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Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

35.

The ancient tile next to my face exploded into dust, making me wince. I turned, almost tripping over the low step again, and pulled the inner door open, pushing myself through. This is what I’d come to: Running away from a homicidal child dressed like a college kid playing Jersey Gangster at Halloween, feeling each of my thirty-one years as I took the stairs two at a time, legs weak and lungs burning. The roar of gunfire out in the street faded behind me.

I wondered how committed the BCPD were to ignoring the 293. Because the noise out there was going to take a lot of effort to ignore. This wasn’t Macus calling 9-1-1 twenty times a day to ask how their day was going. This was Carroll Mick coming out of retirement and launching a gang war to save my sorry ass.

I rounded the first landing. I’d come up these stairs just about every day of my life these last few years. I’d come up with plungers to unclog toilets, with wrenches and hammers to kludge half-assed repairs, with six packs of beer to donate to casual dinners and spontaneous get-togethers. I knew every dip and worn spot on the old steps, every splinter on the old handrails, every shiny spot that would slide under your shoe in betrayal.

The second floor hall was dark, each doorway shrouded in shadow. For a second I considered ducking into darkness, see if I couldn’t clothesline Merlin as he raced after me, but then I heard him grunting breathlessly on the steps behind me. I rounded onto the next flight, heading up as fast as my exhausted legs would take me. I wanted as much space between me and him as I could so I could position myself, and I had two more floors to waste.

“Fucking stairs!” The Broker hissed from below. “Fucking godfuck stairs!” As if this were some final humiliation I’d inflicted on him, one final reason to shoot me in the head that had nothing to do with the money he imagined my asshole father had salted away, nothing to do with the supposed reputation of the Spillaine family he intended to rejuvenate, apparently by being an asshole to a level science had previously believed humanity incapable of.

I leaped onto the third floor landing and caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I twitched, and my momentum sent me crashing into the wall, skidding through the sticky blood where Luis had died. Someone had moved his body. I assumed it was part of the white glove service Chewing Gum had been performing for the Spillaines before his unexpected retirement.

I spun around. Ivan Blanko was pressed against the wall outside his apartment, his bat poised up in the air, wiggling. He met my eyes and winked, once.

The Broker appeared, red-faced as he took on the last flight of stairs. I nodded at Ivan and the aging punk swung for the fences just as the Broker topped the stairs and stopped, leaning down on his knees as he gasped for breath. The bat sailed over his head and smacked into the old plaster, sending an explosion of dust and lead paint everywhere.

The Broker snarled and brought the gun up, twisting around to point it into the darkness, but his feet betrayed him and he slid backwards, windmilling his arms to stop himself from falling down the stairs. The gun fired wildly into the ceiling.

“Come on!” Ivan shouted, turning and opening the door to his apartment. I dashed across the hall. The Broker lunged forward, trying to catch my ankle, then slid backwards again, cursing.

I crashed through the door and Ivan slammed it shut, setting the three deadbolts in rapid succession. We kept moving. When we were in his tiny, stuffy living room, three thunderous gunshots indicated the Broker’s preferred lockpicking technique.

Ivan hustled past me into the bedroom. I followed. finding him lifting the sash of the window.

“He’s got people back there!” I hissed, hearing the door splinter inward. “It’s no good!”

“Lisa’s place!” Ivan shouted, climbing out onto the fire escape. “The guns!”

The blanket on her bed, her collection. “I thought you didn’t need a gun?” I asked, following him through the window and climbing the rusty stairs of the fire escape.

“I was younger then,” he said, breathing heavily as he climbed. “So much has changed since the last time we hung out, Maddie.”

Life was patterns. That was something I’d learned going to meetings, sitting in the back with Miguel. Life is shit you do, he would say. You do something a few times, it becomes pattern. A fucking habit. Keep doing it, it sinks in, gets into your programming. Your instruction set. Only way to get out is to change the pattern. Do something different.

It had worked. Miguel said that bad habits, because they typically felt good, took just a few times to become permanent. Good habits were harder. You had to do something for two weeks straight, really work at it, for it to become a habit. It had worked. I’d told myself, don’t drink for two weeks. Go to a meeting twice a day, smoke cigarettes, eat junk food. Anything. Just don’t drink for two weeks.

Every alcoholic in the world went through dry periods. Every one of us woke up covered in vomit, shaking and blacked out, maybe bloodied knuckles or no memory of the last four days, and found it pretty fucking easy to not drink for a few days, a week, maybe a few months. You got religion. But without the fresh memory of brain damage, those were the longest two weeks of my life. But it had worked. Day fifteen, I forgot. I woke up and went about my day and didn’t think about changing patterns or booze until three in the afternoon.

Now I was hauling myself onto the fire escape and climbing in through Lisa’s window for the second time that day. My merry band of warriors had been reduced to a fifty-year old punk covered in hazy black and blue tattoos and a bed covered in random weapons, and I was grateful to have both.

Outside, I heard The Broker shouting. Get your fucking asses up here! They’re in the fucking building, you fucking morons!

I didn’t know if the muscle out back were Spillaine’s or if they’d come with Dubsey, if Chewing Gum’s death would dampen their enthusiasm for their work. As Ivan and I crowded into Lisa’s bedroom, I could hear gunfire still going on outside.

It smelled like sandalwood. Clean and woody.

Hearing the kid on the fire escape behind me, I leaned down and swept a Beretta 92 into my hand, spinning and squeezing the trigger as he appeared in the square of the window. He ducked to the left, but all I got for my efforts was a dry click, because Lisa aspired to be a professional and so didn’t leave loaded weapons lying around. She was the sort who cleared every chamber and checked every safety religiously.

“Fuck,” I muttered as The Broker reappeared. I reared back and threw the Beretta at him as hard as I could. It smacked into his chest and he spun back, discharging his gun into the air again as he staggered.

