'We just want you to sit down on the floor and rest,' DeLucca repeated softly, tugging at the kid's waist.
'Puuuu-leeeeze!' wailed Marty, his feet pointed out and his knees bowed like a toddler's. His lower half was shaking violently now.
'Mister Deeee-loooo… Deeeee-'
Vince took his pistol and struck Marty's hands, which slid away from the door frame. The two men helped the kid down the stairs. We heard him blubbering and wailing. Then a door slammed shut and everything was quiet. I looked at Mary. Her teeth were clenched tight on her lip. There was a little blood. I kicked at the railings with my feet. and knees with all I had, and finally managed to break two of the oak uprights, which weren't very thick. I yanked them out of their sockets, leaving a wide hole under the banister.
'Hurry, Charlie. Hurry!'
I pulled Mary underneath the banister. We were still fastened together. I ran down to the front door and yanked. No go. I flipped the bolt; it still wouldn't open. It had been deadbolted. As we went back down the hall and into the kitchen we heard a sound beneath us. A muffled explosion. Then fast feet on the stairway, coming up.
I had the back door open now and we went through it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Vince in the kitchen raising his arm. His hand held a pistol.
We were running across the terrace when I saw a piece of the brick wall fly away. I jumped over the wall and yanked Mary after me. She was making little high sounds. Vince was raising the pistol again when I pulled Mary off to the right and began to circle the house. I knew we'd never make it across the open meadow to the woods.
But around the first corner we stopped dead, looking right down the muzzle of DeLucca's automatic. His meaty chest and shoulders were heaving as he panted. He'd'gone around the other way and cut us off. We heard Vince coming up behind us. I grabbed Mary tight and shut my eyes, waiting.
I felt a rap on the head and opened my eyes. I was half-stunned. I looked up and saw Vince grab the chain that held us together. DeLucca, panting loudly, was behind us, pushing the gun muzzle into our backs.
'You blew it, shithead,' he growled. 'Now you're gonna have to go down the cellar.'
Again I felt tingling around my head and mouth. The ground shook under my feet. I was afraid to look at Mary.
'Let her go. Have Vince take her to the motel.'
'Too late,' he said, smacking the back of my head with the barrel. I felt a warm trickle down the left side of my neck from the previous blow. We were back around to the terrace again. The kitchen doorway was only twenty feet away. Once they had us through that door we'd never get out again. I decided to shout for help at the top of my lungs before all hope was gone, and had just taken the biggest lungful of air I could manage when I heard a gigantic roar. Instantaneously I felt a stinging on my right cheek, and the arm tugging the handcuffs went slack.
Next to us, Vince was falling. His head had come apart into a big red wet cloud. And part of that cloud was stuck all over my face, stinging it.
DeLucca had his pistol up. He was pointing it at a huge dark shape that was flying at his head. The thing hit him with a deep rumbling snarl and threw him to the ground. Popeye had him by the upper arm, right near the shoulder. He had his big steam-shovel mouth wrapped around DeLucca's upper torso and was shaking it, tearing it. DeLucca couldn't hold the gun; nobody could have. Then the dog was off him and waiting by in a crouch. DeLucca sat up for a second, then lunged for the pistol and I brought it up. But before he could fire the roar came again and he was flung backward, spinning around like a top. He lay on his stomach and didn't move. There was motion in the yew trees, and Sam Bowman came walking toward us, the big silver revolver held up in his hand. He came up and looked down at Carmen DeLucca, who was now moaning and flipping his left arm on the grass like a seal pup. The big soft-nosed slug had left his back just below the left shoulder blade. A lot of his back was gone. I peered down at him and could see a shiny pink balloon sliding around in the gore beneath his splintered ribs. It was his lung.
Sam shoved his big piece back into its shoulder holster and zipped up his Windbreaker. He was no longer wearing the jumpsuit. He reached down and laid his large coffee-colored hand on Mary's cheek.
'How ya doin'?' he asked. And she began to bawl.
I was certain DeLucca was dying. I thought he knew it too. Sam went through the pockets of the former Vince and retrieved the keys to the cuffs; he had us free in a wink. I crawled over to DeLucca and looked at his face. The lizard eyes fluttered, then opened. Carmen DeLucca stared at the blades of grass inches from his eyes and the terrace wall behind them. The big wound in his back began to bubble and sputter.
'Carmen. It's Doc Adams. Remember?'
A nod.
'You don't have very long. Tell me what the negatives showed. Hear me, Carmen? What did the pictures show?'
A faint shake of the head.
'You don't know?'
Headshake.
'Who hired you to get them? It wasn't Paul Tescione, was it?'
Headshake.
'Then who was it, Carmen? Who?'
I heard a thin rasp of expelled air. I bent over and put my ear close to his mouth. He said a name in a barely audible voice. Then there was a long sigh. When I next looked at the cruel black eyes they were open and staring. I watched them and the face for a minute. There was no motion, no change, nothing. Carmen DeLucca was dead. But not before he had told me who it was who'd hired him to snatch the Sacco-Vanzetti papers. I looked up from the corpses and turned my head around. Mary and Sam were sitting quietly on the terrace chairs while Popeye sat looking up at Mary and whining. I had been alone with DeLucca when death overtook him. Nobody had overheard him tell me the name. That was awkward.
It was especially awkward because it was no ordinary name. I knew if I mentioned that name nobody, not even Mary, would ever believe me. Ever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
With the tension and the adrenalin rush worn off, Mary and I collapsed in fatigue. After I took her to the hospital to be treated is for several small gashes on her breasts- the sad result of Marty's warped idea of 'getting fresh' with a woman- I took her home in time to meet Joe out in back. He stared and stared at DeLucca's body. He thanked Sam over and over again. He was one glad cop.
'Except I'm kicking myself in the ass for leaving so suddenly last night. I should've thought of the possibility he'd sneak out here. Anybody with the balls and cunning to slip back into Lynn and grease Johnny Rizzo would try anything. But it seems to us that it was that psycho kid who did all the wet work. He sure loved to hurt people.'
'Well I'm not going to miss him one bit. He may have been ill, but I don't feel sorry for what happened to him. I'd hate to think what he would have done to Mary if he'd had the chance. As it happens, she's probably not even going to have any marks when she heals up. Jeez, I bet Moe has a field day when I describe Marty to him.'
Joe's men had found Marty wedged up behind my workbench with a hole behind his ear. Then they carted the three of them off in a meat wagon. Good riddance. Joe said he guessed the whole thing was as good as wrapped up.
'Not quite,' I said, leading him into the study and closing the door behind us. I sat him down and told him the name of the person who had hired Carmen DeLucca.
'What? Where did you get that load of shit?'
'From DeLucca himself. His dying words. You're the only one I've told. I didn't think you'd believe me.'
Joe walked over to the window and looked at the dogwood- petals that littered the lawn. He had his hands thrust deep into his pants pockets, and he rocked back and forth on his heels.
'That's a big name, Doc. Not as big as the Kennedys or Saltonstalls, but big. The only thing I can't figure out,
