Bullock and Pockmark looked at me, stupidly at first, a kind of “Huh?” expression on both their faces. Bullock wiped the back of his left sleeve across his mouth. When Pockmark saw the gun in my hand, he went to raise his and I shouted at him, “Freeze, motherfucker!”

I couldn’t help myself. I could always apologize to Angie later. And the thing was, it worked this time.

Pockmark froze.

Angie, who two seconds earlier had been reeling from Bullock’s explosive performance, now looked at me with further astonishment, wondering, perhaps, what I had done with her real father.

“I want you to put that gun on the floor,” I said, pointing my gun now directly at Pockmark.

“I thought you dumbfucks searched him,” Bullock said.

“We did! He had nothing on him!”

“You call that nothing?”

“I asked you to put that gun down,” I said, stepping around in front of Angie to shield her in case Pockmark decided to try something stupid.

But he still wouldn’t drop it. It hung there at the end of his arm, still pointing down. He glared at me, as if we were engaged in a staring contest, that he would no more drop his gun than look away.

I didn’t see this situation getting any better if something wasn’t done about it right away. Blondie was still out there somewhere, probably coming back soon. At the moment, I only had two of them to deal with, and it wasn’t going to get any easier with three.

So I shot Pockmark.

For a second, I couldn’t believe I’d done it. No one was more surprised than I. Well, maybe Pockmark. And Angie seemed a bit taken aback as well, because she screamed. From where she stood, slightly behind and to the side of me, she didn’t know for a moment who’d actually pulled the trigger. And in that room, the shot sounded like a cannon going off.

I’d aimed a bit low when I squeezed the trigger, not wanting to actually shoot Pockmark in the head or chest, even though I realized that if you want to bring someone down, you aim for the biggest part of his body, the torso. Aiming for someone’s leg and actually hitting it was not something you could count on, so I guess you could say I got lucky. Certainly luckier than Pockmark.

“Jesus!” he yelped, and the gun hit the floor. He stumbled over to a chair, both hands pressed over a growing shiny patch on his black jeans. “Jesus Christ.”

There was a time when I might have apologized for something like this, but not tonight.

Bullock said nothing. He kept glaring at me.

“Angie, sweetheart,” I said.

From behind me, she said, “Yes, Daddy?”

“Do you think you could go over and pick up that gun? Very carefully, by the handle?”

“Okay.”