Gone, Baby, Gone - Dennis Lehane [147]
“Any comment?” Casper asked the guy’s friend.
“No,” the guy said, and looked down at the bar.
“Anyone else?” Casper said.
The bartender came up from behind the bar and placed the trash bag on top.
The bar was as silent as a church before a baptism.
“What?” Popeye said, and took three steps toward our table.
It took me a moment to realize he was talking to us, another moment to know with a complete certainty that this was all about to go terribly wrong terribly fast.
None of us moved.
“What did you just say?” Popeye pointed the gun at Lionel’s head, and his eyes behind the mask skittered uncertainly over Ryerson’s calm face, then came back to Lionel’s.
“Another hero?” Casper took the bag off the bar, came over to our table with his shotgun pointed at my neck.
“He’s a talker,” Popeye said. “He’s talking shit.”
“You got something to say?” Casper said, and turned his shotgun on Lionel. “Huh? Speak up.” He turned to Popeye. “Cover the other three.”
Popeye’s .45 turned toward me and the black eye stared into my own.
Casper took another step closer to Lionel. “Just yapping away. Huh?”
“Why do you keep antagonizing them? They have guns,” one of the secretaries said.
“Just be quiet,” her companion hissed.
Lionel looked up into the mask, his lips shut tight, his fingertips digging into the tabletop.
Casper said, “Go for it, big man. Go for it. Just keep talking.”
“I don’t have to listen to this shit,” Popeye said.
Casper rested the tip of the shotgun against the bridge of Lionel’s nose. “Shut up!”
Lionel’s fingers shook and he blinked against the sweat in his eyes.
“He just don’t want to listen,” Popeye said. “Just wants to keep talking trash.”
“Is that it?” Casper said.
“Everyone stay calm,” the bartender said, his hands held straight up in the air.
Lionel said nothing.
But every witness in the bar, deep in states of panic, sure they were going to die, would remember it the way the shooters wanted them to—that Lionel had been talking. That all of us at the table had. That we’d antagonized some dangerous men, and they’d killed us for it.
Casper racked the slide on the shotgun and the noise was like a cannon going off. “Got to be a big man. Is that it?”
Lionel opened his mouth. He said, “Please.”
I said, “Wait.”
The shotgun swung my way, its dark, dark eyes the last thing I’d see. I was sure of it.
“Detective Remy Broussard!” I yelled, so the whole bar could hear me. “Everyone got that name? Remy Broussard!” I looked through the mask at the deep blue eyes, saw the fear in there, the confusion.
“Don’t do it, Broussard,” Angie said.
“Shut the fuck up!” It was Popeye this time, and his cool was slipping. The tendons in his forearm clenched as he tried to cover the table.
“It’s over, Broussard. It’s over. We know you took Amanda McCready.” I craned my neck out to the bar. “You hear that name? Amanda McCready?”
When I turned my head back, the cold metal bores of the shotgun dug into my forehead, and my eyes met the curl of a red finger on the other side of the trigger guard. This close, the finger looked like an insect or a red and white worm. It looked like it had a mind of its own.
“Close your eyes,” Casper said. “Close ’em tight.”
“Mr. Broussard,” Lionel said. “Please don’t do this. Please.”
“Pull the fucking trigger!” Popeye turned toward his companion. “Do it!”
Angie said, “Broussard—”
“Stop saying that fucking name!” Popeye kicked a chair into the wall.
I kept my eyes open, felt the curve of metal against my flesh, smelled the cleaning oil and old gunpowder, watched the finger twitch against the trigger.
“It’s over,” I said again, and it came out in a croak through my arid throat and mouth. “It’s over.”
For a long, long time, no one said anything. In that hard hush of silence, I could hear the whole world creak on its axis.
Casper’s face tilted as Broussard cocked his head and I saw that look in his eyes that I’d seen yesterday at the football game, the one that was hard, that danced and burned.
Then a clear, resigned defeat