Rance continued to push the apparently heavy trunk into the room. “What do you think you’re accomplishing by interfering with our business, Mr. O’Sullivan?”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with business. It’s personal.”
Breathing hard, still pushing the trunk, nearer the light of the lamps by the couch, Rance said, “It’s nothing but business — all of life is business, that’s what you fail to grasp. And in business, to get what you want, you must have something valuable to trade.”
“Those files are a start.”
“Not... ” The accountant grunted as he pushed the trunk. “... Not for someone as valuable as Connor Looney.”
O’Sullivan frowned. “What makes Connor Looney valuable?”
Rance’s expression clouded, as if he’d said too much, bantering with this intruder.
A mechanical chatter — loud as hell! — drew O’Sullivan’s attention away from Rance, who was rising from his crouch, the trunk pushed to the center of the room, now.
“Opening bell on Wall Street,” Rance explained, nodding across the room.
In the shadow of an alcove, a ticker-tape machine stood, spewing tape, making a racket like a miniature machine gun. Under the glass jar covering the machine, a pile of yesterday’s tape was strewn.
The machine’s chatter was loud enough to blot away the outside world — including the sound of O’Sullivan’s son, desperately honking the horn.
Rance withdrew a big ring of keys from his dressing-gown pocket, sorting through them, muttering, “Now which one is it?”
“Find it — now.”
“I’m trying!... I believe this is the one... ”
The accountant knelt at the trunk, tried the key. “No... not that one... ”
“If you’re stalling, I’ll shoot the lock off. Then you.”
“Please... I’m doing my best!... Here it is... no, I tried that one already... ”
“Mr. Rance... I may look like a patient man, but I assure you I’m not. Move it!”
Rance threw a glare at O’Sullivan. “That tone isn’t helping! You’re making me nervous!”
O’Sullivan went over and jammed the gun into the accountant’s left temple and asked, “Does this help?”
“Uh... uh... ”
“One more try, and we do it my way.”
Rance selected another key, and said, “This is it — it has to be,” inserted it into the keyhole and, with a click, unlocked the trunk. O’Sullivan took a step around, to get a look inside, as Rance opened the lid...
... on emptiness.
At that moment the ticker tape ran out, its chattering ceased, and the blurt of the car horn... the signal repeated over and over... finally made itself known to O’Sullivan.
Rance took that opportunity to scramble into the bedroom, slamming the door, locking it behind him.
And Mike O’Sullivan — with a second futile glance at the bare inside of the “heavy” trunk the accountant had struggled with so — knew he’d been set up. Rance had been the bait, and he knew he was the mouse... so where was the fucking cat?
A gunshot trumped the car horn, punching a hole through the bridal suite door — a rifle blast at close range! — splintering the wood, the honeymoon over.
O’Sullivan took cover behind the trunk, its metal lid up, as somebody kicked the door in with a forceful boot heel, wood crunching, metal snapping, and the man in the bowler filled the doorway and — not seeing O’Sullivan — fired off five loud sharp shots in quick succession, all around the room, including the bedroom door and wall.
Two shots slammed into the open metal lid, which was providing a shield of sorts for O’Sullivan, who stayed down as low as possible, the body of the trunk serving better cover.
As the man with the rifle paused to reload, stepping inside what appeared to be an empty room, O’Sullivan popped up from behind the trunk and blasted away with the .45. But he’d been shooting somewhat blindly, and the slugs thudded into the sofa near the door, as the guy with the rifle, losing his bowler, scrambled behind an end table that supported a crystal-shaded lamp, crouching there to finish reloading.
O’Sullivan, huddled low behind the trunk, could see where the two slugs had dimpled the lid; breathing hard, he mentally counted how many rounds he had left, as time itself seemed to pause, and the room took on a ghostly silence broken only by the sound of his opponent reloading the rifle. In the wall and the door to the bedroom adjacent, where Rance had fled, daylight was slanting through bullet holes like swords in a magician’s box. Dust motes floated. Crystal lamps stood mute and the elegant surroundings seemed at odds with the conflict at hand.
O’Sullivan didn’t see his adversary pop up from behind the end table, but the punch of the bullets from the rifle — two more rounds — pounded into the trunk, which slammed into O’Sullivan, knocking him backward and to one side, robbing him of cover. The second he realized he was exposed, O’Sullivan squeezed off three fast rounds, and one of them shattered the crystal lamp on the end table, showering his opponent with flying shards of glass, hitting him right in the face, like a dozen terrible bee stings.
The gunmen screamed in pain and surprise, and dropped to his knees. O’Sullivan, still on his side on the floor, out in the open, kept firing with the .45, though his bullets only served to send his bleeding moaning adversary seeking refuge behind the overstuffed sofa.
And then O’Sullivan was clicking on empty chambers, and he got a glimpse of the man with the rifle cowering behind the sofa, his bloody face in one hand, the rifle impotent — at least for the moment — in the other.
O’Sullivan took the opportunity to get to his feet and run over to that bedroom door, and — in a panel that had bullet holes punched in it already — kicked, then kicked again, letting daylight flood in, and he reached in and around and turned the key in the lock.
Pushing into the room, O’Sullivan quickly turned, staying in a crouch, in case the man with the rifle advanced on him; he slammed a fresh clip in his .45 and, as he backed in, he finally saw Rance — flung on the bed, on his back, his eyes and mouth open, and a blossom of red on the green silk robe, a spray of scarlet on the headboard and wall. One of the rifle slugs had caught the accountant, and taught Rance a final lesson about the business of crime.
O’Sullivan almost stumbled over something, and he looked down and saw a small black strongbox, amid a scattering of file folders and accordion envelopes next to the bed; too much stuff to grab up and carry... but the strongbox had a tiny label that said something big: CHIEF ACCOUNTS.
With his left hand, O’Sullivan grabbed the strongbox by its little handle, his right hand still ready to send death flying at that bleeding bastard in the next room.
The bedroom had a separate exit, and O’Sullivan took it, running down the corridor. On the second floor he found a window out onto a fire escape that brought him to the alley; and within seconds he was sprinting across the main street, toward where Michael was parked.
He didn’t realize that Harlen Maguire had managed to stagger to the window and draw back the curtains and, pulling a revolver from his topcoat pocket, blinking away blood — no shards in his eyes, one small miracle — took aim.
Michael had spotted Papa, exiting that alley, and threw the Ford into reverse, backing the car toward his advancing father, neither of them wasting any time. But two gunshots discouraged them — holes punched in the roof of the car, sunlight streaming in! — and the boy heard his father yell, “Go! Get out of reverse, damnit — go!”
And Michael knew not to disobey his father. He changed gears, as professional as any outlaw wheelman, and began to pull away, his father running alongside the car. The boy’s reach wasn’t long enough to open the door for his father, but Papa managed to get the door open himself and was almost inside when another gunshot rang out, and Papa’s shoulder flinched, even as he winced from the impact and pain.