Page 55 of The Murder Inn

“The guy in the booth? He went out like a light,” said Vinny, snapping his fingers. “But the one guy who Bill caught before he hit the floor: I don’t know. I didn’t stick around. When I left, Bill was trying out CPR. Man, Driver’s face when the guy across from him started coughing.”

Vinny laughed, pretended to choke, grabbing at his throat and rolling his eyes up in his head. Nick didn’t move. Didn’t smile. The older man hadn’t seemed to notice that he was the only person enjoying this conversation.

Nick wasn’t having fun but he wasn’t angry. He felt numb, looking out at the darkness beyond the French doors. He wondered how long it had been since he’d become the kind of person who could sit listening to a man laugh about murders he had committed that day like he was reciting a beloved family anecdote. It felt like a lifetime. Nick couldn’t find the lines that divided just and evil actions anymore, good and bad deaths, times to be silent and times to speak. So he just listened. He looked at his phone on the coffee table before him, thought about the recording it contained.

He’d just put into words memories that he’d kept inside since 2010.

And as he’d voiced them aloud, he’d experienced the same unquestioning paralysis. Like he’d already felt all that he could possibly feel about what happened in Afghanistan, and now he was hollowed out.

Nick heard Effie’s footsteps on the stairs, and then she was in the doorway, pointing frantically toward the hall and the little foyer beyond it.

He went there and recognized Breecher’s silhouette beyond the stained glass panels in the door. He opened it, feeling Effie crowding at his back, the enormous rifle in her arms pointed at the ceiling. Nick looked Breecher over, gave Effie the nod that it was OK.

“You gotta go,” Nick said. He held a hand up before Breecher could speak. “It’s not safe here. We’ve got all kinds of trouble headed this way from Bill’s end of things and… it’s just not a good time.”

“I’m sorry, Nick,” Breecher said.

For a moment Nick thought she must have meant about the timing. Some part of him assumed she was about to suggest they meet again in the daylight hours, when the unease that comes with night had lifted, and she could try to convince him that she wasn’t lying to him. But another, deeper part of him was unsurprised as he heard glass breaking at the back of the house. Effie’s sneakers squeaked on the floor behind him as she swiveled, desperately trying to decide if she should respond to the intruders at the back or stay with the intruder at the front.

Nick looked down at the pistol Breecher drew from her jacket pocket. She leveled it at his chest.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

THEY BACKED UP. From where he stood at the junction of the foyer and the dining room doorway, Nick saw what had to be Norman Driver and two of his men enter through the kitchen, glass crunching on their boots, the hard-headed construction boss at the lead with a pistol in his grip. Effie leveled the rifle at the approaching trio, but Nick put a hand on top of it, halting her. There was no telling whether Effie had calculated the odds of their situation or not. Maybe she had, and she was willing for them both to be blown apart rather than submit to Breecher, Driver, and the two crewmen. She was younger, hot-headed, and trigger happy. Nick took the rifle from Effie’s hands and leaned it against the umbrella stand. He was silent and calm, hands on Effie’s shoulders, as Breecher flicked her gun and motioned for them to follow Driver and his guys into the sitting room.

Vinny was motionless in his wheelchair, only his white-knuckled grip on the armrests indicating he felt anything morethan he would watching another visitor to the house enter the room. Driver’s men drew the blinds. Breecher pushed Nick and Effie into the corner of the room while Driver leveled his pistol at Vinny’s head.

“You got any more talking to do, old man?” Driver asked the ancient gangster in the chair.

“Yeah, sure.” Vinny smiled. “I want to tell you this: It’s gonna be busy down there in hell. You might think you’ll slip by me in the crowd. But you won’t. I’m gonna be there, holding the door open for you.”

Driver smiled. Vinny grinned back.

“I know I won’t be waitin’ long,” Vinny said.

Nick and Effie gripped each other as Driver fired. Vinny’s head bucked and he sagged dead in his chair.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

NICK DIDN’T KNOW if his knees gave out and he sank onto the couch beside Effie, or if Breecher pushed him down. The room seemed to be turning slowly, ticking back on itself like the hands of a broken clock. Effie’s hand gripped his own, drenched in sweat. On the coffee table near where he had been sitting earlier, his phone began buzzing. Probably Bill. The silence in the room and the smell of the gunshot pulled him out of himself, away from the screaming of his mind at Vinny lying dead in his chair.

Driver turned the gun on Nick as his two men left the room, heading for the stairs.

“The weirdo in the room upstairs,” Driver said. “We’re gonna bring him down. That leaves Bulger, Robinson, the girlfriend, and the bitch who talks too much. Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” Nick said carefully. He lifted his eyes to Breecher. “Bill and Susan have been out looking for ShaunaBulger. She was never in this with us. She borrowed Bill’s car. That’s all.”

“Save it,” Driver snapped.

“Angelica got a room at a motel in town,” Nick continued, the words feeling like razorblades in his throat. “She didn’t feel safe here.”

“What about guests?” Breecher said. “You mentioned there was a mother and child. Overnighters.”

Nick shrugged. “Clay moved them. He’s… he’s got a thing with the mother. A romantic thing.”

Breecher and Driver looked at each other. There were footsteps on the stairs, and Driver’s two men shoved Neddy Ives into the room. The tall, hollow-eyed man folded himself carefully into a little armchair across the room from where Nick and Effie sat.

Driver smiled at Neddy Ives. He nudged the man beside him, gesturing to Neddy with his pistol.

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