He put his dog down on the counter, went to the sink, turned on the water as hard as it would go. He counted to ten, then turned and peeked down the narrow hall, saw that the bathroom door was firmly closed.
He left the water running, picked up his dog. He tiptoed to the living room window that gave onto the fire escape. He opened it wide, used his arms to help lift his legs as he stepped stiffly over the sill.
Out on the rusty landing, he tucked the chihuahua under his arm as though it were a football, then launched himself down the skinny metal stairs. He didn't so much run as fly, as in a dream of spiraling downward, giving in with an ecstatic trust to gravity, pivoting with ease around the frigid railings. The skyline wheeled around him as he spun, and in the freezing air the old man felt light, fearless, giddy. He was closer to eighty than to seventy and he was taking it on the lam.
———
Arty Magnus locked his bike to a Christmas palm, then kept a hand on Debbi's back as they walked through the moonlight to his cottage. He ached for a vacation from the hazards and the clamor of the world, a visit to a small safe universe of making love. They kissed once in front of the torn screen door, then he led her over the scuffed, uneven threshold.
"I can't see a thing," she whispered when the door had shut behind them, blotting out the moonlight. The darkness seemed to call for whispering; it was an intimate, caressing darkness, but if it was sanctuary it was also peril. There were edges to walk into, rugs and wires to trip on.
"Don't have to see," Arty whispered back. "I've had this dump so long, I know which floorboards squeak."
He dropped his notebook on the ratty unseen table, then led his new lover through the bedroom doorway. He found the mattress with his knee, leaned down with the slow precision of a blind man, and grabbed the box of wooden matches he kept on his bedside table. He struck one. It flared to life with a rasp, a hiss, an acrid whiff of phosphorus. He reached the match toward a plain white candle glued with wax to a saucer, and that was when they saw the gun pointing at them from the far side of the bed.
They saw the gun before they saw the person holding it; it hovered gray, glinting, disconnected, as rude and stripped of context as a dildo. Next they saw the thick and hairy hand smeared inside its glove, and only after that the damp and slovenly bulk of Gino Delgatto sprawling in the chair.
The assassin clicked on his flashlight, drilled the beam at Arty's face. "Hello, Romeo," he said. He shifted the beacon toward Debbi, thrust it at her loins, her breasts, slashed at her face with the light as though it were a razor. "Hello, you fuckin' whore. Either a you makes a sound, you're dead."
———
Bert d'Ambrosia, in a monogrammed blue shirt without even a sweater over it, puffed and jogged to the corner of Sullivan and Bleecker, then turned west toward the bar where he hoped Pretty Boy would still be drinking, would by now be drunk. He found the place then paused for breath on the freezing sidewalk; wreaths of steam rose from his head. He petted his dog and went inside.
The tavern was crowded, smoky, dizzying after the blast of cold. The jukebox blared, laughter erupted here and there. Bert nestled the chihuahua against his wizened tummy, tried to shield it from the beery crush of bodies. Squinting against the smoke, he found Pretty Boy sitting near the far end of the bar, exactly where he'd been several hours before. But certain things had changed. Alcohol had conquered pills, and now the handsome thug's posture was hulking, his nervous mouth slack and surly. His high hair seemed to be deflating, whorls of it hung greasily over his forehead.
Bert approached his blind side and was right under his chin before he spoke. "Pretty Boy."
The thug looked at him stupidly. Recognition came on slowly, like an old tube radio warming up. He remembered Bert. They'd even had a drink together. But hadn't that been a different day? "Fuck you doin' heah?"
"Bo sent me. We're goin' back ta Florida."
In front of Pretty Boy was a glass with something brown in it. He took a swallow and said, "Wha'?"
"Word came from Messina. Bo's gettin' the car. Gino's business down there, it didn't go right."
Synapses were slowly coming alive in Pretty Boy. Vindication helped them wake up. "Send a boy ta do a man's job," he said. "We shoulda just did the fuckin' thing ourselves."
"Dat's what Bo says too," ventured Bert the Shirt.
"Yeah?" gloated Pretty Boy. "So now Bo says I was right?"
"Yeah. All along. Messina says so too."
"Fuckin' A." The gratified thug went back to his drink.
"Yeah, Bo tol' me all about it. No reason not to now. I said you were right. Thing like dat, ya don't trust it to somebody else."