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Stettner spun around, away from the open safe, facing toward us. His face was white, his mouth wide with horror. He held his arm in front of him like a shield. Arterial blood, bright as sunrise, spurted wildly from his mutilated arm. He lurched forward, his mouth working soundlessly, his arm spraying blood at us, until Ballou let out an awful sound from deep in his throat and swung the cleaver a second time, burying it in the juncture of Stettner's neck and shoulder. The blow drove the man to his knees and we stepped back out of the way. He sprawled forward and lay still, pouring out blood onto the gray broadloom.
Olga was standing still. I don't think she had moved at all. Her mouth was slack and she had her hands poised at the sides of her breasts, her nail polish a perfect match for the color on her nipples.
I looked from her to Ballou. He was turning toward her now, his apron crimson with fresh blood, his hand locked on the handle of the cleaver.
I swung the Smith around. I didn't hesitate. I squeezed the trigger, and the gun bucked in my hand.
Chapter 23
The first shot was rushed, and wide of the mark. It took her in the right shoulder, I tucked my elbow in against my ribs and fired a second shot, and a third. Both entered the center of her chest, between the rouged breasts. The light was gone from her eyes before she hit the floor.
"MATT."
I was standing there, looking down at her, and Mick was saying my name. I felt his hand on my shoulder. The room reeked of death, the smells of gunfire and blood and body wastes merging to foul the air. I felt an awful weariness, and there was a dull cramp at the back of my throat, as if something was trapped there and wanted to get out.
"Come on, man. We've got to get out of here."
I moved quickly once I shook off whatever it was that had immobilized me. While he cleaned out the safe, sweeping stacks of money into a couple of canvas sacks, I wiped away any prints either of us might have left. I retrieved the cassette from the VCR, stuck it in my coat pocket, and tossed the coat over my arm. I stuck the.38 back in my belt and put Mick's SIG Sauer in my pocket. I grabbed the attaché case and followed Mick down the hall and up the stairs.
Tom was right next to the door, propped into a sitting position against the wall. His face looked bloodless, but then he was always pale. Mick set down the sacks of money, picked Tom up in his arms, and carried him out to the car. Andy had the door open and Mick tucked him into the back seat.
Mick came back for the money while Andy opened the trunk. I tossed in everything I was carrying, and Mick returned and added the sacks of cash and slammed the trunk lid hard. I went back into the arena and checked the room where we'd done the killing. They were both dead, and I couldn't spot anything I'd overlooked. At the top of the stairs I found the two guards, and they were both dead, too. I wiped the whole area where Tom had been sitting on the chance he'd left his prints there, and I dug most of the chewing gum out of the lock so that it wouldn't be stuck open. I wiped the lock, and parts of the door we might have touched.
They were motioning to me from the car. I looked around. The neighborhood was deserted as ever. I ran across the pavement. The Ford's front door was open, the front passenger seat empty. Mick was in back with Tom, talking softly to him, pressing a wadded-up cloth against his shoulder wound. The wound seemed to have stopped bleeding, but I didn't know how much blood he'd already lost.
I got in, closed the door. The engine was already ru
"That I do, Mick."
"We don't want a ticket, God knows, but step as lively as you dare."
MICK has a farm in Ulster County. The closest town is Ellenville. A couple from County Westmeath, a Mr. and Mrs. O'Mara, run the place for him, and their name appears on the deed. That's where we went, arriving somewhere between three and three-thirty. Andy drove with the radar detector switched on, and even so didn't stray too far over the speed limit.
We got Tom inside and made him comfortable on a daybed in the sun parlor, and Mick went out with Andy and woke up a doctor he knew, a sour-faced little man with liver spots on the backs of his hands. He was with Tom for almost an hour, and when he came out he stood for a long time washing his hands at the kitchen sink. "He'll be all right," he a
While the doctor worked the rest of us sat at the kitchen table. Mick cracked a pint of whiskey, and most of it was gone by the time Andy ran the doctor home. Andy made a beer last as long as he could, then had a second one. I found a bottle of ginger ale in the back of the refrigerator and drank that. We just sat there and nobody said much of anything.
After Andy dropped off the doctor he came back for us and pulled up next to the house and tapped the horn. Mick rode up front with him and I sat in the back. Tom stayed at the farm; the doctor wanted him to spend the next several days in bed, and pla
Andy got on the Thruway and retraced our route. We picked up the Saw Mill and the Henry Hudson and wound up in front of Grogan's. It was six-thirty in the morning and I had never been more wide awake in my life. We carried the sacks of money inside and Mick locked them in the safe. We gave Andy our guns, the ones that had been fired; he'd drop them in the river on his way home.
"I'll settle with ye in a day or so," Mick told him. "Once I count it all and figure out shares. 'Twill be a decent sum for a good night's work."
"I'm not worried," Andy said.
"Go on home now," Mick said. "My love to your mother, she's a fine woman. And you're a grand driver, Andy. You're the best."
WE sat at the same table again, with the doors locked and only the light of dawn for illumination. Mick had a bottle and a glass but he wasn't hitting it hard. I had drawn a Coke for myself and found a piece of lemon to cut the sweetness some. Once I got it the way I wanted it I barely touched the damned thing.
For over an hour we spoke scarcely a word. When he got to his feet around seven-thirty I got up and went with him. I didn't have to ask where we were going, and he didn't have to go in back for his apron. He was still wearing it.
I went with him to collect the Cadillac and we rode in silence down Ninth Avenue to Fourteenth Street. We parked in front of Twomey's, mounted the steps, entered the sanctuary of St. Bernard's. We were a few minutes early as we took seats in the last row of the little room where they hold the butchers' mass.
The priest this morning was young, with a smooth pink face that looked as though it never needed a shave. He had a thick West-of-Ireland brogue and must have been a recent arrival. He seemed confident enough, though, before his tiny congregation of nuns and butchers.
I don't remember the service. I was there and I was not there. I stood when others stood, sat when they sat, knelt when they knelt. I made the indicated responses. But even as I did these things I was breathing in the mixed scent of blood and cordite, I was watching a cleaver descend in its furious arc, I was seeing blood spurt, I was feeling a gun buck in my hand.