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Talker didn’t really wake up until he found himself in the stairway leading to his apartment with the 9mm still in his hand. He couldn’t remember closing Johnny Calderone’s door and it was annoying the hell out of him. If Rudy was around, he might not even
talk
to Talker for doing something as stupid as leaving the door open and waving the gun in the hallway. Suppose he ran into one of the tenants. He’d have to kill the fucker. And the next one and the next one.

“But I got the cure, man,” he said aloud, his voice echoing in the stairwell. “Smiley D is mines.” Rudy-Bicho would definitely approve
of that
. Rudy loved dope.

Talker thought about Rudy’s approval while he cooked up his fix. The envelopes were small and his hands were shaking bad; it seemed to take forever to empty the bags into a bottle cap. But he did get one break in that he managed to find a vein the first time he pushed the dull syringe into his upper arm. The relief was immediate, as always. He went from a sniveling, pitiful junkie to cool, straight, and controlled in a matter of seconds.

“That’s bad shit, man,” he said. “Tha’s a bad
maricón
.” Slipping down into a chair, he began a light nod, entering an almost dreamlike state. At first, there were no thoughts at all, just a gentle floating through warm, empty clouds. He might have stayed there for hours (he would have
loved
to stay there for hours), but, even as he’d cooked up a fix to cure the sickness, he knew he would have to make a move. How could he stay in his rooms like nothing happened when he just blew the shit out of Johnny Calderone?

His thoughts began to come together (gently at first, like morning dew on the flowers and shrubs when he’d worked in the Deputy Wardens garden upstate) about twenty minutes after he got off. Vague questions, in the beginning. How long would it take someone to find Johnny Calderone? Did he have a girlfriend who’d be coming by? Or a partner? Was Calderone connected to the kind of bad asses who’d come looking for his killer?

So many questions and no answers. He wasn’t even sure that nobody had seen him when he walked through the hall with the tool in his hand. Maybe some asshole was peeking out through the peephole and had already called the cops.

“Rudy-Bicho, man,” Talker asked, “you gotta help me out. This
pendejo
shit is so fucked up, I don’ know wha’ the fuck I gotta do.”

Talker wasn’t surprised to find Rudolfo Ruiz in his mind. Opium is the mother of dreams and he’d met every kind of life in his deepest nods.

“You got to get the fuck outta tha’ room, Talker,” Rudy-Bicho said angrily. “I always say you got
cojones
where your brains should be. Big deal, so you shoot tha’ Johnny Calderone. You stay in tha’ chair, you gonna find yourself pullin’ twenty upstate. You got to get the fuck outta tha’ room.”

“But where I’m gonna go?” Talker asked. “How you gonna fin’ me if I’m no’ here when you get out?”

Rudy-Bicho laughed at him, a sneering laugh that Talker Purdy hated worse than a beating. “How come you don’ think?” Rudy asked scornfully. “You so
estupido
, sometime I can’ even believe you’re alive.
Mira
, listen careful to what I’m sayin’. Go over to your sister’s house and wait for me there. Don’ you think when I find out what you done to Johnny Calderone, I’m gonna know you can’ stay here no more? Jus’ go to your sister’s house and wait for me. Take the guns and throw the one you used on Johnny Calderone down the sewer. If nobody seen you, we can put the shit back together in a couple of days. If you been made, we go down to Miami. I got bro’s in Miami. And don’ forget to wipe the piece before you dump it.”

Talker Purdy loved to listen to his partner explain the plans. Because Rudy-Bicho Ruiz was always positive and because his plans came out right. Talker had attached himself to a number of planners before Rudy-Bicho, and
their
plans had sent him into jail about ten times and twice to prison. “Rudy-Bicho, man,” Talker said. “I’m gonna do jus’ like you sayin’. I’m takin’ the two guns and gettin’ outta here. I’m gonna go to my sister’s house and wait for you, man. Then we can go to Miami, if somebody seen me, or put the shit back together if it’s cool.”

“Wha’ you do,
pendejo
? You blow farts from out your
culo
or from out your ears? Wha’ do I tell you abou’ the fuckin’ gun?”

“Oh, shit, man.” Talker Purdy slapped his head and laughed at himself. “I got to dump the fucking piece. The one I shot Johnny Calderone with.”

“Wha’ you do
before
you dump it?”

“Wipe it down, man. Tha’s right. Clean tha’ shit and kick it down the sewer.
No problema
, bro.”

