Ed glares at him. The ‘head up his ass’ crack was apparently going a little too far. Cantankerous old bastards that he and Papa are, they’ll probably take an entire case of Moretti outside and guzzle the whole thing before the sun rises.
I should have crawled into bed the moment I got home from work this afternoon. The evening began with my father demanding that I bring Deano home from Pat’s house, where he’s still recuperating. I continue to refuse, reasoning that Deano is safe there. Apparently, the Deano argument isn’t finished.
Papa looks up at me after I put my glass into the dishwasher. “Deano, he come home tomorrow.”
“I’m done arguing with you,” I retort as I head for my room. I’m asleep almost before my head hits the pillow.
A popping noise interrupts my sleep three hours later, the same sound I’d heard the night Pat was shot before my eyes. The sound of feet pounding through the living room brings me fully awake.
“Call 911!” Zeller calls out from the front of the house as more gunfire erupts outside. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he shouts while I scramble out from under the covers and grab my cell phone.
I’m connecting with the emergency operator when I reach the living room and follow Zeller’s voice onto the front porch. The smell of gunpowder hangs in the heavy night air.
“What the hell were you two thinking?” Zeller is yelling at a stunned Papa while I give the 911 operator our address.
Zeller steps past Papa and bends down. Ed Stankowski is crumpled in the corner of the porch. “Ed?” Zeller pleads. “Ed!”
“Ed’s hit?” an approaching voice asks out of the darkness in the front yard.
“Bad,” Zeller mutters. “You put down the bastard who shot him?”
“Yeah,” Max says as he arrives at the porch rail and stares in horror at his wounded friend, whose breathing is distressingly labored. Max slams a meaty fist into the railing. “I told the stupid bastards to get inside when I heard them out here a little while ago.”
“I sorry,” Papa murmurs as he gawks at his bloodied friend.
“A lot of fucking good that does Ed now,” Max snarls at him.
I inform the operator that a retired cop has been shot, then send Papa inside to get a blanket. Zeller reaches over the rail, squeezes Max’s shoulder, and points into the yard. “You’re sure that guy’s down?”
The second mention of a guy down registers in my discombobulated mind. My eyes follow Max as he walks to a body sprawled in the grass halfway between the sidewalk and our porch. The glow from the streetlights reflects off a sheen of blood on the torso. With his gun pointed at the head of the prone figure, Max none too gently prods a leg with his foot. When he gets no reaction, he bends down and presses his fingers to the victim’s neck. After rolling the man facedown, he slaps a pair of cuffs on the guy and turns him onto his side facing the house. Max pauses for a long moment with his head hanging low, then straightens up and walks back toward us. His footsteps leave imprints in the dew on the grass. “Fucker’s still alive.”
I tell 911 about the second shooting victim as Papa delivers an old picnic blanket to Zeller and then sits on the top step while Max and Zeller do what they can for Ed.
Zeller’s hands are slick with blood when he gets to his feet and grabs the cell phone out of my hand to speak with the 911 operator. “Where’s that damned ambulance?” he demands as the sound of approaching sirens grows steadily closer. His next words chill me. “Ed’s been shot in the chest. He’s coughing up blood and is struggling like hell to breathe. His heart’s racing a mile a fucking minute. I think we’re losing him. What the hell should we do until the paramedics arrive?”
Zeller listens with a grim expression, then slaps the bloodied phone back in my hand and squats down to resume working on Ed.
Papa stares up at me. The haunted expression is back in his eyes when he gestures toward the body in the yard. “The man, he come for me. He walk on sidewalk and see us, look only at me when he take gun out of jacket and point it. Ed, he jump in front of me and try to shoot the man. He get shot!”
Papa’s starting to go into shock. I pull him into an embrace and hold his frail shoulders tightly as he begins to sob. Then I take him back inside, settle him in his La-Z-Boy, cover him in a fuzzy blue blanket Mama had used to warm her legs, and pour him a glass of grappa. I make my way back to the porch as the first emergency vehicles arrive. At Max’s direction, the initial team of paramedics hurries to the porch and starts working feverishly on Ed. A second ambulance arrives within the minute. Max directs those paramedics to the second shooting victim. When a uniformed officer shines a powerful flashlight on the casualty in the front yard, I recognize the old man who had walked past the house while Pat and I were waiting for Ben Larose four nights ago. Should I have done something when I noticed him staring at the house? Granted, he hadn’t seemed threatening, but still. What had I said? “He looks like he belongs?” Right.
When a third ambulance arrives, I send its paramedics inside to check on Papa.
“Shit! We’re losing him,” one of the paramedics working on Ed exclaims.
“We need to get him to the hospital,” his partner mutters grimly.
After they wrestle Ed onto the gurney, hustle him out to their waiting ambulance, and race away to the hospital, Zeller slumps onto the top step and watches the second team of paramedics as they work on Ed’s shooter. “Damn it,” he says dejectedly as his eyes meet mine. “I fell asleep
