“I don’t suppose your mother called you ‘Bullet,’” I said as he pushed me to the stairwell.
“Shut up!” He shoved the gun harder against my spine.
“If she thought you were special, she would have used a special name,” I mused. “Lancelot, or Galahad, or—”
“Shit-Face,” he shouted. “She used to call me ‘Shit-Face,’ which you are going to be when Freddie finishes with you. He don’t like bitches coming around messing with his business.”
“That explains a lot.”
I tripped on the stairs, twisted and shoved my shoulder into his diaphragm. He fell backward, tumbling down, hitting his head on the edge of the riser. His gun went off as he fell. The shot echoed and re-echoed in the stairwell.
Footsteps pounded on the floor above me. Shouts, “Bullet, what the fuck? You kill the bitch?”
A man leaned over the banister at the upper landing, saw Bullet, shouted for help. “Freddie! Bullet, he’s—it looks like he’s dead, man!”
“Shit, Vire, bitch shoot him? Get her, you fuck-up!”
Bullet’s body blocked most of the stairs behind me. I couldn’t get around him without exposing my back to Vire’s gun. I slung a leg over the banister and slid down to the next landing, just as Vire fired. I had a tiny edge; Vire took time skirting around Bullet on the stairs, pausing to fire wildly down the stairwell.
I reached the front door, but the locks were sealed from the inside. I pulled my gun from the leg holster, took cover as best I could in the dark at the back of the entry hall. Someone had left a bicycle. I tripped and fell heavily over it and lost my gun. I fought free of the bike and hurled it at Vire as he came up the hall toward me.
The bike caught him in the face. I scrabbled on the floor for my own gun, found it just as all the stairwell lights came on. A moment later Freddie himself appeared. He was a big, rangy guy with a scraggly beard and black hair flopping over his forehead. He picked up the bike and flung it to the ground in front of Vire.
“Who the fuck left the goddamn bike in the hall? Morons, do I have anybody but morons working for me? Who are you, bitch, and what the fuck you doing picking my locks?”
“I’m looking for Judy Binder.” I was winded; my words came out in gasps.
“Judy Binder? You kill my man Bullet looking for that wasted bitch?”
“Is Bullet dead?” I said. “I didn’t shoot him; he fell down and hit his head.”
“Yeah, you tell that to judge and jury, bitch.”
“Bitch. Fuck-up, fuck, bitch. You’d be more interesting if you developed your vocabulary.” Freddie had a semiautomatic in his right hand, but I kept my own gun pointed just below his belt buckle; this made him unconsciously put one hand over his crotch.
“I’m not talking to you to be interesting, b—whoever the fuck you are. What do you want with the Binder ho?”
“You remember Ricky Schlafly?” A moral person would just shoot Freddie and get it over with.
“Ricky? Yeah, of course I know the dude. We do—” He cut himself short. “What about him?”
“Haven’t you heard? Ricky won’t be doing business with anyone anymore. I found his body in a cornfield. Crows had plucked out his eyes. They ate his balls, too. It was an ugly sight. Makes a person think about mortality and all those things.”
“Ricky dead?”
Vire kicked the bike away and took a step toward me. I kept my own eyes on Freddie’s eyes. The wilder they got the more likely he was to start shooting.
“Ms. Binder was down there with him, but she ran away. I’m trying to find her; she’s a material witness.”
“What? You a cop?”
“A lawyer,” I said, thinking it might be marginally safer than admitting to being a detective. “We need to find Judy. Is she here?”
“She’s trouble, Freddie, told you not to let her in the door. I’ll go upstairs and take care of her.”
“Take care of this one first.” Freddie’s gun hand came up.
I hit the floor, rolling, firing, ducking behind a wedge of wall under the stairwell. Eight bullets in my clip; three gone. Freddie marching toward me, firing.
Over the ferocious noise, a bullhorn: “This is the police. Put your weapons down and come out with your hands in the air.”
11
CHEMISTRY SHOP
YOU’RE THE PI Conrad Rawlings trusts? One of you is going to have to explain why that makes sense.”
Ferret Downey was talking to me in an empty apartment across the hall from Freddie’s drug shop. As soon as he’d come up the front walk, with two patrol officers in his wake, I’d known who it was: with his long nose and drooping mustache, he looked exactly like a ferret. He only showed after I’d been cuffed to Vire for over half an hour.
Vire turned out to be short for Virus, which turned out to be a nickname for Erwin Jameson. Erwin. Such a weeny name for a bodyguard.