‘You really don’t know? Mario didn’t tell you this?’ A bitter laugh. ‘It’s so typical. He’s always doing things like this, leaving it for me to clean up after him.’
‘Tell me,’ Hardy said.
In her calm hysteria she kept the gun trained on Hardy’s chest.
Her body shifted, its language terrifying. He thought she would pull the trigger now, that it was over. He sucked in a breath.
‘There was that bomb scare, that day, Friday. A little before lunchtime. You knew about that, of course.’
He nodded.
‘When they cleared the building, the courthouse, Mario was out in the alley with his staff. Suddenly Sal is there, pulling him aside, all in a panic, telling Mario he’s got to get the money together, the money isn’t in his safe. He’s thinking Mario took it back somehow. He tells him if he doesn’t get it back, he’s going to spread the word about the fire. He won’t keep quiet any longer.’
She lowered her voice, but not the gun. ‘Don’t you see, Mr Hardy? He would have destroyed Mario’s name. Which is all we have, all we’ve worked for all these years, Mario’s reputation with his peers. And to let that senile bum threaten it? No, he had to be stopped. I couldn’t let him bring Mario down. Sal wasn’t anybody. He was dead anyway.’
‘So your husband called you after he went back inside?’
She nodded. ‘He thought Sal had simply misplaced the money – taken it out of the safe, put it somewhere else and forgotten where. So he went back up to Sal’s room with him, to look for it. Can you believe the risk he took doing that? Anyone might have seen him and remembered. Then, when Mario couldn’t find any money, Sal went off at him. Mario yelled back.’
Another tumbler fell into place: Blue’s testimony, before her nap, the male voice in Sal’s apartment. It had been Giotti after all.
But his wife was going on, the gun still trained on Hardy’s chest. ‘After he got back to his chambers, he called and told me what had just happened. And still, he tried to tell me it was all right. Sal was just having a bad day. How could he believe that? How could he not see?’
‘So what did you decide to do?’
‘I didn’t know exactly. Not when I left to go there. Something, though. I was going to stop him. I brought this gun with me, just in case, but then there was the morphine out on the table. So much quieter and cleaner. I knew how to administer injections. One of my children is diabetic – I knew to put it in the vein. There was this heavy whiskey bottle. Sal never felt anything. I just knocked at his door and he let me in and we talked a minute, just like you and me now. And everything was there, laid out for me. As though God wanted me to do it, wanted to help me.’
With a jolt of terror Hardy realized that he’d led her to her moment. God had provided in this case as welclass="underline" the building empty except for him. The open door. The cover of darkness for her escape.
It would be her second perfect crime.
He thought of a final question. ‘Does your husband know?’
It wasn’t really a laugh. It was too derisive. ‘Mario? How could I tell him? He’s a good man, a judge. He believes in justice. He doesn’t understand that sometimes you have to act, not pass some abstract judgment.’
‘So what does he think happened? That it was just his good luck?’
‘He believes it was Graham. I think you convinced him. For which I thank you.’
This was her closing statement. Hardy could feel it.
The notion came to him – an instinct, far less than a thought or an idea. There was no time to analyze how good it was. In despair, his last effort, trying not to give it away with his upper body, he moved his foot under the desk and kicked a leg of it, producing a wooden thud.
This was going to have to be fast if he was to have a prayer.
‘What was that?’ She had to take her eyes off him for an instant. If he could make her do that…
‘Maybe you forgot to lock the downstairs door behind you too.’
Her head began to turn, and only slightly. It was going to have to be enough. Hardy lunged for his banker’s lamp as she fired. He went rolling with it over, then off, the desk. The lamp crashed to the floor, plunging the room into darkness as the sound of more gunfire exploded in his ears and he knew in the blinding flash of pain, God, he’d been hit. A third shot. Another.
It was his leg, below the knee. Here came another shot. She wasn’t wasting any time. He felt her steps on the floor, the vibrations through it. She was coming toward him as he lay.
The only light now with the lamp broken, and it wasn’t much, came from the dimmers in the hallway outside his door. Fighting the shock and pain, he pulled his back up against the wood and the cover the desk barely provided. When he looked up, her form was there above him. Even in the darkness he could see the arm coming down. He was on his side, his back pressed against the side of the desk.
With no hesitation she fired again. The lick of flame across his belly.
He didn’t want to die like this.
Aiming for a last shot to finish him, she finally made a mistake, coming too close. She was now within his reach, and he grabbed for her near foot, catching her at the ankle, bringing his other hand up around her leg.
He pulled as hard as he could, twisting her foot as he did. She screamed and fell in a heap next to him.
The gun hit the floor and went off again. He couldn’t risk letting go of her leg, even for a second, but began pulling himself up her struggling body, arm over arm. He could feel a weakness spreading in him, but he couldn’t give in to that. He had to manage to hold on to her.
She was pounding her fists on his head and shoulders, screaming at him. ‘No! No! No!’ Rolling over onto something hard, he felt the gun and grabbed for it, getting it into his hand, then rolling away.
‘I’ve got the gun,’ he said. ‘Don’t move. It’s over.’
‘No!’ She kicked out in his direction. It wasn’t over for her. She wasn’t going to let him take her, not alive. The shadow of her came at him with all her strength, hit him full in the chest, knocking him backward again, grabbing for the gun.
His leg, as he tried to kick her off him, wouldn’t do what he asked it to. When he twisted to get at her, his stomach stabbed at him. He screamed involuntarily at the pain, but she was a wild animal over him, scratching at his face, lunging for the weapon in his left hand.
He had no other option, his strength and mobility were ebbing away. He snapped the gun up, feeling it connect with flesh and bone – the side of her head. It stunned her briefly and without any reflection he brought the gun up again, connected with flesh and she collapsed to the floor.
He had to get to a light, a phone, get some distance on her. With all he had left, he pushed her off him.
Then wasn’t sure he could get up at all. His leg wasn’t responding. His stomach prevented any turning of his torso.
But he had to.
Pulling himself up by the corner of the desk, he finally got his dead leg pulled over to his doorway and hit the light switch. Pat Giotti was already moving again, coming to.
‘Don’t. Don’t move!’ he gasped at her.
She was wearing black spandex leggings and a black nylon windbreaker and there was blood – his blood, he realized – all over her. He couldn’t get a breath. Hyperventilating, he kept the gun trained on her as he hobbled his way across to the desk again. Knocking the receiver off, he pushed 911, picked the receiver up again.
‘Stay back!’ It was all he could get out.
But she’d gotten to her knees now, again, less than five feet from where, shakily, he stood.
He had the telephone receiver in one hand, the gun in the other. When the operator answered, Hardy started to say his name. Consciousness was fading. He gasped to try to fill his lungs.
At that moment she leapt at him again, for the gun, over the desk.
He’d been wounded twice and had lost a deal of blood already, and she had only been stunned and now seemed to have regained all of her strength. With the adrenaline driving her, it was considerable.