Alicia heaved the doe off her shoulders, onto the bar top. Its head hung with the looseness of death, the pink tongue unspooling from its mouth like a ribbon.
“I told you,” she said. “You really need to eat.”
* * *
29
The first gunshots rang out on schedule, a series of distant pops from the end of the causeway. It was one A.M. Michael was concealed with Rand and the others outside the Quonset hut. The door swung open with a blaze of light and laughter; a man stumbled out, his arm draped over the shoulders of one of the whores.
He died with a gurgle. They left him where he fell, blood darkening the earth from the wire’s incision around his neck. Michael stepped up to the woman. She wasn’t one he knew. Rand’s hand was covering her mouth, dampening her terrified shrieks. She couldn’t have been a day over eighteen.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you, if you keep quiet. Understand?”
She was a well-fed girl with short, red hair. Her eyes, heavily made up, were open very wide. She nodded.
“My friend is going to uncover your mouth, and you’re going to tell me what room he’s in.”
Cautiously, Rand drew his hand away.
“The last one, at the end of the hall.”
“You’re certain?”
She nodded vigorously. Michael gave her a list of names. Four were playing cards in the front room; two more were back in the stalls.
“Okay, get out of here.”
She dashed away. Michael looked at the others. “We go in in two groups. Rand with me; the rest of you hover in the outer room until everybody’s ready.”
Eyes flicked up from the tables as they entered, but that was all. They were comrades, no doubt stopping by the hut for the same reasons everyone did: a drink, some cards, a few minutes of bliss in the stalls. The second group spread out across the room while Michael and the others faded to the hallway and took their positions outside the doors. The signal was passed, the doors were flung open.
Dunk was on his back, naked, a woman busily rocking astride his hips. “Michael, what the fuck?” But when he saw Rand and the others, his expression changed. “Oh, give me a break.”
Michael looked at the whore. “Why don’t you take a walk?”
She snatched her dress from the floor and ran out the door. From elsewhere in the building came an assortment of screams and shouts, the sound of glass breaking, a single gunshot.
“It was going to happen sooner or later,” Michael said to Dunk. “Might as well make the best of it.”
“You think you’re so fucking smart? You’ll be dead the minute you walk out of here.”
“We’ve pretty much cleaned house, Dunk. I was saving you for last.”
Dunk’s face lit with a phony smile; beneath the bluster, the man knew he was looking into an abyss. “I get it. You want a bigger share. Well, you’ve certainly earned it. I can make that happen for you.”
“Rand?”
The man moved forward, gripping the wire in his fists. Three others grabbed Dunk as he attempted to rise and shoved him hard onto the mattress.
“For fucksake, Michael!” He was squirming like a fish. “I treated you like a son!”
“You have no idea how funny that is.”
As the wire slipped around Dunk’s neck, Michael stepped from the room. The last of Dunk’s lieutenants was putting up a bit of a struggle in the second stall, but then Michael heard a final grunt and the thump of something heavy striking the floor. Greer met him in the front room, where bodies lay strewn amid overturned card tables. One of them was Fastau; he’d been shot through the eye.
“Are we done?” Michael asked.
“McLean and Dybek got away in one of the trucks.”
“They’ll stop them at the causeway. They aren’t going anywhere.” Michael looked at Fastau, lying dead on the floor. “We lose anyone else?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
They loaded the bodies into the five-ton that waited outside. Thirty-six corpses in all, Dunk’s inner circle of murderers, pimps, thieves: they’d be carted to the dock, loaded onto a launch, and dumped in the channel.
“What about the women?” Greer asked.
Michael was thinking of Fastau—the man had been one of his best welders. Any loss at this point was a concern.
“Have Patch put them under guard in one of the machine sheds. Once we’re ready to move, get them on a transport out of here.”
“They’ll talk.”
“Well, consider the source.”