“Get out slowly and keep your hands where I can see them. You’re getting such a big break from me that it might make even a weasel like you think twice.” He realized that saying more might invite Kevin to fight, or run for it. “Open the trunk. Leave the key in the lock.” He stepped back from Kevin. “Put the guns, yours and mine, on the ground, take off your jacket, and get in the trunk.”

“I’m going to suffocate.”

“You’re worth more to me alive.” He waited until Kevin was cowering in the fetal position on the floor of the trunk, then quickly scooped up the jacket and one of the .38s. “Get yourself a new jacket.” The handcuffs made wrapping the jacket around the barrel of the gun difficult and maybe a little dangerous, but Devlin was able to fire the gun through the trunk lid. The report was not as sharp as it might have been. “Now be a good boy in there.” He threw the jacket in the trunk, closed the lid, and removed the key. If he worked fast, he could make the short trip east, a bit more than a mile up Forty-eighth Avenue, to Sunnyside and his apartment, for the things he would need tomorrow, including fresh clothing and toilet gear. He started the car to get the air-conditioning going.

Getting Kevin’s key into the lock of the handcuffs was a lot more difficult than wrapping the jacket around the revolver. Four guns now. Devlin thought of his father’s relief over not ever having had to kill anyone. The only reason Devlin hadn’t shot anyone before last night was a lack of opportunity. Now he was in a position that did not allow him to think more than a few minutes into the future without feeling terror, and he knew it was because he would not hesitate to use the guns again if he had to. He had stepped into another world.

FRIDAY, JULY 4 …

FRIDAY, JULY 4 …

4:27 A.M. …

4:27 A.M. …

The white Plymouth Reliant came around the corner the third time and then Devlin was in it with Eileen, whisking them through the Midtown Tunnel back to Queens. Devlin knew he was dreaming; perhaps the knowledge itself made the dream something less than soft time, because it wasn’t. Not a nightmare, either, not yet. Enough of Devlin’s consciousness still flickered to let him know he was sleeping, his body contorted on the seat of a car, Kevin’s car, in the factory district in Long Island City. The factories became the firetraps of Alphabet City. Devlin expected to see Octavio Lopez, but then he didn’t, remembering that Lopez had holes in him, put there in high school, Long Island City High School.