“If they are, they got here on their own. They know you’re alive, yes, but they gave me two days to find you and get my money back.”
“Don’t shit me, not with Harry and Tillis shot all to shit.” He bent over and looked very sober. “Nolan, I want to work out a trade with you. Listen to me. You take care of Walter, get him out of here before the Family comes. You see that he stays alive.”
“What do I get in return?”
“That kid friend of yours, that Jon. Walter’s holding him down at the boathouse right now. Why the hell else would I take that kid Jon with me? I knew you were coming after me, that if you caught up with me, I could use the kid as a buffer. He’s your friend, saved your life once — I know, I was there.”
“Sorry. Jon is holding a gun to your son’s head right this minute. You don’t have the edge you thought you had, Charlie.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t have time to lie to you, Charlie. We got to get on with this before those people you mentioned start showing up.”
“No, no,” Charlie said, whimpering, his eyes filling with tears. “Walter’s got to get out, nothing to happen to Walter, not Walter, he’s the only thing left. Please God.”
“Tell me what you did with the money, Charlie, and I’ll help your kid get out of this.”
“Do I get your word on that?”
“Sure.”
“You always called me a melodramatic bastard, remember?”
“I still do, Charlie.”
“Well, that’s true, I guess it’s true but you... you got your own quirk. You’re straight, in your crooked way. You give your word and you keep it. So I know if you give me your word, you’re going to stand behind it, Nolan. I’m sure of it.”
That wasn’t particularly true, but Nolan let it slide by. Charlie was saying all that in order to convince himself he could trust Nolan, and Nolan knew it.
“What did you do with the money, Charlie?”
“You promise, you promise you’ll help Walter?”
“Sure.”
Charlie let out a relieved sigh. He smiled on one side of his face and said, “A funny goddamn way for us to finish it up, Nolan. Me turning to you to save my kid’s ass. My God. You know something else funny? I didn’t even need that goddamn money of yours. I got all kinds of money, in this guy’s account and that one, money to live a couple goddamn lifetimes, if I had ’em. No, I took that money because I hated you, I wanted you to bleed, I wanted to hurt you the one place you could feel it, in your goddamn pocketbook. It was for blood, not money, and now neither one means a goddamn thing. Why’d we do it to each other? What the hell was the goddamn point?”
From behind them came a sound — bup bup bup bup bup bup — no louder than someone giving a deck of cards a hard shuffle, and Charlie screamed, “Mother of God!” and jumped behind the sofa. Nolan dove under the coffee table, turned it on its side and held it in front of him like a shield, while the slugs ate up the room, tearing into the dark wood walls, ripping apart the leather sofas, knocking down furniture, their white sheets flying in the air, like dancing ghosts. Charlie went scrambling over to the dining area, got behind the big long table and tipped it over with a crash, got sheltered behind its thick wood while the slugs splintered away at its surface, bup bup bup bup bup.
Silence.
Nolan peeked out from behind the table and the bup bup bup started in again, but not before Nolan saw the gun and the man behind it. The gun was a grease gun, a submachine gun that fired.45 slugs and looked as if it had been put together with discarded tin cans; the barrel had been screwed off and a tubular silencer put on its place; two magazines had been taped together so the guy could flip it around and shove in a fresh round without missing more than a half-second of action.
The guy behind the grease gun had a chubby face and a skinny body and all of a sudden Nolan knew who Charlie’s pipeline to Felix was. All of a sudden Nolan knew who killed Tillis and Harry and why.
Nolan had his.38 in one hand and the silenced automatic of Charlie’s in the other and started firing at Angelo, shooting haphazardly, firing both guns like some two-gun kid in a Western. With that grease gun out there, aiming was out of the question, even though the guy was standing out in the open, over by a side door directly behind where Nolan had been sitting.
Charlie dove from behind the table, pitched himself into the kitchen, caught one in the gut just as he went through the doorway. Nolan could see the little man in underwear crawling off through the kitchen, out toward the elevator. Somehow Nolan sensed that Charlie was not so much trying to get away as making an attempt to get to Walter and warn him. Well, luck to you, Charlie, Nolan thought.
Angelo yanked the magazine out, flipped it around and shoved it in place and Nolan blew Angelo’s kneecap apart with a.38 slug. Angelo fell on his face, like a pratfalling clown, but much harder, and on his side started in firing the grease gun again and the room was splintering, chunks of the marble top started to fly and Nolan held his breath, hoping Angelo’s pain and rage and reflex would empty that damn, damn gun.
It did. The bup bup bup trailed away and Nolan spun out and pointed the.38 at Angelo’s head and Angelo threw the empty grease gun, whipped it at Nolan. The metal of the gun smashed into his head, slashed a red crease across his forehead, and he fired the.38 wildly, missed, and blacked out.
When he came to a second later, he looked up, blinked the blood from his eyes, saw Angelo kneeling on his good knee in front of him. “Are you awake, Nolan?”
Nolan nodded.
“Good,” Angelo said. “I want you awake, you overrated bastard. Some fucking tough guy,” and Angelo lifted the Bodyguard Smith and Wesson.38 and let Nolan look into its short snub-nose, let him wait for the blossom of fire and smoke.
“Hold it!”
The voice came from behind them.
“What the hell’s happening here?”
It was Greer.
The baby-faced man was standing in the doorway over where moments before Angelo had been firing the grease gun. Greer had his own snub-nose.38 in his right hand.
“Greer,” Angelo said, his eyes moving back and forth.
“What you doing, Ange?”
“I’m going to kill this son of a bitch, Greer,” Angelo said. “He tried to pull a cross, tried to team up with Charlie and cross the Family.”
“I don’t believe you,” Greer said, and shot Angelo through the throat.
Angelo’s.38 went off, but Nolan had had sense to duck and roll as Greer fired, and Angelo’s gun clattered to the floor and he clutched with both hands under his double chin and flopped onto his back and gurgled and died.
Nolan said, “Jesus.”
Greer came over and helped him up. “Where’s Charlie?”
“Shit,” Nolan said, and headed for the kitchen.
When he got there the elevator had gone to the bottom. Charlie had somehow found strength to punch DOWN. Nolan pressed the button and heard the elevator whine and moan and start its ascent. When it got back up, Charlie was still inside the cage.
He was sitting against the steel wall, his lower tee-shirt and shorts soaked with red. His eyes were shut.
Nolan crouched down beside the little man and yelled as though Charlie were a hundred yards away. “Charlie! For Christ’s sake, Charlie!”
The close-set eyes flickered.
“Charlie,” Nolan said, putting a hand on the little man’s shoulder. “Thank God you’re alive.”