Getting into the car, I finished the sentence. "And I said what I meant. One hundred percent."

While she drove, the woman talked. Robillard had set up the meeting in an empty Northern Chinese restaurant downtown that he had points in. It made me feel oddly uncomfortable, like he was trying to impress me. Like he was showing his connections and power. And pride and insecurity had never been a good combination in anyone I'd ever had to deal with.

We ended up in a neighborhood of redbrick buildings five or six storeys high with old woodwork and big pieces of wrought iron framing filthy panes of starred and cracked gla.s.s. Shards of paper blew across the sidewalks and gathered in eddies with leaves, empty paper cups, and cigarette b.u.t.ts raped of any shred of tobacco.

"This looks familiar."

She lit another cigarette, this time with the car's lighter. "Yeah. It should. This chunk of the city's been filmed like twenty million times."

I looked out the window and tapped the gla.s.s. "Sure."

"Framed with Sam Neill. with Sam Neill. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs Twilight of the Ice Nymphs. Acceptable Risk Acceptable Risk. The Adventures of Shirley Holmes The Adventures of Shirley Holmes."

I turned in my seat and looked at her quizzically. "Adventures of Shirley Holmes?"

"It was good."

I let it lie for a while but circled back to it. "Adventures of Shirley Holmes?"

"Drop it. Here we are."

She pulled into a tunnel in the middle of a block and drove halfway down until the walls opened up on either side and we could get out of the car. The woman took a big drag on the cigarette and snapped it away to bounce off the bricks, trailing sparks like the tail off a comet.

She asked casually, "You carrying?"

"No."

She looked at me indifferently as though she didn't believe me but let it pa.s.s anyway. Then I added, "Do I know you?"

"I used to be a hooker and you might have f.u.c.ked me. But I don't remember you."

"What's your name?"

"Sandra. Now, there's no need to be nervous here. Robillard just wants to talk."

"Right. Adventures of Shirley Holmes Adventures of Shirley Holmes. s.h.i.t."

She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips disapprovingly. "You ever watch it?"

"Well, no."

"So shut your mouth. It was good."

There was a heavy-gauge steel door set into the wall and Sandra knocked on it six times slowly before it was opened by a sullen teenage boy.

"Hiya, Sandy. Thank f.u.c.k you're here, your husband's being a k.n.o.b."

"Good afternoon, Tom, you're looking lovely today."

She looked at him and smiled at the corner of her mouth. The boy glanced at me and I saw he was carrying a thin-bodied, long-barreled Colt pistol level with his crotch. He tightened the grip on the pistol with one hand. I tried to break the ice.

"Hey, nice gun. Colt thirty-eight Super, right?"

The kid nodded half-heartedly.

"Great gun and a nice round. Good and fast. Especially for the thirties, when they started making it. Not so fast these days. Kinda old-fashioned."

The kid didn't cut me slack, just stared, so I tried again.

"Where's Robillard?"

Sandra turned halfway around to face me. "My husband's downstairs."

She walked in front of me down narrow stairs into the bas.e.m.e.nt underneath the building. I followed, then the kid. Halfway down the stairs I sneezed and it echoed loudly. "Stupid allergy."

Sandra led us into a large kitchen floored with industrial gray tiles and full of stainless steel tables, counters, and equipment. In the center of the room was a perforated metal lid over a drain and I knew that this place could be a killing room just as easy as not. The drain could carry away my blood as easy as anything else.

Looking up from the drain, I saw a fattish white man. He wore a maroon silk shirt over khaki pants and held a tall can of Olympic Ale in one meaty hand. He waved the can around when he talked and some slopped into the air and fell like molten gold to the tiled floor.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Haaviko, is it? Or do you prefer Parker?"

"Parker."

"Excellent. Do you know who I am?"

He sounded reasonable. I took two steps into the room and waited while the kid with the Colt closed the door and leaned up against it. Sandra took three steps to the right and hitched herself up onto a platform beside a heavy cutting block.

"Robillard. You're a crook."

He nodded, like I was a good student. "Excellent. Yes, I am. I own parts of three or four restaurants, two garages, a pool hall, some other businesses. I smuggle, I fence, I grow and distribute weed, I lend money, I arrange for people to get hurt. I am telling you all this as a courtesy so we know where we're at."

My eyes went to Sandra and then back to him. "You a pimp too?"

His smile flickered like a neon light. A tremor ran through his face and subsided and his voice got louder. "No."

He drank some beer and I saw his hand tremble a little until some beer splashed out. For a second the drops were suspended in the air and then they hit the ground.

"Sandra's my wife. You should apologize."

Emphasis on my my. I nodded to her and spoke very softly. "Sorry."

Robillard paused for a moment and then ran his free hand through his hair. "I am not the worst man in the city, nor am I the best. I am not a shark amongst minnows. I am a shark amongst other sharks. We all have sharp teeth and I am not to be f.u.c.ked with."

The tremors in his hands came again, stronger this time, and he took a deep breath and slowly they stopped. "Yet you are f.u.c.king with me."

The way he spoke, the obscenity was in brackets and sounded like a preacher telling a dirty joke. It sounded out of place.

"This is about your cousin, I suppose?"

"You suppose right. Your actions show contempt."

The kid with the Colt shifted around a little and Sandra stared at a point on the wall above my head. Robillard went on, his voice smooth now. "And if you show me contempt, then it makes it harder for me to follow my chosen profession. I will appear weak. Some other shark will try me out. Which would lead to violence. Which would lead to bloodshed. Which no one wants."

