by Mike Knowles
Miles was right behind me. “I asked you a question. What the hell is going on?”
Miles took a fistful of my shirt at the right shoulder and spun me towards him. Instinctively, both of my hands wanted to come up, but the bum shoulder made that impossible. Instead, I pivoted on my heels and turned with the momentum. I shot my right hand out and my hand extended like a snake bite. The webbed skin between my thumb and index finger jammed hard against the con man’s throat. He staggered back a step and then brought his hands to his neck leaving the gun tucked into his belt unguarded.
I took the gun and stepped back. The sudden burst of speed had me light-headed and I groped for the top of a kitchen chair to keep me on my feet.
Ilir appeared in the doorway and echoed his last message. “You need to tell me what you think is out there because I can’t see nothing out front.” Ilir looked from me, leaning against the chair, to Miles, who was drowning on two legs. “You guys okay?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The loss of blood and painkillers had numbed the pain in my body, but they had done the same job to my mind. There was a heavy fog that had settled in slowly enough to go unnoticed — at least at first. The stabbing pain in my shoulder and side brought on by hitting Miles had cut through the fog like the beam from a lighthouse. For a few seconds, I had my bearings again. I was aware of a thought, or an absence of one. There was something that I had missed, and some part of my brain, the primordial part that was all survival instinct, was screaming a warning. The thought was buried deep, but it was surging against its confines. I rubbed at my eyes with my right hand hard enough to see spots behind my eyelids.
“Say that again, Ilir.”
“What?”
“What you just said.”
“There is nothing out front.”
Out front. Out front. The words kept repeating in my mind. Miles gravitated towards the counter and I heard a squeak of breath make its way back into his lungs.
The thought crawled out of the shallow grave the medication had buried it in. There was nothing out front. I understood what the back of my mind had been furiously repeating. Out front was the logical place to watch, but when I showed up at the back door Carl opened the door and was surprised to see me. He had been told that I wasn’t coming back. If it wasn’t me he was expecting at the back door — who was he waiting for? A better question followed. How long had he been upstairs?
Miles was breathing shallowly now and he pushed off the counter and moved for the doorway. Ilir saw Miles’ zombie shuffle and he took a step back, unsure about how to address what he was seeing. Finally, he found the words. “This is getting fucked, man. Someone needs to fill me in on what the hell is going on.”
“I’ll tell you,” Carl said from the living room. “In the kitchen.”
Ilir looked over his shoulder. “Just tell me now, Ca —” He stopped talking when he saw what must have been a gun in Carl’s hand.
Being hurt changes things. You realize all at once the little things you used to be able to do effortlessly are now painstakingly difficult. For some, it might be bending over to tie a shoe or walking up a flight of stairs. For me, it was drawing a gun. Healthy, I could draw a gun as fast as any cowboy in a Sunday afternoon Western matinee. But with drugs in my system, blood loss, and tissue damage to my shoulder and torso, my movements were slow and clumsy. I was slow — not a cowboy anymore. Injuries change things. They change you. You have to adapt, find new ways to do old things well.
Adrenalin was pumping again and the fog that had been so intellectually stifling had parted like the Red Sea in front of Moses. The police pistol came out from behind my back slow and steady.
Ilir was bringing his head back towards Miles and me with a look of confusion tinged with a blooming rage. It was the kind of look ordinary people got just after they realized that they’ve stepped in dog shit. The look on his face changed when I shot him in the chest.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Ilir’s body, propelled by a 9 mm slug moving just under the speed of sound, pitched back through the doorway and onto the floor. Above his body, two more bullets from my pistol screamed into the living room. Miles, who had moments ago been moving for the door, dove to his right for cover. He collided with what was left of the lower kitchen cabinets and scrambled left and then right looking for a place to hide. He came to a stop, two palms against the cabinet doors, and looked at me. If he had been carrying a gun, he would have gone for it already. I shot him a look that told him all he needed to know. Miles stayed where he was.
“Shit,” Carl screamed. “Are you fucking nuts?”
“You thought I wasn’t coming back, Carl. You said it yourself.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You opened the back door and were surprised when it was me on the other side.”
“So?”
“No gun, just a look on your face. That’s how I found you.”
“Miles, he’s lost it.”
“If I wasn’t coming back, who were you looking for out there?”
“Miles, are you hearing this?”
Miles looked at me and saw that the gun was on the doorway, not on him. “Yeah.”
“Miles, he sent me upstairs a minute ago because he thought you turned on us. Then I come down the stairs and he shoots the kid in the chest. Now I’m the guy who’s turned on us. Wilson’s lost it.”
“No argument,” Miles said.
“He shot Ilir for no reason and he’s going to shoot me for answering the back door. What do you think is going to happen to you when you’re the only one left?”
I glanced at Miles. He had inched a bit towards the back door. He stopped when we made eye contact. “I was kind of wondering,” he said.
