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  The four men meeting with Bucky had to be Saudis tied to the group that had bought and killed this old street, and who were vying to kill a lot more streets, maybe in this very town. The thought flashed through my mind that these bastards might be planning to turn this building itself into a bomb, to assemble their weapon right in this basement in this forgotten stretch of urban landscape in the middle of everything.

  Only, they had that specially rigged van out there. And the two muscle men with work boots and gloves on. So they were here to load up the atomic cube and make for points unknown — say, Florida....

  Bucky was on his hands and knees in the dirt, leaning over the massive safe, which had so many years ago been buried on its back in the basement of a gangster’s lair. He was down in the dirt in more ways than one, selling his soul and his country out to a bunch of slobs who weren’t satisfied with all that oil money, no. They had to take out the infidels, too. Hell, weren’t we their best customers? Hadn’t we paid for those black leather jackets with the matching pants these clowns were modeling?

  Of course, we couldn’t offer them seventy virgins in heaven or Valhalla or wherever the hell they thought they were headed. Scrounging up seventy virgins in the big city at this stage was a stretch....

  After the twisting and clicking of the combination dial, Bucky worked the latch and, standing with one foot on the dirt and another on the lower edge of the iron safe, yanked and the door yawned open with a creak worthy of a haunted house.

  And all four of Bucky’s houseguests leaned forward, throwing shadows in the Coleman light, agape with anticipation: now they could see down in, behold what the old safe held.

  So could I, from my perch on the third step.

  Nothing.

  The damn thing was empty!

  Bucky’s head whirled, his eyes wide with shock and fear, and the shorter black-leather Saudi slapped him with a nine millimeter that sent the traitor tumbling down into the open safe.

  And Bucky was on his back like a bug.

  “What happened to the item we purchased, Mr. Mohler?” This was the other Saudi, the taller one. No emotion on the surface of the bass voice but something constricted it down low. “Where has our purchase gone?”

  “I don’t know, I tell you! I don’t know! Somebody beat me to it — stole the damn thing from under us! You think I’d invite you guys here if—”

  The gunshot sounded weird — like the voices, it didn’t as much echo as cause a minor tremor in the ancient rafters. Dust and grime drifted down like dirty snow. The big lead box Bucky was down in gave up a kind of metallic mini-echo, but that was mostly drowned out by Bucky screaming.

  Getting shot in the knee will make a man do that.

  Scream.

  The smaller Saudi said calmly, “Who did you tell? You compromised this purchase, at the minimum. Who did you tell, Mr. Mohler?”

  Well, I couldn’t have them killing the punk. Bucky still knew things I didn’t. And as much as I wouldn’t have minded seeing a guy who would sell out a city getting another kneecap or maybe his gonads shot off, I had to put a stop to this.

  I came clattering halfway down the reinforced steps, not trying to be quiet at all, pointed t... .45 and yelled, “NYPD! Weapons down, hands up!”

  But every one of them got stupid. All at once stupid, if not exactly otherwise coordinated — they turned toward me, looking almost red in the lantern light, and went for their guns and by all rights one of them should have been fast enough.

  I took the little leather-jacket one out first — both he and the taller Saudi were on my left, with the burly boys at right, Bucky squirming on his back down between them. By shooting the short one first, exploding his head like a melon with a forehead-center... .45 that splashed the taller one with gore, I distracted tallboy for the fraction of a second I needed to give him the same skull-shattering treatment.

  Neither one had fallen by the time I swung t... .45 onto the bigger, slower brutes, who were digging in their waistbands for Glocks, their hands clumsy in the work gloves. Still, the one closest to me almost had his rod out.

  There wasn’t time for anything fancy — I just unloaded t... .45 on them, head and torso alike, one bullet squirting the juice out of the bald one’s left eye, the ponytail guy losing an ear before catching a hell of a heart shot and they collided with each other doing their stringless puppet routine, tumbling in a bloody pile-up.

  The rafters shook and dust and dirt rained down and the blood on the dirt floor draining from shattered skulls and punctured organs was already seeping and soaking in, shiny and glittery, black not red.