My eyes scanned the bed again. I grabbed a second 92 and dug into the shoebox, finding a loaded magazine and slapping it into place.

When I swung my arm back to face the window, The Broker was there, gun aimed directly at me, and we both squeezed the trigger simultaneously.

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Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

34.

The scene was bizarre. Me, bloody and sweat-soaked, on my knees in the middle of the street, hands on my head. The Broker, pink and shiny in his expensive clothes, holding the gun to my head, execution-style. His people, a half dozen hard cases, all with guns in their hands behind him, ready for the word. Carroll Mick, jowly and out of breath, standing their in his bowling shirt, his huge hand making a well-loved nine milimeter look like a toy. Behind him, a group of old men whose scars were faded, whose broken bones had long healed badly, making them walk with a lurching, shuffling gait. And getting out of the third car was Perry and Misha, looking terrified. But they were there, which was more than I could have expected, from anyone.

“What the fuck is this, Carroll?” Merlin said. His voice shook. I wasn’t sure if it was rage or fear, or just fucking pique.

Mick reached into his pocket like he didn’t have a bunch of guns aimed at him and pulled out a handkerchief. He mopped his face with it. “We got a problem, kid,” he said. He gestured at me. “That’s my employee.”

In my head, I heard Lisa Lisa say I made a call. She sure did. I wondered what she’d said to activate the Prostate Gang. Was ?Maddie’s in trouble’ enough?

“Are you fucking kidding, Carroll?” The Broker said. “You know better. You know we cleared this through the Outfit. Kansas City gave its blessing. Get the fuck out of here while I finish my business.”

Mick nodded. “I’m in a world of hurt, no doubt,” he said. “They’re gonna send another fucking cabinet member out here to call me names and tax me until I bleed.” He made a face, waggling his head. “Maybe I get popped for it. We’ll see. But it don’t change anything. You grease Mads Renik, I’m here to grease you.”

Under the fat, the jowls, the fucking bowling shirt, here was Carroll Mick, killer. Carroll Mick, legbreaker. Carroll Mick who’d been born into nothing and built a tiny empire with blood and sweat and his bare, scabbed hands.

The Broker took the gun from my head and raised it up. On cue, everyone stiffened, a dozen guns coming up. “Are you fucking crazy? You got any idea—”

“What I got is a dispensation,” Mick said mildly, his own gun still down by his thigh. “From Esmundo Brusca.”

The Broker stepped around me and stalked over to Mick, his shoulders tight, the gun held down low—but with his finger on the trigger like an asshole. Mick was old, but put them side by side and the difference between the old man’s physical presence and the kid was obvious. Mick had come from a generation before body sculpting at the gym. He was a mountain of flesh. The Broker was toned and fashionable, but I put my money on Mick, who’d learned how to take a punch from his own father at the age of five or so. Even with a monster like Abban Spillaine for a father, I didn’t think anyone had ever touched The Broker with anything less than gentle servility.

“Brusca?” Merlin hissed. “The fuck I care what Brusca wants here? The fuck you care, Mick? You’re my father’s vassal, right? You think you can set up on your own—at your fucking age—under cover of this bullshit?”

Mick shook his head. “No one’s setting up,” he said with a shrug I recognized as the disinterested sign of a true killer. You saw the shrug at Queenies, you had to decide right then and there if you were going to risk a fight. Loosely translated, it read I’m answering this question as a courtesy, because I can afford to.

Slowly, I got to my feet. No one paid me any mind. The air crackled with hidden electricity. The center of gravity had shifted, drawing everyone’s attention.

“I owe the kid,” Mick said. “I fucked up and he paid the price for it, and now I owe him. So that kid’s not yours to kill,” Mick said. “That’s it. You went into Brusca for the cash to buy him. That means Brusca’s got a say, and I got his proxy on this. Cost me a fuckin’ fortune—it’s a banner day for Esmundo Brusca as people keep showing up at his office in that fucking meatpacking plant downtown to drop bags of money on his desk—but I got his proxy on one thing: Killing Mads Renik.” He squared up, chucking his chin truculently at The Broker. “And I vote no.”

I looked around carefully. I had The Broker’s guys lined up behind me in a loose semi-circle. They weren’t paying attention to me now, but if I moved, my chances of getting tripped up or fucking shot to death before I got too far were pretty good. Even if they got distracted, making a run for the intersection was probably a death sentence.

“I own this debt, Mick.”

“You own the debt, son. You don’t own fuckall else.”

“Don’t call me son, old man.”

Mick smiled. It was a ferocious, humorless expression. “Yeah? What should I call you? Shithead?”

Merlin Spillaine flinched. You got the impression he’d never been called a shithead before, which was, frankly, impossible.

“How about bitch?” Mick added. “Or Daddy’s Boy?”

A couple of the old-timers snickered, smiling down at their feet. The Broker raised the gun, then thought better of it. But it was too late.

Criminals, Mick was fond of saying, were usually morons. Who else would choose this fucking life? he’d say. People with brains, people with money, people with options, they go to school. They start a business. They don’t go into a career with a life expectancy of about five years, and all-cash business that requires you to fuckin’ spend every thin dime as soon as you palm it because you can’t put it in a bank.

The Broker’s hand went up with the gun, and an old codger behind Mick raised his shotgun. An impulse, an instinct, a reflex. A second later, one of Spillaine’s idiots twitched and fired a single shot into the asphalt.

And all hell broke loose.

Gunfire erupted around me as every went for cover, diving behind cars and hitting the ground. For a second I was frozen—a deer in the headlights, so exposed I couldn’t comprehend what I should do.

Then I ran.

