“So, Cosmo,” Dmitri said, “you are going to get ATM money tomorrow when you catch addict woman, no?”
“That is exactly correct,” Cosmo said.
“Okay, here is what I do for you, Cosmo,” said Dmitri. “You owe me eleven thousand, five hundred plus diamonds. I am go-ink to cancel the money what you owe me! You get Ilya up here and give me all diamonds and we are even. Tomorrow when you catch addict woman, you keep all ninety-three thousand dollars. Your share, my share. I could not be more generous with my own brother, Cosmo.”
Then Dmitri looked up at the Georgian for validation and got a nod of agreement that said Dmitri was a very reasonable and very generous man.
It was hopeless. Cosmo was the image of despair. As Cosmo was staring at the money on Dmitri’s desk, the Russian opened the top drawer and put the first stack back inside. When he reached for the second stack, Cosmo felt that he was outside his body and watching himself pull his coat back and reach behind him for the Beretta.
“Dmitri!” the Georgian yelled, coming up with a small pistol, from where, Cosmo didn’t see.
And Dmitri shouted in Russian and opened a second drawer and reached inside for a gun of his own.
Andi said to the other cops and to Andrei the manager, “We’ve waited long enough. I’m going to knock on Dmitri’s door.”
She was interrupted by one shot followed by two more followed by five! And the two detectives and three uniformed cops ran upstairs. Andi was getting her pistol out of her purse when Fausto and Budgie passed her and both crouched down on one knee, guns extended in two hands aimed at the door of Dmitri’s office. The Oracle ran to the other side of the door, and with his old six-inch revolver extended, he backed up, so that all guns, high and low, were deployed diagonally, pointed at the door.
Inside the office, Cosmo Betrossian had pain in his left arm that far exceeded anything he’d suffered this night either from Farley Ramsdale or the killer dog. Cosmo had a through-and-through wound in the biceps that had chipped the bone before exiting, and it burned like liquid fire.
The Georgian was sprawled across Dmitri’s desk, spurting blood from an arterial penetration in the neck. But his chest wounds were even more devastating.
Dmitri was sitting back in his chair with a hole in his forehead that was actually a coup de grâce delivered by Cosmo as Dmitri lay dying, having fired the round that wounded Cosmo.
The thundering sounds from the pit below Dmitri’s office had actually muffled the sound from the patrons’ area, and everyone rocked on. From time to time Ilya gazed across the dance floor, wondering why Cosmo had not returned.
Cosmo hoped he didn’t faint before he got down to Ilya with the stacks of money inside his shirt against his skin. The money felt good. He was about to put his gun back into his waistband, but thinking that an employee from the kitchen might have heard the shots, he held the gun in front of him with his one good hand and opened the door.
In such confined space it sounded to Fausto like automatic weapon fire that he’d heard in Nam. Budgie later said that it sounded to her like one huge explosion. She couldn’t differentiate the separate weapons firing.
Cosmo Betrossian got off exactly one shot, which hit the wall above their heads. He in turn was shot eighteen times with nine rounds missing him, probably as he was twisting and falling. All five cops shot him at least twice, with Fausto and Budgie scoring the most hits.
This being her first shooting, Andi McCrea later said during the FID investigation that it truly was like a slow-motion sequence. She could see, or thought she could see, hot shell casings ejecting into the air from various pistols and slapping against her face.
The Oracle said that in forty-six years, this was the first time he’d ever fired his weapon outside of the police pistol range.
Budgie had the most interesting commentary. She said that in such close confines, all the muzzle blasts and gun smoke had created a condition that, with her mouth wide open and sucking air, got her chewing gum full of grit.
The pandemonium that followed was worse than what occurred on the night of the patio stabbing. The customers did hear the roar of the multiple gunshots from the upstairs hallway. Budgie and Fausto ran down the stairs to grab the manager and anybody else who looked like he might know what the hell had happened upstairs to cause the original gunfire. The Oracle made urgent calls on his rover.
By the time Viktor Chernenko pulled up in front, people were pouring from the front door and running for their cars. The parking lot was in such chaos that the cars in the back of the lot could not move. Headlights were flashing and horns were honking. Viktor bulled his way through emerging hysterical customers and took the stairs two at a time.
When he got to the scene of carnage, he said to the Oracle, “One of these Russians may be the one I am looking for! Maybe the one who shot Farley Ramsdale!”
The Oracle, who was pale and had the worst heartburn of his life, said, “A busboy told us the one in the chair is the owner. The one lying across the desk is a bartender. The one we shot…”-and he pointed to the ragged, bloody heap lying in the corner just beyond the door-“I don’t know who he is. He killed the other two.”
Viktor said, “You have latex gloves?” and when the Oracle shook his head, Viktor said, “Hell with it!” and pulled Cosmo’s wallet from his back pocket and ran back down the stairs, his hands stained by Cosmo’s blood.
When he got to the sidewalk in front he could hear sirens wailing as patrol units were arriving from all directions.
“Come with me!” Viktor yelled to Wesley Drubb, who had just leaped from their car as Nate was double-parking it.
Wesley followed Viktor to the parking lot, where Viktor looked inside each and every car with his flashlight as the cars took turns trying to funnel out of the narrow driveway. Most cars had couples in them or single men. Less than ten percent of the cars were driven by single women, but for every one that was, Viktor’s flashlight beamed squarely into the driver’s face.
He was starting to think that he’d been wrong when he got to the last row of cars, but then he saw a big blond woman with huge breasts behind the wheel of an older Cadillac. Viktor turned to Wesley, his flashlight on Cosmo’s driver’s license, showing Wesley the name. Then he shined his light on the Cadillac and said, “Please get a DMV on this license plate! Very fast!”
Viktor hung his badge on his coat pocket, walked up to the driver’s door, and tapped on the window with his flashlight, his pistol in hand concealed just below the window ledge. And he smiled.
The woman rolled down the window, smiled back at him, and said, “Yes, Officer?”
“Your name, please,” Viktor said.
“Ilya Roskova,” she said. “There is a problem?” Then she looked to see if the queue of cars was moving, but it was not.
“Maybe,” Viktor said. “And is this your car?”
“No, I borrow this car from a friend. She is a neighbor. I am so stupid I do not even know her family name.”
“May I see the registration?”
Ilya said, “Shall I look in glove box?”
“By every means,” Viktor said, shining his light on her right hand as well as the glove compartment. His gun coming up a bit higher.
“No,” she said. “No papers in there.”
“This car belongs to a woman, then?”
“Yes,” Ilya said. “But not to this woman who sits before you in traffic.” Her smile broke wider, a bit coquettish.
Hollywood Nate and Wesley came running back, and Wesley whispered, “Cosmo Betrossian. Same as on that driver’s license.”
“So you know the owner of the car, then?” Viktor said to Ilya.
“Yes,” Ilya said cautiously. “Her name is Nadia.”
“Do you know Cosmo Betrossian?”
“No, I do not think so,” Ilya said.
Viktor raised his pistol to her face and said in Russian, “You will please step from the car with your hands where we can see them at all times, Madame Roskova.”