I dropped to the floor as a second bullet burst through the darkness and out into the light.

Behind me, I heard two deep metal-into-flesh sounds. Sucking sounds.

As Pine walked out of the darkness, he unscrewed a silencer from his pistol, his gloved hand shrouded in smoke.

I turned my head and looked back down the lanes.

Phil was on his knees, hands over his head.

Bubba tilted his head back as he poured vodka down his throat.

Kevin Hurlihy and Jack Rouse stared blankly back at me, identical bullet holes in the centers of their foreheads.

“Welcome to my world,” Pine said and offered me his gloved hand.

37

I didn’t like the way Pine stood over the elevator shaft with his eyes on Phil as we descended. Phil had his head down and his hand on the roof of the Porsche as if he needed its support to remain standing. Pine’s gaze never wavered.

As we neared the first floor Pine said something to Bubba, and Bubba stuffed his hands in his trench coat pockets and shrugged.

The elevator doors opened and we climbed in the car and pulled out the back of the building and turned up the alley that led to South Street.

“Jesus,” Phil said.

I drove slowly up the alley, my eyes on the headlights cutting through the hard dark in front of us.

“Pull the car over,” Phil said desperately.

“No, Phil.”

“Please. I’m going to be sick.”

“I know,” I said. “But you’re going to have to hold it down until we’re out of sight of the building.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

I pulled out onto South Street. “Because if Pine or Bubba sees you puke, they’ll be convinced they can’t trust you. Now hold on.”

I drove up the block, turned right and picked up speed on Summer Street. A half block past South Station, I pulled in behind the Post Office, checked each loading bay until I was sure they hadn’t started filling the trucks yet, and then pulled in behind a Dumpster.

Phil was out of the car before we came to a complete stop and I turned up the radio so I wouldn’t have to hear the sounds of his body revolting against what he’d just witnessed.

I reached down and turned the volume higher and the windows reverberated as Sponge’s “Plowed” poured through my speakers, the vicious guitar riffs carving through my skull.

Two men were dead and I may as well have pulled the trigger myself. They weren’t innocent. They weren’t clean. But they were human, nonetheless.

Phil came back to the car and I handed him Kleenex from the glove compartment and turned down the volume. He pressed the tissue to his mouth as I swung back onto Summer and headed toward Southie.

“Why’d he kill them? They told us what we wanted to know.”

“They disobeyed his boss. Don’t get caught up in the whys, Phil.”

“But Christ, he just shot them. He just pulled his gun and they were tied up and I’m standing there, looking at them, and then—shit—no sound, nothing, just those holes.”