I ran for The 293, my home, the only cover available to me and someplace I’d been safe for three years now. I launched myself and was off-balance from the start, stumbling diagonally, falling but never hitting the ground. I righted myself and made for the steps. TV and movies never prepared you for the sound of gunshots—up close it’s like bombs going off right next to you. The noise can make you stupid, a fight-or-flight reaction. I ran in a ragged, exhausted sprint, and I knew I was relying on the legendarily bad marksmenship of criminals. Professional crooks hardly ever learned how to use their guns. Based on the sampling I’d seen at Queenies, the mystery was how more of them didn’t accidentally kill themselves, just walking around living their lives.

I staggered up the steps and tore the door open, throwing myself inside and tripping over my feet. I crashed onto the grimy old tile of the vestibule, smacking my head on the half-step leading up to the inner door. Head ringing, I pushed myself up and looked back.

The Broker was right behind me, face a red mask of rage. As he ran up the steps, he lifted his shiny gun, squeezed the trigger, and the glass door exploded.

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Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

33.

The sound of the place was suddenly familiar again. I’d lived in the basement apartment for two and a half years, and most of the time it was filled with noise—with Ellie’s cries, or Carrie’s voice, or the television or music or the muffled sounds of my neighbors. But every now and then there had been nights I’d come home from Queenies with no chores, no missions from Mick, nothing to do but sit in the kitchen and sip some tap water and listen to the way the place burped and moaned. It was an odd mix of the furnace and the hot water heaters just outside, the creak and groan of the floorboards, the hum of the appliances, the way the wind rustled the leaves out back, the complaints of the old wooden kitchen chairs.

It was so quiet.

“No, no,” I whispered, throwing myself down and skidding into Dubsey’s blood. I grabbed her and pulled her towards me, fingers pressing into her throat.

There was nothing.

“No,” I whispered.

I climbed unsteadily to my feet and dragged her clear of Dubsey. I stretched her out on the floor and straddled her with my knees. And I started humming Staying Alive.

####

One of the first things they taught me when I took the job at Queenies was how to resuscitate someone.

“Happens couple times a month,” Perry said. “You take a piss break, can’t get into the bathroom, find some asshole in there fuckin’ dead. Mick thinks dead shitheads in the john is bad marketing, so he asks us to bring ?em back.”

I looked around. Mick’s office was small, and three of us in there was a tight fit, especially when two of us were Misha and me. Perry wasn’t your typical bouncer. He wasn’t big. He was tall, but wiry, all tendons and cords, his shaved head threaded with veins. Perry always looked like he was about to have a stroke, bulging eyes and twitches. But he was smart, and balanced, and he used speed and deceptive strength instead of bulk.

“CPR,” I said, trying to be enthusiastic. “We got a dummy or something?”

Misha and Perry looked at each other and burst out laughing. Misha grinned at me and removed his jacket with a certain fucking panache, then got down on the floor.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I brush my teeth.”

It was a quick class. According to Perry, the main thing was the timing, and for that, you could use the rhythm from the song Staying Alive.

####

In the silence of the apartment, I half-whispered, half sung the song. Oh you can tell by the way I walk …

Sweat dripped off my nose onto her. Her body just twitched and convulsed as I did compressions. Her face turned to me when I moved it, leaning down to force my breath into her.

I’m a ladies man, no time for

I crossed my palms on her chest and pushed, singing, breathing, heart pounding. We were in a void, an inky blackness all around us, and I knew one thing. I knew that either we both emerged from it, sputtering and cursing, or neither of us did.

And then I thought

talk

I had to come back because someone was going to have to go outside and kill everyone, every single one of them, every one of The Broker’s people.

I leaned down to clamp my mouth over hers when she suddenly convulsed on her own, dragging in a rusty breath. She reached up weakly and shoved at me.

“Motherfucker,” she wheezed, “in your fucking dreams.”

I fell backwards and landed on my elbows. Breathing was an effort. After working so hard to fill hers, I couldn’t fill my own lungs up enough.

“Ah fuck, Maddie,” she said from the floor, sounding distant. “I need a … I’m in a bad way.”

I nodded. “I know. I’m workin’ on it. We’re surrounded, Pills.”

“My phone,” she said faintly. “Where’s my fucking phone?”

I crawled over to her and put hands on her in what felt like the first time in decades. I pushed into her pockets, soaked with blood, until I found it. The screen was cracked, but it powered on. I pushed it into her hand and she raised her head to watch herself slowly thumb-tap her way into her contacts. When the phone was dialing, she sagged back, leaving it on the floor near her head.

I looked up. Lisa stood in the doorway. She had a new auto in her hip holster and her hair had been tidied up into a pony tail again. She stared down at Dubsey and Jill, eyes wide, then looked at me.

“She needs a hospital,” I said. “We need to get her outside.”

Lisa nodded. “Okay. Okay, let’s do it.”

“We made a call.”

Lisa nodded. “So did I.”

####

“Just hang back until it’s time,” I said, my eyes lingering on Jill. She sagged on Lisa’s shoulder like a sack. Or someone who was mostly dead, and would be completely dead really, really soon. Her icy skin screamed internal bleeding.

“How will I know when it’s time?”

I sighed, looking at her. “Trust me, you’ll know. He’s not subtle.” I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. “Thanks, Lisa. I—”

“Save it,” she said, not unkindly. “Tell me later.”

I nodded, checked that Dubsey’s 1911 was tucked against the small of my back in my waistband, and walked out onto the front steps.

It was a view I’d seen every day for years. Empty lots, broken asphalt, a few scattered parked cars. This time, there were more cars. Dubsey’s truck sat like a dented-up shadow, two big guys in puffy coats leaning against it, smoking. The Broker leaned against an old-school Cadillac, a fucking boat the size of an asteroid, three guys I think I recognized from Queenie’s lounging next to him. When they saw me, all six straightened up and took a step forward.

