business” neighborhood if ever there was one — and glanced up at Willie’s apartment. I could see a glow from behind the curtains, so the lights were on there. I went into the building with both hands on the piece and the safety off.
The stairs were at the very back of the dark hallway. As I went tiptoeing along with the pistol at the ready, I regretted not shooting the guy out front. He wasn’t on his way to the airport to take a six-month sabbatical. What if he came charging upstairs while I was in the middle of delicate negotiations? Or did a knife job on me next week? Of course, the law generally frowned on people who took it upon themselves to waste assholes; there were so many, and where would it stop?
The stairwell had an old-building mustiness to it, a delicate aromatic mixture of stale tobacco, marijuana, and beer vomit. Willie lived in the flat on the left at the head of the stairs. There was a window at the end of the upstairs hallway that faced the street; the only light in the hall came through that glass. I seemed to recall a fixture up here, so I looked. Right at the top of the stairs, a naked bulb on the ceiling. I could just reach it.
The bulb was loose in the fixture. Some thoughtful soul had screwed it out far enough to extinguish it. I left it that way.
I put my ear to the door. I could hear muffled voices but couldn’t distinguish words.
The shortest and quickest way into that apartment was through that door. If it was locked, I wasn’t going in. The door was a security door — wooden panels over steel — and wore four locks, including a new Cooper. It would take me a half hour to pick them all, and everyone inside would hear me do it.
I got a firm grip on the gun, then grasped the doorknob and applied pressure. It refused to turn.
The only other way in was the fire escape.
There was no help for it — I eased down the stairs and headed for the door. Just in time I remembered the jackrabbit that had been behind the wheel. He was nowhere in sight.
The alley was a home for garbage cans. There must have been a dozen in there.
The bottom of the fire escape consisted of a ladder with a weight on the bottom, but it appeared to be chained up, no doubt to discourage overweight burglars. I hoped it would hold me… and the noise wouldn’t inspire someone in Willie’s to lean out the window and shoot my sorry old self.
With a pistol in each hip pocket, I ran and jumped as high as I could reach. Got one hand on the rusty metal, then the other. The whole contraption creaked, but it held.
I did a chin-up, then hooked a leg and squirmed my way up. On the next flight I came to Willie’s living room window. Gun in hand again, I inched my head around… and I saw Willie. They had him naked with a plastic tie on his wrist, sitting in a chair from the kitchen. They were working on him with a knife.
How many of them were there?
I could see two.
White guys.
Two deep breaths, then I squared myself in front of the window and drilled the nearer guy in the back, which drove him to the floor. My second shot spun the knife holder halfway around, so I shot him again. He was a big fucker: He stayed up, spun toward the window, released the knife, and tried to get a pistol out of a belt holster. I gave him two more bullets, the second one in the face. That one snapped his head back, and he toppled.
I kicked out the rest of the glass and stepped through the window. A man rushing from the kitchen snapped off a shot that stung my arm. He had started running when he heard the shots and entered the room before he knew my location, which proved to be a fatal mistake. I nailed him dead center before he could shoot again. He lost his weapon and his legs folded and he somersaulted forward onto his face.
Willie was still conscious. The sadist with the knife hadn’t gotten to his crotch yet. His girlfriend was gonna thank me someday.
I got the little.38 out, and with a pistol in each hand I checked the rest of the apartment. No one else there.
I cut Willie loose with a kitchen knife and used a towel to clean him up some. There was blood everywhere. Then I half carried, half dragged him to the bedroom and put him on the bed. He had some Scotch tape on his dresser, so I used that. Slapped tape on the worst of the cuts to hold the edges together and slow the bleeding.
“Come on, man, we gotta get you to the emergency room.”
“That you, Tommy?”
“Yeah.”
“You get the motherfucker with the knife?”
“Yeah.”
“He dead?”
“Seems to be.”
“Shoot the fucker again. Drive a stake through his goddamn heart.”
I began working pants and a shirt onto him.
“They wanted to know about you,” Willie said. “Where you were, when I talked to you last, who your girlfriends were, everything… ”
“What did you tell them?”
“Everything I could think of when that prick got to cuttin’ on me with that fuckin’ knife.”
The hell with his shoes.
“You’re gonna have to help me, Willie. I can carry you, but we’ll both be dead if we meet another of these bastards.”
“Okay.”
I draped one of his arms over my shoulder and lifted him. He could barely stagger. I half carried him into the hallway and made sure the door locked behind us.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re still bleeding, man.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“You tell them about Dorsey?”
“Who?”
“Dorsey O’Shea.”
“Probably. Fuck, I was jabberin’ my fool head off there at the end.”
“Who were they?”
“Cops.”
“How do you know?”
“By the way they asked questions. The good guy, bad guy routine, all of it.”
“You’re guessing.”
I almost put him down and went back to search the corpses, but he was still leaking blood at a good rate. It was the hospital quick or the morgue later.
Going down the stairs he said, “I been grilled by cops all my life. I could tell.”
We took the hitters’ car. Willie was not in any shape to do the two blocks to mine, that was certain. I drove back to my rental heap and took the time to collect the MP-5, then headed for the nearest hospital that I knew about. I asked Willie if indeed the one I was thinking of was the one, but he had passed out by then.
I whipped into the ambulance entrance and carried him into the emergency room. There was a vacant gurney there, so I put him on it. An attendant rushed out to help me.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. Some guys cut him on his arms and chest. No drugs. He’s not allergic to anything that I know of.”
As the attendant rushed the gurney through the swinging doors, I turned to the window where the admitting lady sat with a client.
I’ll be right with you, sir,” she said. “Please take a seat.”
“I’ll park the car and be back,” I said.
As I got behind the wheel and headed for Wisconsin Avenue, I wondered if Willie did tell them about Dorsey O’Shea. Well, they were dead, so even if he did, it didn’t matter.
Unless they called someone, of course. Maybe that was what the guy in the kitchen was doing when I rudely interrupted. I didn’t recall seeing a cell phone in the kitchen. Of course, he might have put it in his pocket as he drew his pistol, after I fired the first shot.
