Gold Coast

I said, "Frank…" and poked him.

Vi

Frank had turned toward the two assassins just as the first blast decapitated Vi

The second man fired both barrels at once, and Frank, who had been a foot or two away from my left shoulder, caught both barrels in his chest and was actually picked up off his feet and thrown backward, crashing through the front window of Giulio's.

The man who had fired the single barrel into Vi

Well, maybe the reason I'm able to tell you about this is that the guy smirked at me, and I wanted the last word so I flashed him the Italian salute. He smiled, swung the barrel of the shotgun away from me, and fired. I actually heard the buckshot fly past to my left, like buzzing bees, and I heard Bellarosa groan a few feet behind me. I looked and saw him sprawled on his back, half his body inside the restaurant and his legs dangling outside. His trousers were shredded, and I realized the last shot had peppered his legs. In fact, I saw blood ru

I heard a noise like another shot from the street and turned back to see that the two gunmen had gotten into the limo and the sound I'd heard was the door slamming shut. The long black car pulled away at normal speed. I noticed now that the two shotguns were lying in the street. My eyes moved downward, and I looked at Vi

No one on the street or sidewalk around me was screaming or ru

Inside the restaurant, however, there was a lot of screaming going on, and I could picture the scene in there with glass all over the place and Bellarosa's body sprawled across the window table, blood ru

The pandemonium in the restaurant was dying down except that I could now hear A

As I moved toward Bellarosa's body, I glanced to my left and saw Susan standing a few feet away now, looking at Bellarosa's upside-down face. Her face was pale, but she seemed composed. Susan turned away from him, looked at me, and our eyes met. I knew I had blood or gore or some wet stuff on my clothes and even on my face, and I was pretty sure it wasn't my blood, but the remains of Vi

A

I was sort of out of it at this point, and I don't pretend that I noticed everything I'm describing at the exact time it happened, or that my impressions are as precise as they should have been. To give Susan the benefit of the doubt, for instance, she was probably in shock and that would explain her catatonic state.

Anyway, I got a grip on myself and knelt down in a tremendous pool of blood beside A

I looked at Bellarosa's face and saw that his lips were moving, but more important, I saw the source of all that blood on the floor: a pellet or glass had penetrated the side of his throat, and blood was gushing from the wound under the collar and ru

Meanwhile, all these customers and waiters were standing around, and I guess there wasn't a doctor in the house, and no one understood that Bellarosa needed first aid. A

So I opened his collar and saw that the wound was probably in a carotid artery by the way it was gushing, and I felt around for the pulse below the wound and found it. I pressed my fingers on the pulse and the bleeding subsided. I then cradled the back of his neck in the crook of my arm to raise his head level with his heart so his brain could get blood, and I took a table napkin and pressed that against the wound itself. I didn't know if that was going to do the trick, but Mr Jenkins, my Troop Leader, would have been proud of my effort. I looked around and said to the crowd in general, "Please move back. Someone take his wife away. Thank you."

So there I knelt, covered with Vi