I stared at him, waited for him to see how silly he looked working the slide like a character in a movie, spitting out his bravado.

He stared back, and the muzzle of his gun slowly turned until it was facing me over the roof.

“You going to shoot me, Phil? Huh?”

His hand was firm. The gun never wavered.

“Answer me, Phil. You going to shoot me?”

“You don’t open this door, Patrick, I’ll blow the window out, climb in anyway.”

I looked steadily at the gun in his hand.

“I love her, too, Patrick.” He lowered the gun.

I got in the car. He rapped on the window with the gun and I took a deep breath, knowing he’d follow me on foot if it came down to it or shoot out the window of my Porsche and hot-wire it.

I reached across the seat and unlocked the door.

The rain started around midnight, not even a drizzle at first, just a few spits that mingled with the dirt on my windows and bled down to my wipers.

We parked in front of a senior citizens home on Dorchester Avenue, a half block up from The Black Emerald. Then the clouds broke and the rain clattered the roof and swept down the avenue in great dark sheets. It was a freezing rain, identical to yesterday’s, and the only effect it had on the ice still clinging to sidewalks and buildings was to make it seem simultaneously cleaner and more lethal.

Initially, we were grateful for it, because our windows steamed up, and unless someone was standing right beside the car, he wouldn’t be able to see the two of us inside.

But this worked against us, too, because pretty soon we couldn’t see the bar very well or the door to Gerry’s apartment. The defrost in the car was broken, and so was the heater, and damp cold bit into my bones. I cracked my window, and Phil cracked his, and I used my elbow to wipe at the condensation on the inside until Gerry’s doorway and the doorway to the Emerald reappeared, diluted and rubbery.

“How’re you so sure it’s Gerry who’s been working with Hardiman?” Phil said.

“I’m not,” I said. “But it feels right.”

“So why aren’t we calling the cops?”

“To tell them what? Two guys with fresh bullet holes in their heads told us Gerry was a bad guy?”

“What about the FBI then?”

“Same problem. We don’t have any proof. If it is Gerry, and we tip him too early, maybe he slips away again, goes into hibernation or whatever, only kills runaways nobody’s looking for.”

“So why are we here?”

“Because if he makes a move, any kind of move, I want to see it, Phil.”

Phil wiped at his side of the windshield, peered out at the bar. “Maybe we should just go in there, ask him some questions.”

I looked at him. “Are you nuts?”

“Why not?”

“Because if it is him, he’ll kill us, Phil.”