I slipped my hand into my jacket pocket, wrapped it around the cold metal of the gun’s grip, got my body ready to launch off the couch in a hurry.

Bullock didn’t just sip from the bottle. He took a long swig, which meant my day-old urine was already hitting the back of his throat before he had a chance to realize that it was not, in fact, apple juice. Already I was thinking that being over on the couch, away from the desk and off to one side, was a good place to be, because I was expecting, any second, something of an eruption from Bullock.

I was not disappointed.

It all took less than a second or two, but if you could have slowed down time, broken it down into milliseconds, you’d have seen his eyes bug out first. Then the cheeks puffed out, the body lunged forward, and then he spewed. The contents of his mouth sprayed out across his desk and onto the carpeting beyond. There was a lot of noise that went along with this. It was as if you went into a recording studio to combine screams of anguish, retching, and intense vulgarity. Somewhere, in the midst of perhaps the most disgusting sound I’d ever heard, Bullock managed to let loose with a loud, gargly “Shit!”

I felt no compunction to point out to Bullock that while he had that wrong, he was closer than he knew.

Pockmark thought, and had every reason to believe, that his boss must be dying. He rushed across the room at the first signs of Bullock’s distress, then dodged as Bullock spewed across his desk, hitting the box and phone and intercom and the envelopes of cash Trimble had taken off Eddie Mayhew.

“What?” Pockmark said. “Is the juice bad?”

He’d totally forgotten about me, and his gun hung down at his side as he went to save his boss, who was now spitting repeatedly, and not particularly fussy about where any of it landed.

Angie’s mouth was hanging open in shock. And I was on my feet, taking the gun out of my pocket and, gripping it with both hands, pointing it at Pockmark, then Bullock, then back at Pockmark, not having to waver too much, because the two of them were now pretty much shoulder to shoulder.

“Ewww,” said Pockmark.

“Fuck!” Bullock said, spitting onto the top of his desk. “What the fuck is this?” He glanced at the bottle, put it up to his nose, and turned his head away, disgusted.

I didn’t have a lot of time to think about what I was going to say, so I said the first thing that came to mind, and that was “Freeze!” I was close to saying “Freeze, motherfuckers!” but it struck me as even more of a cliché, and besides, my daughter was standing right there.