“It’s all right,” I said, putting my hands up. “Andy told me to come out. We figured everything. It’s settled.”

The Broker flicked away his cigarette. He was wearing what I guessed was Wiseguy Casual, a black turtleneck, boiled leather jacket, fat gold watch on one wrist as if everyone present didn’t know he’d been forced to beg credit from Brusca to make his play. He looked around, hoping against hope that someone who outranked him was around. Then he squinted at me.

“What the fuck is this?”

He was confused, which was the goal. “It’s settled. It’s fine.”

It was an obscure lesson that bouncing taught you, but pretending to be incredibly stupid was often your most effective defense. When assholes showed up at the front door demanding to be let in, pretending you just couldn’t wrap your head around their bizarre requests exhausted all but the most determined. You just kept repeating the same shit, and smiling pleasantly. It drove asshole fucking crazy.

Merlin Spillaine was a huge asshole, so it totally drove him bonkers.

He cocked his head slightly. It was like watching a dog do math. “Where’s Dubs?” he finally said.

I’d been standing on the sidewalk for a whole minute, and no one had told me to do anything. I nodded, pushing out blank stupidity. “It’s all done. It’s figured out,” I said. I stole a word from Chewing Gum. “It’s been adjudicated.”

The Broker looked around at the goons. They were all practicing the ancient art of appearing to be laser focused on something far beyond the perception of normal humans. Muscle was a blunt instrument. There was no margin in being creative, so guys like this learned early to just keep their heads down and to never do a fucking thing unless someone up the ladder told them to.

There was a distant roar, getting closer. I was obviously going to have to teach The Broker his job. I started walking towards them, hands still up. Everyone reacted, reaching for weapons.

“What? No, it’s okay—Andy told me.”

The Broker held up a hand, studying me as I approached as if waiting for a thought bubble to appear over my head. I moved deliberately, smiling.

“Steady, boys,” Merlin said. He chucked his chin in my direction. “You giving up your pops?”

I nodded. “It’s all settled.”

The roar had resolved into a car engine, a slurry beat under it. Living in Bergen City you got used to that exact sound profile: Souped up car, overjacked sound system, too close to ignore, too far away to do anything about. It sounded like Saturday Night. It sounded like home.

“Take him,” The Broker said as I got close. “Get his arms.”

The kid with the cloud of hair pushed his gun back into its holster and strode out to meet me. He took one wrist in his hand and bent my arm behind me, then reached for the other. He paused—noticing the 1911.

A screech of tires made us all turn.

The Blue Ruin appeared at the far end of the street, something seriously wrong with it. There was a hole somewhere in the muffler, making it incredibly loud. Black smoke poured from the exhaust. And Trim had the stereo blasting—a lurching hip-hop beat over a broken piano.

Ooh la la, ah oui oui

Ooh la la, ah oui oui

I looked at the 293. The door opened. A moment later Lisa was on the steps, Jill hanging limply off of her. But everyone was watching the Ruin as she made her way down the steps.

It was time to be a distraction.

I twisted away from the kid, spinning and pulling the gun. I pointed it up in the air and fired a single shot just as the Ruin crashed up onto the sidewalk, two wheels on the concrete and two wheels on the pavement and not slowing down. It screeched to a shuddering halt right in front of Lisa. Everyone ducked instinctively.

Trim waved at me from the front seat.

Lisa dragged Jill towards the car, tearing open the rear door and pushing her in like a sack of laundry. I squeezed the trigger again, firing into the air, and Lisa threw herself into the car behind her. Trim floored the Ruin, the roar so loud I thought the engine was about to pop out of the hood and achieve escape velocity. The car lurched past me and The Broker’s frozen army, who only recovered enough to take a few potshots at the old Nova as it accelerated, clipping Dubsey’s truck as it made the intersection and wrenched itself right, one side briefly lifting off the ground.

And then the Ruin was gone. I stared at the fading cloud of black smoke and hoped we’d moved fast enough. That I’d saved everyone I could.

Then several people slammed into me, knocking me down.

“Pin that son of a bitch!”

My arms were held down and the 1911 pried from my hands.

“Get in there and find Dubsey. Bring that asshole here.”

I was yanked up roughly off the ground, my element of surprise gone. I was walked over to The Broker, who stood holding his own chrome-plated automatic like he was going to toss it as far as he could, shotput-style, which I assumed was something he’d seen on TV.

We stood for a moment, staring at the 293. It looked like a sad little yellow-brick building. It looked like a place that probably smelled like curry all the time, a place that had one searing hot room in each apartment in the winter, the rest of the rooms ice cold. It looked sad and lonely, the only thing standing for two blocks in any direction.

The kid with the cloud of hair emerged from the front door and shook his head. The Broker looked down at his feet.

“Get ?im on his knees!” he shouted, and someone kicked my legs out from under me. I was pushed into a kneeling position, and I felt the barrel of the chrome pushed into my head.

I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I just knew it was going to hurt.

“You just made yourself too fucking expensive,” The Broker hissed into my ear. “I’m going to fucking splatter your brain all over the road, and then we’re going to find your fucking father anyway, and we’re going to pay ourselves back. So you can go fuck yourself.”

“Boss!”

More squealing tires. I looked up, afraid that something had gone horrifically wrong and Trim was bringing Jill and Lisa back in some fucked-up, catastrophic stupidity. But the sound was coming from the wrong direction. I whipped my head around and saw two cars screaming down the street. They were old-school boats, Continentals, black, shining like new pennies. They screeched to a halt in a V-shape halfway down the block.

“Now what is this shit?” The Broker breathed. For one moment, the illusion was broken and I felt sorry for the kid. His voice was suddenly buried under decades of frustration, a stupid kid born just in time to watch his father fritter away whatever passed for a criminal empire in Bergen City.