“Now you tight. You real tight. You gonna get by with this shit if you stay cool and remember what I learned you.”

“I know, Rudy. Wipe the tool and dump it in the sewer.”

“An’ one more thing you got to do for me, Talker.
Por favor
,
señor
.” Rudy laughed, fawning like the greaseball waiter his father had been.

“Anythin’, man,” Talker replied. “You say it and I do it for you. Like now, man.”

“All these problems we got are comin’ from the old fuck who disrespect us in the lobby. You know where he live at?”

“I know.”

“Go and kill him, bro. Tha’s what I wan’ you to do.”

Talker felt himself drifting up out of his nod. He was refreshed and strong. Rudy would fade away, but that was nothing new. The lives always faded when you came out of the nod. “Rudy, man,” Talker said, before he lost his friend completely, “wha’ happen if the old fuck got the door locked?”

“Tha’s easy, man. Take the chisel and the hammer we usin’ for the locks on the truck doors and pop the lock off.
No problema
, right? Bang tha’ cheap shit right off there and blow the ol’ fuck away. He’s the one who put me in this fucked-up place and he gotta pay.”

Talker Purdy did it by the numbers. He scooped up the remaining bags of heroin and put them in the inside pocket of his jacket. Then came the two guns, Rudy’s in the small of his back and his own (he remembered that he should use his gun on the old fuck so he wouldn’t have to dump Rudy’s piece) in front where his jacket covered it nicely. He hesitated for a moment over the ammunition stored in the dresser, but decided the several hundred rounds would be too heavy in his pockets. They’d make too much of a bulge. Rudy’s clip held the full fourteen rounds and his still had thirteen. That would be enough unless he got into some totally fucked-up shootout with the pigs. Which he didn’t think was even possible, because he had Rudy-Bicho’s plan and Rudy-Bicho hadn’t fucked up once.

Talker left his apartment, half-expecting about a thousand cops to be standing out in the hallway. A thousand cops wearing black vests in a shooters stance with .38s pushed way out in front. But there was nobody. It was eleven o’clock at night and the citizens were settling down to the news and the bed. Even the lowlifes were laying low—the hallways and the stairwells were deserted.

He went directly to the third floor, to 3F, Mike Birnbaum’s apartment, putting his ear to the metal surface, listening for sounds of life inside. Everything was quiet. Next (he wasn’t
altogether
stupid) he tried the door, turning the handle, but it was locked tight, the bolt thrown. Then he took his chisel, inserting the blade between the lock and the doorframe, hoping to splinter just enough of the frame so the door, with the bolt still extended, could open outward. To his surprise, the metal-covered wood began to splinter with the first twist of the chisel; he wouldn’t even have to use the hammer.

“Rudy-Bicho, man,” he muttered as he worked the chisel back and forth. “You the bes’, bro. You the baddes’ bes’ mother-fucker in the whole joint. You teach me everything, baby, and now I’m gonna get your revenge for you. I’m killin’ this old fuck as soon as I get inside, then I’m gonna dump the
pistola
and go over to my sister’s house and wait for you. And I’m gonna wipe the piece, Rudy. I ain’ forgettin’ to wipe the piece. I’m gonna wipe the piece and then dump it and then go over to my sister’s house and wait.”

Talker Purdy was sweating when the doorframe finally gave way. He was uncomfortable, but still very stoned. The door had come apart easily, much more easily than he’d anticipated. As he’d come down the stairs, he’d been afraid he was going to make so much noise he’d wake up the whole damn building. In fact, the noise was
all
he thought about; he never once considered the possibility that the old fuck inside might be able to make some kind of a defense, but the first thing Talker Purdy saw, as the door swung outward, was an old man standing at the far end of the hall holding a pistol, an automatic like his own.

“Aha,” the apparition said. “I see you came back to finish the job.”

“Where you get tha’ gun?” It was the only thing Talker Purdy could think of to say.

Mike Birnbaum laughed out loud. “I took this from a Nazi in the mountains south of Milan. He was a bigshot
gonif
, just like you. Naturally, I had to kill him,
tacha
. Just like I’m gonna kill you.”

Talker Purdy, suddenly realizing that it didn’t even
matter
where Mike Birnbaum had gotten the gun, began to move his hand toward the 9mm in his waistband, but he wasn’t fast enough. Not even close. The first slug caught him under the chin, choking and spinning him until he was facing away from his intended victim and the blood poured down his throat. “Oh, shit, Rudy-Bicho,” he said, “you fucked it up.”

