“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Woo says, his head hung out past his shoulders, not ready to accept what he knows is about to happen.
Cortez starts to follow Jimmy, then stops for a moment next to Lenore.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Woo repeats, tight-lipped, a tick beginning in his left eye.
Lenore chucks him lightly under the chin with the Uzi barrel. “Learn some new words,” she says slowly, then turns to Cortez. “You get to that cave in the mountains down there, make sure it has two exits.”
Cortez nods, puts a hand on Mingo’s shoulder, and steers him toward the doors.
“Will the Aliens find you?”
Cortez shrugs.
“You want Wyatt to take care of anyone outside?”
She shakes her head no, stops, shakes her head yes.
He pauses as if he had something more to say, then takes an off-balance step and jumps down from the train car, followed by Mingo.
“Pathetic choice,” Woo says to her.
“There was no choice at all, Freddy. I cut no deal. I don’t take dime one out of this.”
He makes a face to indicate how ridiculous this sounds to him.
“Believe what you want. I didn’t know you were the producer — the Paraclete, right? — until five minutes ago.”
Woo holds up his hand in a stop sign and mutters, “Oh, please …”
Lenore cuts him off and says, “You whacked Peirce, you fuck.”
Woo breathes through his nose and holds up a second hand. “You’re making a terrible mistake, Lenore. There are so many things you just don’t know. Your sister detective made some pathetic character judgments. It was her associates who judged her expendable. When all this is over it will look like she was one more dirty cop who made one more stupid decision—”
“A couple things you should know, asshole. That diner you hit. That motorcycle chickenshit drive-by. You killed a friend of mine. And your visual aid here”—she strokes Ike’s forehead—“this is my brother.”
Woo goes still and silent. Across the car, Rourke says a weak, “Oh, shit.”
A small grin finally breaks on Woo’s face and he says, “So now you take me in.”
“Now who’s kidding who?”
“I’ve got people outside. You know that.”
“Great. The Duk-man here will have some company. You can all sit around, play Scrabble in hell. You’ll have a real edge, Freddy.”
“They’ll have heard the gunfire.”
“I’ve got a feeling they were told to expect some gunfire.”
“It doesn’t stop with me, Lenore. I have friends. There’s a great big family. People in position. You know the saying about City Hall.”
“Impress me some more, dickhead.”
Woo takes a breath. “All your talk about will. All your words. It comes down to this, Lenore.”
“You know, Freddy, there’s a reason the Families put the gun barrel in the enemy’s mouth. You know that, right, Freddy?”
“I’m unarmed. Defenseless. A prisoner. You can just execute me? You think so?”
She raises her free hand to his mouth, pinches in the sides like some cliché of an elderly woman admiring a child’s face. She turns his head from side to side.
“Courage of my convictions, Freddy.”
She hears the metal-click sound of a safety being snapped off. She steps back slowly and turns enough to see Rourke, on one knee, one arm extended forward, hand gripping a small revolver.
Woo begins to laugh and says, “Even the mailman carries a gun. I love this country.”
Lenore pivots very slowly as Rourke, caught somewhere between terrified and adrenaline-high, says, “Don’t, do not, just stop.”
“Okay, stupid, just listen. I’ve got a bead on you right now. I’ve got tension on the trigger. You might get a shot off. But I’ll be firing back. My body jerks back, the weapon fires, I swear to you, this will happen.”
Woo makes his move. It happens in seconds. He goes down and up into her, his shoulder coming under her, knocking the Uzi upward toward the ceiling. A small burst of gunfire sounds and stops. Lenore loses balance, falls backward, hugging the gun into her chest to maintain position. Woo is on top of her, one hand pushing the weapon down against her so she can’t get control, another struggling to pull something from the inside of his coat.
Then it’s out, an open razor. A long straight razor, a barber’s tool from a generation past. Woo manages to get a grip on her throat. He makes a sweep that passes near the end of her nose. The miss charges him up and he pushes harder on her neck, brings the razor up more slowly this time. And his intention becomes clear. The thought gels in Lenore’s brain: He wants to cut up my mouth, he wants to cut out my tongue.
Now he makes a jab motion instead of a sweep. The blade slides into Lenore’s upper lip and at once a rush of blood flows down over her mouth. There’s no pain, but the shock of the action gives Lenore enough of a jolt to throw him to the side. He pulls the blade across the back of her hand as he passes. Blood spurts and runs, and she tries to keep a hold on her weapon. Woo gains balance and begins to come at her again, backhand, a wide arc.
There’s a round of gunfire, a series of low-caliber pops. She turns to see Cortez, outside the train car, bent in a practiced shooter’s stance. The bullets enter Woo’s body chest-level. For an instant he makes the helpless, jerking, seizurelike spasms of a man in an electric chair. The body erupting in short, violent twitches. Then he pitches forward and his head lands facedown in Lenore’s abdomen.
She rolls to the side, angles the Uzi toward Rourke. But Ike is in the line of fire, a knee planted on Rourke’s chest, hands around the throat, coming downward with his head, cracking the bridge of his forehead into Rourke’s nose, eyes, skull. The revolver is a few feet away from them. Lenore slides out from under Woo’s head and it thumps to the floor. She crawls toward her brother, picks up Rourke’s gun, then pulls Ike off him.
She turns back to see Cortez climbing into the car. She watches him toe Woo’s limp head until he’s satisfied the man is dead. Then he bends down and picks up the briefcase full of Lingo.
“I forgot something,” he says.
“That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“The deal,” he says, “was left very vague.”
“I need it. To explain.”
“You’ll find another explanation,” he says, and she realizes his gun is casually pointed toward her. “That’s one of your strengths, Lenore. You’re so good with words.”
“Don’t,” she says, tensing muscles.
“I’m leaving now, Lenore. Wyatt and Mingo are waiting for me.”
He starts to back toward the door. They stare at each other until he turns and jumps to the ground.
The girl, Wilson, is curled up, weeping, gagging, trying to breathe, in a far corner of the train car.
Ike sways under his sister’s hand, falls off Rourke, whose face is a lumpy puddle of blood, torn skin, visible bone.
They sit, their bodies fall into one another. The only sound is Wilson’s choppy, eerie, infant-noises and their own attempts at regulating their breathing. The train car is already starting to fill up with a smell, something heavy, primal. Something without a specific word attached to it.
Lenore pulls in some air and tries to speak, but the sounds are unintelligible. Ike looks up at her, crunches up his eyes and mouth, brings his hand up to her lips in a useless effort to stop the bleeding. They both know, at once, it’s more a sign of concern than something pragmatic.
Ike takes his hand away, dabs at his pants leg, then reaches around to a back pocket and produces a white handkerchief. Lenore takes it from him, presses it up over her mouth. She knows it will be saturated in a minute.