The engines cut, and the doors opened. Carroll Mick emerged from the back seat of one. Behind him, the cars disgorged six older men in bowling shirts and baggy pants.

The goddamn Prostate Gang.

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Yea, verily, it is once again time to post a free novel one chapter a week! This year’s novel is THE BOUNCER. Enjoy!

32.

We crept down the stairs. We were out of ammunition. Ivan limped, using his bat as a cane, and Tony kept breathing with his mouth open, looking like a gray, walking heart attack. Lisa led the way with her personal sidearm held down low by her hip like she’d been trained.

The building was silent. Our slow, deliberate movements seemed loud and excessive, and at every landing we tensed up and got ready for an assault. Every shadow in the dim halls was dangerous, every closed door had a group of Outfit thugs waiting on the other side, ready to pour out. But I was not going to leave Jill behind, not going to make a run for it without seeing her. If she’d survived the fall, if the branches had slowed her down, if she’d broken both legs or cracked her skull on a rock. I owed her a lot more than that, but that at least.

On the third floor, Tony broke away and walked to his apartment, unlocking the door and slipping inside without a glance back. A moment later, Ivan did the same thing, dragging the bat along the floor. I didn’t blame either one of them.

Me and Lisa kept creeping. Every step creaked, and our breathing filled the space around us to deafening proportions. Her hand trembled slightly as she jabbed the gun at different noises she heard. My hand trembled pressed against her back—adrenaline and terror in equal parts.

On the first floor, the front door was smashed in, glass glittering in the industrial carpet. We hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, peering into the gloom, feeling exposed. The door to the basement was right there, but it felt like a long five seconds in a direct line of sight with the street and anyone Chewing Gum or Merlin Spillaine might have left behind to pay attention.

I gestured at Lisa to stay back, and stepped into the hall.

“You’re one tough bastard, I’ll give you that,” Chewing Gum said from behind a shiny chrome-plated nine-millimeter. He was leaning against the wall across from the basement door, one hand hooked into the belt loop of his jeans, one leg bent, the boot against the wall. He was effortlessly relaxed. He looked over my shoulder. “Come on out, darlin’, with that cannon in the air, or I’m going to have to shoot your neighbor here.”

I glanced at Lisa. She was soaked in sweat, streaked in blood. She and everyone else had done more than anyone should have for me. I nodded at her. This had never been her fight, and there was no reason for her to sacrifice any more. She hesitated, studying my face, then sighed. She put the gun up in the air and crept down to join me on the floor.

“Good girl,” Chewing Gum said. “Drop it and kick it over to me.”

Lisa complied, sending the gun skittering across the floor. Chewing Gum casually stopped it with his foot, then grinned.

“Okay, miss. Go on home, now. Lock the door, stay inside.” He looked at me. “Come on, Mr. Renik. Things have shifted on the ground, and you’ve got a meeting.”

Lisa glanced at me, looking ashamed. She reached out to squeeze my arm, then turned and went up the stairs. I didn’t blame her for that. She’d done more than most would have. And Luis was cold and staring upstairs, a good man I hadn’t known well enough for his death to make sense. I didn’t need anyone else on my conscience.

“Come on, Maddie.”

I walked down the hall and he swept his free hand towards the basement door. He picked Lisa’s gun up off the floor and followed me down. My apartment door was still open. I stepped through.

“Take a seat.”

I half-turned my head as I pulled out a chair and sat down. “Shifted on the ground?”

“Mr. Spillaine, Junior, has purchased your father’s debt,” Dubsey said as he sat to my left. “Gotta say, didn’t think the Spillaines had that kind of cash, but who knows what they got salted away in this shithole of a city. So this is his show, now.”

“You’re still here.”

He shrugged. “The Outfit told me to provide security, as a courtesy to our new partners. I got a couple of guys outside, making sure no one tries to skip the meeting. They hear a ruckus, they’re comin’ in, just a word to the wise.” He shrugged a little, offering me a small-scale smile. “They don’t give two shits about the Spillaines or you or any of this, now they got their money. But I was told to do this courtesy for Merle and his dad, and if something happens, it reflects badly on me. So I’m going to be courteous as all fucking hell.”

Dubsey put the gun on the table and reached into his jacket. This looked casual and sloppy, but it was calculated; the gun was just beyond my reach, so if I made a grab for it I would have to lunge out of my seat. Unless I was incredibly fast, he would have plenty of time to snatch it up and punish me. So I didn’t move.

He produced a large flask, turned his head, and spat his glob of gum out onto my floor. For a split second I pitied the man who would have to explain this to Carolina Renik, but then I wondered if she’d still be using the Renik name, and realized I’d probably never come back here to claim my security deposit anyway.

“Where’s your dad, Maddie?” he asked, affecting calm and easy. “That’s all we want.”

I shook my head. “Merlin—a known genius—thinks Mats had more money, huh?”

Chewing Gum nodded, his smile widening. “Sure does! Sure as hell does. He paid a premium for your dad’s debt, kid. He figures, if Mats took X amount of money from a few bookies and associated legbreakers he knows about, he probably took X plus Y money from a bunch he doesn’t know about. He’s hoping to see the Y money out of this.” He toasted me with a wink. “That kid’s got vision.”

“You know Mats was behind on the rent at Paradise.”

Chewing Gum nodded. “Sure, none of the other tenants have ever hidden some Go Money anywhere, had visions of a midnight move out and leaving us holding the bag, tears in our eyes.” He laughed a little. “C’mon, Maddie. Where’s your ma?”

Liùsaidh. Suddenly, it clicked into place: Liùsaidh had left my father high and dry at Paradise. She’d robbed him blind—she had whatever nut was left.

