Hard Case Crime: Fifty to One (27 page)

Tricia inched over to the corner of the stall beside the door and then, with her back pressed against the wall, stood once more. There was a wide wooden post here at the border between this stall and the next that topped out around seven feet, and standing behind it she was fairly sure they couldn’t see her. She’d stopped whispering to the horse once the men came in and now she was too far away to stroke him, but from her hiding place in the corner she held him with her eyes, and though it felt foolish she raised one index finger to her lips. Would it help? Who could say? But Shooting Star stared back and stayed quiet. All Tricia could hear were the steps of the men as they walked to the far end of the barn and came back—that, and the thudding of her pulse in her ears.

“Hey,” one of the men called, the one who wasn’t Bruno. His back was to her at the moment—both men’s were. “We know you’re in here. We won’t hurt you if you come out.” The false friendliness in his voice was chilling. He made almost no effort at all to sound as though he meant it.

Tricia tried to breathe as shallowly as possible, making no sound. She raised the gun, shrank into the shadow.

“Come on,” the man said, “don’t make us do this the hard way. You’re just going to make us mad.”

When they got no response, Bruno said, “Maybe it was the next stable over.”

“You said this one.”

“I thought it was this one,” Bruno said, “but maybe it was the next.”

“Well, why don’t you go look there then.” The other man sounded annoyed. “If she’s here, I’ll flush her out. If you see her, yell.”

“Okay,” Bruno said. Then: “Remember, she’s got a gun now.”

“You really think I’d forget that?” the other man said. “Now get over there.”

“Okay,” Bruno said again, and Tricia heard him leaving.

Remember, she’s got a gun
—well, of course Bruno would know that. But now the other guy did, too, which was a shame. On the positive side, the odds had just improved: There was now only one man here, which lined up better with the one bullet. Except that the sound of a gunshot would surely bring Bruno running right back in...

“I’ll count to three,” the remaining man said, his voice fading as he paced further away and then growing louder as he returned. “If you’re not out here by the time I reach three...” He stopped pacing and his voice grew darker, nastier. “Let’s just say you’ll be sorry. We understand each other, right? Uncle Nick wants you alive—but that leaves me plenty of options.
Plenty.
You’ve only gotten a little taste so far.”

Tricia stood in the darkness, shaking. There was a part of her that wanted to step out, gun blazing, take this man down before he knew what hit him. But could she hit him? It was far from certain. She’d fired guns before, every kid in South Dakota did, but not for a while now, and not in a darkened barn, and never at a target that was armed and ready to shoot back.

Meanwhile, there was another part of her that wanted to surrender—drop the gun, step out with her hands up, tell the guy she had Nicolazzo’s photos and demand that he take her to him unharmed, untouched. It might work. It might. But it might not. And even if it did, then what? Nicolazzo would have his pictures back and she’d have no gun and no way out, nor any way to help Coral get out.

“If you’re in here,” the man bellowed, “I’m going to find you. You can’t get away.”

Tricia heard the door to one of the stalls—it sounded far enough away to be the one on the other end—swing open and slam against the stable wall. A few footsteps, then another door swung and slammed, this one a little nearer. “There’s nowhere you can hide. Don’t you understand that?”

She understood. She understood it fine.

At the rate he was going, he’d reach her end of the row in seconds—thirty seconds? Forty-five? And then she’d be forced to make a decision. A terrible decision with terrible consequences, whichever way she decided it.

Another door slammed and she heard the man leap into the newly opened stall with a loud
“Hah!”
A moment later he stepped out again.

“You are making me
very
angry,” he said, and he certainly sounded it. Almost to himself, he added, “I’m gonna make you hurt real bad.” Less a threat than a promise.

He was just two stalls away now.

Tricia tried to will her right hand to stop shaking. She steadied it with her left, held the gun between both, fit both index fingers inside the trigger guard. Her breath was coming fast now, and she could hardly believe he couldn’t hear it, that and the pounding of her heart. It was a cacophony to her. Shooting Star whinnied beside her—he probably smells the fear on me, Tricia thought, and why not? I must stink of it.

