"When I had your brother like this," I said, weakly as I could, "I stepped on his shoulder, on his wound,
Marco, till he did what I wanted."
Marco's expression screwed up in rage. He took a step toward me, then stopped. His face relaxed. Sort
of.
"Nice try, shithead. You had me going there for a minute. Joey told me about what you did. He told me, all right. But I'm just gonna chip away at you, a part at a time, till I only got one bullet left. Then I'm gonna drill you. Dead square in the face," Marco jeered, cooking his revolver. "In your face."
The barrel mouth slid toward my good leg. I was out of ideas. I thought of Nancy and Beth, Martha and Al Junior. Of unclaimed book envelopes gathering dust in a post office. The waste of it all.
I heard a shot and a second, and a slug thumped the ground next to me as a third and a fourth and . . . Marco pitched toward me, the monument between us throwing a stationary hip-check on him. There was a clicking noise behind him as he slumped and tumbled over the stone. His face crunched into a small marker at my feet. There were two gaping, burbling holes in his back. I released a long breath and raised unsteadily to face the clicking.
She was propped against a waist-level cross. A bloodstain the size of a baseball cap was spreading on her shoulder. Her clothes looked like she'd been the mold for a snow-woman. Her eyes were open, but her trigger finger kept driving home the shrouded hammer of the Bodyguard, methodically, reflexively.
I limped over to her. I put my hand on her gum arm. She stopped pulling the trigger. I gently pried the weapon from her clamped fingers. A police car, lights flashing, no siren, came barreling into the cemetery and up the car path. "Oh, my God," she said, sinking down on her knees, "oh, my God . . ."
I tried to support her, but instead my leg gave way, and I sank down with her. I heard the cruiser doors open and slam. "Over here," I called, dropping the Bodyguard to the ground. "Get an ambu1ance."
"Oh, John, oh my God, I killed him . . . oh Jesus Mary, I killed a man."
I drew her face toward me and mourned for the time when I would have felt as she did.
The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy Page 24