said, still calm, still casual, “but I’ll go out my own way. I won’t get shoved. I won’t get conned and robbed like an old man.”
“Al, I don’t know what—”
“It’s either Ernie or Dutch,” Lozini said. “Can’t be anybody else.”
Calesian blinked, stunned at the names. But with the gun pointing at him, there was nothing to do but go on playing innocent. “Al, you’re miles ahead of me,” he said. “I just don’t—”
“That’s right, you son of a bitch,” Lozini said, with even the insult said in a calm and measured way, “I
“Al, if I had the first idea what—”
“I’ll shoot your fucking kneecap off,” Lozini said, his voice finally beginning to harden, to match the words he was saying. “And you can gimp your way to the discotheque with your teenage twats from now on.”
“Al—”
“Don’t deny it again,” Lozini said. “You know me well enough, Harold. I can shoot pieces off you till sundown and you won’t even get to pass out. One more lie and I start chopping.”
Calesian’s mouth was dry. His scalp was burning in the sunlight, all of his muscles were tense and jumping, and he felt he needed time to go away and relax and work out what was best to do here. But there wasn’t any time, he had to do something now.
And he knew Lozini, he knew that cold look in the bastard’s eyes, he knew that Lozini actually would start shooting very soon now. Not to kill, just to hurt and maim. He’d seen the remnants two or three times over the years of men who’d been treated that way; the shot-off parts had come to the morgue in a separate plastic bag. There’d been jokes about it, the spare parts in the plastic bag, but Calesian couldn’t remember any of the jokes now. All he could remember was the plastic bag, with the bloody bites of flesh inside it.
“All right,” he said. He licked his lips, and put his left hand on top of his head to shield it from the sun. “I’ll level with you,” he said. Then, still thinking hard, he stopped and licked his lips again.
“Go ahead,” Lozini said. The gun was still pointing at him, not wavering; the bastard might be old, but he wasn’t used up, not yet.
”It’s, uh—” Calesian felt the hot breath of wrath on him, hotter than the midsummer heat. No matter what he said now, no matter what he did, wrath would come at him from some direction. “It’s Ernie,” he said. “Ernie Dulare.”
Lozini sagged a little. The gun barrel dipped, Lozini’s eyes seemed to lose the hard edge of their focus, the skin of his face got grayer, less healthy in the sunshine.
“It was bound to happen, Al,” Calesian said. “And I had to go along with it, you can see that.”
Lozini had nothing to say.
“In fact,” Calesian said, “you know where I just was, I took a plane trip, I went to see a guy from Chicago. Ernie’s clearing things with the big people ahead of time, letting them know there isn’t going to be any trouble, no bloodshed, a simple quiet changeover.”
Lozini, his voice and face duller than before, said, “What guy? What guy from Chicago?”
“Culligan.”
Lozini nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “And he’s got no objection?”
“Why should he?”
“Sure,” Lozini said. Then he frowned. “Prove it’s Ernie,” he said.
Calesian tensed again. “What?”
“Call him. Come on, we’ll go inside and you’ll call him and I’ll hear what he’s got to say.”
“Oh,” Calesian said. “Sure, why not? You think maybe it’s really Dutch, after all, and I’m covering, putting you off on Ernie? I’ll call, you’ll hear it for yourself.” He started to take the attache case off his lap, then stopped and said, “Wait a minute, I’ll do better than that. I’ve got a letter in here to Culligan from Ernie, you can read it yourself.” He put the attache case on his lap again, clicked open the snaps, lifted the lid.
Lozini was frowning at him. “A letter—” Then he straightened up suddenly from the railing, pushing the gun out ahead of himself toward Calesian. “Get your hand out of—”
There wasn’t any time to fit the silencer on, but up here that shouldn’t matter. Calesian fired through the lid of the attache case, then had to lunge forward and grab a handful of Lozini’s jacket to keep the old man from toppling over the railing after all. He lowered Lozini to the slate floor, plucked the gun from his dead fingers, tossed it over onto the chaise longue. His own gun and the attache case were on the floor where they’d fallen when he’d made his
