It occurred to him that Connie was no longer at his side.
Before he had time to wonder how or when she’d disappeared, he saw a short, thickset man coming around the sleeve of a chinchilla coat hanging at the far end of the rack. Except for his broken nose, the man looked a lot like Tony the Bear Orso or Charlie Bonano, both of whom looked like Rocky’s brother-in-law. He had a gun in his hand. Michael guessed this was Silvio.
“Hey!” Silvio yelled, if that’s who he was, and Michael immediately slipped between a Siberian yellow weasel coat and a Persian lamb, brushing past the furs and through the rack to emerge on the opposite side where a tall, angular, craggy-faced blondish man who looked like Sterling Hayden in The Godfather was coming around the end of a table upon which was displayed an open coffin with no one in it.
Michael figured he himself would soon be displayed in that coffin, which was made of fine mahogany and lined with white silk and hung with bronze handles.
If the other one was Silvio, then this one was Larry.
So there was Silvio coming through the rack of furs farther up the line now, emerging between a Mexican ocelot and a Mongolian marmot, and here was Larry spotting Michael now and also shouting “Hey!” and here, too, was Alice coming around the home entertainment center display and seeing Michael, and grinning like an African lioness contemplating a warthog dinner. Michael figured this was it. The full deck had been dealt at last and there were no more aces in it.
“Freeze!” the voice said.
It sounded like Detective O’Brien.
But it was Connie.
Standing with a gun in each hand.
Behind Alice and Larry, who had probably heard that word a great many times in their separate careers and who did not move a muscle when they heard it now. Coming through the rack swathed in furs left and right, Silvio froze, too. Connie looked like the Dragon Lady. Cool and beautiful and deadly. Ready to blow away anyone who did not take her by overnight junk to Shanghai. The guns were only .22 caliber revolvers, but in her delicate hands they looked like big mother-loving cannons.
“Help us here!” Alice shouted to the moving men, but they, too, had seen the guns in Connie’s hands and the look in her eyes, and they had heard the word “Freeze!” thundering like a Chinese curse into that echoing space, and when they’d realized that they themselves were not the ones being asked to freeze, they decided this might be a good time to get the hell out of here before someone asked them to move a piano.
There was a rush toward the metal entrance door, now an exit door too narrow to accommodate the sudden traffic. The moving men piled into the doorway like Keystone Kops, wedging themselves there for an impossibly tangled moment, unraveling themselves, and then hurling themselves headlong into the corridor outside.
Larry shook his head in dismay when he heard the elevator starting. Still shaking his head, he dropped his gun to the floor and looked at his watch, probably wondering if Johnny Carson was still on. Silvio raised his hands over his head. He looked like a man who did not have to be told that Chinese people stuck bamboo under your fingernails. Especially Chinese women. Or maybe it was the Japanese who did that. Either way, he wanted nothing further to do with this entire enterprise.
Only Alice seemed undecided.
Michael had his doubts as well.
Which was why he was moving so swiftly toward Connie.
Because it was one thing to have a look on your face that said handling a gun was second nature to you and you’d as soon shoot a person as treat him to an ice cream cone, but it was another thing to be holding a gun as if you’d never had one in your hand before. Connie was holding those pistols the way Crandall had held the .32 last night. They were both amateurs. Michael recognized this because when it came to oranges or guns, he was a pro. But so was Alice. And in thirty seconds flat, she was going to recognize that Connie didn’t know a trigger from a click sight. In fact, the knowledge was seeping into her eyes that very instant, and Michael knew he had to reach Connie and grab one of those guns from her before Alice made her play.
She moved sooner than he’d expected.
Didn’t say a word.
Merely fired at Connie.
And missed.
And was sighting along the gun barrel to fire again when Michael realized this was not a time for dueling in the sun, this was a time for definitive action—like throwing himself at her. He flung himself sideways, hoping to knock her off balance and realizing an instant too late that he was rushing her with his bad side, rushing her with the bandaged shoulder and arm that had been injured by one of those Car 54, Seventh Precinct cops—where were they now, when he needed them? He let out a horrible yell, similar to the “Aiiii-eeeeee!” he’d screamed at Detective O’Brien all those years ago on Christmas Eve, but this one was involuntary in that the body contact with Alice sent arrows of pain shooting from his arm clear up into his skull. There was another gunshot, and he thought, Oh, Jesus, no! and then Alice screamed and he thought it was because his own scream had frightened her the way it had earlier frightened O’Brien. But his hands where he grabbed for Alice were suddenly sticky and wet, and he realized all at once that Connie had actually fired one of those guns, Connie had actually shot Alice, who was stumbling backward now as Michael stumbled forward. He said something like “Watch it,” or “What shit,” and Alice very definitely said, “What shit,” and then both of them collapsed to the floor in a hurt and bewildered heap.
Connie was on them in an instant.
Legs widespread.
Both guns angled down at Alice’s head.
“One move,” she said.
“Don’t get dramatic,” Alice said, and tossed her gun onto the floor.
She was bleeding from the shoulder.
“It went off,” Connie explained.
“I see that,” Michael said.
“Remember when I asked you if it was a crime to steal stolen goods? That’s when I stole them. From the table. Because he who gathers up his nuts need never leave his hole.”
“If you don’t mind,” Larry said, “there’s a lady present here.”
“Get me a doctor,” Alice said.
Michael wondered if Dr. Ling would make a house call all the way over here in the First Precinct.
“Who’s Mama?” he asked.
“Go fuck yourself,” Alice said.
“Tch,” Larry said, and rolled his eyes.
Silvio still had his hands up in the air. “Can I put my hands down, lady?” he asked. “Or shall I go fuck myself, too?”
“You can put them down,” Connie said.
“First promise me no bamboo shoots,” Silvio said.
“What?” Connie said.
“And no MSG,” Larry said. “It’s the MSG gives you headaches.”
“Keep your hands up,” Michael said.
“Who’s Mama?”
“Quién sabe?” Silvio said.
“Are you Spanish?” Michael asked.
“No, I’m Italian. But everybody knows what quién sabe means.”
“Sure,” Larry said. “It’s what Tonto calls the Lone Ranger.”
“Anyway,” Alice said testily, “we don’t know who Mama is, and please get me a goddamn doctor.”
“Why are you trying to kill us?” Michael asked.
“We’re trying to kill you?” Alice said. “This Asian person almost takes off my arm with that weapon in her hand, and we’re trying to kill you?”
“That’s certainly comical, all right,” Larry said, shaking his head in wonder.
“Can I put my hands down?” Silvio asked.
“No,” Michael said. “Who’s Mama?”