A sudden outburst of sound snapped him out of his dark reverie, making him flatten against the wall as a shaft of light shot down the long, broad passageway he'd been traveling.
"No, Al, this is it for a while. I'm closing up. Things're getting hot. Cashman's dead and the cops are starting to swarm. If I were you, I'd lay low or pull up stakes. That's what I'm doing."
In the light, Kunkle now saw that the BMW was parked in the gloom just ahead of him, much as it might have been in an alleyway, except that here everything was under a single roof. Andy Liptak was stepping out of a side room, looking back over his shoulder and talking to someone Willy couldn't see.
"I wouldn't, not if I were in your shoes," Andy was saying to some comment Willy hadn't heard. "Take the money and run. That's why I gave it to you. You get greedy now, you'll just get caught. That's how the cops get most of the people they're after. Me, I burned my bridges or settled my debts, just like now. Lay low. It'll be a piece of cake."
He laughed at whatever he heard in response to that and moved completely outside the room, waving a hand. "Whatever, Al. It's been real."
Tired of the waiting, of trying to keep his thoughts in balance, of putting his hopes on a future free of the past, tired even of thinking at all anymore, Willy drifted into the light, his gun in his hand, and said, "Hey, Andy. Got time for one last debt?"
Liptak reacted as though he'd been splashed with scalding water. He spun around, his arms flung out, his mouth open in surprise, making Willy think of a bug flattened against a windshield.
"Jesus Christ. Sniper. What the hell?"
Willy leveled his gun at him, so tired it felt like lifting a cinderblock brick. "It's over. That's what. For all of us."
Liptak gave him a broad, strained smile. "Hold it, hold it. What's going on? What're you talking about?"
The man Andy had been speaking with appeared in the doorway. "You okay?" He paused, freezing in midmotion. "Oh, oh. Sorry, guys."
"Leave," Willy ordered.
The man named Al was instantly accommodating. "Sure thing. This way?" He pointed down the dark corridor.
"I don't care."
Al slid down and away from them both without further ado, adding over his shoulder, "Good luck, Andy. Sorry."
Liptak blinked once, slowly, no doubt impressed by his friend's loyalty. "You got a problem with me?" he asked warily.
"I don't have the energy," Willy answered. "I know you had Cashman kill Mary. I probably can't prove it, but that doesn't matter anymore."
Andy took a step toward him, his face showing how fast and hard he was thinking. "I'm going into my pocket for a cell phone, okay? Just two fingers, super slow. One call and I make you a rich man. You have any idea how much money I have? I give you three million bucks, I won't even feel it. Four, if you want."
"You really are a piece of work."
Liptak removed a phone from his pocket with his fingertips. Willy had never felt so exhausted.
Liptak moved the phone in front of him and took hold of it with his other hand so he could punch the buttons of the keypad. He was holding the phone awkwardly, pointing it at Willy. "Maybe I am. You have no idea what Mary had turned into. I supported her for years, giving her enough to survive but not so much she could buy a lot of dope. I took care of her, Willy, and it wasn't easy. She hated me for it-you know how crazy junkies get. And then after she got clean-again, thanks to me-she threatened to destroy me. She'd become a monster, man."
As he uttered this last statement, he fine-tuned the way he was holding the phone.
"Willy. Dive."
The shout was Sammie's, coming from the darkness behind him. Willy did as she ordered without thought, on pure reflex, just as a white-hot lick of flame appeared out of the cell phone's front end, accompanied by the sharp report of a small-caliber cartridge. As he bounced off the wall and fell to his knees, his left cheek stinging from the slug barely kissing him, Willy smacked his hand, lost his gun, and saw it skitter across the floor, vanishing from sight.
Andy Liptak didn't hesitate. Swinging the phone gun in Sammie's direction, he fired twice more into the dark, using her one muzzle flash as a guide. Her shot went wide, but one of his hit her in the leg, making her cry out and spin around. He then ran up to her, kicked her gun away, and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, half throwing her toward his car. In pain, off balance, and surprised by his desperate violence, Sammie staggered and fell against the car's fender, where Liptak finally struck her cross the back of the head with the phone, further stunning her.
Willy was almost back on his feet by now, unarmed but intent on charging Liptak, when the latter fired wildly once more in his direction-a haphazard, almost incidental shot-and hit him in the heel of his shoe, knocking his leg out from under him.
Before Willy could get up a second time, Liptak had tossed Sammie into the back of his car and slid behind the wheel. As Willy launched himself at the driver's door, Liptak gunned the engine and squealed away, careening down the enormous corridor toward the entrance bay he'd used not fifteen minutes earlier.
Willy was left on his knees, his one good hand supporting him, looking like a three-legged dog.
With a sound wedged between a shout of rage and a strangled sob, he staggered back to his feet and began running toward his car.
Chapter 24
It was a fruitless effort. By the time Willy reached his car, Andy Liptak's BMW was long gone. Nevertheless, trusting to instinct, Willy took off in the direction he'd seen Liptak use, flooring the accelerator and paying no attention to any obstacle that couldn't either be ignored or defeated by the weight of his vehicle. He rammed trash cans, destroyed parking meters, creased several parked cars, and burned through every red light he encountered in his effort to catch some glimpse of the black German car.
Beneath all this frenzy, though, his instincts were still at work, for in short order he found himself within sight of an on ramp to the Gowanus Expressway, one of his tires flat from hitting a curb, but in time to see the BMW heading north at high speed.
As frustrating as that should have been-his quarry within reach but his car out of service-Willy was instead seized with a cold, calm confidence. He knew, as surely as if he'd been left a detailed map, where Liptak was headed. All he'd needed to see was the direction and the fact that Andy had chosen a freeway to take.
Twenty minutes later, his tire changed and his spare gun moved from his glove box to his pocket, Willy was driving north toward Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was a long drive, propelled by anxiety and self-recrimination, but accompanied, too, by the realization that the city had slipped behind him like a bad dream after an abrupt awakening. Willy drove automatically, steady and very fast, trusting to luck that he wouldn't be pulled over, feeling with each passing mile a sharpening sense of purpose. This was his third hasty departure from New York-once to go to war, once in an attempt to escape his past. This time, the most precipitate, also found him the most resolved. With his own fate as tenuous as ever, he felt the job at hand had never been clearer. There would be no second-guessing now. No walks along the road or procrastinating at a diner, as there'd been when he'd left Vermont to find Mary in the morgue. New York, in its confusing, contradictory, all-enveloping way, had finally seen fit to set him free.