The Oracle was very surprised to see the detective car parked in the red zone on the east side of the nightclub, where he too was forced to park, the packed parking lot being an impossibility. He wondered which detective was in there and why. As he was walking toward the door, a black-and-white slowed and stopped and Fausto gave a short toot to get his attention. The Oracle walked over to the curb, bent down, and said, “I won’t be long, Fausto.”

“Want some company?” Budgie said. “I’ve never been inside one of these Russian glam palaces.”

“Okay, but we’ll scare the crap outta them,” the Oracle said. “There’s already a detective team in there.”

“For what?” Fausto said.

“Maybe the murder the other night,” the Oracle said. “Five cops? They’ll think they’re back in the USSR.”

When the Oracle entered, followed by Fausto and Budgie, he spotted Andi and Brant standing back by the restrooms talking to a guy in a tuxedo who the Oracle figured might be the manager Andrei.

The decibel level was astounding and multicolored lights and strobes were playing all over the dance-floor pit, where couples, mostly young, were “get-tink down,” as Dmitri called it. From her seat at the end of the bar, Ilya couldn’t see the three uniformed cops who entered and headed toward a narrow corridor by the kitchen. The Oracle, Fausto, and Budgie attracted some attention but not much, and they surprised the detectives.

Andi had to shout over the music. “What’re you doing here? Don’t tell me there’s another murder on the patio I haven’t heard about?”

The Oracle said to the unhappy-looking guy in the tuxedo, “Are you Andrei?”

“Yes,” the manager said.

“We’ll give you cuts in line with this one,” Andi said to the Oracle. “We’re waiting to see Dmitri, the proprietor.”

The Oracle said to Andrei, “I need to have a chat with you and get your name and address. I’ll explain when we get to a quiet place, if such a thing exists around here.” Then, with a wink at Andi, he indicated Fausto and Budgie and said to Andrei, “These two’re my bodyguards. I take them with me wherever I go.”

Andrei had a what-else-can-go-wrong look on his face then. Just as something else was about to go very wrong.

Dmitri’s eyes were half closed as Cosmo glossed over the aftermath of the ATM robbery, leaving out his confrontation tonight with Farley Ramsdale.

And when Cosmo was through, Dmitri said, “You had to shoot the guard?”

“Yes, Dmitri,” Cosmo said. “He did not give up money like you say.”

Dmitri shrugged and said, “Sometimes information on enemy is not correct. Ask President Bush.”

Cosmo was getting his hopes built until Dmitri turned to the Georgian and said, “Okay, maybe is a little piece of truth about the car. Maybe the car is not so good as you think.”

“Dmitri!” the Georgian said, but he saw the look in Dmitri’s eye and stopped his protest.

“So, Cosmo,” Dmitri said, “you are going to get ATM money tomorrow when you catch addict woman, no?”

“That is exactly correct,” Cosmo said.

“Okay, here is what I do for you, Cosmo,” said Dmitri. “You owe me eleven thousand, five hundred plus diamonds. I am go-ink to cancel the money what you owe me! You get Ilya up here and give me all diamonds and we are even. Tomorrow when you catch addict woman, you keep all ninety-three thousand dollars. Your share, my share. I could not be more generous with my own brother, Cosmo.”

Then Dmitri looked up at the Georgian for validation and got a nod of agreement that said Dmitri was a very reasonable and very generous man.

It was hopeless. Cosmo was the image of despair. As Cosmo was staring at the money on Dmitri’s desk, the Russian opened the top drawer and put the first stack back inside. When he reached for the second stack, Cosmo felt that he was outside his body and watching himself pull his coat back and reach behind him for the Beretta.

“Dmitri!” the Georgian yelled, coming up with a small pistol, from where, Cosmo didn’t see.

And Dmitri shouted in Russian and opened a second drawer and reached inside for a gun of his own.

Andi said to the other cops and to Andrei the manager, “We’ve waited long enough. I’m going to knock on Dmitri’s door.”

She was interrupted by one shot followed by two more followed by five! And the two detectives and three uniformed cops ran upstairs. Andi was getting her pistol out of her purse when Fausto and Budgie passed her and both crouched down on one knee, guns extended in two hands aimed at the door of Dmitri’s office. The Oracle ran to the other side of the door, and with his old six-inch revolver extended, he backed up, so that all guns, high and low, were deployed diagonally, pointed at the door.

Inside the office, Cosmo Betrossian had pain in his left arm that far exceeded anything he’d suffered this night either from Farley Ramsdale or the killer dog. Cosmo had a through-and-through wound in the biceps that had chipped the bone before exiting, and it burned like liquid fire.

The Georgian was sprawled across Dmitri’s desk, spurting blood from an arterial penetration in the neck. But his chest wounds were even more devastating.

Dmitri was sitting back in his chair with a hole in his forehead that was actually a coup de grâce delivered by Cosmo as Dmitri lay dying, having fired the round that wounded Cosmo.

The thundering sounds from the pit below Dmitri’s office had actually muffled the sound from the patrons’ area, and everyone rocked on. From time to time Ilya gazed across the dance floor, wondering why Cosmo had not returned.

Cosmo hoped he didn’t faint before he got down to Ilya with the stacks of money inside his shirt against his skin. The money felt good. He was about to put his gun back into his waistband, but thinking that an employee from the kitchen might have heard the shots, he held the gun in front of him with his one good hand and opened the door.

In such confined space it sounded to Fausto like automatic weapon fire that he’d heard in Nam. Budgie later said that it sounded to her like one huge explosion. She couldn’t differentiate the separate weapons firing.

Cosmo Betrossian got off exactly one shot, which hit the wall above their heads. He in turn was shot eighteen times with nine rounds missing him, probably as he was twisting and falling. All five cops shot him at least twice, with Fausto and Budgie scoring the most hits.

This being her first shooting, Andi McCrea later said during the FID investigation that it truly was like a slow-motion sequence. She could see, or thought she could see, hot shell casings ejecting into the air from various pistols and slapping against her face.

The Oracle said that in forty-six years, this was the first time he’d ever fired his weapon outside of the police pistol range.

Budgie had the most interesting commentary. She said that in such close confines, all the muzzle blasts and gun smoke had created a condition that, with her mouth wide open and sucking air, got her chewing gum full of grit.

The pandemonium that followed was worse than what occurred on the night of the patio stabbing. The customers did hear the roar of the multiple gunshots from the upstairs hallway. Budgie and Fausto ran down the stairs to grab the manager and anybody else who looked like he might know what the hell had happened upstairs to cause the original gunfire. The Oracle made urgent calls on his rover.

By the time Viktor Chernenko pulled up in front, people were pouring from the front door and running for their cars. The parking lot was in such chaos that the cars in the back of the lot could not move. Headlights were flashing and horns were honking. Viktor bulled his way through emerging hysterical customers and took the stairs two at a time.

When he got to the scene of carnage, he said to the Oracle, “One of these Russians may be the one I am looking for! Maybe the one who shot Farley Ramsdale!”