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He felt the sudden urge and let it carry him for a moment. What would it take? Pull the Glock right now and put three slugs in the back of Moss’s neck. Finish him with one to the brain. Walk out of this building then get in the car and drive.

Without the money.

No. It was too soon. Either do the job all the way through, bring Dugan back to New York, or wait around and get the money. Don’t do neither. The realization came to Cruz like something that had always been there, submerged at the bottom of a deep pool but slowly working its way to the surface over long years. The way you retire, he grasped now, is you don’t announce it beforehand.

Moss turned back to him. “Ready?”

Cruz couldn’t let Moss know just how far he had drifted in the past hour. At least, he couldn’t let him know yet. “Let’s do it,” he said.

***

“You’ve gotta get out of there!” Smoke shouted. “You gotta get out of there right this minute.” It made no sense.

Lola stood with the phone to her ear. She was distracted momentarily as Pamela came in from work – she had just this moment walked in the door with a bag of groceries from Micucci’s Italian Market at the bottom of Munjoy Hill. She was in her neat work attire. Slacks, a blouse, and a sports jacket. It was neat, but hardly sparkling. She wore sneakers for the long walk up the hill.

“Hey babe,” Pamela said. “You left the door open downstairs again.” She began to put the food away.

“I’m pretty sure I locked it,” Lola said.

“Listen to me! Will you listen to me?” Smoke was babbling, almost incoherent. Something about she had to get out of the house. He was insistent, he was raging, he was out of his mind. She had never heard him like this before.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Wait a minute. What are you saying?”

“I don’t have time to explain,” came his voice. He sounded like he was outside somewhere, next to a highway. Cars were going past him in the background. “Some men attacked me today.”

“What? Some men attacked you? Are you all right?” She thought of Mr. Shaggy and Mr. Blue Eyes. Had they attacked Smoke? Why would they attack Smoke? They could have been following her, seen Smoke, and decided to take out their revenge on him because they knew they couldn’t harm her. Jesus!

“Who were the men? What did they look like?”

“Lola, shut up and listen to me!”

She stopped. She hated that. She hated when any man thought he could end the conversation just by being louder, or by putting on his man-authority voice. If he had been attacked, he needed to tell her about it. But he didn’t have to tell her to shut up. She wouldn’t stand for that. He knew as much, too.

She heard her voice go cold. “I’m listening, but it had better be good, and it had better come with a box of chocolates and some roses.”

He didn’t take the hint, or even stop to comment on it. That, more than anything, made the skin on her back tighten into gooseflesh. He spoke slowly, as if to an imbecile or a child. There was something in his voice…

“Lola, I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, there’s a lot I can’t get into right now. I’ve been meaning to tell you, but I never did, and now you just have to do what I say. Some very dangerous men are in town. They want money from me. I got away from them, but I’m worried they’re coming to get you. You have to get out of there.”

“Smoke, come on. What is this, a game?”

“Go out the back way. Right now. GO!”

Pamela came out of the bathroom, in stocking feet with her shirt unbuttoned halfway down from the collar. She headed back into the kitchen.

A knock came on the door. Lola looked at it. So what? Somebody was knocking. But how did they get in the building? Pamela changed directions and headed for the door. She reached out for the lock and the knob simultaneously. She wasn’t even going to glance through the peephole.

Suddenly, Lola was afraid.

“Lola, you’ve got to get out of there right now. If Pamela is there, you have to take her with you. It’s not safe.”

Pamela’s hand was on the knob.

“Don’t open it!” Lola screamed.

Too late.

Pamela turned to look at Lola, her eyes puzzled by the sudden outburst. She had unlocked the door, but hadn’t opened it. The door burst open, knocking her backwards. Lola watched Pamela take two stagger steps backwards and fall to the floor.

A man came in. He walked with a swagger. He was huge, with impossibly muscular arms. The hand at the end of one of those arms held a gun. The gun had a large silencer attached to the end of it. He looked down at Pamela sprawled on the worn carpet near the door. Then he looked up at Lola.

He smiled.

Lola dropped the phone.

***

Cruz followed Moss up the narrow stairway. Moss’s bulk barely fit between the walls. His head nearly scraped the low ceiling.

Moss burst through the door and Cruz padded in behind him, moving fast, moving quietly. Moss backed the black girl, Lola, into the living room with the gun. The other girl, a slim, bookish white girl, was lying on the floor in a daze. Cruz pulled the door shut and locked it.

The girl on the floor stared up at him. Pretty girl, gone numb.

“If you do anything, I’ll kill you,” he said to her. He held up his gun for her to see it better. “It has big bullets. It’ll put big holes in your body. Understand?”

She nodded. Her eyes were wide and hollow like those of a Japanese cartoon.

“Is anyone else here?”

She gazed at him and didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

Cruz did a quick sweep of the apartment. He already had one extra witness. He hoped nobody else was in here. God, the bodies were piling up. He didn’t want to think about it. He went into a room. It was a bedroom with a double bed, the headboard against the wall. There was a poster of a black girl in tennis whites on the wall. Black girls played tennis? So much Cruz didn’t know. He picked in the closet. Nothing here, except some clothes, skirts and such. The room was clean. He went back outside.

He paused in the doorway and glanced over at Moss, who had Lola at gunpoint. She wore a pair of black tights and a belly shirt. Her body seemed to defy gravity. Her hair hung down in wild curls. She was something.

Moss looked at Cruz.

He grinned, and gestured at her with the gun. “Whaddya think?” he said.

Just then, Lola kicked out.

Amazingly, she knocked Moss’s gun right up into the air. Her kick – it finished high, nearly as tall as Moss’s head, and the gun flew back up and over his head, into the room Cruz was standing in. It slid across the floor. Moss watched it go. The girl followed up with a punch at Moss’s throat. Moss stepped back just before getting the brunt of it.

He laughed.

“Girl, I never saw anyone kick that high. Not in real life.”

Then she came for him.

Her movements were a blur. Moss blocked her first two punches. He was still laughing, the embarrassed laughter of a ten-year-old boy being attacked by a little girl in his class. Then Cruz saw her knee go into his groin. Moss grunted. A fist connected with his face. He barely moved. It was almost as if he was watching it happen to him. He couldn’t get his engine going. His eyes said that this sort of thing just didn’t happen. She hooked his leg, whirled and elbow smashed him in the face.

He lost his balance, stepping backwards and sideways. She kept coming.

A punch, a kick and down he went. Moss went down.

MOSS… WENT… DOWN.

It was like watching a building fall. Cruz felt the floor shake.

Incredible.

“Pamela!” Lola shouted. “Pamela, get the gun.”

The girl Pamela looked up from her stupor. Her eyes brightened as she became aware of the situation. She was four feet from the gun. Cruz was half way across the room from her. Ridiculous. Imagine if that little girl actually picked up the gun and began shooting it? She probably wouldn’t hit anything, but then again she might. In any event, a lot of shooting wasn’t the answer in this small apartment building in this residential neighborhood.