  Blood mist and cordite were mingling as I took my time coming down the steps, putting a new clip in just in case reinforcements showed.

  “Doctor!” Bucky was yelling, having a spasmodic fit down in his iron box.

  “I’m not your doctor,” I said, “but here’s what I prescribe for you, Bucky.”

  And I clanged the door shut on him.

  His muffled screams made me smile.

  A minute or so later, I opened the safe and leaned down in and stuck t... .45 in his face. “Selling a nuke to terrorists, Bucky — new low even for you.”

  “Shooter? Shooter! Don’t do it, don’t do it....”

  “I have to, Bucky.”

  “Don’t do it!”

  “I said I have to. Much as I want to kill your greedy ass, I’m going to haul you up and out and get you a doctor.”

  “God bless you, Captain! God bless you....”

  “Why, Bucky — did I sneeze? But if you don’t talk, and tell me every damn thing I want to know, after I get you to a medic? The only blessing you’ll get is a death as quick as these bastards got.”

  I didn’t call 911 — I called Sgt. Davy Ross. While Bucky and I were waiting down in that cellar of death for his ambulance and my cop pal, I gave him enough first aid on the shot-up knee to get by. I had him sit on the edge of the open safe. It stank of vacated bowels in that dank space and, in that orange Coleman glow, it was a hellish atmosphere that even got to me a little. But it really got to Bucky.

  He passed out and I’d have to wait to ask him my questions. That was okay. Even if he was faking, I didn’t figure he was in shape for much of a getaway run.

  Chapter Ten

  Bucky really rated.

  Ross arranged him a private room at Bellevue’s prison ward. There, in a bed where his shot-up bandaged leg was elevated, Bucky was feeling no pain, thanks to the medics pumping him full of junk.

  Not that Bucky didn’t feel the weight of his circumstances. That smirk of his was gone, and I didn’t figure after he finally got back on his feet he’d ever have that same swagger old Bessie recognized.

  “I’ll cooperate,” he said. He was cranked up in the bed enough to be able to look right at me and the police sergeant standing at his bedside. “I’ll give you the names of those Saudis, every damn one of them creeps.”

  Ross said, “We don’t need their names, Bucky. Captain Stang here shot them all.”

  “There are others! I’m going to want immunity. You want my cooperation, I’m going to want immunity.”

  I said, “You’ll want a lawyer, too.”

  “That’s right!”

  I turned to Davy and said, “Why don’t you go get him one?”

  Davy saw the look in my eyes and smiled just a little. “I’ll go and get right on that.”

  And Sgt. Ross was gone.

  “Now it’s just you and me, Bucky,” I said, hovering over him. “Not a cop and a con. Just a couple old birds from the street.”

  “Don’t shit me, Shooter! You’re a cop!”

  I braced my hand on the mattress near his pillow. “I retired.”

  “You said I need a lawyer...”

  “You do. For when the cops are around. Before that happens, you and me are going to catch up on old times. The room isn’t wired, and nothing you say can be... but you know the rest.”

  Beads of sweat pearled the forehead unde
r the skimpy cue ball comb-over. “Why should I talk to you, Shooter?”

  “Because I saved your ass. And because you promised you would, if I got you a medic. I kept my promise, Buck.” I shifted my position and very gently laid my hand on his elevated, bandaged knee. “Your turn to keep yours.”

  It all came spilling out.

  How twenty years ago a mob guy named Benny Orbach buttonholed him about Big Zappo’s safe. A big heist was going down, involving atomic materials, and the right kind of storage was needed for the dangerous stuff. That old lead safe of Padrone’s would do the trick, till the haul was shifted to a buyer. And there were lots of prospective buyers on the scene, even back then — from the North Vietnamese to various Middle Eastern groups.

  “How did you happen to have access to Big Zappo’s safe, Bucky?”

  “I found it — I heard the stories about Zappo’s money stash being somewhere in that cellar, and I looked till I found it.”

  “How much loot did you find?”

