Sal opened the top drawer of the hutch to grab the handgun he had placed there just this evening for exactly this kind of thing and…Jesus Christ Almighty, it was gone! Vinnie must have grabbed it. Sal could still hear the cops hammering on the door behind him, and it was sure to give any second. He started to head through the living room to the back door, but then stopped and ducked into the kitchen, suddenly knowing that they would have somebody waiting at the back door. They came out in force, they came out in the middle of the night, so of course they’d have somebody at the back door. But Sal was too smart for that shit and he wasn’t going to fall into their trap. He was going to go through the garage instead.
Marlin was standing on the front porch, jittery, feeling useless, when he saw a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. He took one step back and saw Vinnie Mameli squirming through a window that opened onto the far end of the porch, almost at the corner of the house. Marlin started to move toward him when he noticed the black steel in Vinnie’s hand.
Before Marlin could even yell Freeze! — Vinnie swung the gun at him and fired.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Behind the house, waiting by the back door, Smedley was hoping and praying the operation would go down flawlessly. After all, he was sure to receive a reprimand for failing to report to Austin before the warrant was served. But Maria meant too much to him, and he didn’t want to wait that long. He knew his superiors would want to study the situation, analyze it for a few days. Hell, they might even try to whitewash the entire situation. They certainly didn’t want another black eye for the witness protection program. That’s why this had to go smoothly, without incident.
Then Smedley heard a shot from somewhere near the front of the house. He drew his weapon.
Garza and Tatum were deep within the residence, trying to find Sal, when they heard the gunshot. The acoustics in the big stone house played tricks with the sound, and they couldn’t tell whether the shot came from inside or outside the house. They began a room-to-room search, Garza wondering whether they might find Sal’s corpse, dead from his own hand.
Marlin threw himself to the ground and heard the round ricochet off the stone entry way behind him. He instinctively rolled, anticipating another shot, but it never came. He sprang to his feet and saw that Vinnie had leaped the railing of the porch and was sprinting into the darkness.
Marlin had dropped his gun when he tumbled, and by the time he picked it up and drew his flashlight, Vinnie was out of sight. Marlin glanced through the open front door, unsure whether to remain where he was or go after Vinnie. Garza and the deputies were nowhere to be seen.
He went after Vinnie.
The waiting was almost too much for Smedley. Who the hell had fired that shot? What was going on in there? Was there an officer down? Should he abort the original plan and enter the home?
Then he heard a sound he instantly recognized. The groaning of the garage door as it worked its way up the tracks. They had forgotten about the garage door-and now somebody was coming out through it! The question was, should he go investigate or stay put? He decided he would work his way along the back wall of the house, peek around the corner to the garage, and still keep an eye on the back door.
He stepped gingerly because the area behind the house was rocky and uneven. He tripped a few times, making more noise than he would have liked, then finally arrived at the corner. He stuck his head around to take a look… and had a mere instant to see a shovel coming toward his forehead.
He felt the impact all the way down to his toes.
His knees buckled, but he managed to remain standing. But now he realized his gun hand was empty. Even through the double vision, he could see that the.38 he had borrowed was now in the hands of Sal Mameli, pointed straight at his face.
Then he heard another shot.
Garza and the deputies found the house empty, except for Angela Mameli passed out in the bedroom. Even the two gunshots hadn’t roused her. They headed for the front door to see what the hell was going on outside.
Marlin weaved his way through a thick grove of cedar and oak trees, his flashlight extinguished, following the sounds of Vinnie’s frantic rampage through the brush. Vinnie was in Marlin’s territory now-in the dark, tramping through the woods-maybe twenty or thirty yards away. Take it easy, Marlin thought. It’s just like rounding up a poacher.
Just up ahead, he heard the scratch of a branch against Vinnie’s clothing. It was unmistakable, a sound he had grown up with. Vinnie seemed to have slowed down, too, waiting for a chance to ambush his pursuer.
Groping in the dark, Marlin found the trunk of a large oak tree and stood perfectly still behind it. Then he called out, “Vinnie, give it up!”
The response was another shot, which thumped into the front of the oak tree.
Marlin was breathing heavily now, struggling to remain calm, the pulse pounding in his temples. He took a deep breath-and heard it again. Just a scratch-but that was all he needed.
Marlin wheeled around the tree and fired three quick shots into the dark.
He heard Vinnie Mameli scream.
Smedley wondered if he was dead. He didn’t feel dead. He heard screaming, but he was fairly certain that it wasn’t coming from him. He was almost too afraid to open his eyes. But he did. He still had double vision, so he saw two Sal Mamelis rolling on the ground, cupping their groins.
Smedley craned his neck and looked behind him. He couldn’t believe it. It was like something out of a million bad movies he had seen…where someone arrives in the nick of time to save the day.
It was Maria.
She was holding Smedley’s gun.
She had just shot Sal Mameli.
Right in the balls.
Marlin waited a few minutes, until Vinnie Mameli’s groans subsided. Then he knelt low and turned on his flashlight, prepared to dive for cover if necessary. But Vinnie was down, sprawled under the lower boughs of a cedar tree. Marlin carefully stepped toward Vinnie until he was just a few yards away.
He might have seen the final spark of life in Vinnie’s eyes, but he couldn’t be sure. In any case, when he knelt down to check his pulse, there was none. Marlin dropped his head and sighed, and he could feel his hand shaking as he slid his gun back into its holster.
After a moment, he returned to the house and called through the front door. Tatum responded, but his voice came from outside the house, near the garage. Marlin found Tatum and Cowan standing guard over Sal Mameli, who seemed to be in shock, lying on the ground. Blood saturated the crotch of his pajamas.
“Garza and Smedley?” Marlin asked.
Tatum said, “Garza’s inside, calling for an ambulance. Do we need two?”
“Yeah…but no rush on the second one.”
Tatum nodded. He gestured toward the small cottage behind the house, where every window now glowed with light. “Smedley’s in there, with the housekeeper. Got clocked with a shovel. Bleeding pretty bad.”
Marlin walked to the cottage and stepped inside. It was a small structure, but clean and well-decorated. In the small bedroom, he found Smedley sitting in a chair, the pretty housekeeper holding a towel to his head. She was murmuring to him in Spanish, but Marlin couldn’t pick out any of the words.
“Smedley, you all right?”
Neither of them even looked his way.
A cat emerged from somewhere and began to rub against Marlin’s leg. A black bird in a cage bobbed up and down on its perch, chirping, probably thinking it was morning already. Marlin looked away, and then looked back at the bird. It looked…familiar.