“Take your time,” Casper said to the bartender, as the bartender knelt behind the bar and fiddled with what I assumed was the safe. “Just go slow, like nothing’s happening, and you won’t spin past the numbers.”

“Please don’t hurt us,” one of the men on the floor said. “We got families.”

“Shut up,” Popeye said.

“No one’s getting hurt,” Casper said. “As long as you keep quiet. Just keep quiet. Very simple.”

“You know whose fucking bar this is?” the guy in the Celtics jacket said.

“What?” Popeye said.

“You fucking heard me. You know whose bar this is?”

“Please, please,” one of the secretaries said. “Be quiet.”

Casper turned his head. “A hero.”

“A hero,” Popeye said, and looked over at the idiot.

Without moving his mouth it seemed, Ryerson whispered, “Where’s your piece?”

“Spine,” I said. “Yours?”

“My lap.” His right hand moved three inches to the edge of the table.

“Don’t,” I whispered, as Popeye’s head and gun turned back in our direction.

“You guys are fucking dead,” the teamster said.

“Why are you talking?” the secretary said, her eyes on the bar top.

“Good question,” Casper said.

“Dead. Got it? You fucking punks. You fucking humps. You fucking-”

Casper took four steps and punched the teamster in the center of the face.

The teamster dropped off the back of his stool and hit his head so hard on the floor that you could hear the crack when the back of his skull split.

“Any comment?” Casper asked the guy’s friend.

“No,” the guy said, and looked down at the bar.

“Anyone else?” Casper said.

The bartender came up from behind the bar and placed the trash bag on top.

The bar was as silent as a church before a baptism.

“What?” Popeye said, and took three steps toward our table.

It took me a moment to realize he was talking to us, another moment to know with a complete certainty that this was all about to go terribly wrong terribly fast.

None of us moved.

“What did you just say?” Popeye pointed the gun at Lionel’s head, and his eyes behind the mask skittered uncertainly over Ryerson’s calm face, then came back to Lionel’s.

“Another hero?” Casper took the bag off the bar, came over to our table with his shotgun pointed at my neck.

“He’s a talker,” Popeye said. “He’s talking shit.”

“You got something to say?” Casper said, and turned his shotgun on Lionel. “Huh? Speak up.” He turned to Popeye. “Cover the other three.”

Popeye’s.45 turned toward me and the black eye stared into my own.

Casper took another step closer to Lionel. “Just yapping away. Huh?”

“Why do you keep antagonizing them? They have guns,” one of the secretaries said.

“Just be quiet,” her companion hissed.

Lionel looked up into the mask, his lips shut tight, his fingertips digging into the tabletop.

Casper said, “Go for it, big man. Go for it. Just keep talking.”

“I don’t have to listen to this shit,” Popeye said.

Casper rested the tip of the shotgun against the bridge of Lionel’s nose. “Shut up!”

Lionel’s fingers shook and he blinked against the sweat in his eyes.

“He just don’t want to listen,” Popeye said. “Just wants to keep talking trash.”

“Is that it?” Casper said.

“Everyone stay calm,” the bartender said, his hands held straight up in the air.

Lionel said nothing.

But every witness in the bar, deep in states of panic, sure they were going to die, would remember it the way the shooters wanted them to-that Lionel had been talking. That all of us at the table had. That we’d antagonized some dangerous men, and they’d killed us for it.

Casper racked the slide on the shotgun and the noise was like a cannon going off. “Got to be a big man. Is that it?”

Lionel opened his mouth. He said, “Please.”

I said, “Wait.”

The shotgun swung my way, its dark, dark eyes the last thing I’d see. I was sure of it.

“Detective Remy Broussard!” I yelled, so the whole bar could hear me. “Everyone got that name? Remy Broussard!” I looked through the mask at the deep blue eyes, saw the fear in there, the confusion.

“Don’t do it, Broussard,” Angie said.

“Shut the fuck up!” It was Popeye this time, and his cool was slipping. The tendons in his forearm clenched as he tried to cover the table.

“It’s over, Broussard. It’s over. We know you took Amanda McCready.” I craned my neck out to the bar. “You hear that name? Amanda McCready?”

When I turned my head back, the cold metal bores of the shotgun dug into my forehead, and my eyes met the curl of a red finger on the other side of the trigger guard. This close, the finger looked like an insect or a red and white worm. It looked like it had a mind of its own.

“Close your eyes,” Casper said. “Close ’em tight.”

“Mr. Broussard,” Lionel said. “Please don’t do this. Please.”

“Pull the fucking trigger!” Popeye turned toward his companion. “Do it!”

Angie said, “Broussard-”

“Stop saying that fucking name!” Popeye kicked a chair into the wall.

I kept my eyes open, felt the curve of metal against my flesh, smelled the cleaning oil and old gunpowder, watched the finger twitch against the trigger.

“It’s over,” I said again, and it came out in a croak through my arid throat and mouth. “It’s over.”

For a long, long time, no one said anything. In that hard hush of silence, I could hear the whole world creak on its axis.

Casper’s face tilted as Broussard cocked his head and I saw that look in his eyes that I’d seen yesterday at the football game, the one that was hard, that danced and burned.

Then a clear, resigned defeat replaced it and shuddered softly through his body, and his finger slipped from the trigger as he lowered the gun from my head.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Over.”

“Are you dicking me?” his partner said. “We have to do this. We have to do this, man. We have orders. Do it! Now!”

Broussard shook his head, the moony face and child’s smile of the Casper mask swaying with it. “This is done. Let’s go.”

“Fuck you, this is done! You can’t cap these fuckers? Fuck you, you piece of shit. I can!”

Popeye raised his arm and pointed his gun in the center of Lionel’s face as Ryerson’s hand dropped into his lap and the first gunshot was muffled by the top of the table as it tore through the flesh of Popeye’s left thigh.

His gun went off as he jerked backward, and Lionel screamed, grabbed the side of his head, and toppled from his chair.

Ryerson’s gun cleared the tabletop, and he shot Popeye twice in the chest.

When Broussard pulled the trigger of the shotgun, I distinctly heard the pause-a microsecond’s worth of silence-between the trigger engaging the round and the blast that roared in my ears like an inferno.

Neal Ryerson’s left shoulder disappeared in a flash of fire and blood and bone, just melted and exploded and evaporated all at the same time in a sonic boom of noise. A splatter of him hit the wall, and then his body toppled out of the chair as the shotgun rose through the smoke in Remy Broussard’s hand and the table toppled to the left with Ryerson. His.9 mm fell from his hand and bounced off a chair on the way to the floor.

Angie had cleared her gun, but she dove to her left as Broussard pivoted.

I drove my head into his stomach, wrapped my arms around him, and ran straight back for the bar. I rammed his spine against the rail, heard him grunt, and then he drove the stock of the shotgun down onto the back of my neck.

My knees hit the floor, my arms fell back from his body, and Angie screamed, “Broussard!” and fired her.38.

He threw the shotgun at her as I reached for my.45, and it hit her in the chest, knocked her to the floor.

He vaulted the two darts players and sprinted for the front door like a born athlete.

I closed my left eye and sighted down the barrel and fired twice as Broussard reached the front of the bar. I saw his right leg jerk and skitter away from him before he turned the corner, threw the bolt lock, and burst out into the night.