Inside the gun shop Harry crosses to the front window. He pulls back a slat of the blind to peer suspiciously out into the night, cupping his hand around his eye to see better.

Out there a police patrol car slowly cruises forward.

Harry lets the blind fall back into place and turns, and that’s when he sees—Radford, looming, moving silently forward—almost on top of Harry—nutcracker lifted … Harry reacts: recognition; dread …

Two cops are in the slow-moving patrol car. The cop in the passenger seat sees something, switches on the car’s swivel spotlight and swings the beam around until it reveals—a motorcycle parked in the deep shadows of the alley.

“Hey.” Softly.

The car stops. The cops get out and approach the motorcycle, with flashlights. One whispers to the other with suppressed excitement: “We got it! Put in a squeal!”

Harry is backing up, flustered, with Radford pursuing him, not hurrying, keeping within arm’s length, swinging the nutcracker at his side, holding it by the end of one stick, holding Anne’s arm with his other hand. Harry nearly falls over the tripod-mounted machine gun. He’s talking very fast:

“You get nothing out of me, hear? You spilled your guts out, but you don’t get a thing out of me. Go ahead. Chickenshit bastard. Fucking traitor.”

Radford swings the nutcracker underarm. Hinged on its lanyards, the nightstick flicks up into Harry’s crotch … Harry’s eyes bug out; he doubles over in shrieking agony … Falls down by the machine gun … Radford stands above him, swinging the nutcracker gently like a pendulum. Harry slowly focuses on it, his eyes hypnotically following it back and forth. When it begins to swing toward him he yells: “No! Hey!”

The pendulum stops. Radford waits, looking down—patient as a Buddha.

Harry licks his lips. After an interval Radford says quietly, “Okay. The hard way.” The nutcracker begins its pendulum swings again.

“All right, all right. Wait. You want to know—the next assassination. Next target … It’s Clay. Commander Clay.”

Anne looks down at him, still able to be shocked. “Oh, Jesus Christ. You bastard.”

Radford says, “Commander Clay. Sure. She’s a real cop. She can’t be bought, so she’s in the way.” Abruptly he crouches and gathers Harry toward him. Nose to nose.

Harry’s glance breaks away.

But Radford isn’t letting up. “Who are you people?”

“We’re just trying to—”

“Give me a name. The head man. Who’s on top of the shitpile?”

And the nutcracker whips around Harry’s throat and begins to tighten. Harry tries to pry it away with his hands but the choking leverage continues to tighten …

Anne makes an abrupt decision. “Damon.”

Radford looks up at her.

She says, “It’s Damon Vickers.”

Harry coughs. He’s relieved now that it’s out; he’s got nothing to lose by going along. His whisper is hoarse. “Yeah. Colonel—Colonel Vickers.”

It takes a minute for Radford to absorb this. “The White House?”

“He ain’t the White House, Christ’s sake. He just works there.”

Radford looks at Anne, then at Harry. They both have the exhausted look of people who’ve given up their most dangerous secret; he’s got to believe they’re telling the truth. “Where does he live?”

Several police cars silently roll up and stop, forming a perimeter around the gun shop. Quietly, cops on foot steer pedestrian passers-by away. As cops barricade themselves, surrounding the gun shop, Commander Clay gets out of her car and meets Dickinson. They talk in hushed voices.

She says, “We’ve had trouble with him before. Automatic weapons, illegal sales.”

“We think Radford’s in there with him. They’ve got a real arsenal in there. Keep your heads down.”

Harry is on his knees. Anne fidgets. Radford flexes the nutcracker. “Tell me about it. Tell me about your outfit.”

Harry hesitates; Anne begins to speak; and they all stop, frozen by the sound of Commander Clay’s voice amplified on a bullhorn outside: “This is the police. You in the gun shop—we have you surrounded. You’ve got one minute to come out with your hands in the air.”

Radford’s eyes dart from front to back. He settles back hard on his heels, his face bleak. Harry’s grunt overlaps the bullhorn speech: “Holy shit!” Anne doesn’t know which way to turn. Radford finally swings toward the front, where the bullhorn sound comes from, and in that instant while his back is turned, Harry swiftly feeds a belt of ammunition into the tripod-mounted machine gun.

Radford catches this corner-of-the-eye action just in time and dives to one side, knocking Anne protectively to the floor just as Harry begins to shoot—full-rate automatic fire—the bullets shattering the big levelor blind and the front plate-glass window …

Cops cover their heads and hunker down as machine gun bullets from the shop spray the street, ricocheting everywhere, smashing car windows, creating havoc …

Commander Clay is rock steady. “Tear gas—now!”

And Dickinson simultaneously shouts, “Open fire. Fire at will. Son of a bitch!”

Clay’s angry “No!” and her sharp look are too late to stop the chaos. Cops open up with revolvers and shotguns. One of them fires a tear gas grenade from a flare pistol into the store.

Inside, the grenade explodes in a puff of evil smoke near the front of the shop. Harry is blazing away, having lunatic fun, overheating the machine gun. Police bullets return the fire, banging around inside the shop, and Radford shoves Anne toward the cover of the counter and scrambles to follow. Tear gas rolls back toward them. All three begin to cough. Radford growls at Harry: “You gun-happy son of a bitch!”

A blaze of police bullets shatters glass everywhere. Anne goes down, shot. Radford tries to protect her. “Give her a hand here!”

Harry ignores him—maybe doesn’t even hear him; must have adrenalin pumping so loud he can’t hear a thing. His machine gun swivels back and forth, raking the street. And runs empty.

Radford lowers Anne gently to the floor.

Harry with deranged glee yanks open a hidden floorboard compartment, heaves out a goddamn flame thrower, ignites the sumbitch and starts to shoot a long spout of deadly flame out through the smoke toward the street.

Under the smoke Radford is trying to rouse Anne but he sees that she’s dead. Finally—coughing desperately—he’s driven back, stumbling back into the fog of tear-gas and smoke.

The roaring blast of flame hoses out from the smoky smashed front of the shop. Cops fall back, desperately seeking cover. And the idiot’s flamethrower has set half the shop on fire; it’s blazing dreadfully.

Inside the thick smoke, coughing, Radford pounces on Harry and wrestles the flamethrower away from him and turns it off.

Harry shoves him away. Both men are coughing hard. Harry yells like a spoiled child whose toy has been taken away. He jumps up and down, throwing a tantrum.

Radford yells at him. “Get down, you stupid—”

But the warning is too late. Harry goes down, cut to pieces in a fusillade of police gunfire.

Amid ragged aftervolleys of police gunfire the smoke billows from the smashed front of the shop. Finally Clay, very weary, stands up. “Cease fire, for God’s sake.”

Total stillness now. An expectant hush. Cops begin to peer out from behind cover …

Now several cars in convoy arrive—Vickers and his G-men get out of them; Vickers deploys his troops with hand motions. Vickers as usual is dressed like a suit mannequin in an expensive shop window.

Dickinson says dryly to Clay, “Cavalry to the rescue right in the nick of time, like always.” As the feds approach, Dickinson gets up and greets them in some disgust, addressing his insult to Vickers: “Here’s Ken. Where’s Barbie?”

“Don’t fart around with me, cop.”

Clay ignores him; she says to Dickinson, “Put another tear-gas round in there. I want to be sure.”