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As he turned toward her, I reached into my coat and took out the Smith & Wesson.

Manfred Bannerhoff stopped and threw back his head in a laugh. He turned to the others. “Oh, my goodness, fellas, look, Mr. de Ratour has a weapon.”

“Listen … damn you,” I said, determined to get my points across.

Turning toward me, his face malignant, he snarled, “No, you listen, Gramps. Face it, you don’t have the balls to use that thing, so give it to me before you hurt yourself with it.”

He was right. I felt like some small beast transfixed by the eyes of a cobra. I could not move. A fatal paralysis froze my limbs, my hands, my fingers. But not my mind, not the urge to beat him with words. “You’re wrong,” I snapped, fierce with refutation. Referring to something entirely different, I began, “Hitler —”

When he laughed, interrupting me, dismissively shaking his head, I felt the gun jump in my hand. The sound came like an aural shock from afar. More than anything, I think now, I was trying to get his attention. I hadn’t even been aiming the thing, just pointing, but the bullet caught his left upper thigh. He went down on his knees, cursing and holding his leg. The other two started toward me and stopped when I swung the gun directly them. Fang uttered a cry and ran off behind the door I had come through, followed by the others.

“You son of bitch,” Mr. Bannerhoff cried. “You old …” He reached under his tunic and pulled out a Luger.

I fired again, catching him in the right shoulder, making him drop the gun, which clattered to the floor in front of him. He looked at me, his rage turning to amazement. “You, you …,” he muttered.

“I mean it,” I said, still wanting him to pay heed. “Adolf Hitler was no artist.”

He lunged for the Luger, screaming in German. I fired again, aiming at his heart. He went down with a thump and lay still. Blood began to pool around him on the polished wood of the floor, just like in the movies.

“And God is not a joker.”

I spoke loudly, with bravado, knowing I had won the argument. But I was far more certain of my first utterance than of my second. I also felt a strange vacuity. You cannot argue with the dead.

It turned into a blur after that. The three men had disappeared. I could hear a helicopter approaching. I took Diantha in my arms and held her. Then, the gun still in my hand, I led her out the way I had come in. We went out past the still Mitzi and up a way along the hillside. I gave her my parka, and we hid in a stand of thick hemlocks.

Presently a helicopter from the SPD hovered a hundred feet off the deck, its loudspeaker booming orders for everyone to throw down their weapons and come out with their hands up. Not long after that, several skimobiles rocketed out into the woods from a basement garage. We could hear gunfire, sirens, men shouting. Then, after what seemed an age, we were both in the back of a four-wheel-drive police vehicle. I was wrapped in a blanket. My teeth chattered, but not from the cold.

There’s more. But I can’t keep going right now. I’m dead, dead tired. I’m going to bed, to sleep.

38

The repercussions of the Love Potion Murders, as this curious tale has come to be called, are going to reverberate for some time for myself, for the museum, and for the larger Seaboard community. There has been considerable media hoopla. There were calls from some quarters for a full investigation of Freddie Bain’s death even after it became apparent that I had “taken out” a major drug lord.

Then, as more details came to light, I had to endure the fickle adulation of the media. At the same time, there remains some concern for the safety of both Diantha and myself in terms of possible mob revenge. Actually, I am more worried that some distant relative of Mr. Bannerhoff/Bain will show up with a lawyer in tow claiming wrongful death.

I would like to have it generally known that I do not feel smug in the least about killing Freddie Bain, however richly he deserved to die. Though under duress at the time, though fearful for my life and Diantha’s, I question my motives.