Carl was good behind the wheel; he was better with his mouth. He knew I was beat up. I was slow and getting slower. The wheelman in the living room would be happy if Miles killed me; he’d be just as happy if I killed Miles. He would use the scuffle to flank me. Either outcome would have the same result — Carl alive with the violin and everyone else dead.
I ignored Miles and put two bullets into the wall at chest height. The slugs had more than enough juice to rip through the walls and streak through the living room. I didn’t think I was lucky enough to hit Carl — luck was nowhere near me today — but they would shut the driver up for a few seconds.
I saw movement in the corner of my eye and I turned my head just enough to see Miles crab-walking towards the back door. There were windows along the back of the house; I figured he would attempt a dive through one of them if the opportunity presented itself.
“Calm down,” I said. “You saw Ilir’s face. Something was wrong with what he saw when he looked over his shoulder.”
“But then you shot him,” Carl called. “If I’m the bad guy here, why do that, Wilson? Why shoot the kid because he saw something?”
Fucking Carl and his mouth. There was no time to explain. Even if I could, my reason wouldn’t absolve me, not in Miles’ eyes. But I didn’t need absolution; I didn’t need to justify anything to the con man. Survival isn’t a team sport.
“Go on. Tell him, Wilson. Why shoot the kid if I was just going to do it, too?”
Fucking Carl. I looked over at Miles. He wasn’t going for a window anymore. He was watching me instead of the back door, and there was a gun in his hand.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
I was slipping. The gunshots had done so much more than slow down my draw — they had slowed me down all over. I had missed the gun that had been on the table with the food containers and garbage. Miles had a revolver, one of the four that Ilir had got for the job, in his right hand. I had mine and the one I took off the conman. Carl had his. That meant the piece Miles pulled off the table had been Ilir’s. The barrel wasn’t aimed at my face though; it was aiming just low of centre mass. The height of the ba
rrel told me that Miles wasn’t totally convinced that I was the bad guy.
Having a gun pointed at you has a way of clearing things up. All of the unnecessary thoughts that usually cloud your conscious mind evaporate, leaving only the information that is necessary for making it through the next few important minutes. I had been slipping — now, I was rooted.
I had about thirty seconds to turn things around. The gun almost at centre mass meant Miles was almost convinced I was crazy. I glanced back at the doorway. It was strange that Carl hadn’t made some kind of move. The job had left him with a fully loaded revolver; all it would have taken was four shots at chest height moving horizontally across the room at two-foot intervals. I would have to duck and cover at some point and, slow as I was, that would be more than enough time for Carl to come into the kitchen to use the last four shots up on my body. No bullets was a message in itself. Carl was clearly smart, so he obviously had a plan. He was clearly waiting for someone.
I had judged Carl wrong. He wasn’t waiting for Miles to make a move or for him to occupy my attention. He was running out the clock. Someone was still coming to that back door and that someone would be the one to kill both me and Miles.
I lifted my index finger off the trigger and let Miles watch as I brought the finger to my mouth. I quietly shhh’ed him. He nodded, but the look on his face told me that he was skeptical. I pointed the gun at the floor five feet away from me and pulled the trigger.
The silence that followed was short.
“Miles,” Carl called. “Tell me you took care of that psycho.”
I lifted my finger to my mouth before Miles could blow it with some smart-ass comment.
“Nope,” I said.
“Miles?”
“Even if his ears did still work, the brains on the floor don’t anymore.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m a survivor, Carl. Now tell me who we’re expecting.”
Carl laughed. “Doesn’t matter. They’ll be here any minute.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Miles open his mouth. I shook my head.
“You sold us out?”
Carl laughed. “Hard to play the righteous crook when you just killed two of your partners. Hand over the violin and you can walk away.”
I pointed at the back window and Miles crept over to check the yard. When Miles communicated the yard was still clear, I moved to the violin. The case was light enough that I could hold it up by wedging it under my injured arm. I nodded at the door and Miles turned the knob.
“Awful quiet, Wilson,” Carl said. “Thinking about making a run for it? It’s a good plan, but you really should have tried it a few minutes ago because the people I called. They’re here.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Miles jutted his head out the door and quickly brought it back in. He slammed the door closed and backed away towards the wall I had already taken up position against. I slid down to the floor and Miles followed suit. He kept his gun on the back while I covered the living room.
“Send out the violin and you can walk,” Carl called from somewhere in the front of the house.
I put my finger to my lips and waited for Miles to nod. The con man was my only advantage. The men outside had been in contact with Carl. Both they and he thought there was one wounded man in the kitchen. Having another man and another gun would give me a chance.
“Hard to believe you would be that generous, Carl.”
I heard him laugh. “I know, but I guess a leopard can change his spots. Besides, what else do you have to go on right now? We aren’t leaving without the violin.”
Something else came out from the same mental graveyard I had dug up earlier. Something that Carl’s choice of words had unearthed. Spots. Why spots? I stalled for time. “Who are ‘we’?”
“I don’t kiss and tell after I jump into bed with someone.”