The second bullet caught him in the back of the skull. Deflecting slightly downward, it plowed a thick furrow through his brain, killing him instantly, before exiting a half-inch below his right cheekbone.

“I got one more for you, Mr. Hoodlum,” Mike Birnbaum said calmly, walking the length of the hallway to stand over Talker Purdy’s corpse. “This little present is from Sylvia Kaufman.”

S
TANLEY MOODROW AND BETTY
Haluka were lying in bed when Paul Dunlap phoned with the news of Mike Birnbaum’s impending arrest. It was nine o’clock on Saturday morning and they were huddled together, half-awake and beginning to search for enough energy to make love. Not that it was to have been a complete holiday for either of them. The morning’s pleasure (a planned brunch just as important as the sex) was only an interlude before they went back to work. Betty expected to spend the better part of the afternoon preparing a motion for an injunction to end harassment of the tenants. The motion was a battle she figured to lose; it would be no more than a side action in the overall legal strategy. Nevertheless, she would work at it diligently and the quality of her efforts (she hoped) would not be lost on Supreme Court Judge Emmanuel Morris, who was scheduled to hear the case and who’d continue to hear it if she found an excuse to go back into the higher court.

Moodrow had planned a trip in Betty’s car, to Queens where he and Dunlap would try to light a fire under Sergeant Boris Kirov, the precinct forensics officer. The fire marshal, Sam Spinner, was screaming for the return of his evidence—the drug paraphernalia Moodrow had taken from the scene. Spinner wanted the bag of vials and syringes so he could officially close the investigation.

“For Christ’s sake,” he’d lectured Moodrow on the previous afternoon, “have a little mercy. The landlord is waitin’ for the insurance check. He needs the money to clean and paint the damaged apartment before it goes back on the market. I mean the bedroom’s still sealed off as a possible crime scene. It’s ridiculous.”

Dunlap’s call, of course, eliminated all concern, either for Sam Spinner’s evidence or for Betty’s Supreme Court motion. Moodrow listened quietly to Dunlap’s concise explanation of the course of events, from Talker’s attempted break-in to the results of interviews with several witnesses who’d come into the hallway after the first shots had been fired.

“Try to hold ’em off until I get there,” Moodrow responded. “If the other tenants see him in cuffs, I’m afraid they’ll give up.”

Dunlap laughed. “You wouldn’t believe it, Moodrow. There’s about twenty of them out there now, blocking Birnbaum’s door. The lieutenants holding the lid on while he waits for the captain to show.”

Moodrow got out of the bed and began to dress as soon as he’d hung up, explaining the situation to Betty Haluka as he went along. “We gotta get out to Queens right away. Mike Birnbaum shot someone.”

Half an hour later, Moodrow, explaining the matter to Betty as they went along, had folded himself into her Honda and they were on their way to Queens, pushing the tiny car for all it was worth. Traffic was light on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (as it usually is early on Saturday morning), despite closed lanes on either side of the Kosciusko Bridge, and they arrived a little after ten o’clock to find Paul Dunlap waiting at the curb.

“What’s the situation?” Betty asked as she got out of the car. Moodrow was still trying to pull his feet from between the pedals.

“Physically, it’s the same as when I called Moodrow, except the number of tenants has grown. There’s about thirty people out there, including some kids. Andre Almeyda’s kids, to be exact. He’s got his whole family singing hymns. Meanwhile, Annie Bonnastello’s praying the rosary with Paul Reilly.”

“In other words,” Moodrow said, his feet finally on solid ground. “The standoff is standing off.”

“Only physically,” Dunlap replied grimly. “The captain showed up about ten minutes ago and he’s determined to drag Mike out of here this morning. Not that he wants to go hard on the old man, but he doesn’t like the idea of the NYPD being humiliated.”

Dunlap hesitated and Moodrow stepped forward. “You want something, right?” Moodrow asked, a smile spreading across his face. “I can smell it, Paulie. I can smell it all over you.”

“I’m in a bad position here,” Dunlap answered firmly. “Keep in mind, I’m still a cop. I got other loyalties besides you and Mike Birnbaum.”

“You’re right,” Betty said to Moodrow as her own instincts, honed by thousands of hours of cross-examination, kicked into place. “He
does
want something.”