A familiar voice drifted down to them from the staircase. “Y’all are on time at least.”
Durant and Blue looked up to find Colleen Cullen on the halfway-up landing and beginning her descent to the foyer with the sawed-off shotgun in the crook of her right arm. Her left hand trailed the banister. Durant thought it was an effective, even graceful entrance despite the shotgun and the black jeans and the black cotton sweater and the black athletic shoes with the high tops that had to be laced up.
“We’re the first?” Georgia Blue asked.
“Just did my outside rounds,” Cullen said. “Nobody out there but rabbits and raccoons.”
“Where will we be?” Georgia Blue said.
“Be right where you were before — in the parlor,” Cullen said, turned and led them toward the closed sliding doors.
When they reached them, Durant said, “You first, Colleen.” She shrugged, shoved the left door back into its recess and went into the parlor followed by Durant, then Georgia Blue. Once all three were in the room and heading for the big round oak table where some drinks had been laid on, a man’s voice behind them barked an order. “Hold it!”
Durant and Blue stopped immediately. But Colleen Cullen whirled around to aim her sawed-off shotgun not at the intruder, but at Durant and Blue.
“Do something with your hands,” Cullen said.
Durant dropped the blue moneybag to the oak floor and raised his hands shoulder height. Georgia Blue merely held her arms and hands away from her body.
“Man behind you’s got an Uzi,” Colleen Cullen said. “You gotta know what that is.” Her eyes flicked to Georgia Blue. “Now here’s what you do, Slim. First, use two fingers of your left hand and pull up your front shirttail. Then use two fingers of your right hand to pull your piece out from between your tummy and your panties and lay it in my left hand.”
Blue did as instructed. As the .38 revolver was deposited in Cullen’s left hand, she gave it a quick glance of recognition and said, “Looks like I get to sell you one more time, sweet thing.”
She shoved the revolver down into her own left rear pants pocket, then turned herself and the shotgun slightly toward Durant. “Same thing, Mr. Tan Man. Two fingers only.”
“Mind if I use a thumb?” Durant said as he carefully took the revolver from his hip pocket, placed it on Cullen’s palm, smiled and said, “Get a better offer, Colleen?”
“Sure did.”
“How much better?”
“Too much for you to top it.”
“Too late to try?”
“Way too late,” she said. “Now I’m gonna turn around and go lay these pieces on the table and I expect you all to stay put on account of the Uzi back there. When I get rid of these, then we’ll get down to — well, whatever it is we’re gonna get down to.”
Cullen turned and walked six steps toward the big round oak table. Just as she began her seventh step there was a short burst of automatic fire. Durant guessed four rounds but changed his mind when only three rounds pierced Cullen’s black sweater just above her waistline and about where her spine was.
The rounds slammed her forward and her legs collapsed first. Before she reached the floor both barrels of the shotgun fired and tore two joined holes in the oak. The holes reminded Durant of a fat solid-black 8 that had fallen on its face.
Durant didn’t move. But Georgia Blue did. She sighed first, turned, went to the nearest straight chair, sat down, crossed her right ankle over her left knee, used the knee to support her elbow, then cupped her chin in her palm, glared at someone other than Durant, then said, “That was a stupid fucking thing to do.”
“One less witness,” said the man who had ordered them to “Hold it.”
“You can’t kill everybody off,” she said. “First the limo driver. Then the two Goodison twits up in what — Oxnard? And now Colleen. It’s dumb.”
“Only one to go,” he said. “And you can do him.”
“Why me?”
“To earn your money and share the liability, why else?”
“I don’t think she’ll do it,” Durant said.
“Whyever not?” the man said.
“There’s nothing in it for her.”
“Three hundred thousand dollars isn’t nothing.”
“The blue bag at my feet,” Durant said.
“The moneybag?”
“The moneybag,” Durant agreed. “Except there’s no money in it. Just magazines. Old copies of Architectural Digest mostly.”
“You’re lying, of course.”
“Take a look.”
“Lying or not, I’m afraid Georgia will still have to kill you as a kind of — what shall we call it — penance?”
“Penance is good,” Durant said. “And she’s got a lot to be penitent about. But it wouldn’t be smart.”
“Aren’t we all just a bit past smart?”
“Probably,” Durant said. “But if you want her to kill me, you’ll have to let her handle a piece. And if you do that, she’ll take you out first and then work something out with me to save her own ass. There’s this about Georgia: she always knows when to cut her losses.”
“Kick the bag out in front of you,” the man said.
Durant took a step back and kicked the bag away.
“Take another step back.”
Durant stepped back just as the man came into view. Durant grinned and said, “My God, it must be Jack Broach, Hollywood super agent — and off to World War Two about fifty years late. Is it tonight we raid Calais, Jack?”
Broach smiled a charming smile. “I’d’ve liked to have done that, Mr. Durant. I really would.”
Broach wore a knitted navy watch cap pulled down over his ears. He also wore a navy-blue turtleneck wool sweater and black pants that were bloused down over jump boots that looked as if they had been spit-shined. Although Durant thought the boots were a bit much he also thought that Broach handled the Uzi with disturbing familiarity.
Broach suddenly stopped smiling, knelt on his right knee beside the moneybag but kept his eyes and the Uzi on Durant. With his left hand, Broach felt for the moneybag’s zipper, found it, tugged it open and glanced down. The open bag was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.
When Broach looked down, Georgia Blue snatched the small .25-caliber semiautomatic from the ankle holster on her right leg — the same leg whose ankle she had rested on her left knee.
She shot the kneeling Jack Broach in his upper left arm. Broach grunted in either surprise or pain or both, dropped the Uzi, clapped his right hand to his wound and stared at Georgia Blue with astonishment. “You shot me,” he said, making it both a question and an accusation.
Now on her feet and aiming the small weapon at Broach with both hands, Georgia Blue said, “Give it up, Jack.”
But his right hand had already darted back to grip the Uzi he had dropped. “Maybe I’ll shoot Mr. Durant myself after all.”
“You can try,” she said.
Broach frowned, as if both puzzled and saddened by events. “We did have a deal, you and I.”
“Where’re the tapes, Jack?”
“What tapes?” he said. “There were never any tapes — none we could use anyway because Ione didn’t kill Billy Rice and don’t ask me who did because I don’t know.”
“And the Goodisons?” Georgia Blue said.
“They became all antsy and wanted to pull out of our blackmail deal and sell their story to some supermarket tabloid and, well, that had to be prevented, didn’t it?”
“Make him drop the Uzi, Georgia,” Durant said.
“A head shot, you think?”
“A head shot would be nice,” Durant said.
“Of course,” Broach said, “it was altogether different with you and me from what it was with me and the Goodisons. You and I are equals. And we made our deal as such.”