In my head, I saw her elegant handwriting: The Celebrated Genius ?

I started laughing. It bubbled up out of me, uncontrollable, a natural, infinite resource. Chewing Gum studied me with an expression of alarm, and then he smiled, nodding, and started laughing with me.

“Your family,” he said, “is fucked up.”

I held up a hand as I struggled for breath. “I know,” I said between gasps. “But the … funniest part? Is you … thinking I know where that monstrous bitch is.”

I wondered if my parents would ever stop haunting me. I reached for the bottle of whiskey, miraculously untouched on the table. It had been a long time, but my hands moved along its distinct lines with an ease born of familiarity. The smoky sweet smell filled me up, and the swallow was the most amazing thing I’d ever tasted in my life. Why, I suddenly wondered, had I ever stopped doing that?

“Well, kid,” Dubsey said, placing his big, calloused hand on the gun, a weathered old 1911 that gleamed with oil. “Sad to say that this courtesy call means if you can’t pay the debt with cash, you’re gonna have to pay in other ways. The kid was insistent on that. Blood or money, either way.” He shrugged again, making a face that implied he was just slightly embarrassed by this. “And it’s gonna have to be kind of fuckin’ public, so he gets his credit.”

I took another swallow.

“You don’t have a play left. I mean, you didn’t really have a play in the first place, but you took your shot, okay. I admire it—you brute-forced a play. Well done.” He sighed. “The deal is, we’re all willing to walk away. Bygones. That’s the ruling out of Kansas City, and the kid here and his dad are gonna respect that. You give up the old man, or your mom, or the money, an’ we part friends. Otherwise, we got to clear the ledger in other ways.” He held up one hand. “Nothin’ personal.”

I looked at him. His grin was charmingly off-center. I took another deep pull from the bottle. I believed him. I remembered him saying a business, an accountant. He just wanted to clear this up and get back to whatever the fuck Chewing Gum Dubsey did on his days off.

“He had to borrow,” I said slowly, teasing it out. “Merlin. The Spillaines don’t have that kind of money. So he had to borrow to buy him out of Paradise.”

Chewing Gum’s smiled widened. Like he was thinking Jesus, this guy! I had the strange feeling that Andy Dubsey liked my work.

I smiled. “Brusca,” I said. “The stupid bastard opened a line of credit with Esmundo Brusca. The Spillaines are his vassals, these days. They wouldn’t be able to get credit anywhere else.” I laughed a little. “When he can’t cash out on this, he’s gonna be stuck owing Brusca. It’s gonna go bad.”

Dubsey nodded. He raised his eyebrows. “Very likely, young Renik,” he said. “And I do not care. That will be a local matter, outside my jurisdiction.”

“Because the courtesy will have ended.”

“It ain’t a forever kind of situation,” he said. “Sweet fucking lord, it’s not like I work for these assholes now. So here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna give up your dad. Lead us to him, hand him over. You. Personally. And if you don’t, we’re gonna kill you. I don’t wanna do that, but that’s what’s gonna happen.”

My hand tightened on the bottle I thought it might shatter. I wondered if I could manage to kill him with it. I kind of doubted it.

He made a waving gesture with his hand. “If it’s the kid—like I said: Word down the Mountain is the wife and kid are out of it, they’re officially civilians,” he said mildly. “Just so you know. Put your mind at ease. Word down the Mountain is, they’re off limits. The kid and Abban made that agreement t’ get us here.”

Alarm shot through me. Dubsey was trying to reassure me, give me the noble word that even when my brains were all over the place, Ellie and Carrie would be safe because the all-powerful Outfit had told Merlin Spillaine to leave off. But it wouldn’t work. Merlin had mortgaged whatever remained of his family’s pull to Brusca to fund this play, and when Mats Renik fucked him one more time from beyond the grave, he would go after them. I knew it. Just for petty revenge, he’d do it.

And he’d be sneaky. Just like he’d tried to be sneaky about Mats, got me to break him free so he wouldn’t be directly connected. The Mountain said Carrie and Ellie couldn’t be touched, but all Merlin Spillaine would care about is them linking him to the noise.

I had a bottle in my hand and I had physical proximity. And I’d sat down ready to die anyway. The dull flush of alcohol, familiar and welcome, pushed at me like wind in sails, gently urging me on. Do it, Maddie. Swing the bottle, see how far you get before they kill you.

“Hey.”

We turned. Jill stood in the doorway. She looked like she’d come back from the dead, covered from head to toe in deep, bloody scratches, her clothes torn to hell. She had the little peashooter in her hand, pointed at Chewing Gum. The Mosquito.

There was a popping noise, barely loud enough to notice. Chewing Gum’s hand slapped at his neck, and for a moment he just stared around at us like he’d been bitten by some sort of invisible bug. Then blood began to pulse out between his fingers, and he made a gargling, choked noise as he staggered up, hand sliding off the 1911 as he kicked the chair out from under himself.

I leaped to my feet, but couldn’t make myself move. Eyes bugging, he stumbled towards her. Jill just watched him impassively, holding the tiny gun out in front of her with remarkable steadiness.

Dubsey fell forward and grabbed onto her with his free hand as his knees gave out. He coughed blood all over her as he sank down. She just stared at him like he was an interesting bug that had fluttered through the window and landed on her, like she was trying to figure out if he was going to dissolve her with his corrosive vomit and then cocoon her or rub his back legs together and perform a symphony.

He gurgled again, his weight forcing her down onto her knees. Her face tightened as she stared at him.

“Poor baby,” she whispered.

I stood for a moment, my breathing rattling in my chest like it didn’t belong there, like there was no oxygen in it.

Dubsey slid to the floor, slick with his blood. Jill blinked slowly and looked up at me. She mimed doing a vague little curtsy. “You’re welcome,” she slurred, then slumped over on top of him.

