“Put it down,” Daggett said.
“You sure?”
“The man has a gun on me, Jimmy. Put it down.”
Jimmy set his shotgun down on the floor. Victor picked it up and brought the butt down heavily on the side of Jimmy’s head. He slumped to the floor and lay there, not moving. Victor opened the breech, ejected the shells and pocketed them. Then he stood the shotgun against the wall, stepped back and broke it with a kick above the trigger guard.
“How many more men?” I asked Daggett.
“Too many for you.”
I kicked the back of his heel, one of the most painful spots in the body, and he yelped. “You’re not getting the feel of this,” I said. “How many?”
“Four.”
“All armed?”
“I fucking hope so.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
I kicked his other heel, harder than I’d done the first.
“Fucking quit that, man, I don’t know. For real. They’re supposed to walk around, make sure no one gets in.”
“Who’s with Jenn?”
“No one.”
“Which heel this time?”
“Okay, one guy.”
“The other three-call them. Tell them to come out here. Tell them to lay down their guns, just like Jimmy did.”
“If they see me in this situation, they might panic. Open fire.”
“You’ll be the first to die.”
“First, last, what’s the difference?”
“You sure you’re ready to find out?”
Daggett sighed somewhat theatrically and called out to his men: “Boys? Boys, this is Sean. Come on out here a minute.”
Silence. I could hear Victor breathing through his nose. Nothing else.
“Again,” I said. “Louder.”
He raised his voice and repeated the call. Seconds later, I heard footsteps coming from the corridor ahead. A big man who looked like he’d been sculpted from a block of granite came into the foyer, a shoulder holster over a black long-sleeved shirt and a mug of coffee in his drawing hand. Soon as he saw us, he dropped the mug and reached for his gun but Victor’s Uzi chattered first and the big man staggered back and fell.
“There goes your element of surprise,” Daggett said. He was listing to one side, keeping his weight off the ruined knee, breathing hard and looking pale.
“Call the others out.”
“After that racket? They don’t love me that much.”
“Tell them it was you shooting.”
“At what? A rat? Jesus, Geller, you’re fucking hopeless.”
“Call them.”
Sweat dripped off Daggett’s forehead and spattered on the hardwood floor. He shrugged. “Hey, Bren?” he called. “Joey? Where are you guys?”
“What was that shooting?” a man asked. We heard his voice down the corridor to our left but couldn’t see him. I jabbed my gun into Daggett’s spine.
“Me,” he said. “Shooting at a rat. You wouldn’t believe the fucking size of it, Bren. Thought it was Whitey Bulger himself.”
“Good one,” Bren said. The hall he was coming down wasn’t carpeted, and we heard his steps grow louder over hardwood. Ryan made eye contact with Victor and pointed to himself and his shotgun, and pointed him to the hallway across from us. Bren’s steps were measured as they approached the foyer. “You want a coffee, Sean?”
The words had just tailed off when he broke into a run and came charging in firing an automatic weapon of his own. Victor’s chest exploded in a shower of blood. Another gun boomed from the corridor Victor had been watching and blew out a piece of the wall just behind Ryan’s head. I pushed Daggett aside and returned fire there, five shots hitting nothing but wood and plaster. Ryan pounded two shotgun rounds into Bren, who dropped to his back, his gun clattering across the parquet floor. Daggett went for it-or made me think he was going for it. As I lunged to grab the back of his collar, he planted his good leg and whirled backwards, elbow first, and caught me with a vicious shot to the side of the head. I felt a wave of nausea surge up my throat, burning the tissue, as I reeled back. His act had fooled me; I thought he’d been too badly hurt to try anything.
“Jonah!” Ryan yelled.
“I’m okay. You get Joey. Daggett’s mine.”
Daggett staggered back down the corridor that led to the garage. I tried to fix him in my gunsight but my eyes were out of focus and the bullet only bit into the wooden arch. I took three steps to my left and fired again. A sconce on the wall shattered in a burst of glass. He kept running, hopping, zigzagging across the wide corridor, and then banged out the door that led to the loading dock.
Damn it. I hadn’t taken the gun off the guard there, Denny. If Daggett made it back there before I could stop him, he’d be armed again.
I dropped the Beretta in the bag and took out the Colt M4 and moved down the hall on unsteady feet. When I reached the door that led out to the dock, I knelt down and blinked, trying to get my eyes to focus properly. I reached up and shook the handle. Two rounds tore through the wood of the bottom half. A third shattered the glass, raining shards down on my arm and neck. I stood up, stuck the M4 barrel through the broken glass and blindly fired three bursts. There was no cry of pain, no body dropping dead on the cement. Just uneven footsteps running out into the night. I opened the door wide enough to roll out onto the dock. Denny was still lying flat on his back. No gun in his belt. I swept my gun barrel left to right, making sure Daggett wasn’t hiding behind his car or Stayner’s Caddy. But he was gone. I went out after him, feeling the temperature drop as I exited the garage. I kept my back to the wall of the building, wondering which way he had gone. Left or right. Then I remembered the north-side door, the one with the crash bar, could be opened only from the inside. He could only have gone south.
As I eased around the corner, a shot rang out and bits of brick blew into my face, breaking skin and drawing beads of blood. I dropped down and elbow-crawled forward until I could reach around the corner with the M4 and fire off another burst. As the sound died away I heard a door close. He had gone back into the building. If I followed him, I’d be on his turf and on his terms. I’d seen drawings of the building but he knew it cold. He could ambush me a dozen different ways. I turned and went back into the garage instead, vaulted up onto the dock. Denny was lying on his back, breathing. I turned him onto his side, found some strapping and bound his hands behind him. Back inside, moving down the hallway toward the foyer, I stayed close to one wall, my finger on the trigger of the Colt. When I came to the open space, only silence greeted me. Victor, the big man and Brendan were dead. The one Victor had clubbed, Kelly, was dead too, his neck unnaturally loose when I felt for a pulse. There was no sign of Ryan or Joey.
That left me nowhere to go but the prep rooms. I started down the hall that led to the extension where they were housed, where undertakers had worked their magic over the years to prepare bodies for viewing. Though the funeral home had long been out of business, the air smelled different in this wing. There was a chemical taint to it, a hint of preservatives. Maybe if I breathed it in I’d live longer.
I listened for the sound of steps, of breathing, anything that might tell me if someone was lying in wait. There was no room for hesitation or error. If Daggett or one of his men crossed my field of vision I would blast away, and keep blasting until they were dead.
Even though I’m not a violent man.
Wait. A floorboard creaked ahead of me. Ahead and on the right. I stopped moving and crouched into the smallest possible target. The hall ended in a T. To the right was a storage room where supplies were kept, to the left the two prep rooms. On the right side, something came into view at eye level. The barrel of a shotgun. My breathing was loud and ragged in my ear. A few more inches of the barrel showed. I knew Daggett only had a pistol. So did Frank. Ryan or Joey? Both had shotguns. I tasted salt on my lip from the sweat that was beading there. I put a little pressure on the trigger and kept it there until I saw the stock of the shotgun.