I heard it hit the ground. With my free hand I reached up and grabbed the back of his collar and pulled him around and then back underneath the shelter of the deck where we couldn’t be seen from above. We were both facing the lights of the canyon and the freeway below. He was the fourth king, the one in the magazine picture who had the bar towel over his shoulder. I couldn’t remember his name in all of the excitement. He’d been sitting at the bar at Chet’s with Banks.
“What’s your name, asshole?”
“Jimmy Fazio. Look, I -”
“Shut up.”
He was quiet. I leaned forward and whispered into his ear.
“Look at the lights. You are going to die here, Jimmy Fazio. The lights are the last thing you’ll ever see.”
“Please…”
“Please? Is that what Angella Benton said? Did she say please to you?”
“No, please, no, I mean, I wasn’t even there.”
“Convince me.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Or die.”
“Okay, it wasn’t me. Please believe me. It was Linus and Vaughn. It was their idea and they did it without even telling the rest of us. We couldn’t stop it because we didn’t know about it.”
“Yeah, what else? You’re only alive because you’re talking.”
“That’s why we shot Vaughn. Linus said we had to because he was going to take the money and pin the girl on Linus.”
“What about Linus getting shot? Was that part of the plan?”
He shook his head.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen but we figured out how to make it work. Like a cover for us buying the clubs.”
“Yeah, it worked all right. What about Marty Gessler and Jack Dorsey?”
“Who?”
I jammed the gun’s muzzle hard into his neck.
“Don’t give me that shit. I want the whole goddamn story.”
“I don’t -”
“Faz! You fucking coward!”
The voice came from above us. I looked up and saw the upper body of a man hanging down over the edge of the deck. His arms were extended, two hands on a gun. I let go of my captive and dove left just as the gunfire erupted. The shooter was Oliphant. He screamed as he fired. Just blindly screamed. The whole shelter area beneath the house lit up with the flashes. Slugs ricocheted off the iron beams. I came up on the side of one of the beams and fired three times in a quick burst at him. His shout cut off and I knew I’d hit him. I watched as he dropped his gun, lost his balance and fell the twenty feet down, making a heavy thud in the bushes.
I looked around for Fazio and found him on the ground near Banks. He’d been hit in the upper chest but was still alive. It was too dark to see his eyes but I knew they were open and panicked, looking at me for help. I grabbed his jaw and turned his face to mine.
“Can you talk?”
“Uh… it hurts.”
“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? Tell me about the FBI agent. Where is she? What happened to her?”
“Uh…”
“Who killed the cop? Was that Linus, too?”
“Linus…”
“Is that a yes? Did Linus do it?”
He didn’t answer. I was losing him. I lightly patted his cheeks and then shook him by the collar.
“Come on, man, stay with me. Was that a yes? Fazio, did Linus Simonson kill the cop?”
Nothing. He was gone. Then a voice came from behind me.
“I think that would be a yes.”
I turned. It was Simonson. He had found the trapdoor and come down out of the house behind me. He was holding a sawed-off shotgun. I slowly stood up, leaving my gun on the ground next to Fazio’s body and raising my hands. I backed away from Simonson, stepping further down the hill.
“Cops on the payroll are always a pain in the ass,” he said. “I had to put an end to that pronto.”
I took another step backwards, but for every step I took, Simonson did likewise. The shotgun was only three feet away. I knew I’d be unable to escape its kill range if I tried to make a move. All I could do was play for time. Somebody in the neighborhood had to have heard the shots and made a call.
Simonson aimed the weapon at my heart.
“I’m going to enjoy this. This one’s for Cozy.”
“Cozy?” I asked, though I had already put it together. “Who the hell is Cozy?”
“You hit him that day. With your bullets. And he didn’t make it.”
“What happened to him?”
“What do you think happened? He died in the back of the van.”
“You buried him? Where?”
“Not me. I was sort of busy that day, remember? They buried him. Cozy liked boats. They gave him a burial at sea, you could say.”
I took another step back. Simonson followed. I was walking out from beneath the deck. If the cops ever showed up they could put a bead on him from above.
“What about the FBI agent? What happened to Marty Gessler?”
“See that’s the thing. When Dorsey told me about her and what the plan was, that was when I knew he had to go. I mean, he was -”
The shotgun suddenly pointed skyward as the foot Simonson had put his weight down on went out from under him. He took a classic pratfall, landing on his back. I was on him then like a wild man. We rolled and fought for control of the shotgun. He was younger and stronger and quickly was able to hold the top position. But he was an inexperienced fighter. His focus was on controlling the struggle rather than on simply overpowering his opponent.
I had my left hand wrapped around the snubbed barrel while the other was gripped at the trigger guard. I managed to squeeze my thumb into the guard behind his finger. I closed my eyes and an image came to me. Angella Benton’s hands. The image from memory and dreams. I channeled all my strength into my left arm and pushed. The angle of the gun shifted. I closed my eyes and depressed the trigger with my thumb. The loudest sound I have ever heard in my life roared through my head as the shotgun discharged. My face felt like it had caught on fire. I opened my eyes and looked up at Simonson and saw that he no longer had a face.
He rolled off of me and an inhuman sound gurgled from the pulp that had been his face. His legs kicked like he was riding an invisible bicycle. He rolled back and forth as his hands balled into fists as tight as stones, and then he stopped and went still.
Slowly, I sat up, registering what had happened. I touched my own face and found it intact. I was burned from the discharge gases but otherwise I was okay. My ears were ringing and for once I couldn’t hear the ever present sound of the freeway below.
I saw a glint in the brush and reached for the object. It was a water bottle. It was full, unopened. I realized that Simonson had slipped on the water bottle I had knocked off the deck a few days before. And it had saved my life. I twisted the cap off the bottle and poured water over my face, washing away the blood and the sting of the burn.
“Don’t move!”
I looked up from my position and saw a man leaning over the deck railing, pointing another gun at me. The moon reflected off the badge on his uniform. The cops had finally arrived. I dropped the bottle and spread my hands wide.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not moving.”
I leaned back, my arms still spread. My head rested on the ground and I pulled great gulps of air into my
