Mattie shook her head as the T rambled on. My heart kept a steady beat. I could almost hear Tex Ritter singing as we approached Haymarket Station.

“They said they’d hurt my sisters,” she said. “They said they got policemen on the pad.”

The skully-cap boys stood. One absently felt inside his heavy coat.

“We’ll take care of it,” I said, my eyes staying with them.

“You and Hawk?”

“And some good policemen I know.”

The brakes on the T screeched, and we slowed on the tracks. A dozen or so people waited on the platform. Haymarket Station was dingy and also well graffitied. Small billboards whizzed by for spring water, furniture showrooms, mortgage companies, and shopping malls. The light came in strobes, white and artificial.

The two boys walked toward us. Their full attention was on us. The boy with the stylish beard nodded at me. I wondered how long it took to be artfully scruffy. The other was not so artful, sporting a ragged goatee.

The one with the goatee opened his coat slightly. He displayed his gun.

“Yikes.” I grabbed Mattie’s arm and said, “Here we go.”

62

Mattie stepped with me, weaving through the crowd. People hustled past, brushing us, bumping into one another. I scanned faces, movements. The two boys remained on the train as the doors hissed closed.

I spotted the exit stairs as we crossed the platform. The T rumbled off to the south with great noise and light, picking up speed into the tunnel and darkness. I watched every corner and both stairwells.

It didn’t take long before Jack Flynn and two gunmen in black leather jackets walked out from behind a pair of concrete pillars. They pointed their guns at us.

In the spirit of the moment, I pointed the Smith & Wesson at them.

“Broz got picked up,” Flynn said. “You fucked me.”

“Would it help if I promised to call later?”

“Leave the girl, smart-ass,” Flynn said. “She’s nothin’ but a piece of trash like her ma. Don’t get stupid and dead.”

“Go ahead and try,” I said. “But shut your mouth.”

“I heard your mother pulled a train every Saint Pat’s Day, Flynn,” Mattie said. “Guessin’ your father was multiple choice.”

Flynn smiled.

“She writes her own material,” I said. “Trying to show me up.”

There were maybe ten people on the platform, more coming and going up the exit stairs. I pushed Mattie behind me. She kept lurching forward. I pushed her back several more times.

“Your mother was a whore,” Flynn said. “She ran her mouth just like you.”

Mattie made a deep sound as if all the air had rushed from inside her. She lunged for Flynn. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back. She fought me.

Flynn had pointed his gun at her and thumbed back the hammer. His gun was a chrome .357 Magnum with a six-inch barrel. His two boys aimed their weapons at me. I didn’t bother to study their makes and models.

“Bad move, Jack,” I said. “It’s been a pleasure.”

“You’re fuckin’ nuts,” Flynn said. “You believe this guy? Shoot the prick.”

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I knew he was there by his posture and walk. I wrapped my arm around Mattie and pulled her down to the concrete platform.

Three very precise, muffled shots thudded. All of Vinnie Morris’s work was neat.

The two gunmen hit the ground, red flowers blooming at their temples. Flynn’s side opened up in a red sash as he leapt behind a column and fired his .357 wildly in our general direction.

Footsteps and confusion. Men and women dove to the T platform or ran for the exits. I heard more screams and scattering footsteps. Shooting in a public place inspires a great deal of pandemonium.

I looked up from where I’d covered Mattie. Vinnie Morris wore a Pats jacket, sunglasses, and a dark ball cap pulled down far over his eyes. I did not see a gun. If Flynn had not fired, most people in the station would not have known anything had happened at all. Vinnie was deadly silent. Within seconds, he headed back up the stairs just as an alarm sounded.

Vinnie had tailed Flynn from Bunker Hill as promised and promptly disappeared.

I helped Mattie to her feet. Her face was the color of parch-

ment.

“You’ve been shot,” she said.

I felt my shoulder. “So I have.” I yanked her behind a thick tile column with my good arm, peering around it.

A dozen bystanders remained on the ground, hands on heads or curled into fetal positions. A young woman lay next to her spilled purse. She was crying, reaching for her wallet and keys, closing her eyes very tight. Another young man in a rumpled navy overcoat was trying to text-message with one hand.

People stirred from where they lay. The young woman gathered her purse, leaving what had spilled, and ran for the exit. Her footsteps echoed up the stairs. Most people chose to stay where they were.

The gunmen lay in a heap on the ground. Jack Flynn stayed hidden behind another column.

“Ready to renegotiate?” I asked.

Gun drawn, Flynn jumped down onto the second set of tracks and jackrabbited for the gaping mouth of the inbound line.

I walked out from the column and shouted for him to stop. Clever.

He turned and again fired wildly.

I squeezed the trigger on my .40-caliber just as he turned to run and caught Flynn in the back. The old thug stumbled and fell forward like a quarterback from a classic NFL film. A second shot got him in the leg.

He wavered, but then he was gone.

The station was quiet, all the violence and cracking energy flushed out by a sudden cold rush of air. I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. The bystanders started to get to their feet and do the same. An alarm sounded from the toll booth. I turned to grab Mattie and offer her some reassurance that Flynn would be found. But she’d disappeared.

I spotted the last bit of her darting down the T tracks after Jack Flynn. She didn’t give me much of a choice.

I followed her down onto the sunken tracks. My shoulder hurt a great deal. I passed the DANGER signs, trying my best not to be electrocuted, running between the tracks. Inside the subway, the walls were concrete and tile, and covered in black graffiti and defaced billboards. The tracks ducked into a gentle curve.

I yelled for Mattie.

A single gunshot rang out in the tunnel. It was very loud and harsh and electric. I yelled for her.

My gun stretched out in my left hand. I was breathing very hard. My right arm hung at my side.

The long row of white lights shuddered off and on.

I turned the corner and spotted Flynn. He’d fallen to his hands and knees in the center of the track. Mattie had Flynn’s gun pointed down at his head.

I walked even more slowly. I called to her.

She didn’t hear me. She was back to being ten, watching a couple hoods tossing her mom into the back of an old Pontiac.

Flynn was spitting up blood. His coat was filthy. Blood and dirt covered him. He wavered on all fours in the flickering light. Mattie circled him and kicked at him with her little sneaker.

The chrome .357 looked ridiculous in her hands. Almost like an oversized toy.

Her arm was bleeding very badly. She’d been shot taking the gun away from him.

“Would it matter if I said he wasn’t worth it?” I said.

Nothing.

“If you kill him, he’ll own you,” I said. “You’ll give his life meaning.”

“He called her a whore.”

“He’s dying, Mattie,” I said. “He’s been shot three times. Twice by me. Let him go.”

“She was not a whore,” Mattie said. “She was not a whore.”

Flynn choked out more blood. He turned his head to me, staring at me with those pale Irish eyes. I thought I detected something that looked like gratitude. His face had been washed of all color as his body fell into deep shock.