I thought everyone was dead.
The offices of Harland and Sinton, attorneys-at-law, looked like a war zone. I could taste blood in my mouth, probably from the table tumbling over on top of me. The metallic taste mixed with the smell of burnt acid rising from the spent cartridges rattling around on the floor. A fat moon illuminated ghostly trails of smoke that seemed to rise from the floor and evaporate just as I caught sight of them. My left ear felt as though it were filled with water, but I knew I’d merely been deafened from the gunfire. In my right hand I held a government-issue Glock 19. I moved around the table, and in the firelight from the smoldering carpet, I saw Sinton crawl across the floor, reaching for a gun. Without another thought, I pointed the Glock at him and fired. The bullet took him in the thigh, and he rolled over. His rasping, blood-slicked breath gave out. There was already a mass of bullet wounds in his chest. I took comfort from that. I hadn’t killed him—he’d been dead already.
The Glock was now empty. Sinton’s legs had fallen across the stomach of the corpse next to him and, in a curious moment of realization, I noticed that the bodies on the floor of the conference room all seemed to reach out to one another. I didn’t look at each one; I couldn’t bring my eyes to bear on their dead faces. I saw the treasury agents, Patton and the man in the sunglasses. Dell’s victims. I looked around for Kennedy, but I didn’t see him.
My breath came in short bursts that had to fight their way through the clamp of adrenaline threatening to crush my chest. The chill wind from the broken window behind me began to dry the sweat on the back of my neck. The glass partition that moments before had separated the reception area from the conference room lay in thick, beady chunks on the floor.
The digital clock on the wall hit 20:00 as I saw my killer.
I couldn’t see a face or even a body; my killer took shelter in a dark corner of the conference room. Green, white, and gold flashes from the fireworks bursting over Times Square sent patterns of light into the room at odd angles that momentarily illuminated a small pistol held by a seemingly disembodied gloved hand. That hand held a Ruger LCP. Even though I couldn’t see my killer, the gun told me a lot. The Ruger held six nine-millimeter rounds. It was small enough to fit into the palm of your hand and weighed less than a good steak. Three possibilities leaped to mind.
Three possible shooters.
This was Dell’s piece. Maybe he’d found it.
I hadn’t seen El Grito’s body. He could’ve picked up the gun, or brought it with him.
A third possibility: Dell’s lover.
No way to persuade any one of them to drop the gun.
Considering the last two days I’d had in court, they all had a good reason to kill me. I had an idea about which one it might be, but right then it didn’t seem to matter somehow.
The Ruger’s barrel angled toward my chest.
I closed my eyes, feeling strangely calm. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. Somehow this last breath of air didn’t feel right. It felt as if I’d been cheated. Even so, I filled my lungs with the smoke and the metallic tang that dwelt long after a shooting.
I didn’t hear the shot, just a dull thump, which couldn’t have been a gunshot. My eyes were tightly shut, so I didn’t see the muzzle flash—I only felt the bullet ripping into my flesh. That fatal shot had become inevitable from the very moment I’d made the deal to persuade David to plead guilty in exchange for Christine’s immunity.
My pants felt wet and warm. I guessed it was my blood.
Only then did I hear the shot; it sounded like a bullwhip cracking.
Instantly, I knew that sound was different—it wasn’t the deafening thump of muzzle blast from the bullet and its gas propellant exiting the bore. This was the sound of the bullet breaking the sound barrier. I knew I wouldn’t hear the shot because the shooter was too far away. He was in the building across the street, behind a “for rent” sign with an M2 sniper rifle, one of his favorite toys. He’d watched Christine from the Corbin Building, and if anyone had tried to take her out, he’d take their head off with one squeeze of the trigger.
I opened my eyes. The Ruger was no longer there; neither was the gloved hand. A bloodied stump of bone and matter, the hand taken clean off by the Lizard’s shot. I heard the scream then. A woman’s voice, yet deep and agonized. She stepped forward, into the moonlight, and Sophie Blanc raised a Glock with her other hand.
I’d thought everyone was dead.
I was wrong.
Four quick shots. Her body crumpled to the floor.
I turned and saw Kennedy leaning out from behind a couch.
The pain in my chest grew from something similar to a burning cut into an ice pick plunged through my rib cage. I forced myself to look down. There was no bullet wound. Instead, the slide from the Ruger protruded from my chest. The handgun had been torn apart by the hollow-point boat tail fired from the Lizard’s sniper rifle. I guessed that the gun part was maybe six inches long, and most of it was buried in my chest.
I don’t remember falling, but I recall Kennedy shouting my name. And then Weinstein was in the room beside Kennedy. His head framed in the blare of the fireworks.
“Eddie, stay with us. We got ’em. We got ’em all. We heard it all on your call,” said Kennedy.
I hadn’t disconnected Kennedy’s call. Instead I’d put the phone on the conference table and let Dell talk.
“Your wife’s safe. So is David. It’s okay. Paramedics are on their way…”
My head wouldn’t stay upright. It kept flopping to my left. Each time it did, I saw Dell’s body, the top of his head missing. The Lizard would have taken out Dell first. Beside him I saw El Grito’s corpse, his dead eyes staring at me.
I heard Kennedy hollering for the paramedics.
And I lost my battle for the light.
EXTRACT FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18.
The New York Police Department has released some of the names of the individuals who lost their lives in a bloody gun battle that took place yesterday evening in the heart of corporate Manhattan. Lester William Dell, 54, and Sophie Blanc, 31, were law enforcement officers working with the Treasury Department. Eli Patton, 28, Joel Friend, 29, and Sonny Ferrar were agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Gerald Sinton, 49, was a named partner in Harland and Sinton, one of America’s most respected law firms. His partner, Benjamin Harland, lost his life in a boating accident just two days before. Police sources believe the two incidents are not linked. One dead man, believed to have links to the Rosa Cartel, has not yet been named. And finally, criminal defense attorney Eddie Flynn, 37, also lost his life. The district attorney’s office has yet to fix a date for a grand jury hearing into the murder of Clara Reece. No official statement has been issued on why this violent episode occurred.