  “Not that much — maybe ten K in those big old bills. If I’d known they was collector’s items, I wouldn’t have been so free with ‘em.”

  “Why did you have access, Bucky? Why do you have part ownership of that building?”

  “Because... because I’m Big Zappo’s kid, all right?”

  “What?”

  “Bastard kid, okay, Shooter? He was old enough to be my granddad when one of his whores had me, get it? But blood is blood, and he willed that building to me. He set it up that half of the income went to that charity — my old man had a thing about helping out these homeless characters.”

  “They say he started those soup kitchens back in the Depression.”

  Bucky nodded. “And, tell you the truth, Big Zap thought I’d just sell the place and blow the dough, if there wasn’t some, you know... constraint put on me. I was a wild-ass kid, in those days — you remember. Hell, my share was tied up in a trust fund deal till I turned forty!”

  He was at least fifty now.

  I asked, “Why didn’t you sell out then?”

  “Because I wasn’t a snotnose no more. You might not buy it, Shooter, but I’ve led a respectable damn life, for years. Even twenty years ago, I’d already broke off from that whole street gang scene — I took a technical course. Got in the ground floor of computer repair.”

  “Which is how you got the Credentials gig.”

  Again he nodded. “Yeah. And when Benny Orbach came around there, he recognized me. He knew me as this kid who used to be a runner for Big Zappo, and remembered the safe in the cellar.”

  Orbach must have been the other guy in Bettie’s office photo, the big guy with his back to the camera.

  “What was Orbach doing at Credentials?”

  “This atomic heist, it was already in the works. Orbach knew his ass was on the line, getting involved with something that big — I mean, it’s the kind of crime you do federal time on. There are people who consider that kind of heist, you know... unpatriotic or some shit.”

  “The word is treason, Bucky.”

  Despite all the junk he was on, Bucky had a hysterical edge in his squeaky voice. “Listen, I didn’t even know what was gettin’ heisted. I only figured it out later, when it got in the papers. All I knew was, Orbach needed a lead-lined vault for something hot.”

  Something really hot.

  “But you knew Orbach was laying his ass on the line,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, but not why. Later, I put that together.”

  I leaned in closer. “The girl, Bucky — the girl Bettie Marlow. Why her? Why was she abducted?”

  He smiled but it looked sick. “I don’t know, Shooter. Honest, man, that was nothing I was part of. But I can guess....”

  “Guess then.”

  “See, it’s what you asked before — Orbach, he put together a big file on everything he knew about the East Coast mobsters. Real insider stuff. Names, dates, you name it.”

  “Why?”

  “Orbach thought with a high-risk caper like this, he should take out an insurance policy. If he got caught, if he took this rap, he wanted to know he’d be safe in stir. That nobody would slip a shiv between his ribs, in the lunch line, to make sure the feds didn’t get the real skinny on who was behind the atomic heist.”

  “And the young woman who worked at Credentials?”

  He paused, his eyes jumpy.

  Then he blurted, “Why don’t you just say it, Shooter?”

  “Say what, Bucky?”

  “That she was your girl! You were going to marry her, right? Don’t pretend she isn’t what this is all about.”

  I felt the muscles along my spine twitch.

  “You knew, Bucky?” I said, keeping my tone steady. “Back then, you knew about Bettie and me?”

  This nod was hesitant, then followed by two quicker assertive ones. “And when I saw Orbach at Credentials, and figured out that the Shooter’s girl had been the one who’d entered the mob data he’d entrusted to them? Well, then I knew Orbach was screwed.”

  My hand clenched the edge of his pillow. “And you told him?”

  “No! I swear I didn’t.”

  It was hard work keeping my voice steady, but I managed. “Why not, Bucky? Why didn’t you tell Orbach?”

  “Because... because I told the guys I was working for instead.”

  I swallowed hard, but I kept my expression calm. “Mob guys, you mean.”

