Lynch felt the hammer in the Beretta click down on an empty chamber. Instinctively, he thumbed the clip release, the top note of his brass still tinkling off the cement as the empty clip clattered down the cement stairs. Lynch tore the spare clip from his belt, slapped it into the Beretta, pulled back the slide, and brought the gun back to bear on the target.

The man was crumpled in the corner of the stairwell, a short-barreled revolver on the cement near his left leg. Lynch went down the stairs carefully, keeping the Beretta level, then flicked the revolver away from the man with his right foot. Lynch could smell blood, could see it beginning to spread around the man. The man’s hand moved a little, and he heard the man trying to say something. Lynch leaned down.

“Fucking chink,” the man said, the words rasping and bubbling through the blood that spilled out of his mouth and down his chin. “Fucking chink.”

Lynch sat on the gurney outside the rear of the ambulance. The EMTs had bandaged his leg where a bullet fragment had punched through his calf, wrapped a turban around his head and taped a piece of gauze over his right eye. Another bandage was on the right side of his neck. They’d cut his right pant leg open past the knee and stripped off the sock and shoe. The pant leg was soaked with blood. Lynch had also bled down the right side of his jacket and shirt. One of the EMTs gave him a blanket. Lynch draped it around his shoulders. Rain had stopped, but it was getting colder.

“You’re gonna need to get some shit picked out of your face, get that leg wound cleaned out, get everything sutured up,” one of the EMTs told him. The guy peeled off his latex gloves and started packing up his material. “Somebody’s got to take a good look at the eye, too. I’m not messing with that. You should be OK. Face is gonna look like shit for a while.”

“Hey,” Lynch said. “You should see the other guy.”

“I did. His face looks fine.”

Captain Starshak walked over. “He about ready to go?”

“Yeah,” the EMT said. “Soon as you guys say, we’ll take him in.”

“OK,” said Starshak. “Give us a second here.”

The EMT walked around to the front of the unit.

“How you feeling, John?”

Lynch shrugged. “Like I got shot a couple times and mainlined some adrenaline.”

“You’re a lucky son of a bitch, you know it? Looks like the guy got four rounds off from about six feet inside a cement box, and all you picked up were some fragments.”

“Yeah. Remind me to grab some Lotto tickets on the way home.” Lynch gave a little grunt, shifted on the gurney. “The OPS guys happy?” Lynch had already given a quick statement to the office of professional standards investigators who looked into all officer-involved shootings. They had his gun.

“Far as I know,” said Starshak. “Hard to see where they can have a problem. Priest backs up your story, crime scene matches up. They wondered a little did you have to shoot the guy so much. You put eight rounds into him between his belt and his collarbone.”

“Yeah, well, he was shooting at me. I got a little excited.”

“What I told em. Right before I told em to go fuck themselves. You know who you popped?”

“Didn’t get a great look. Dark down there, and he was spitting up a lot of blood.”

“Jose Villanueva.”

“The second-story guy?”

“That’s him.”

“He’s doing churches now, boosting chalices? Seems a little low-rent for him.”

“Wasn’t after the chalices. Had a baggie in his pocket with some hi-tech crap in it. Priest told me what you were thinking about the confessional being bugged. Looks like you were right.”

“The electronics point anywhere?”

“Sending them down to the tech weenies, see what they can make of them.” Starshak let out a long exhale, his breath clouding in the cold, damp air. “Fucking cold. You don’t figure he shot old lady Marslovak? Coming back to pick up his stuff?”

Lynch shrugged. “Toss his place, I guess, see if you find a long gun. Be for-hire if it’s him, but I don’t remember him doing anything like this. And he would have had to learn to shoot somewhere. He ex-military?”

“Slo-mo’s checking.”

“More likely somebody hired him to clean up.”

“You mean after they hire somebody else to pop the Marslovak woman?”

“Yeah.”

“Lotta hiring. Jose didn’t work cheap, either.”

Lynch nodded. “He said something right before he died. Said ‘fucking chink.’ Said it a couple of times.”

“So?”

“So somebody says fucking chink in this town, who do you think of?”

“Paddy Wang?”

“Yeah. Did I tell you he turned up where I was eating a couple nights back? Picked up my tab, told me I gotta show up at the Connemara Ball this year.”

“Think we should haul him in, shake him up a little?”

“Shake up Paddy Wang? With what? A nuke? Nah. Let me think on it. I’ll figure some way to come at him.” Lynch saw Father Hughes and Liz Johnson standing across the street by the curb. Her face was red and her eyes looked puffy. She gave a little wave, uncertain. He waved back, smiled, which made his face hurt.

“OK, Lynch, get yourself patched up. I’ll see what we can make of Villanueva. So that the blonde from McGinty’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Think now that your face is all messed up she might be looking for a replacement?”

Lynch flipped him off. Starshak smiled, clapped Lynch on the shoulder, and gestured to the EMTs. They came back, strapped Lynch to the gurney, and rolled it inside the unit. Lynch watched through the back window as the ambulance pulled out, the flashing lights washing through the rain-dampened branches of the trees and into the sky, staining everything red. Lynch was tired suddenly, and feeling empty. And cold.

At Northwestern, the ER docs irrigated and sutured the wound on his leg, picked nine bullet and cement fragments out of his head and neck, and removed a shard of cement from his eye. It was almost 3am when they were done.

“All right, detective. We’re going to have to keep an eye on that leg, make sure we don’t get an infection.” The doctor handed Lynch two bottles of pills. “The antibiotics should help. You’ve had some here. Take four when you wake up, then two every four hours until they’re gone. The other bottle is for pain. No more tonight. We’ve shot you up pretty good. You’re going to hurt in the morning, though. Same deal, two every four hours. Also, you need to keep that eye covered for at least three or four days. Any questions?”

Lynch shook his head. He felt groggy. His leg was throbbing faintly. He couldn’t feel it clearly. It was more like a premonition. The side of his head was still numb from the local they’d injected before they went to work.

“You got a ride home? Got somebody to stay with you tonight?”

Lynch tried to focus. “One of the uniforms’ll get me home, I guess.”

“OK,” the doctor said. “You’ve got some people waiting for you out front.”

A nurse wheeled Lynch to the waiting area. Starshak and Bernstein were standing by the door. Johnson was sitting in a chair.

“He gonna be OK, doc?” Starshak asked.

“Lucky man,” said the doctor. “The fragment in his neck came real close to his carotid, and the eye could have been a lot worse.”

Bernstein squatted down next to the chair. “How you feeling?”

“How do I look?” Lynch asked.

“You look like shit.”

“Feel worse,” Lynch said.

“You want me to get you home?” asked Bernstein.

Johnson stood up. “I can get him home.”

Bernstein looked at Johnson, then looked back at Lynch.

“Yeah,” said Lynch. “Thanks anyway, Slo-mo, I got a ride.”

The doctor walked over to Johnson. “Can you stay with him tonight?”

Johnson looked at Lynch, he nodded. “Sure,” she said.

The doc pulled her aside. “He’s a macho guy, isn’t going to ask for help. Keep him warm. Keep him quiet. Liquids are good – orange juice, water. No booze. Food is fine in the morning. This probably hasn’t all hit him yet, but it will. Be there for him for that.”