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31.

I may have screamed out her name. I wasn’t sure.

You get used to people. They’re in your life, they live six blocks away, they’re always in your phone, your DMs, your old photos. They become fixtures. Furniture. Always there, never thought about.

I had a photo of Jill on my phone. I’d moved it from phone to phone over the years, making a point of it. For a while it had been my screen background, but Carrie hadn’t approved, so I’d moved it. But it was always there, in my gallery, no matter what. It was Jill at a party, smoking a cigarette with an exaggerated pose of haughty elegance, smoke in the air all around her. It flashed through my mind.

I ran for the edge, ignoring the gunshots, the grunts, the sounds of combat around me. Just as I reached Patsy, hands found me, pulling me back. A voice hissed in my ear.

“Where ya goin’ Renik?”

Another set of hands on me. I struggled, trying to pull away. They pushed me down, letting their weight do the work. With my arms controlled I couldn’t get sufficient leverage to do anything.

I stared over Patsy’s body at the spot where Jill had vanished.

There was a dull, solid sound, and the hands on me disappeared. I spun in time to see Lisa smack my old friend Milky in the head with her baton, a solid, cracking hit that spun him around, a tooth flying free. She stood there, sweat dripping off of her, baton pointed up at the sky, a fucking Valkyrie.

Bodies slumped on the roof, but our chokepoint strategy had worked. Ivan and Tony crouched on opposite sides of the door, hands on their knees as they sucked in air. Ivan’s bat was bloody. Seven bodies slumped on the roof’s silver surface.

I lumbered to my feet and staggered for the edge. I crashed into the low wall next to Patsy and leaned over, staring down into the mass of branches and leaves. The backyard had always been a jungle, and it had swallowed her whole.

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30.

I racked the shotgun, but Patsy crashed into me before I could fire again. I was knocked backwards into Lisa, and we went down in a tumble of limbs. The big man heaved himself up with surprising speed and grace, and raised one massive fist over me, his weirdly hairless face twisted up in a grimace of rage.

With a screech, Jill landed on top of him, one thin arm circling his neck, the other putting the gun to his bald head.

“You brought a fat guy to a gun fight!” she screamed.

Patsy whirled, almost shaking her off, the shot going wild. A moment later he reached up and smacked the gun from her hand.

A moment later, Jill had a knife.

She plunged it down into Patsy’s back, and the giant screamed. He began moving, shuffling and spinning, off-balance as he tried to reach up and grab hold of her. As gunshots filled the air around us, Lisa leaped up and planted herself in front of him, racking her shotgun and firing directly into his abdomen.

Patsy screamed. His legs buckled, but his momentum carried him forward. He crashed into the low wall around the roof, and Jill went sailing over his head, losing her hold on him. For a moment she was framed against the tops of the weed-like trees that grew in the backyard, and then she went over the side.

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29.

The sudden sense of openness, the cold, crisp air biting at my sweaty face, was disorienting. We were trapped, but we would have been trapped anyway in one of the apartments—and now we had just one bottleneck to worry about. If they were coming, it was through that door. And we would be ready.

I stepped back and faced the door, which began to shake and vibrate as the hardcases sent by The Outfit threw themselves against it. “Trade me the shotgun,” I said to Tony. He nodded and tossed it to me. I skidded the pistol over to him and checked the shotgun over. “Lisa—behind me.” I looked at her. “I go low, you go high.” She nodded. I checked to make sure Jill was still standing. She was sweating like a pig, but she stared back at me fiercely, the same girl who could do heroic amounts of drugs in a club and still, somehow, remain standing through sheer obstinacy. “Jill, left. Crossfire.”

I knelt down, shotgun braced against my shoulder. Lisa stood behind me with the other shotgun. Tony and Ivan stood by Jill, ready to take whatever opportunities they got.

We waited. The door shook and rattled in its old frame. Then it stopped, going still and silent.

“Wait,” Jill said, her voice quiet and snatched away by the wind. “Wait.”

In that moment, I wondered if I was about to die. If we all were. I was marked for it—even if they didn’t kill me outright on the roof, right then, as soon as they figured out that Mats was dead and I was the only person left who could satisfy his debts, I was dead. And in my experience when you irritated half-sentient thugs, they got violent first and worried about what they’d done later.

If it was going to happen, I was glad it was at the 293. I was glad it was with Jill. With these people who’d made life bearable while I’d crawled up towards zero these past few years.

With an explosive crash, the door flew off the hinges and Patsy, face bloody and twisted in rage, came barreling through. Lisa and I both fired, buckshot.

Patsy kept coming.

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28.

“Up!” Lisa said, her voice shaking and rough. “Move!”

I got my feet and felt dizzy. I hadn’t known Luis for long. I’d known his wife better, although I realized with a start that I didn’t know her name. I’d always called her ?Mrs. Quinones.’ I stared at his body for a moment, finding it impossible to believe.

Someone was tugging at me. I turned and found Jill, blood streaming down her face. She was pulling me towards the stairs, where Ivan was disappearing around the next landing.

“Gotta go!” she shouted.

I let her pull me for a few more seconds as I stumbled. Then, like blood rushing back into a sleeping limb, I found my feet again. This wasn’t a performance. I’d known that, I’d known that killers were here, but I hadn’t really known it. I’d spent so much time around gangsters, around people who kept telling you about all the violence they were going to do to you. Telling and telling and telling and never doing. Never actually doing it, because there were rules.

But now I’d broken those rules, and I was fair game, and for the first time I felt it.

Jill and I took the stairs backwards, guns up. We moved as fast as we could; the stairs were awkwardly spaced, and turned and twisted as we rose.

