15

When I’d brushed myself free of dirt, I made my way around front.

Varga was just climbing into his Mercedes and the others were getting into their respective vehicles. I dashed from shadow to shadow and came right up to Varga’s door. Before his driver even knew that the shit had hit or what it smelled like, I had his boss’s door open and I dragged that fat gob out onto the grass. A couple kicks to the ribs and the fight drained out of him like piss through a leaky drainpipe.

I threw him up against the car just as the troops moved in.

But I already had my knife against his soft, white throat. “Tell them to fade or I’ll slit your throat,” I ordered him.

He made a few pathetic wheezing sounds. I pressed the knife home until a trickle of blood ran over my fingers. “Do it,” I said. “Tell ‘em all to get back in the house. The dead ones, too. Everyone.”

“You stupid-”

I kneed him in the kidneys and he yelped. “INTO THE FUCKING HOUSE!” he cried out. “ALL OF YOU!”

I watched them file in. Marianne’s little club…what was left of it. Then all of Varga’s hoods, at least twenty of them. Finally Quigg and the zombies carrying the bodies of Marianne and her boyfriend. In they went. The door closed.

“Any of ‘em come out of there,” I hissed, “and you die, understand?”

He shook his head carefully. “They won’t. Not until I come for ‘em.”

“You sure?” I said, pushing that cutter against his pipes.

“Yeah, I’m sure, tough guy.”

I dragged him up the drive and over to the wall.

Maybe my timing was a little off, because we’d barely made the wall when the fireworks began. There was a huge, rending explosion that pitched us to the grass. And the Tudor came apart like a house built of Popsicle sticks. Great sections of it vaporized as gouts of fire and rolling clouds of flame blasted through the windows and engulfed the roof. The air was raining charred wood and missiles of glass and burning fragments. They showered down all around us.

Varga sat up and just stared at his house, slowly shaking his head. “You sonofabitch,” he said, sounding like he needed to cry. “You dirty sonofabitch.”

I started laughing and couldn’t stop. “It’s all over, asshole. All of it.”

But then I wasn’t so sure. A huge figure stumbled out of the burning wreckage, lit up like Roman candle. He made it a few feet and fell into a blazing heap. You could’ve roasted wieners off him.

I figured it was Big Tony.

A few minutes later the fire department arrived along with dozens of nosy neighbors. There wasn’t much to do but watch it burn to ashes. They asked me and Varga questions, but we had no answers.

Finally, Tommy arrived. “Jesus H. Christ, Vince,” he said. “What in hell’s name did you do this time?”

He dragged me away to his car after warning the mob boss not to move. He gave me a belt of bourbon from his pocket flask, stuck a cigarette in my mouth, and waited. Just waited. It was going to be good and he knew it.

“Well?” he said. “You wanna tell me about it?”

“Depends,” I said, blowing smoke.

“On what?”

“On whether you like horror stories or not.” I took another drag. “Because if you do, Tommy, boy, have I got a beaut for you.”

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