He waited for me to say something but I didn't.

"So I really should kill you. To prove that I am not weak."

"That's an option."

His eye twitched and the tremors came back for a second. I could swear I saw Sandra hide a grin.

"What do you mean?" Robillard's voice was throaty now, full of anger.

"I'm hard to kill. Find another option."

Without making a big deal about it, I moved to the right and turned so I could see the door and the kid with the Colt out of the corner of my eye. The woman tilted her head to the side like this whole thing was amusing her and now the smile was in the open. Robillard went on, this time talking to me and then switching to Sandra. While he talked, he opened another beer from a six-pack on the counter.

"I've decided I do not want to talk to you."

She sneezed.

"I want this man dead ..."

I interrupted. " 'Kay. Before we do that, hear my side. Your cousin broke into my home with his friends and they were killed."

Robillard took a swig of beer and a trail of translucent snot ran out his nose into the foam on his upper lip. He was trembling openly now, big, hard slabs of fat shaking with strong emotion and something else, an upper like cocaine or speed fanning his flames. His right hand rested right beside his front pocket, which bulged like it would if it was holding a gun. Of course, he could be holding a cell phone or a wallet but my money was on a gun.

I continued, "You would have done the same thing."

Click-click. The kid with the Colt moved the safety on and off again and again. The woman watched what was going on and Robillard raised his voice to a yell. "f.u.c.k that and f.u.c.k you. You killed him for no good G.o.dd.a.m.ned reason."

Sandra sneezed again.

Click-click. The kid, it was getting annoying.

"Sorry."

Could that be what he wanted, an apology? I tried that. "Look, I'm sorry he's dead."

Robillard screamed, any semblance of patience gone. "That's not f.u.c.king important!"

"Then what is?"

"Respect. You don't show me no f.u.c.king respect."

I had shifted weight and was looking over Robillard's head to examine my reflection in a hanging rack of stainless steel frying pans.

Click-click. The kid had a real nervous twitch going on.

"f.u.c.k this." I said it out loud and everyone stared. The kid had come slightly closer and was surprised when I pivoted with my weight on my right foot with my left foot guiding. I had brought my right hand in close to my chest and drove it out open-handed to turn his nose into jelly. At the same time, I grabbed the Colt by the barrel with my left hand and then reversed the motion and handed the gun to my right hand. I thumbed the hammer back and checked the safety blindly with the same thumb. Then I pointed it in the general direction of Robillard.

"Don't!" I said it mildly and Robillard stopped. Drinking. Talking. Even breathing.

"You too." That was directed at Sandra, who had drawn a slim pistol out from somewhere and she froze as well. She laid the pistol down on the counter and I relaxed a little before going on like nothing had happened.

"So did I kill your guy back there or is he just f.u.c.ked up?"

Robillard's eyes were focused on the barrel of the gun. His beer fell to the ground and bounced once and the fluid boiled out.

"I said, is he dead?"

Stepping back a little, I found I could see the boy in my peripheral vision. He was collapsed against the door with his left hand pressed hard against where his nose had been. From around his fingers I could see pink meat and white bone and the healthy red of arterial blood. His nose, though, was gone. Shock had taken him away and Sandra finally answered. "Bad but not dead."

"Oh well."

I backed up to the boy and patted him down to find two extra magazines and a cheap folding knife. As I was doing that Sandra flexed her fingers and Robillard reached down towards his pocket. Both stopped moving when I shook my head.

"Neither of you is nearly fast enough. You got a good boy here, you know that?"

They didn't respond and I walked over to the woman and took her gun. Up close I was struck by how much prettier she was than I'd originally thought. She was also eerily calm. Her gun was a Colt Woodsman in .22 with a six-inch barrel and the front sight filed off. A killer's gun. Something for someone who liked working up close and who had confidence. Normally, a .22 is a useless round, you have to be really arrogant to use it. Or you have to hate the noise and recoil of a bigger gun. Or you have to have read too many detective novels.

As I took her gun I told her, "Nothing personal."

She nodded and I got out of her s.p.a.ce and moved over to Robillard and took his piece too before moving back. He had been packing a big Smith and Wesson revolver in .41 magnum with the barrel cut down to the cylinder and the handle wrapped in black electrician's tape. Inaccurate. Loud. Destructive.

I went back to where I'd been and covered them both with her piece and the kid's Colt. Robillard's gun went into my back pocket just in case I wanted to kill a whale later on.

"Now," I reached Robillard in two steps, "our discussion is over."

He looked hard and drug-fueled rage opened and closed his mouth until I pressed the barrel of the Colt .22 into his eye and he backed up, and then pressed some more until he backed and finally stopped when he hit the inst.i.tutional gray wall.

"Stay out of my way or you die. Stay away from my family or you die. If you interfere with me, you die. You try to do anything that affects me personally in even the smallest way and you die."

With each word I jabbed a little harder into Robillard's eye and then I stopped and headed up the stairs. At the top I booked it down the alley, stopping for a second to open the hood and tear a handful of wires loose from Sandra's car. A few alleys over, I wiped down the three guns on a piece of canvas sticking out of a garbage can and dropped them one at a time into trash cans and down sewer gratings.

On the bus home I wondered about Shirley Holmes.

16.

When I walked into the house both my knees were immediately bruised black by a charging dog's head. After I had untangled a very happy Renfield from my lower torso and stopped him from loving me to death, I called out, "Hi, honey, I'm home. What's for dinner?"

"Very funny and very original."