And Decker sitting there—an army vet, a cop for twenty years, having served three different police departments, an expert with firearms, the perfect point man for any operation because he was always cool, calm, rational, stoic, so goddamn unemotional. Just sitting there, paralyzed by the sight of his mother falling.

5

The time has come.

The time is now.

Just go, go, go, I don’t care how.

You can go by foot.

You can go by cow.

MARVIN K. MOONEY will you please go now!

Hank closed the dog-eared children’s book and packed it inside his suitcase. Zeyde used to read it to him when he was just a little kid. Then they’d laugh together….

Marvin K. Mooney was one stubborn sucker. Everyone in the book against him, telling him to get the hell out, but he don’t care one single bit. He goes by his own time when he wants to go.

And no one was gonna tell him different.

He thought for a moment.

The time had come.

The time was now.

Do it, do it, I don’t care how.

Go by foot, go by cow.

Just get the hell out, it don’t matter how.

But you need someone to carry the bags.

Need someone to beat up the fags.

Need someone to wash your feet.

Need a wuss to take the heat.

Just look around, it’s there for the takin’.

Your little boys willing to…willing to…willing to…

He stopped, unable to think up the rhyme.

What the hell. Poetry was for faggots anyway.

But there was truth to what he was sayin’. He had a faithful following of true believers. Little dummies just waiting to follow orders. Errand boys. And one of them would do.

The apartment was closing in on him.

Do it. Do it right away.

It was the time of year made him feel this way, all bent out of shape, all nervous inside. Everyone acting so damn godlike and then shittin’ all over you as soon as the holidays was over.

Bunch of fanatical hypocrites. He’d love to buy himself an AK-fucking-forty-seven and take ’em all down in one moment of glory.

But that was too dangerous, too easy to get caught.

One glorious moment, but then it was the cooler for the rest of your life and having to knife off the shaved-headed shvartzes from reaming you in the butt and who needed that crap?

Anyway, he might hit a baby or something and even though the kid would grow up to be one of them, he couldn’t see splattering the wall with baby brains.

Besides, no one had any respect for a baby killer. Rip off a bank or something, now that got you respect. But killing a baby—even by accident—that was definitely out.

Besides, if you’re gonna do anything like that, you don’t do it yourself.

And then there was the principle of the thing.