Personal

Bennett looked at me, and at Charlie, and at Nice, and then he shrugged and stepped back to where he had been before, by the window, and as he got there the busted door crashed open and a man with a gun stepped in, followed immediately by another, the hut suddenly hot and cramped, six of us in there, and then it got worse. A leg the size of a tree trunk appeared, bent at the knee, and a massive shoulder, and a bent back, and a lowered head, way down under the lintel, where it said Bowling Club outside, and then Little Joey was right there in front of us, in the hut, upright, nearly seven feet tall, the pent of the roof exactly framing his massive head and shoulders.

FIFTY

JOEY’S HUGE BULK pushed his two guys forward, and we didn’t have room to retreat, so we ended up all packed together like in a subway car, which meant contact between us and them was made early, with one of Joey’s guys pressing up against Casey Nice, and seizing her elbow, and moving her in front of him, presumably with his gun in her back, and the other guy doing the same thing to Bennett, so I had no snap shot. The Glock stayed in my pocket. There was nothing I could do at all, except get a crick in my neck.

Up close and personal Joey was worse than I had feared. He was nothing like the athletes I had seen, years before, from visiting colleges on the West Point campus, the football players and the basketball teams. Those guys had been immense, but quiet and focused and above all contained, as if their frontal lobes were fully in command. Joey didn’t look that way. He was the furthest thing possible from a small nervous guy, but he was twitching and throbbing with the same kinds of spasms. He looked deranged. His eyes were buried deep and his lower lip was hanging down over his absent chin. His teeth were wet. His right foot was tapping on the floor. His left hand was bunched in a fist, and his right hand was arched open, completely rigid.

He looked at Charlie White first, and then he looked away. He looked at Casey Nice, up, down, and then at me, the same, up, down, and then at Bennett, right into his eyes, and he said, ‘You think I didn’t notice the fence blew down? And the tree? You think I’m stupid? You think you’re the only one who can afford night-vision binoculars? We thought you’d gone. But we checked anyway. And look what we found.’

No reply from Bennett. I recognized both of Joey’s guys. They had been in the little supermarket’s parking lot. The security cordon, from the black Jaguar. Two of the four. The pick of the litter. Next to their boss they looked like miniature humans. I assumed the other two were out in the lot. In the cold and the dark. I assumed the driver was still with the Bentley, at the far end of the yard-wide footpath. I put my hands in my pockets. On the right I had the Glock, and on the left I had the linoleum knife. I glanced out the window at the shadowy contours of the street four hundred yards away, and I hoped Kott didn’t have a night-vision scope on his rifle. He could have chosen which eye to plug me through.

Behind me Charlie White said, ‘Joey, get me out of here, will you?’

But Joey didn’t answer right away, which gave me a glimmer of hope. Maybe he was setting foot on a road that might lead somewhere useful. It’s a DNA thing. Like rats.

Behind me Charlie said, ‘They’re armed, Joey. They have guns and knives.’

Joey nodded, an inch down, an inch up, which looked millimetric, given his bulk. The guy with Bennett let go of his elbow and started patting his pockets. He came out with the switchblade, now closed up again, and a SIG-Sauer automatic, a P226, I thought, favoured by Special Forces everywhere. Then the guy with Casey Nice did the same thing, and out came her Glock, and her linoleum knife, and finally her pill bottle, its lone occupant rattling quietly. Joey held out his hand, the size of a trash-can lid, and the guy put the bottle in it, and Joey held it between a huge finger and a huge thumb, and he brought it up close to his face, and he said, ‘Who is Antonio Luna?’

Casey Nice started once, and started again, and said, ‘A friend of mine.’

‘Are you addicted?’

Nice paused a beat and said, ‘I’m trying not to be.’

Joey used a thumbnail the size of a golf ball and popped the lid, which fell away to the floor, and he upended the bottle into his palm, where the lone pill looked tiny.

He said, ‘Do you want it?’

Casey Nice didn’t answer.

‘Do you?’

No answer.

‘You do, don’t you?’

No answer.

Joey slammed his palm to his mouth, and he swallowed the pill.

He dropped the bottle on the floor.

Charlie White said, ‘Joey, come on.’

Joey reached out an arm the size of a tree limb and nudged his guys aside, one way and the other, making them haul Nice tight against the wall and Bennett tight against the window, elbows around their necks, guns visible now, aimed at me, Browning High Powers from Belgium.

I took my hands out of my pockets.