Jeffrey Wright paced in a tight pattern, jingling the spare change in his pocket. The room was dark. Marvin Halliday’s jazz club, the Blue Moon, was still being built, and the light fixtures weren’t installed yet. The late afternoon sun cast dark shadows around the two men.
“We’ve got to do something,” Jeffrey told Marvin. “I can’t take the pressure anymore. And if you won’t help me, then I’ll do it myself.”
“Yeah?” a voice snarled behind Jeffrey. “You and what army?”
Jeffrey froze. He knew that voice. For a moment Marvin and Jeffrey locked eyes, sharing the same terrified look. Slowly—so that the goon behind him would know that he wasn’t about to try anything—Jeffrey turned.
There were three of them. All big. All smiling. Without a word, one guy took a sledgehammer and smashed a deep hole into the nearby painted pillar. Another knocked over a table, taking several chairs down with it.
Then there was the third guy, grinning.
Why is he just standing there? Jeffrey wondered. For one second Jeffrey didn’t understand what the sudden, searing pain in his arm was. Somehow he felt the bullet tearing into his flesh before he heard the gun go off.
From far away—so far away—Jeffrey heard Marvin shouting, and some crashing, and pop! pop! pop!
Jeffrey flung himself to the floor behind the toppled table. A volley of bullets ripped through it, splintered wood and paint chips raining down on him.
Someone’s got to hear this, he thought. Someone’s got to come in and stop it! He crawled toward the bar, desperate for cover.
There was a crash and glass flew everywhere. The window. Did they just throw Marvin out his own window?
Crawling was too slow. Jeffrey pulled himself up to a low crouch, clutching his burning left arm. The kitchen door was within reach. From there he’d run out the back. They wouldn’t gun him down in the street.
Of course they wouldn’t. Not when they could put his lights out forever right here.
Jeffrey fell forward, his chest thrust outward from the impact of the bullets in his back. He went down, his face smashing into the rubble strewn over the floor.
He thought he could hear his breath, ragged and full of pain. It sounded like a roar in his ears, like the ocean. Or maybe that was the sound of his blood rushing out of him.
Something landed near his face. A gun, still smoking.
That was the last thing he ever saw.