The little man continued nodding, but vaguely, without any apparent meaning. Then he frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gurney was seized by the sickening possibility that he was on the wrong track. But there was nowhere left to go except forward, no time left for thinking twice. So, then, forward with a vengeance. “Maybe you should’ve killed him a long time ago. Maybe you should’ve strangled him when he was born, before Tirana really sank her teeth into him. Little fucker was nuts from the beginning, like his mother, not a businessman like you.”
Gurney searched the man’s face for the slightest reaction, but his expression was no more communicative-or human-than the pistol in his hand. So once again there was nowhere to go but forward. “That’s why you showed up here after the Jillian drama, right? Leonardo killing her was one thing, that could just be good business, but cutting her fucking head off at the wedding, that was… more than business. My guess is you came to keep an eye on things. Make sure that things were conducted in a more businesslike fashion. You didn’t want the crazy little fucker fucking it all up. But, to be fair, Leonardo had some strong points. Smart. Imaginative. Right?”
Still no reaction beyond a dead stare.
Gurney went on. “You have to admit that the Hector idea was pretty good. Inventing the perfect fall guy in case anyone caught on to all those Mapleshade graduates being unlocatable. So the mythical Hector ‘appeared on the scene’ just before the girls started disappearing. That shows forward thinking on Leonardo’s part. Real initiative. Good planning. But it came with a price. He was just too fucking crazy, wasn’t he? That’s why you finally had to do it. Backed into a corner. Crisis management.” Gurney shook his head, looked with dismay at the huge bloodstain on the rug between them. “Too fucking little, Giotto. Too fucking late.”
“The fuck did you call me?”
Gurney returned the man’s granite stare for a long moment before answering, “Don’t waste my time. I have a deal for you. You have five minutes to take it or leave it.” He thought he saw a tiny crack in the stone. For maybe a quarter of a second.
“The fuck did you call me?”
“Giotto, get it through your head. It’s over. The Skards are done. The Skards are fucking done. You get it? Clock’s ticking. Here’s the deal. You hand me the names and addresses of all Karnala’s customers, all the Jordan Ballston creeps you do business with. I especially want the addresses where some Mapleshade girls might still be alive. You give me all that and I give you a guarantee that you will live through the process of being arrested.”
The little man laughed, a sound like gravel being crushed under a blanket. “You got amazing balls, Gurney. You’re in the wrong fucking business.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re down to four and a half minutes. Time fucking flies. So if you choose not to give me the addresses I want, here’s what’s going to happen: There will be a careful, by-the-book attempt to take you into custody. You, however, will foolishly try to escape. In doing so you will endanger the life of a police officer, making it necessary to shoot you. You will be shot twice. The first bullet, a nine-millimeter hollow-point, will blow your balls off. The second will sever your spinal cord between the first and second cervical vertebrae, resulting in irreversible paralysis. This combination of wounds will convert you into a soprano in a wheelchair in a prison hospital for the rest of your fucking life. It will also give your fellow inmates an opportunity to piss in your face whenever they feel the urge. Okay? You understand the deal?”
Again came the laugh. A laugh that would make Hardwick’s nasty rasp sound sweet. “You know why you’re still alive, Gurney? Because I can’t fucking wait to hear what you’re going to say next.”
Gurney looked at his watch. “Three minutes and twenty seconds to go.”
There were no voices coming from the monitor now-just moans, hacking coughs, a sharp little scream, crying.
“What the fuck?” said Hardwick. “Jesus, what the fuck?”
Gurney looked at the screen, listened to the piteous sounds, turned to Hardwick, spoke with deliberate clarity and evenness. “In case I forget, remember that the door opener is in Ashton’s pocket.”
Hardwick looked strangely at him, seeming to register the implication of his statement.
“Time is running out,” Gurney added, turning toward Giotto Skard.
Again the old man laughed. He could not be bluffed. There would be no deal.
A girl’s face appeared on the screen, half obscured by a tumble of blond hair, full of fear and fury, larger than life, distorted into ugliness by its closeness to the camera.
“You fuck!” the girl screamed, her voice cracking. “You fuck! You fuck! You fuck!” She began to cough violently, wheezing, hacking.
The cadaverous Dr. Lazarus appeared from behind an upended pew, crawling like a giant black beetle across the smoky floor.
Giotto Skard was watching the screen. Worse than emotionless, he seemed amused.
This minor distraction, Gurney concluded, was as good as it was going to get. This one last chance was all he had left.
There was no one to blame. No one to save him. His own decisions had brought him to this place. This most dangerous place in all his life. This narrow place, teetering on the edge of hell.
Gate of Heaven.
There was only one thing he could do.
He hoped it would be enough.
If it wasn’t, he hoped that perhaps one day Madeleine would be able to forgive him.
Chapter 79
There was no course at the academy that adequately prepared you for being shot. Hearing it described by those who’d been through it gave you some idea, and seeing it happen added a certain disturbing dimension, but like most powerful experiences, the idea of it and the reality of it existed in two different worlds.
His plan, such as it was, conceived as it was in a second or two, was, like jumping out a window, simplicity itself. The plan was to launch himself directly at the little man with the gun, who was standing ten or twelve feet from him next to Ashton’s empty chair just inside the open door. The hope was to smash into him with sufficient force to drive him backward through the doorway-the momentum carrying them both over the small landing and down the stone stairs. The price was getting shot, probably more than once.
As Giotto Skard watched the blond girl shrieking “Fuck!” Gurney hurled himself forward with a guttural roar, placing one arm across the heart area of his chest and the other across his forehead. Skard’s.25-caliber pistol would not have great stopping power, except to those two areas, and Gurney was resigned to absorbing elsewhere whatever damage was necessary.
It was crazy, probably suicidal, but he saw no alternative.
The deafening report of the first shot in the small room came almost immediately. With a shocking impact, the bullet shattered Gurney’s right wrist, which was pressed against the heart side of his breastbone.
The second bullet was a spike of fire through his stomach.
The third was the bad one.
N
An explosion of electricity. A blinding green spark, a spark like an exploding star. Screaming. A scream of terror and shock, screaming into a rage. The light is the scream, the scream is the light.
There is nothing. And there is something. At first it’s hard to tell which is which.
A white expanse. Could be nothing. Could be a ceiling.
Somewhere below the white expanse, somewhere above him, a black hook. A small black hook extended like a beckoning finger. A gesture of vast meaning. Too vast for words. Everything now is too vast for words. He can’t think of any words. Not a single one. Forgets what they are. Words. Small bumpy objects. Black plastic insects. Designs. Pieces of something. Alphabet soup.
From the hook hangs a colorless transparent bag. The bag is bulging with colorless transparent liquid. From the bag a transparent tube descends toward him. Like the neoprene gas tube on a model airplane in the park. He can