  “Yeah. See, I... Shooter, I’m going to level with you. I’m going to level with you because it’s my best shot at not really pissing you off. And all I want right now is to not piss you off, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Now Bucky spoke slowly, as if to a child. “The reason I was working at Credentials was because some top-secret government stuff was going through there. I don’t know why some little hole-in-the-wall computer outfit had such confidential federal dope on file, and I don’t know how the guys I worked for knew, neither. But they had stuff on file, all right, information about weapons and munitions stolen from federal armories... and about sales of the stuff to foreign countries. Enemy countries.”

  “Why was that of interest to mobsters?”

  “Because this atomic shipment was coming through, and the heist was all planned and everything... and they needed to know the players.”

  “The potential buyers, you mean.”

  “What else? That was what I was trying to get for them, that info... and my computer repair job with Credentials, that was my cover.”

  “And did you get that info, Bucky?”

  “Hell, yes. Stealing candy from a baby.”

  “What about the files on your mob pals that Orbach left with Credentials?”

  He shrugged. “I erased the sons of bitches. Wiped the computer drives clean. Used a magnet on the back-up discs, too.” His eyes tightened. “Only, I knew your girl...” But the words caught in his throat.

  “Spill it, Bucky.”

  His eyes were wild. “Shooter, now I’m leveling with you, man, you need this information, don’t go apeshit on me, man.”

  “You give me what I need, Bucky, you never had a better friend.”

  “Okay. Okay. This was a long time ago, and I was a stupid greedy little punk who didn’t know right from wrong.”

  I decided not to remind him he’d been trying to sell the guts of a nuke to terrorists earlier this evening.

  “Go on, Bucky.”

  “I... I knew Bettie, knew she’d made copies of the files and took ’em home with her. And I knew she was your girl, and it was obvious that she was going to turn ’em over to you.”

  If I smothered him with a pillow, no one would hear. If I covered his face with a pillow and used it to muffle t... .45, no one would hear that either.

  “Don’t... don’t look at me like that, Shooter.”

  “They’re still after her, aren’t they, Bucky?”

  “I wouldn’t know, honest, man, I wouldn’t know! I had no idea they was going to snatch that snatch of
yours!”

  My hand clenched the pillowcase cloth again.

  “Shooter, you got to believe me, I wanted no part of that shit. Why do you think I paid to fake my damn death? I wanted out, I got out, disappeared upstate and I been straight ever since. Computer repair, to this day. You think it’s easy keeping up on this computer crap, competing with these kids who had computers in their damn playpens?”

  “I feel for you, Bucky. But like the man says, I just can’t reach you.”

  “Shooter... Shooter....”

  “If you went straight, what were you doing back in the big city, on that street, in that old building?”

  “I saw in the papers Orbach was out of stir and then right away he bought the farm. So I kind of started thinking about the safe and what was in it, and how I must be the last one to know about it. And how, you know, valuable them contents was.”

  “Why would a straight successful businessman start thinking bad things like that, Bucky?”

  “I told you it’s been tough, competing. Plus I lost everything in my divorce, and... but it was just me thinking. I didn’t do anything about it. Not at first.”

  “Oh?”

  A short nod. “Then when those Saudi guys contacted me about buying the old building, I checked on the atomic stash and, damn, if it wasn’t still there! Orbach dead, and so many of the old mob guys gone. Why not make a buck?”

  “So the Saudis didn’t approach you about the contents of that safe?”

  “No — they’re developers. They’re going to build friggin’ condos or something. But I figured they might be connected to, you know, certain kinds of people. You know — crazy ragheads with money to burn.”

  My stomach tightened, muscles twitching, but I didn’t let it show in my face.

  “And so you told them about what you had for sale.”

  “Yeah! Of course. Wouldn’t you?”

  I let that pass. “And they were interested?”

  “Not for themselves, but they got in touch with people who were. I guess that box of plutonium or whatever the hell it is, it’s something people have been looking for, for years.”

  “Yeah. Only the safe was empty.”

  His shook his head, eyes wild again. “Shooter, I checked that baby. I opened that safe and there it was, wrapped up in blankets just like when the heisters stuck it in there. Twenty years ago!”