Ray moved inside, pointing the gun into the hallway ahead of him. He called Danny’s name again and waited. After a minute with no sound but the birds in the trees and the faraway dog, he moved down the hallway into the kitchen. He circled through the first floor, checking the empty rooms. The place was a mess, and there was a stink of unemptied garbage and mildew. In the living room there was a big new flat- screen TV standing next to the box it came in. This was Danny spending his end of the score he had put Manny and Ray onto before he even got his hands on it. In the living room a few steps from the front door, a suitcase was open on the floor. Clothes were pulled out and heaped on the dirty carpet.
He went to the front door and shrugged at Manny, who came out from behind the car door and moved around the back of the house. Ray went up the stairs, and the garbage smell got stronger. All the doors were open except one, and Ray moved to it and stood in front of it for a moment, adjusting the pistol in his sweaty hand. Finally he pushed the door open and looked for a minute before stepping away and breathing through his mouth, gasping and spitting to keep from throwing up.
He forced himself to look again. An old woman was in the tub. There was blood and vomit on her chin and down the front of her robe. One eye stared, a milky blue. There was a hole in her chest and her throat was open. There were flies walking in the blood on her mouth and a terrible buzzing noise that filled the small room. Ray used the sleeve of his coat to grab the door handle and pulled it closed, wiping it again after it was shut. He didn’t want to see what might be in the other rooms and ran down the stairs and out the front door. He heard Manny calling his name as he wiped the doorknob and pulled the door shut.
He moved cautiously around the house, the gun out and pointing down. He came around the corner into a junk- strewn backyard. Manny passed him going the other way, back out to the car. In the back a Plymouth Fury was up on blocks, the exposed wheels rusted through. There was a woodpile with spiderwebs running down one side and an ancient deflated football stuck in the mud. There was a clothesline strung from the house to a pole stuck in cracked cement. And there was Danny, staring at the sky. Thinning red hair showing white scalp, pale blue eyes. His right arm was broken over a flat tree stump, and there was an axe separating his right hand from his fingers.
Ray heard the car starting and looked around the yard, rubbing his own right arm. He looked everywhere but at Danny. After a minute, he went back to the front of the house.
Manny was on the cell phone when he got in the car. Manny started it up and began to back the car around, pointing the nose down the driveway.
“Sherry? Yeah, hon, it’s me. How you doing?”
Ray looked in the glove compartment, thinking there must be something to drink in this fucking car.
“Good. That’s good.” Manny stopped the car and reached into a green sport bag. He pulled out a pint of something wrapped in a paper bag and handed it to Ray. “Nothing, just wanted to hear your voice.” Ray took a long drink of what he thought was some kind of sickly sweet schnapps. “Listen, Sherry? I want you to take your mom and drive to Atlantic City. Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah, I know but just do it right now. Don’t pack, don’t fuck around or call anyone. Just go.” Ray could hear a shrill voice on the other end, but not the words. “Don’t worry about money or anything. Sherry, you can scream at me later. You can scream at me all night long, I promise. Sherry. Sherry. Just hang up the fucking phone and get your fucking mother into a car and go to the Trop. Use the card I gave you for emergencies and get a nice room and take a bath.” Manny put the car back in gear. “I’m hanging up now, Sherry. I love you. I know. I’ll see you in a few hours.” The voice on the other end was still going when Manny folded the phone and dropped it on the floor.
“Will she go?”
“She’ll go. She’s a pain in the ass, but she’s not stupid.”
Ray looked back at the house. His hands were shaking, and he watched Manny’s head swivel, looking around them into the trees. “Why did they do that?”
“Who knows?”
“I mean, you know he gave us up the second they walked through the door.”
“I know.”
“So why do that?”
“They’re animals.”
The windshield shattered with the first gunshot, then a man stepped from the trees with a shotgun raised and the glass went white and blew in. Ray felt shards of glass hit his face and upraised arms. Manny pushed his door open and jumped out with the Remington in his hands, screaming something unintelligible, the 4Runner still moving. Ray threw himself over the backseat, wondering how bad he was cut. They moved fast, amped by the crank and adrenaline, and Ray was more afraid than he could ever remember being in his life.
There was a loud pop and more glass breaking. He flattened himself in the bed of the trunk, yanking the pistol out of his waistband and shooting wildly toward the front of the car at nothing he could see. The SUV smacked into a thin tree trunk and stopped moving, and he cracked his head against the wall. Ray heard the heavy bang of Manny’s pump gun and the cracking sound of the slide working, and he flailed at the hatchback door handle. He pushed it open and let himself fall out onto the driveway. More shots rang off the metal and starred the glass over his head.
He could hear Manny racking the shotgun and firing and the hollow plastic chime of the expended shells hitting the ground. He stuck his head under the car and saw two sets of legs in front of the car, one moving left and one right. He put the front sights of the pistol on the set of legs on the right and pulled the trigger twice while Manny screamed something, burning off the fear and dope. The recoil of the gun stung his hand, and the shells ejected up and pinged off the tailpipe of the 4Runner. Someone screamed, and a guy wearing a black leather jacket fell heavily onto the driveway, grabbing his ankle. Ray fired again and hit the front tire on the right side.
Ray pulled himself out from under the car as it lowered on the flattening tire. He pointed the gun to his left, waiting for the other one to come out into view. The barrel of a long gun appeared at the left, and Ray tried not to breathe, wondering how many shots were left in the pistol. He held himself rigid and watched more of the gun barrel appear as the shooter slowly made his way down the side of the Toyota. Finally the guy made a quick move into the open, raising the shotgun and swiveling to put the front sight on Ray. He was wearing black leather, like the big man down in the driveway, and wraparound sunglasses. Ray could see tattoos on his hands and spiking up his neck from inside his shirt. There was a bang that Ray felt in his chest, and the guy folded up, blood haloing his head. Ray pulled the trigger involuntarily, and the shot pushed the biker onto his back, his eyes open. Ray could hear the other, bigger guy down in the driveway moaning and calling them motherfuckers.
Manny moved out of the woods to the left. He gestured with the shotgun toward the front of the car, and Ray wheeled and pointed the pistol down the passenger side of the 4Runner. The big guy was pulling himself along the driveway, leaving a trail of blood in the wet grass and gravel. Ray ran to the front of the car and pulled the door open. He thumbed the magazine catch, dropping the clip. He pulled another clip from the sport bag and pushed it into the Colt and racked the slide, his hands shaking and blood dripping from his face onto his hands. He closed the door as the big biker pushed himself to his feet and began to limp down the driveway.
Manny said, “Hey!” and the big man pointed the gun clumsily behind him as he tried to hobble faster down the trail. Ray pulled the trigger, holding the gun low, and the biker’s legs went out from under him and he screamed again. He dropped his pistol and kept moving, crawling hand over hand and moaning into the dirt.