Personal (Page 69)

Because I knew something about Joey.

Bennett was doing OK. He had a thumb in his guy’s eye, and his other hand was crushing the guy’s throat. In the active sense of the word. His fingertips were right in behind the guy’s larynx, squeezing and tearing. They didn’t rule the world by being nice. That was for damn sure. I picked up the flashlight and waited until Bennett’s guy hit the deck, and then I searched the floor and under coats and came back with our original three handguns, plus four identical Browning High Power Model 1935s, from Joey’s guys. The Brownings were all recent, with the ambidextrous safeties. Up for safe, down for fire. They were all fully loaded. But their chambers were empty. We had been safer than I thought. We shared them around, one each, and I took the magazine out of the fourth and gave it to Nice to put in her pocket.

I said, ‘Let’s go find Joey.’

I turned and headed for the door, but Bennett caught my arm and said, ‘We can’t just walk out there. Especially not with a flashlight. We’d be sitting ducks.’

I said, ‘Let’s not overthink this whole thing.’

Bennett glanced at Nice, in mute appeal, like he thought I was crazy.

She said, ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine.’

I smiled. She had seen it too. Probably from the thing with the pill bottle.

I said, ‘Joey is not armed. That’s one thing we can be sure of.’

Bennett said, ‘How can we?’

‘Because we know in his whole adult life Joey has never fired a handgun, or a long gun, or a shotgun, or a BB gun, or any other kind of a gun.’

‘How do we know that?’

‘Because no trigger guard on earth is big enough for his finger. He couldn’t get it in there. No way, no how. He hasn’t touched a trigger since he was maybe seven years old. And I bet even then it was a tight squeeze. He’s out there, right now, in the lot, unarmed, and we’ve got a hundred and four rounds of live ammunition and a flashlight.’

FIFTY-ONE

CASEY NICE HAD the flashlight. I had a gun in each hand, mainly because by that point I was short on pockets. Bennett was behind us, ranging left and right, watching our rear, watching our flanks. Nice flicked the flashlight beam from side to side, very fast, painting the night air, lighting things up like a stroboscope, letting our persistence of vision fill in the gaps.

No sign of Joey. Not at first. The beam reached a good long way down the yard-wide footpath, and he wasn’t there. And he would have been, still, if he was making a run for it. Because it wouldn’t have been much of a run. He would have had to take the path sideways, at a shuffle, which would have been slow. We checked the far corner, where I had waited for Bennett, and he wasn’t there. We checked the opposite corner. Not there.

We stood still and listened. No sound. The yellow glow was still there in the sky, but the houses all around us were darker. Lights were going out. People were going to bed. Their children were already in bed. Pretty soon we would be completely boxed in by sleeping people. Here and there I saw the blue flicker of some night owl’s television, a movie, perhaps, or soccer, or a documentary feature, which I hoped was illuminating in the educational sense, because it certainly wasn’t in the physical sense. We were hunting a giant in the dark.

And getting nowhere, until I did fourth what I should have done first, which was to put myself in his shoes, to think like him, to be him, just for a moment. What would I have done? No gun, bodyguards down, driver too far away to summon, a sideways skip down the alley too slow. Not that I needed to run, and not that I needed support. I could do fine by myself. I was Little Joey Green, and I had been all my life.

But I liked an audience.

Of which there was a shortage, at that particular moment. The lawn bowling World Series was not currently under way. All around us people were closing their drapes and closing their eyes. There was only one place Joey might find an audience. Possibly. An audience of one, admittedly, but committed. An ally, maybe even a friend already, and a fellow professional, Joey might like to think.

John Kott might be watching, through the night-vision binoculars.

Or through a night-vision scope.

I made a sign and Casey Nice killed the light, and we inched around to the far back corner of the hut, which put us level with the windows, which meant we were within a degree or two of the same view we had gotten before, through the binoculars, from where we had seen the whole fine square of lawn, which we saw again, but this time with Little Joey in the middle of it, the giant all alone under the yellow night-time sky, dancing, swinging his hips, shuffling his feet, waving his arms, and jerking his head from side to side.

I knew immediately what he was doing, and how, and why. Some kind of animal cunning. Some kind of rodent intelligence. It’s a DNA thing. Like rats. He had no gun in his hand. How could he take the guns out of our hands? Boxed in by sleeping people. Their children were already in bed. He was dancing to make us miss. Which we couldn’t afford to do. Not there. Not that we would have missed. Not ninety-nine times in a hundred. Or better. This is like one of those philosophy questions that people debate in the newspapers. What odds would a responsible person need? But even a good clean hit could be a through-and-through. The soft tissue of the neck, maybe. Which wouldn’t slow a bullet. Next stop, a bedroom painted blue or pink. Or the bullet might nick bone and skip away at an unpredictable angle, low and wide. It might hit a night owl, before the game had ended. Tied score, maybe, and into overtime. He would never know what happened.

Could I make the shot? Hell yes. Little Joey was big enough. Should I take the shot? With sleeping children behind him, to the left and the right, behind thin panes of glass?

We pulled back into the shadows, and we leaned on the wall of the hut. We could afford to let him dance a minute more, I thought. It might tire him out. Which might help. I hoped.

Nice and Bennett slipped around the edge of the green, to the far side, on what looked like a well-worn gravel track. Maybe referees ran up and down. Or umpires. I had no idea of the rules of the game. Bennett went further than Nice, until they were about twenty feet apart, triangulated, so they both had the hut dead in line behind Joey, so if they had to shoot, with no alternative, then at least their misses might get stopped by the sixty-year-old wood. Or worst case, delayed.

I had no front pockets, so I put my guns in my back pants pockets. Then I stepped on to the grass. I tracked to my left, to keep Joey’s bulk between me and his distant house, with its numerous firing positions behind its numerous oversize windows. Four hundred yards. Less than a second. Flash one thousa game over.

I walked on, slowly. Towards Joey. He saw me coming, looming up out of the yellow gloom, and I saw a flash of teeth as he smiled, and he backed away, towards the far corner of the lawn, matching me step for step, leading me, keeping me lined up with his distant house. He wasn’t dumb. After three backward paces he had moved out of Nice’s safe zone, and after four he had moved out of Bennett’s. I sensed their shoulders slump, and in the silence I heard Bennett’s phone ding with a message. My information about the glass, I hoped. Which could be interesting. If I survived to read it.

Joey checked over his shoulder and adjusted his alignment and came to a stop. He started dancing again, hopping from side to side, bending one way, bending the other. His huge feet were stamping divots in the perfect grass. I guessed the bowling club was going to be seriously pissed. I hoped they had insurance. Or a big bag of seed.