The Goldfinch

“Sorry to do this to you,” said the American to Boris, though he didn’t sound sorry—if anything, pleased. He was broadshouldered and bored-looking, in a soft gray coat, and despite his age there was something petulant and cherubic about him, overly ripe, soft white hands and a soft managerial blandness.

Boris—cigarette in mouth—stood frozen. “Martin.”

“Yeah, hey!” said Martin genially, as the other guy—gray blond thug in a pea coat, coarse features out of Nordic folklore—ambled straight up to Boris, and, after grappling around at Boris’s waistband, took his gun and passed it over to Martin. In my confusion I looked at the boy in the white coat but it was like he’d been struck on the head with a hammer, he didn’t seem any more amused or edified by any of this than I was.

“I know this sucks for you,” said Martin—“but. Wow.” The low key voice was a shocking contrast to the eyes, which were like a puff adder’s. “Hey. Sucks for me too. Frits and I were at Pim’s, we weren’t expecting to get out. Nasty weather, eh? Where’s our white Christmas?”

“What are you doing here?” said Boris, who despite his overly still air was as afraid as I’d ever seen him.

“What do you think?” Jocular shrug. “I’m surprised as you, if it makes any difference. Never would have thought Sascha had the balls to call in Horst on this. But—hey, fuck-up like this, who else could he call, I guess? Let’s have it,” he said, with an affable tick of the gun, and with a rush of horror I realized he was pointing the gun at Boris, gesturing with the gun at the felt-wrapped package in Boris’s hands. “Come on. Give it over.”

“No,” said Boris sharply, shaking the hair from his eyes.

Martin blinked, with a sort of befuddled whimsy. “What’s that you say?”

“No.”

“What?” Martin laughed. “No? Are you kidding me?”

“Boris! Give it to them!” I stammered, as I stood frozen in horror, as the one named Frits put his pistol to Boris’s temple and then caught Boris by the hair and pulled his head back so sharply he groaned.

“I know,” said Martin amicably, with a collegial glance at me, as if to say: hey, these Russians—nuts, am I right? “Come on,” he said to Boris. “Let’s have it.”

Again Boris moaned, as the guy yanked his hair once more, and from across the car threw me an unmistakeable look—which I understood just as plainly as if he’d spoken the words aloud, an urgent and very specific cut of the eyes straight from our shoplifting days: run for it, Potter, go.

“Boris,” I said, after a disbelieving pause, “please, just give it to them,” but Boris only moaned again, despairingly, as Frits jammed the gun hard under his chin and Martin stepped forward to take the painting from him.

“Excellent. Thanks for that,” he said bemusedly, tucking his gun under his arm and begi

But in the half-moment as Frits was motioning to me with the gun, we’d all lost track of Boris, whose cigarette flew out in a shower of sparks. Frits screamed and slapped his cheek, then stumbled back grappling at his collar where it had lodged against his neck. In the same instant Martin—distracted with the painting, directly across from me—looked up, and I was still looking at him blankly across the roof of the car when I heard it, to my right, three fast cracks which made us both turn quickly to the side. With the fourth (flinching, eyes closed) a warm spray of blood thumped across the car roof and struck me in the face and when I opened my eyes again the Asian kid was stepping back horrified and drawing a hand down his front in a bloody smear like a butcher’s apron and I was staring at a lighted sign Beetaalautomaat op where Boris’s head had been; blood was pouring from under the car and Boris was on the ground on his elbows, feet going, he was trying to scramble up from the floor, I couldn’t tell if he was hurt or not and I must have run around to him without thinking because the next thing I knew I was on the other side of the car and trying to help him up, blood everywhere, Frits was a mess, slumped against the car with a baseball-sized hole in the side of his head, and I’d just noticed Frits’s gun lying on the ground when I heard Boris exclaim sharply and there was Martin, tight-eyed with blood on his sleeve, hand clamped to his arm and fumbling to bring up his gun

It had happened before it even happened, like a skip in a DVD throwing me forward in time, because I have no memory at all of picking the pistol off the floor, only of a kick so hard it threw my arm in the air, I didn’t really hear the bang until I felt the kick and the casing flew back and hit me in the face and I shot again, eyes half-closed against the noise and my arm jolting with every shot, the trigger had a resistance to it, a stiffness, like pulling some too-heavy door latch, car windows popping and Martin with an arm coming up, exploding safety glass and chunks of concrete flying out a pillar and I’d got Martin in the shoulder, the soft gray cloth was drenched and dark, a spreading dark stain, cordite smell and deafening echo that drove me so deep inside my skull that it was less like actual sound striking my eardrums than a wall slamming down hard in my mind and driving me back into some hard internal blackness from childhood, and Martin’s viper eyes met mine and he was slumped forward with the gun propped on the roof of the car when I shot again and hit him above the eye, red burst that made me flinch and then, somewhere behind me, I heard the sound of ru

Out of the darkness the sound of feet ru

I drew my palm down my face and looked at the red smear on my hand. Boris was still talking to me with some urgency but even though he was shaking my shoulder it was mostly mouth movements and nonsense through soundproof glass. The smoke from the fired gun was oddly the same bracing ammonia smell of Manhattan thunderstorms and wet city pavements. Robin’s egg speckles on the door of a pale blue Mini. Nearer, creeping dark from under Boris’s car, a glossy satin pool three feet wide was spreading and inching forward like an amoeba, and I wondered how long before it reached my shoe and what I would do when it did.