Down below, I could hear steps and furtive consultations. A single shot rang out—a double tap on Luis, whose blood was on my hands. Next to me, I could hear the rasp of Jill’s breathing, the sawdust sound of someone who’d been smoking or vaping every day of her life for twenty years.

The third floor hall was dark and crowded. Jill posted up by the landing and fired once down down the stairs to let them know she was watching.

“My place,” Ivan said, sounding remarkably steady as he hefted the bat. “Right over here.”

“No,” I said. “They’ll just trap us. Squeeze in from the fire escape and the hall. We go up.” I leaned towards him. “Go,” I said. I glanced at Tony. “You, too. This isn’t your fight. Luis is dead and I can’t have all of you on my conscience. Get inside, lock the doors, wait it out.”

“Up?” Lisa hissed. “What are we gonna do on the roof?”

Tony looked down at his feet, but Ivan set his jaw. “I never backed down from a fight my whole life,” he said. “I been fighting jerkoffs like these assholes since I was a kid. Fucking fascists who think they can push you around.” He spat on the floor. “I’m stickin’.”

Jill fired a shot down the stairwell. I looked at Tony. “Don’t be stupid,” I said.

He looked at Ivan, then nodded. “We’re getting you out. I’m not gonna hide behind my door while someone murders you.”

“Come on!!” Lisa shouted, heading up the stairs. “We gotta go!”

An explosion of gunfire peppered the plaster and wood near Jill, forcing her to dive to the floor. I lunged forward and grabbed her by the jacket, sliding her along the boards to me and pulling her up. The four of us ran after Lisa, rounding the landing on the fourth floor and pelting up the narrower steps leading up to the roof.

“Keys!” I shouted, digging them out of my pocket and tossing them up. Lisa snatched them out of the air.

“Which one!”

“Red tag!”

Holding the shotgun awkwardly under one arm, she picked out the right key and worked the lock. I crouched with Jill, sweating streaming into my eyes as I held the gun on the darkness below, watching for movement.

Two guys in dark hoodies suddenly stepped onto the landing. I squeezed the trigger without thinking. Jill unloaded three more shots, and both leaped backwards as if kicked, leaving bloody streaks on the wall behind them.

“Jesus Christ!” Tony shouted, giving the impression that this wasn’t what he’d signed up for.

Lisa shoved the door open with a bone-rattling creak. Jill slapped me on the back.

“Go!”

I turned and pelted up the stairs. Lisa raced through the door. I grabbed the key ring and twisted with all my might, snapping the key off in the lock. Then I turned and raised the gun.

“Now!”

Jill turned, staying low as she moved around me and through the door. I squeezed off a shot for emphasis, then turned and lumbered through the door, pulling it shut behind me with a click that seemed to shut off all the noise in the, leaving me in a vacuum.

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27.

I felt rather than heard Patsy finally roar through the window, but it was too late. Gravity wasn’t the big man’s friend. I pulled myself onto the first landing of the fire escape as two shots exploded below me. I kept moving, running up the old, rusted stairs to the second floor, where Lisa was ushering Ivan through her bedroom window.

“Unlocked windows. Very dangerous,” Jill said in-between breaths. She was pressed against the wall on one side of the window, still holding what I was certain was an empty gun. “How long you lived here, girl?”

“Right behind me,” I said.

“Is it too late to time travel back a few days and tell you to go fuck yourself?” Jill said, scrambling through the window.

“Come on, mijo,” Lisa urged. Another shot cracked the cold night air. I hustled through the window into a soft, pink light. Lisa’s bedroom was the same size as my own, a small space barely big enough for a twin bed and a stick or two of furniture. But she’d made it into a cozy, warm space with a piece of red fabric over a lamp and some serious investment in linens. I instantly felt surreally relaxed.

She climbed in after me and pushed me out of the way. Kneeling down, she reached under her bed and pulled out a roll of gray blanket. She dropped it on the bed and unrolled it, revealing three pump-action shotguns, two automatic handguns, and a shoebox filled with ammunition.

“Jesus, lady,” Jill said.

Lisa began loading one of the shotguns. “Come on,” she said. “No time for receipts.”

Ivan hefted his bat and stood by the window. “No thanks, mamasita,” he said. “I ain’t touched a gun in my life and I’m not starting now.”

I grabbed one of the handguns. Shotguns would be a liability in close-up fights and tight spaces.

“You got 45s in there?” Jill asked. I picked up a box and tossed it to her. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of clicks and snaps as we loaded and reloaded. Outside, yelling and whistling.

As I turned away from everyone to check the chamber, A figure filled the bedroom window and leaned inside. I froze, staring at a broad-shouldered Black guy with a thick, square King Tut beard.

A moment later, Ivan swung the bat, smacking the guy in the chest with an audible thump. He rocketed backward, and there was a screeching cry as he tumbled over the railing and fell.

Behind me, I heard three shotguns rack. “C’mon!” Lisa shouted.

I tapped Ivan on the shoulder and jerked my head. He nodded and followed everyone else out of the room. I took up the rear, walking backwards, gun warming in my hand, eyes on the window. As I stepped through the doorway, I saw a flicker of movement, so I squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet after it.

Lisa’s kitchen was immaculate, and smelled like ammonia. I stumbled into her table, my eyes on the back window. Flashes of movement made my heart skip beats, but no one stepped into the window’s frame. They were trying to draw my fire.

A hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Mads,” Jill whispered. “Here we go.”

I let her guide me to the door, and then through. I pulled it shut behind me and spun. Luis stepped forward, the shotgun held low by his hip where it would cause him some serious pain when he fired it. He walked past the stairs heading up to the landing.

Three shots. Luis spun, the shotgun going off. We crashed to the floor, and I felt the sting of a few stray bits of birdshot. When I looked up a second later, Luis was staring back at me from the floor, the top of his head a bloody ruin.

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