When Kelson parked in front, the cars that tailed him stopped in the middle of the street. ‘One thing at a time,’ Kelson said, and stared at the two-flat. The downstairs was dark, but lights shined from the upstairs windows. He thought he saw movement inside one of the rooms, so he dialed Stevens’s home number and, when no one picked up, tried his cell.
Nothing.
He removed the magazine from Rodman’s pistol, rolled it in his hand, and slid it back in. He climbed the steps to Stevens’s front door. No one got out of the other cars.
Kelson rang the doorbell and listened. Although many people were heeding the police warnings to stay off the street, the sound of traffic filtered in from a block away, and then a siren whined over the traffic. The Buick and the Chevy idled nearby. ‘Like purring kittens,’ Kelson said.
He rang the bell again.
When no one came, he tried the door handle.
It turned – unlocked.
He backed away from the door, stepping down to the front walk. He glanced at the idling cars, then watched the upstairs windows. Nothing moved. So he called Rodman, who was still a half mile from Nancy’s house.
‘Lights are on,’ he said. ‘No one’s answering. Door’s unlocked.’
‘Don’t do it,’ Rodman said. ‘Call Dan Peters.’
‘Good idea,’ Kelson said.
‘I mean it,’ Rodman said. ‘You walk in there, you don’t know who’s waiting.’
‘Only one way to find out.’
‘Actually, that’s not true,’ Rodman said. ‘A couple of dozen cops can go in through the front and the back. They can knock down the walls if they want.’
‘That would work too.’
‘Hang on,’ Rodman said. ‘I’m calling Peters.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t go in.’
But then, without pulling from the middle of the street, Nuñez’s two men climbed out of the Buick, and Nuñez himself climbed from the Chevy Impala. All three carried pistols. As if they’d practiced such things, they chambered bullets at the same moment and drifted toward Kelson.
‘Tell Peters to hurry, will you?’ Kelson said to Rodman. Then he hung up, climbed the front steps, and went into the house.
The downstairs hall was dark and cool. It smelled like a place where no one had ever lived. Kelson listened, then told the darkness, ‘Nothing and—’ He yelled Toselli’s name. He listened. ‘No one.’
As Nuñez and his men came up the front steps outside, Kelson found the bannister in the dark and inched up the stairs. He said, ‘If you’re up there, Toselli, I’m coming – I wish I was anywhere but – I’m coming. And, Stevens, if you’re there and can’t speak, there’s not much I can do but I’ll do it.’ He came to the top stair and stopped. He could choose between two brightly lighted rooms toward the front of the house and two dark rooms in back. He moved toward the lighted one where he thought he’d seen movement from outside.
The doorway led into a master bedroom decorated in grays and browns. At one end there was a fireplace, a leather divan, and a thick rug. A black-bladed ceiling fan turned lazily. A king-size bed stood across from the fireplace. In the middle of the mattress, Stevens lay curled on his side.
Kelson heard the front door swing open downstairs, but he spoke to Stevens. ‘Hey?’
Stevens didn’t respond.
Kelson went to him.
A bullet hole – so tiny and precise it could’ve been made with an awl – descended through Stevens’s ear canal. A shot straight into the brain.
Kelson yelled, ‘Toselli, you bastard.’
A voice answered from downstairs.
Then more than one voice.
Then an eruption of shouting – in English, in Spanish, shouting, rage.
Then gunfire – an enormous explosion of ammunition, half a house away from Kelson but as ferocious and extraordinary as when he and Bicho shot each other in a Ravenswood alley.
Footsteps retreated out the front door and down the outside steps. Kelson moved to the front window and watched Nuñez and his men scrambling across the sidewalk into the street. Nuñez dragged a leg as if he’d taken a bullet in the hip. One of his men bled from the neck.
Toselli came out after them and stopped on the sidewalk. As Nuñez and his men leaned for their cars, Toselli raised his gun and squared his shoulders.
He shot.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
A spot of blood burst from the back of one of Nuñez’s men, then the other, then Nuñez. They fell face down on the concrete.
Kelson knew then that Toselli had saved him again. But he knew something else, and Toselli confirmed it by turning from the men he’d killed and staring up at the window where Kelson watched. Toselli pointed up at him and said, loudly enough for him to hear through the glass, ‘Not them. Me.’ Kelson knew Toselli had saved him only to kill him.
Toselli ran toward the house, and Kelson heard footsteps on the stairs.
He’d expected this moment. He would stand by Stevens’s bed and exchange gunfire with Toselli. One or both of them would fall. He would never learn whether he or Bicho shot first – but now he didn’t care.
He yelled, ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ There was joy in that realization. Bicho shot at him and he shot at Bicho. Bicho died … and that was as it should be. Kelson lived … and that was as it should be too. He yelled again, ‘Who the fuck cares?’ Then he realized something else. Not only did he remain alive after Bicho shot him, but he really, really liked living. Which presented another problem.
So he ran across the room and hid in the closet. He crouched low to the floor – almost, like Stevens, fetal.
He heard Toselli stop at the doorway and look in, then move to the other rooms. From the other side of a wall that the closet shared with the hallway, Toselli called out, ‘Kelson?’
If Kelson could have torn out his own tongue, he would have. If he could have bitten into his own flesh and silenced himself – if his damaged brain …
‘Kelson?’ Toselli yelled again. ‘Where’d you go, my friend?’
Like a child playing hide-and-seek and unable to contain his excitement, Kelson answered. ‘Here.’
For a moment, there was silence. Then Toselli spoke from the other side of the wall. ‘You know how this works now, don’t you?’ He spoke as if still whispering in Kelson’s apartment, as if Sue Ellen had never interrupted.
Kelson answered through the wall, in a voice as quiet as Toselli’s. ‘You’re a real bastard.’
For another moment, there was silence as Kelson waited for an answer. Then bullets blasted the wall, punching holes where Kelson’s chest would have been if he’d stood. Dust snowed on him from the wallboard. Toselli squirted another dozen shots, then ran to the doorway and into the bedroom.
As Toselli came to the closet, Kelson stood and threw his shoulder against the cratered wall. He tumbled through into the hallway. As he crawled away, more gunshots blasted from Toselli’s automatic.
Kelson scrambled to his feet and ran up the hall. Toselli yelled after him – his name – something else he meant to send him to hell – Kelson didn’t know what – he couldn’t hear – his head was screaming an insane music. Gun in hand, hand on gun – so tight the skin could’ve grafted to the metal – he went to the bedroom doorway and rounded into the room.
Toselli was groping at the hole Kelson fell through.
Kelson aimed the Smith & Wesson at his old friend’s back.
Toselli smashed the wallboard with his gun butt. Then he realized he’d outsmarted himself. He pulled himself from the closet, stood straight, and turned to face Kelson.
‘Ha,’ Toselli said.
Kelson shot him in the head.