“You’re asking me to trust them not to kill me. Hard to do if you don’t know who them are.”
“Funny thing, our business. It’s all so secretive. No one really knows anyone. Hell, we only use first names. No one ever even asks about last names. Mine is Bogdani.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s the second most common Albanian surname.”
“So when did you decide to switch sides on us, Carl Bogdani?” I didn’t care because it didn’t matter, but Carl talking to me meant he wasn’t talking to the Albanians out back. It also gave me a general idea where he was. General meaning not near the doorway.
“It wasn’t like I was a double agent or anything like that. A couple days ago was the first time I spoke Albanian in twenty years.”
I pointed at the window and Miles looked out back again. He put his head up and gave the yard a quick look. When he sat back down, he shook his head. No way out — not yet anyway.
“Who did you speak to?”
“I called some relatives. Guys in our line of work. It was right after the attempted robbery on the house. I said to myself, ‘Now these are some motivated countrymen. They want that violin fuckin’ bad.’ I figured anyone who would make a play that crazy had to be desperate, and desperate people pay. So, I put the call out and eventually ended up talking to someone who worked for Arben Malota.”
I remembered the name of the Buffalo Pyrros Vogli.
“So, Malota’s guys, they don’t believe what I’m telling them at first. They’ve been feuding with Pyrros so long that they suspect everything to be a trap. But after the violin got stolen from the concert hall —”
“They had a sudden change of heart,” I said.
“Bingo.”
I heard the front door open followed by a hushed conversation. After a while, Carl said, “New deal, Wilson. The street isn’t as empty as it used to be, and those bullets you fired seemed to have made the neighbours curious. Throw the violin out and you get to live.”
I pointed my gun at the back door, and gestured for Miles to cover the back exit. “Curious neighbours means curious cops. How long before a car rolls up behind your backup?”
“I don’t think you have any interest in cops, not after what you pulled today,” Carl said.
“They want to arrest me, not kill me. I’ll take my chances.”
“I’m sorry you see it that way. You sure there’s no way we can work this out?”
Carl was playing his own game now. There was nothing left for us to say, but he kept on talking. He wanted my attention forward rather than backward. It was a good plan, or at least it would have been if I didn’t have an extra set of eyes trained on the sights of an extra gun.
“Just pass out the vio —”
A creak betrayed someone sneaking up to the doorway from the living room. I put a bullet through one of the kitchen cabinets in a spot that would let it out just beyond the doorway. Someone hit the floor just as the back door blew inward. Miles put three slugs into the man framed in the doorway while I shot at, and missed, another man trying to come into the kitchen from the living room. Miles fired again as I struggled to my feet. I moved closer to the doorway with the gun raised. I had missed from ten feet back — slipping. At five feet, aiming was no longer an issue — it was just point in the general direction and pull the trigger.
No one else tried to come in from the living room or the back door. The only visitor was silence until Carl’s voice drifted in from somewhere in the living room. “You were telling me fibs, Wilson. Hello, Miles.”
“Fuck you, traitor.”
Carl spoke calmly. “We don’t have any time left, so I’m going to tell you how this is going to play out. In a minute, one of my new associates is going to drive through the front door, through the living room, and into the kitchen. Those guns won’t mean shit when the wall hits you.”
While Carl was talking, I scavenged the two bullets from the revolver I had brought with me. I opene
d the cylinder on what used to be Miles’ gun and flicked it out one-handed like Phillip Marlowe. The transition to my still working hand at the end of my dead arm was less smooth. I exchanged the spent brass with the two replacements and pocketed the shells.
“You’ll smash the violin,” I said as I transferred the gun back to my right hand. With a hard flick of the wrist, the chamber clicked back into place.
“Maybe, but we can’t wait any longer for you to come to your senses, so it’s a chance we’ll have to take. Unless — you do the smart thing and slide the violin out into the living room. I’ll give you ten seconds to think it over.”
I looked at the violin and then at Miles. The con man shook his head. Miles was all in.
“Time’s up. Are you going to pass it out, or do you really want to die over a two-hundred-year-old piece of wood?”
“We’re going to pass —” Miles was already nodding as he raised the gun towards the back door and readied himself for another assault. “It out,” I finished.
Miles stopped looking at the back door; he was looking at me instead, and he wasn’t happy.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting us out of here alive,” I said.
“You heard him, Wilson. The cops are on the way. We just need to wait out Carl and the Albanians.”
“The cops aren’t going to let you take the violin and walk, Miles.”
“Don’t act like you’re worried about me. You’re just worried about your own skin. You’re on your way to being a cop killer and you’re scared of what the boys in blue might do to you if they get you into the back of one of their squad cars.”
“Clock is ticking,” Carl called.
I moved for the violin and Miles did the same. I let him get a lead on the violin; I was going for my gun. Miles got a hand on the case when I whistled. He looked over his shoulder and saw the gun aimed at him.
“Fuck, again?”