“Take another step back.”
Durant stepped back just as the man came into view. Durant grinned and said, “My God, it must be Jack Broach, Hollywood super agent—and off to World War Two about fifty years late. Is it tonight we raid Calais, Jack?”
Broach smiled a charming smile. “I’d’ve liked to have done that, Mr.
Durant. I really would.”
Broach wore a knitted navy watch cap pulled down over his ears. He also wore a navy-blue turtleneck wool sweater and black pants that were bloused down over jump boots that looked as if they had been spit-shined. Although Durant thought the boots were a bit much he also thought that Broach handled the Uzi with disturbing familiarity.
Broach suddenly stopped smiling, knelt on his right knee beside the moneybag but kept his eyes and the Uzi on Durant. With his left hand, Broach felt for the moneybag’s zipper, found it, tugged it open and glanced down. The open bag was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.
When Broach looked down, Georgia Blue snatched the small .25-caliber semiautomatic from the ankle holster on her right leg—the same leg whose ankle she had rested on her left knee.
She shot the kneeling Jack Broach in his upper left arm. Broach grunted in either surprise or pain or both, dropped the Uzi, clapped his right hand to his wound and stared at Georgia Blue with astonishment. “You shot me,” he said, making it both a question and an accusation.
Now on her feet and aiming the small weapon at Broach with both hands, Georgia Blue said, “Give it up, Jack.”
But his right hand had already darted back to grip the Uzi he had dropped. “Maybe I’ll shoot Mr. Durant myself after all.”
“You can try,” she said.
Broach frowned, as if both puzzled and saddened by events. “We did have a deal, you and I.”
“Where’re the tapes, Jack?”
“What tapes?” he said. “There were never any tapes—none we could use anyway because Ione didn’t kill Billy Rice and don’t ask me who did because I don’t know.”
“And the Goodisons?” Georgia Blue said.
“They became all antsy and wanted to pull out of our blackmail deal and sell their story to some supermarket tabloid and, well, that had to be prevented, didn’t it?”
“Make him drop the Uzi, Georgia,” Durant said.
“A head shot, you think?”
“A head shot would be nice,” Durant said.
“Of course,” Broach said, “it was altogether different with you and me from what it was with me and the Goodisons. You and I are equals.
And we made our deal as such.”
“No tapes, no deal, Jack,” Georgia Blue said. “Sorry.”
Jack Broach shook his head as if disappointed. He rose with the Uzi in his right hand, pointed downward, his finger nowhere near the trigger. He seemed unaware of the blood that ran down his left arm beneath the sweater and dripped to the floor.
Clenching his teeth and barely moving his lips, Durant said, “Make him drop the fucking piece, Georgia.”
“I’m leaving now,” Jack Broach said and walked slowly toward the open sliding door. Just before reaching it, he stopped and looked back at Georgia Blue, who still used two hands to aim the small semiautomatic at him. “Regardless of what you now claim, Georgia, we really did have a deal.”
He turned and walked through the door into the foyer. Standing near the stairs was Otherguy Overby, the Sauer semiautomatic he had borrowed from Artie Wu in his right hand.
When Broach saw Overby, he tried to bring the Uzi up. He was still trying when Overby shot him three times without hesitation. Once Broach lay sprawled on the parquet floor, Overby went over, stared
down at him curiously, nudged him with the toe of a shoe, then looked up as Durant came through the door, holding one of Colleen Cullen’s revolvers. He was followed a moment later by Georgia Blue, whose small five-shot weapon dangled at her side, seemingly forgotten.
Overby looked back down at the dead man, then up at Georgia Blue.
“Jack Broach?”
She nodded.
“What about the tapes?”
“There aren’t any tapes,” she said.
“None they could use anyway,” Durant said.
Overby frowned, then looked around. “What about Colleen?”
“Broach didn’t want any witnesses,” Blue said.
“Except you,” Durant said.
