coat and across Schaefer’s shirt while her right held the gun in place. The gesture was a mockery of eroticism; Schaefer knew she wasn’t fondling him. She was looking for something.
She found it. Her fingertips brushed the wire under Schaefer’s shirt, and she ripped the shirt open, exposing the tiny microphone.
”Cute little thing,” she said.
”You like it?” Schaefer said. “Keep going-you might find a CD player strapped to-”
”Shut up!” she said, slapping the. 45 across his face. It stung, but Schaefer didn’t feel anything broken or bleeding-Baby had just been making a point. If she wanted to, he didn’t doubt she could do far worse, so he knew she hadn’t been trying to hurt him.
Not yet, anyway.
Just then, before Schaefer could reply or Baby could comment further, the ripping sound of nearby full-auto gunfire interrupted the conversation.
The three in the shop froze.
”What the fuck…” the man with the shotgun said-the first words Schaefer had heard him speak. He had a squeaky tenor that didn’t match his broad shoulders. He kept the shotgun trained on Schaefer, glancing uneasily back and forth, as he headed for the shop’s display window.
He didn’t reach it; instead, the window reached him, bursting in a shower of shattered glass as the old man in the trench coat came flying through it amid another burst of machine-gun fire.
”Son of a bitch!” Baby said. She turned and ran for the back door, the. 45 still in her hand.
Schaefer didn’t worry about that; he’d stationed a man out back, just in case, and if that cop couldn’t handle Baby, then the department was in worse shape than Schaefer thought.
The shotgunner, unaware of his boss’s sudden exit, picked himself up from the welter of broken glass and pumped two rounds into the street at random.
”Fuck!” he screamed. “Baby, it’s fucked somehow! They got Arturo!”
”What do you know, Einstein,” Schaefer said. “So they did!” He had no weapon, since he’d thought they might check him out before closing the buy, and the other man still had the shotgun, but Schaefer didn’t hesitate before launching himself in a flying tackle.
The two men landed in a clatter of kitchenware; the shotgun put another round through the shop ceiling before flying from its owner’s hands.
The man turned over in Schaefer’s grip, though, and locked his hands around the detective’s throat.
”Die, motherfucker!” he said. He squeezed.
Those shoulders weren’t just for looks, Schaefer realized. “Potty-mouth,” he grunted, forcing the words out in a harsh whisper. “And speaking of pots…” He picked up a heavy-duty frying pan from the store’s scattered stock and slammed it down on his opponent’s head.
The grip on his neck suddenly loosened.
”Take a look,” Schaefer said as he pulled free. He held up the pan. “Drugs,” he said. Then he slammed it down on the other man’s head again, just to be sure. “That’s drugs on your brain. Your brain on drugs. Whatever.”
He climbed to his feet, tossed the pan aside, then asked his unconscious foe, “Any questions?”
”Yeah, I got a question,” Baby said from the back-room doorway. “You gonna run, or you gonna die?”
She was holding an M-16, Schaefer realized. What’s more, she was pointing it directly at him. She hadn’t been fleeing at all when she’d left; she’d just been going back for more firepower.
He dove for cover behind a rack of flour and sugar canisters as she opened fire, and then he began crawling, looking for something he could use as shelter.
Baby continued to spray bullets into the merchandise for another few seconds, until the click of an empty chamber told her she’d used up her ammunition.
”Damn it!” she shouted as she realized she had missed him. She yanked the spent clip and fumbled with a new one. “Where are you, big boy? Come out, come out wherever you are!”
This would have been Schaefer’s chance, while Baby was reloading, if he’d been somewhere he could have gotten at her. He wasn’t. He didn’t have a gun, and Baby was on the other side of two aisles of kitchen gadgets.
By the time the fresh clip was in place he had already planned his course; he slithered behind shelves full of pot holders and place mats, out of her sight, working his way behind the counter.
”Yoo hoo,” Baby called. “Come on out and play, Detective Schaefer! I know you’re in there.”
Schaefer knew that as the echoes of gunfire and falling crockery faded and Baby’s hearing recovered, she’d be able to track him by sound-there was no way he could move silently in this place, not with all the crap that had fallen off the shelves. That meant he had to move fast. He looked for a weapon.
There wasn’t any. Plenty of merchants kept a gun behind the counter, the Sullivan Act notwithstanding, but all Schaefer saw under the register here were boxes of creditcard slips and the empty shelf where the. 45 had been.
An idea struck him. There weren’t any weapons under the counter
…
He kicked the wall and said, “Damn!” Then he swung himself quickly into a squatting position, braced himself, and set the heels of his hands under the edge of the counter.
”I heard that, Schaefer!” Baby called. “I know where you are-now, come on out! Don’t make me come in after you!”
Schaefer held his breath.
”All right, you son of a bitch, be like that!” she barked. “You’re just making it hard on us both. Christ, a woman’s work is never done.” She strode over to the counter and started to lean over, finger tightening on the trigger…
And Schaefer straightened up from his squat, hard and fast, putting all the strength of his massive thighs into shoving the counter up into Baby’s face and sending it toppling over onto her.
A moment later he stood over her, kicked the M-16 aside, then reached down and yanked the. 45 from her belt. He pulled the clip, then tossed that aside as well.
He glanced around quickly. The interior of the shop was a shambles; spent cartridge casings, broken glass, and battered merchandise were scattered everywhere. Cold winter air was pouring in from the street. The dead man called Arturo was sprawled just inside the remains of the main display window; the unconscious punk Schaefer had crowned with the frying pan lay nearby.
And a dazed but still conscious Baby lay right in front of, him, glaring up at him.
”You’re under arrest,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent…”
The crunch of glass alerted him; Schaefer turned to see Smithers and three other men in black suits and overcoats standing in the shattered window.
Two of them held assault rifles of a design Schaefer didn’t recognize, and Schaefer suddenly realized who’d shot out the front window- and Arturo.
”Come on, Schaefer,” Smithers said. “You’re coming with us.”
”The hell I am,” Schaefer replied.
”We’ve got our orders,” Smithers said. “And all the authorization we need. I tried asking nicely; now I’m telling you. You’re coming with us.”
”And I’m telling you I’m not,” Schaefer replied. “I’m taking Baby and her little playmate in, and I’m calling the meat wagon for Arturo there, and then in a day or so, when the paperwork’s all squared away, I’m going to sweat some information out of Baby.”
Smithers signaled to the man who didn’t have a rifle; that man drew a 9mm handgun from a shoulder holster, stepped over Arturo’s corpse, then neatly, unhesitatingly, put a bullet through Baby’s head.
She hadn’t had time to realize what was coming; the expression on what was left of her face was mere puzzlement, not fear.
”Christ!” Schaefer exclaimed, staring down at the body in shock.
”Him, too,” Smithers said with a nod, and the shotgunner’s brains were added to the mess on the carpet.
”Smithers, you bastard!” Schaefer shouted.
