Durant and Blue stopped immediately. But Colleen Cullen whirled around to aim her sawed-off shotgun not at the intruder, but at Durant and Blue.
“Do something with your hands,” Cullen said.
Durant dropped the blue moneybag to the oak floor and raised his hands shoulder height. Georgia Blue merely held her arms and hands away from her body.
“Man behind you’s got an Uzi,” Colleen Cullen said. “You gotta know what that is.” Her eyes flicked to Georgia Blue. “Now here’s what you do, Slim. First, use two fingers of your left hand and pull up your front shirttail. Then use two fingers of your right hand to pull your piece out from between your tummy and your panties and lay it in my left hand.”
Blue did as instructed. As the .38 revolver was deposited in Cullen’s left hand, she gave it a quick glance of recognition and said, “Looks like I get to sell you one more time, sweet thing.”
She shoved the revolver down into her own left rear pants pocket, then turned herself and the shotgun slightly toward Durant. “Same thing, Mr. Tan Man. Two fingers only.”
“Mind if I use a thumb?” Durant said as he carefully took the revolver from his hip pocket, placed it on Cullen’s palm, smiled and said, “Get a better offer, Colleen?”
“Sure did.”
“How much better?”
“Too much for you to top it.”
“Too late to try?”
“Way too late,” she said. “Now I’m gonna turn around and go lay these pieces on the table and I expect you all to stay put on account of the Uzi back there. When I get rid of these, then we’ll get down to—
well, whatever it is we’re gonna get down to.”
Cullen turned and walked six steps toward the big round oak table.
Just as she began her seventh step there was a short burst of automatic fire. Durant guessed four rounds but changed his mind when only three rounds pierced Cullen’s black sweater just above her waistline and about where her spine was.
The rounds slammed her forward and her legs collapsed first.
Before she reached the floor both barrels of the shotgun fired and tore two joined holes in the oak. The holes reminded Durant of a fat solid-black 8 that had fallen on its face.
Durant didn’t move. But Georgia Blue did. She sighed first, turned, went to the nearest straight chair, sat down, crossed her right ankle over her left knee, used the knee to support her elbow, then cupped her chin in her palm, glared at someone other than Durant, then said,
“That was a stupid fucking thing to do.”
“One less witness,” said the man who had ordered them to “Hold it.”
“You can’t kill everybody off,” she said. “First the limo driver. Then the two Goodison twits up in what— Oxnard? And now Colleen. It’s dumb.”
“Only one to go,” he said. “And you can do him.”
“Why me?”
“To earn your money and share the liability, why else?”
“I don’t think she’ll do it,” Durant said.
“Whyever not?” the man said.
“There’s nothing in it for her.”
“Three hundred thousand dollars isn’t nothing.”
“The blue bag at my feet,” Durant said.
“The moneybag?”
“The moneybag,” Durant agreed. “Except there’s no money in it.
Just magazines. Old copies of Architectural Digest mostly.”
“You’re lying, of course.”
“Take a look.”
“Lying or not, I’m afraid Georgia will still have to kill you as a kind of—what shall we call it—penance?”
“Penance is good,” Durant said. “And she’s got a lot to be penitent about. But it wouldn’t be smart.”
“Aren’t we all just a bit past smart?”
“Probably,” Durant said. “But if you want her to kill me, you’ll have to let her handle a piece. And if you do that, she’ll take you out first and then work something out with me to save her own ass. There’s this about Georgia: she always knows when to cut her losses.”
“Kick the bag out in front of you,” the man said.
Durant took a step back and kicked the bag away.