“Shut up, you nag,” the man said. He stopped at the stall beside Tricia’s, put his hand on the door latch.

He yanked it open, let the door swing free, and began another exclamation—
Hah!
or
Huh!
or something of that sort—but just what it was Tricia would never find out since from inside the stall came the explosion of a gunshot and the man fell backwards clutching his chest.

Shooting Star reared up and bucked wildly; the other three horses sounded like they were doing the same. Dodging the horse’s flailing hooves, Tricia flung herself at the door to the stall, scrabbled up and over and landed in a heap on the ground. She saw the man lying there, blood pooling around him, just a few feet away. From the open stall a figure came forward, gun in hand—

“Don’t shoot!” Tricia screamed and swung her hands up, thinking too late that maybe she should have dropped her gun first. That would’ve made for a more convincing surrender. But instead of blasting her, the figure lowered its own gun.

“Trixie?” Erin said. “Is that you?”

“Erin?” Tricia said. “How did you—never mind, you’ll tell me later. We’ve got to get out of here before Bruno comes back.”

“Hold on,” Erin said, and bending over the fallen man, calmly put another pair of bullets into him. Judging by his lack of any reaction, they were superfluous; but judging by the clicking of Erin’s gun she would gladly have given him more if she hadn’t run out of bullets. “There,” she said, to the corpse. “How’s that for a little taste?”

“Jesus, Erin!” Tricia stood up, pulled at Erin’s arm. “Come—”

But Bruno was filling the doorway now, silhouetted in the light from outside. They ducked to either side as a twin-barreled shotgun gun swung up and spat flame at them. The hammering of the horses’ hooves against the stall doors echoed like a further fusillade.

Bruno ran between them to where his fellow gunman lay. “What did you do?” he shouted, swinging his shotgun back around, trying to find them in the shadows. With his other hand he pulled a second gun from his belt, a handgun. “If you...if you killed him, you’ll pay for it!”

“Probably,” Tricia heard Erin say, “but not today.” Then came the sound of a door being unlatched and swinging open, followed by a half-ton of angry horse erupting from the stall.

Tricia felt a hand on her arm, pulling her toward the entrance, saw Bruno, illuminated by brief flashes of gunfire, shooting point-blank into the horse’s pale brown torso but making not the slightest dent in his momentum. She saw Bruno go down, still firing, saw Braddock’s Bane tumble onto him; then Erin pulled her out into daylight and they both began running at full speed, arms and legs pumping hard, toward the front gate in the distance.

‘There!” someone behind them shouted, and a pair of gunshots chased them across the gravel walk and onto the track. Tricia expected a bullet to catch her at any instant.

“You! Stop!”

More shots whizzed by, one tearing up the dirt by their feet and spattering clods against their shins.

The turnstile seemed very far off. And past it was the largest of the parking lots—nothing but blank concrete there, nothing to hide behind: not trees, not cars, nothing. If they could make it through the lot to the sidewalk they’d have a better chance, but even there...

And that was assuming they made it to and through the turnstile. Doing so would require them to get past this no man’s land in the center of the track, half planted with trees and shrubs, half empty soil. On the barren side, Tricia saw an earth grader standing silent and unhelpful; on the other, a paddock where a track walker with remarkably bad timing was trying to keep the bay stallion he’d brought out for a trot from running each time a gunshot split the air.

Erin, meanwhile, was falling behind—she didn’t have the benefit of dancing two shows a night to build up her stamina and endurance, not to mention the lingering effects of whatever mistreatment she’d suffered at the hands of Nicolazzo and the gunman she’d put down back in the stable.

“Can you make it?” Tricia said.

“Do I have a choice?” Erin said. She stumbled and almost fell, but she caught and righted herself, kept going.

Behind them, Tricia heard the pounding of feet, the heavy breathing and cursing of their pursuers. There were at least three of them, maybe four, and no more than forty yards away.

“Is there a car somewhere?” Tricia said. “Something we could use...?”

“Just that thing,” Erin said, jerking her head toward the grader. “If you know how to jumpstart it.”

She didn’t—but glancing over the opposite way, Tricia had another thought. She angled off to the left, running along a line of low bushes.

