Sacred

“Who are you, Manny?” I said. “You don’t seem much like a grief counselor.”

“Ah, but this isn’t about me.” He glanced over my shoulder again, and then the phone on his desk rang. He smiled and picked it up. “Yes?” His left eyebrow arched as he listened and his eyes found mine. “That makes sense,” he said into the phone. “He’s probably not working alone. Whoever that is inside the offices”—he smiled at me—“hit them hard. Make sure they feel it.”

Manny hung up the phone and reached into his desk drawer and I put my foot against the desk and pushed so hard I knocked the chair out from under me and toppled the desk onto Manny’s chest.

The guy who’d been behind me making eye contact with Manny came at me from my right, and I sensed him before I saw him. I pivoted to my right, my elbow extended, and hit him so hard in the center of his face that my funny bone shrieked and the fingers of my hand numbed.

Manny pushed back the desk and stood as I stepped around and placed my gun in his ear.

Manny, for his part, was very poised for a guy with an automatic weapon against his head. He didn’t look scared. He looked like he’d been through this before. He looked annoyed.

“You’re going to use me as a hostage, I suppose?”-He chuckled. “I’m a pretty big hostage to lug around, pal. Have you thought that through?”

“Yes, I have.”

And I hit him in the temple with the butt of the gun.

Some guys, that’s all it would take. Just like in the movies, they’d drop like a sack of dirt and lie on the floor, breathing heavily. But not Manny, and I hadn’t expected him to.

When his head jerked back from the hit to the temple, I hit him again where the neck meets the collarbone, and once again in the temple. The last shot was the lucky one, because he’d been raising his massive arms and would have tossed me across the room like a throw pillow if his eyes hadn’t rolled back into his head instead. He pitched back into his overturned chair and smashed into the floor with just a bit more noise than a piano dropped from the ceiling would have made.

I spun away from him and pointed my gun at the guy who’d collided with my elbow. He had a runner’s ropy build and the trim black hair on the sides of his head was offset by the swath of bare skin on top. He rose off the floor, face bleeding into his cupped hands.

“Hey, you,” I said. “Asshole.”

He looked at me.

“Put your hands over your head and walk in front of me.”

He blinked.

I extended my arm, leveled the gun on him. “Do it.”

He locked his fingers together atop his head and started walking with my gun between his shoulder blades. The crowd of shiny, happy people parted in waves as we walked, and they didn’t look very happy or shiny as they did. They looked venomous, like asps who’d had their nest upended.

Halfway across the old ballroom, I saw a guy standing behind a desk, a phone to his ear. I cocked the hammer on my gun and pointed it at him. He dropped the receiver.

“Hang it up,” I said.

He did, his hand shaking.

“Step back from the desk.”

He did.

The guy in front of me with the broken face called out to the room, “Don’t anyone call the police.” Then to me, “You’re in a lot of trouble.”

“What’s your name?” I said and dug the pistol into his back.

“Screw you,” he said.

“Nice name. Is that Swedish?” I said.

“You’re dead.”

“Mmm.” I reached around him with my free hand and slapped his broken nose lightly with my fingers.

A woman standing frozen to our left said, “Oh, God,” and Mr. Screw You gasped and wavered for a moment before he regained his footing.

We reached the double doors and I stopped Screw You by placing my free hand on his shoulder and the muzzle of my pistol under his chin. Then I reached down and pulled his wallet from his back pocket, flipped it open, read the name on his license: John Byrne. I dropped the wallet in the pocket of my topcoat.

“John Byrne,” I whispered in his ear, “if there’s anyone on the other side of these doors, you get an extra hole added to your face. Understand?”

Sweat and blood dripped off his cheek into the collar of his white shirt. “I got it,” he said.

“Good. We’re leaving now, John.”

I looked back at the happy people. No one had moved. Manny, I guessed, was the only one packing a gun in his desk.

“Anyone comes out that door after us,” I said, my voice a little hoarse, “they will die. Okay?”

I got several nervous nods, and then John Byrne pushed the doors open.

I pushed him out, holding on tight, and we stepped out at the top of the staircase.

It was empty.

I turned John Byrne around so he was facing the ball room. “Close the doors.”

He did, and then I turned him around again and we started down the stairs. There are very few places with less room in which to maneuver or fewer places to hide than a butterfly staircase. I kept trying to swallow as my eyes darted left, right, up, down, and back again, but my mouth was dry. Halfway down, I felt John’s body tense, and I yanked him back into me, dug the muzzle into his flesh.

“Thinking about flipping me down ahead of you, John?”

“No,” he said through gritted teeth. “No.”

“Good,” I said. “That’d be real dumb.”

He went slack in my arm, and I leaned him forward again and we walked down the rest of the staircase. His blood and sweat mixture had found the arm of my topcoat and formed a moist, rusty stain.

“You ruined my topcoat, John.”

He glanced at my arm. “It’ll come out.”

“It’s blood. On virgin wool, John.”

“A good dry cleaner though, you know…”

“I hope so,” I said. “Because if it doesn’t, I have your wallet. Which means I know where you live. Think about that, John.”

We stopped at the door leading to the entrance foyer.

“You thinking about it, John?”

“Yeah.”

“There going to be anyone waiting for us outside?”

“I don’t know. Cops maybe.”

“I don’t have a problem with cops,” I said. “I’d love to get arrested right now, John. You understand?”

“I guess.”

“What I’m concerned about, John, is a bunch of grief-stricken behemoths like Manny waiting out on Beacon Street with more guns than I have.”