I shrugged.
“If we’d bumped you, Mercer, you wouldn’t be walking around. My guys might fuck up some things, but they’re good at that.”
“I was in LaPorte to see you-”
“Our business was done. Nobody was more surprised than me when I got a call from Dmitri’s motel, telling me you’d bought the farm.”
“I was shot at the motel?”
Gino looked me over again, hunting for bullet holes. I still wore the doctor’s hat, so he couldn’t see the bandage.
“You don’t remember?”
I waggled the gun at him impatiently.
“Yeah, yeah, it was at the motel. That right there oughta prove I had nothing to do with it. If I wanted to get rid of you, I woulda put you at the bottom of that lake.”
What he said made sense. The Guidos don’t leave bodies for autopsies. They dump them in lakes or bury them in concrete. They’ve had lots of practice.
“Dmitri sent me to see you,” I said.
“That’s right. Some of our boys had gotten crosswise. He sent you to smooth things over.”
“And we made them smooth?”
“Far as I was concerned. You were supposed to talk to Dmitri, make sure we had a deal.”
A flash of memory: Dmitri leaning toward me across a table, sputtering about one of his boys who’d been killed in a fight. What was the name? Alexei. Just a kid.
“What about Alexei?” I asked Gino.
“What about him? He was a punk. He messed with Chuck at that night-club Dmitri owns on Coney Island. Chuck was within his rights-”
“We covered all this.”
“That’s right. You getting your memory back?”
“I remember enough.”
Gino’s eyes settled on the.45 in my hand.
“Speaking of Chuck,” he said, “isn’t that his gun?”
“That’s right.”
“So where is he?”
“He had a traffic accident. Unless you want to join him, you’d better sit quiet until I’m gone.”
“Thought you knew better than to make threats.”
“I got nothing to lose.”
I reached behind me for the doorknob. Soon as the door cracked open, I could hear the boys arguing over their cards. Clueless.
I met Gino’s eyes. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me.”
“Who would believe me?”
I eased into the hallway and closed the door behind me. Then I slipped out of the house, quiet as a ghost.
WHEN I pulled into the parking lot of the Shady Rest Motor Inn, the office looked empty. A few rooms down, one door was blocked by an X of yellow crime-scene tape. I parked in front and sat in the Buick, staring at the door. I didn’t remember staying in the room, but this was bound to be the place.
I got out of the car, ripped the tape away, and tried the doorknob. The door swung open. I felt uneasy as I reached inside and flicked on the lights.
The bed was mussed, and every surface was dusted with fingerprint powder. But what captured my attention was the large red-brown stain on the tan carpet, near the foot of the bed. Blood. My blood.
There’d been a lot of it. I carefully circled the stain, measuring it with my eyes. I must’ve bled out right here, before the ambulance arrived, before anyone tried to save me.
The wavy-haired manager appeared at the open door. She wore jeans and a lumberjack shirt, and she spoke with a strong Russian accent: “What do you think you’re doing?”
I looked up at her from under the brim of my hat. When our eyes met, she went pale. She whispered, “Nyet.” Then she fainted dead away.
Shit. I kept having that effect on people.
Careful not to step on the bloodstain, I went to the door and checked the parking lot. No sign of anyone except for the young Russian woman who lay in a heap at my feet. I got my arms under her and lifted her up.
She felt light and loose, as if she had no bones. I carried her to the bed and gently set her down. I brushed her hair away from her face. She had creamy skin, high Slavic cheekbones, and full lips. I felt drawn to her. I wanted to kiss those lips.
Her eyelids fluttered, and I backed away. Gave her a chance to look at me without going into another swoon. I closed the door in case she started screaming.
She stared at the ceiling for a second, then stiffened all over as she realized where she was. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me.
“You,” she said.
A memory sparked. Her in this same bed, naked under the sheets, smiling up at me. A name flashed in my mind. Irina. Her name was Irina.
How had we ended up in bed together? What had we meant to each other? Did she know why I was in LaPorte, what I did for a living? Did she know who the hell killed me?
I didn’t get to ask her. Cars roared up outside, screeching to a stop on the asphalt. Doors slammed. Aw, hell.
I went to the window and peeked between the heavy curtains. Gino was out there with four of his boys, crouching behind a Cadillac and the hood of a black SUV. The neon light made their faces a sickly green. Two were standard-issue goombahs, but I recognized the other two: Gino’s lifelong chum Frankie and a steroid case named Vinnie, brother of the late Chuck Graziano. Guess they found Chuck’s body and came hunting for me. That would explain all the guns.
“Get in the bathtub,” I told Irina as I pulled the.45 from my belt.
Once she was out of sight, I threw open the door and stepped into the cold night air.
“What’s up, Gino?”
“Thought we’d find you here, Mercer,” Gino shouted from behind the SUV. “This time, you’ll stay dead.”
I didn’t wait for them to start shooting. I lifted Chuck’s.45 and blasted away. One bullet clipped Gino’s shoulder and sent him spinning. Another caught Frankie in the forehead, and his skull exploded.
Bullets whined past me. Vinnie had some kind of automatic rifle, sounded like applause as it stitched a line of holes across the front of the building. A couple of bullets hit me in the chest and slammed me against the doorjamb, but it didn’t hurt at all.
I shot Vinnie in the throat, and he forgot all about his machine gun, too busy grabbing at his collar and hunting for air. One of the goombahs shrieked as he fell backward, blood spurting from his chest.
The last guy shot me again, a punch in the gut, but then he stopped, gaping at me. Bright pencils of light jutted from the bullet holes in my shirt.
The shooter freaked. He tried to run away, but I took careful aim and nailed him between the shoulder blades. He pitched forward onto the pavement.
My ears rang. Gun smoke stank up the air. As I turned to go back inside, I heard a groan from the other side of the cars.
I stalked around the vehicles and found Gino on the pavement, squirming and whimpering. I stopped right in front of him, the coroner’s wingtips an inch from his nose. Gino rolled over and looked up at my bright quills of light.
“What the fu-”
I shot him in the eye.
It was the last bullet in the.45, and I tossed the gun aside as I hurried to the motel room. I needed to plug these holes. I felt weaker by the second.
Irina stood framed in the bathroom doorway, shaking with fear.
“It’s over,” I said. “They’re all dead.”
She stared at the light streaming from my chest.
“What is that?”
“No time to explain,” I wheezed. “I need bandages-”
Dizziness overwhelmed me, and I dropped to my knees rather than fall on my face. No pain, but light poured out of the holes in my torso. I covered two of them with my hands, but it still felt as if I were slipping away. I looked up at Irina, who hadn’t moved.
“Help me.”
Her face twisted into a scowl, and she spat on the floor.
“Like you helped my brother?”
She pronounced it “brudder,” and for a second I didn’t know what she meant. Her brother?
“They left Alexei bleeding on the sidewalk,” she said. “His life draining away. But did you care? No, to you it was just business.”
Alexei. The kid Chuck killed at Coney Island.
I remembered now, her telling me her brother’s sad story. She’d wanted vengeance against the Italians. She wanted Dmitri to declare war. But I hadn’t come here for that-