“Trixie! It’s—it’s longer that way—”

It was. But it also intersected the paddock where the walker was working, with some success, to calm his horse. He looked up as they burst in on him.

“We need that horse,” Tricia said, gesturing with her gun. His mouth opened, but before he could say anything she grabbed the reins out of his hands and hoisted herself up onto the horse’s back, bunching her dress around her waist, modesty be damned. She kept the gun trained on the man with her other hand.

Erin tried to follow but slipped off the horse’s side on her first attempt. The men chasing after them were shouting now, just twenty yards away and closing. One of them sent a bullet at them through the trees. Tricia heard a branch crack and fall. The horse squealed and jerked to one side; it was all Tricia could do to keep him from bolting.

“Erin, quick!” She reached down one arm and Erin caught it, almost pulled Tricia off, but grabbing hold of the horse’s mane with her other hand and kicking wildly with her feet she finally managed to sling herself belly-first across the horse’s back. She snaked one arm around Tricia’s waist, held on tight. Tricia kneed the horse in the sides, cracked the reins, shouted—
“Yah!”
—and the horse burst forward, delighted to be doing what it did best and to be doing it in a direction that took it away from the men with guns.

The horse pounded across the dirt, over the track, his sides heaving and hooves thundering. When he came to the low concrete wall separating the track area from the parking lot, he leapt it smoothly, landing with a jarring jolt that almost unseated them both. But Tricia held onto the reins and Erin, now upright at last, held onto Tricia, and the horse went
clopclopclop
across the asphalt and onto Rockaway Boulevard.

Cars swerved, honking, out of their path. Pedestrians, too, made way as the horse loudly approached, its metal shoes echoing against the pavement. This was one of the main shopping thoroughfares in this part of Queens and Sunday afternoon was prime shopping time. There was no shortage of people to goggle at Tricia and Erin as they galloped past.

Several ran for street-corner phone booths, leaving Tricia wondering how long they had before more than just the attention of passersby was directed their way. They’d left the men at the track far behind, but it wasn’t as though Nicolazzo’s men were the only ones interested in getting their hands on her. And riding a racehorse down Rockaway Boulevard was as fine a way to attract the attention of the others as any Tricia could imagine.

They sped along the avenue, attracting stares and gasps. One little girl on the sidewalk raised her arm and pointed, only to have her mother slap her hand down and yank her protectively out of the way. The girl started bawling, but at the pace they were going Tricia could only hear it for a few seconds.

The police sirens, when they came, were louder and lasted longer. One cruiser slid in behind them as they crossed 103rd Avenue, but they lost him by taking a sharp left against the traffic onto 102nd Road and then racing through a gas station parking lot and the scruffy back yards of three low brick homes. Another cop car picked up the chase when they hit Eldert Lane, the driver shouting at them through his bullhorn to pull over. “We’ll shoot if you don’t stop,” came the amplified voice.

Tricia could feel the horse tiring under her, felt its ragged breaths, its slowing pace. They wouldn’t be able to go a whole lot farther even if the cops didn’t shoot. But Erin urged her on. “Don’t,” Erin said. “We’ve got to shake them.”

“Where?” Tricia shouted back, her voice getting lost in the wind. But she tugged on the reins, turning the horse off the main road, and they vanished once more into the maze of yards and passages behind and between buildings.

“We’ll have to stop soon,” Tricia shouted and she felt Erin nodding against her back.

“You know where Jamaica Avenue is?” Erin said.

“No,” Tricia said.

“Up by all those cemeteries? Mount Cypress, Mount Lebanon, you know.”

She didn’t know. But somehow Tricia wasn’t surprised to find herself racing toward yet another cemetery. There seemed to be no getting away from them. New York was peppered with good places to lie down and have a final rest, to go with all the reasons you might need to.

“Just keep going, you’ll hit it,” Erin said.

“Why there?” Tricia shouted.

“We can ride into the cemetery,” Erin said. “The cops can’t drive in. They’d smash up all the graves. They’d never do it.”

“How far is it?”

“Not much farther.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know, eight blocks? Nine?”

“Great,” Tricia said and urged the horse on.