Cancerno had assumed a position at the far end of the bar, his back to the hallway that led out to the back door. He’d finished spreading alcohol and stood with a bar rag in one hand and his revolver in the other. Watching him, Ramone set the revolver down on top of the bar and lifted his shotgun again, leveling it across the surface of the bar, the ugly muzzle pointed right at me. No need to worry about accuracy now; the shotgun would cut me in two if I tried to move.
“You’re right, Perry,” Cancerno said. “It’s all done.” He shifted the bar rag so he held it in the same hand that was clenched around his revolver. He reached into his pocket with the other hand, and when he withdrew it, a steel Zippo was in his fingers. He flipped the top off the lighter and flicked the wheel with his thumb. A short flame appeared, and he touched it to the edge of the bar rag, which began to burn slowly.
I shifted my weight forward, onto my toes, preparing for a rush that would end with a shotgun blast, and behind me I could hear Draper tensing, the handcuffs scraping against the wood that held him.
“I don’t think so,” Ramone said, following my movement with the barrel of his gun. My fingers brushed against glass, and I squeezed them around the shattered neck of one of the bottles Cancerno had broken. My opportunity would come thanks to Cancerno, although he didn’t realize it yet. The fire wouldn’t kill me as fast as Ramone’s shotgun would, and the initial burst of flame might be more distracting to the shooter than to me. When Cancerno dropped that rag to the floor, I was going to be moving with the flames, right at Ramone’s throat, with that jagged glass in my hand.
“I hope this hurts like hell,” Cancerno said, holding the now-burning rag high in the air, grasping it with just two fingers, and I tensed every muscle, ready to spring forward when that rag hit the floor. That was when I heard Draper let out a grunt that sounded like an explosion as he suddenly lurched forward.
I am a strong man. I own a gym where many stronger men come regularly to hoist obscene amounts of weight. During my time on the narcotics beat, I saw men riding methamphetamine highs kick down doors and punch through walls as if they were not even there. Never, though, had I seen a display of raw strength comparable to the one Scott Draper offered in that moment at the Hideaway. With a single, swift-but-massive effort, he lunged forward and jerked with all his power at the handcuffs that held him to the shelves. Because Draper was so tall, they were fastened fairly high on the cabinet, well above the central point of balance. When Draper leaned into that savage jerk forward, the several hundred pounds of oak shelving and liquor bottles leaned with him, overbalanced, and fell forward.
Ramone had time to shoot. He had time, but the shelving unit was at least eight feet tall, and it was coming down right at his skull. He’d been focused on me because I’d been the only one with freedom to move, and when Draper lunged forward Ramone had to pivot to his left to bring the gun around to this new threat. By that time the massive wooden cabinet was falling, and when Ramone pulled the trigger, he took a full step back, trying to avoid taking all that weight on the top of his head. The combined pivot and step backward were enough, and the slug he fired missed us both, splintering through the cabinet about a foot to the right of Draper’s head as it came crashing down.
The bar saved us. The weight of the enormous cabinet would probably have killed us both, crushed us, if it had fallen directly onto our bodies. But because it was so tall, it landed against the bar, shedding glass and booze all over us, and held there, wedged at about a forty-five-degree angle.
Ramone was hidden from my sight now, but Cancerno had screamed something and jumped backward as the cabinet fell, throwing the rag at the same time. It caught the edge of the new obstruction provided by the fallen shelves and dropped to the floor. There was some alcohol there, but it missed the large pool Cancerno had spread earlier, and the eruption of flame was smaller than it might have been.
Staying on my hands and knees to avoid braining myself on the shelves that lay angled over my head, I scrambled for the end of the bar and Cancerno, bits of broken glass slicing into my flesh. I cleared the shelves as Cancerno brought his Beretta up, and I sprang forward, hitting him around the waist as he fired over me. The tackle drove us both down, and he landed on his back, his head snapping against the floor with a crack like a dropped cinder block. By the time I lifted myself off him he was already unconscious.
Behind me the fire was spreading. I had turned back to the flames, searching for Draper, when there was motion in the hallway behind me and a shot was fired through the air over my head.
I ducked and grabbed Cancerno’s Beretta as another shot was fired, this one blasting off part of the wall above me. Ramone must have found the revolver, because these shots were clearly rounds from a handgun and not slugs from his shotgun. I rolled onto my left shoulder and brought the Beretta up, looking for him. A shadow moved along the dark wall that separated the bar from the dining room, and I fired several shots in that direction. Then the shadow was gone, and I didn’t pursue. Draper was still pinned behind the bar, with the fire surging closer.
Crawling back to him from the way I’d come out was impossible now; the flames had devoured that end of the bar, the heat so intense I could only look with a sidelong glance, holding my arm up to shield my face. I ran around the front of the bar, switching the gun from my right hand to my left, then put my right palm on the surface of the bar and leaped, swinging myself over it, and onto the floor.
Draper was pulling furiously at his handcuffs, straining away from the fire that was now almost upon him. I ducked my head under the angled shelves and crawled to him. It was almost impossible to see anything now because I couldn’t keep my eyes open against the heat.
Relying on touch instead of sight, I felt for the handcuffs. The metal was hot when my fingers finally found it. I slid my free hand away, pressed the barrel of Cancerno’s Beretta against the thin central portion of the chain, and squeezed the trigger. Shards of metal and wood flew away, and I tugged at Draper’s hands, expecting them to come free. The cuffs held.
I put the muzzle of the gun back against the chain and fired again, and again. I was screaming until I choked on the acrid air. Unable to stand the heat anymore, I fell away, my hand still wrapped around Draper’s wrist. It took me a second to realize his wrist had come free with me.
Then we were on our feet and running out of the bar as flames surged behind us. Draper’s knees buckled and he started to go down, but I caught him and lifted him and then he seemed to find his balance. Clutching on to one another, we staggered out of the bar and into the dining room, which was also beginning to fill with smoke. The heavy front door loomed in front of us, and I hit it with my shoulder, but couldn’t get it to open. Draper found the bolt with one of his bloody hands, turned it, and then we fell forward, out of the bar, and onto the cool concrete of the front steps.
By now smoke was pouring out of the building, and windows ruptured with a soft popping noise that sounded harmless compared to the crackle of the flames. Draper and I scrambled out to the sidewalk on our hands and knees, gratefully gasping in breaths of fresh air. I tried to speak to him, but instead I fell onto my stomach, my chin bouncing off the concrete. I twisted onto my side on the cold, rough pavement of the sidewalk, watched the Hideaway burn, and waited for the sirens to begin.