I said nothing.

Going out, he paused to say, “They’re going to be crawling all over this place again, the cops and the feds. I’ve already found a new home for those three girls who lived with Sandy. But, uh, you need to be out of here tomorrow morning.”

He gave me a little salute and was gone, door shutting gently behind him, as if trying not to stir any ghosts.

I shut off the lights and sat on the foot of the bed in the dark and tried not to cry. Worked hard at it. I would be goddamned if I’d blubber like Shoulders and Dolan and everybody else on this fucking job. Carr was right: Sandy knew what she was getting herself into. The scent of that Greenlease money had made her crazy. What did I care if she lived or died? She was just another whore. I barely knew the bitch. Then the fucking tears came.

A two-rap knock came to the door. My palms took away the wetness and I wiped them on my trousers. I glanced around as the double knock repeated. Carr had forgotten Sandy’s pack of smokes on the coffee table. Not hitting the light switch, I cracked the door to make sure it was Carr, but it wasn’t, and a big guy who was mostly silhouette shouldered his way in. Behind him was another male shape. He came barreling in, too, as I backpedaled, going for the Browning under my arm, but my arm got batted away and somebody snatched out the gun and gave it a toss that made a thud somewhere on the carpet. A hand on either side gripped my biceps from behind as the guy in front of me lifted a hand with white cloth in it, and he poured liquid from a can that infused the cloth with the antiseptically sweet-smelling liquid that was chloroform, and clamped the damp cloth over my nose and mouth.

It took longer to take effect than you might think, and I fought it, flailing, kicking, for what must have been two or three minutes anyway. Which is a long fucking time. And it took two good-size strong men to hold me down, the cold and oily feel of the damp cloth the last sensation I experienced before I learned that the lights could go out in a room where the lights were already off.

* * *

The chirring rumble, and occasional jostle, of wheels on pavement told me I was in a car before my eyes came open and confirmed it. My arms were handcuffed behind me and my ankles were bound with heavy twine, the cuffs making me wonder if the fedora-sporting, gorilla-shouldered pair in the front seat were cops. My mouth tasted oddly sweet. My face around my nose and mouth burned a little.

I was lucky to be alive. If you called living being cuffed and ankle-bound in a back seat driven somewhere by a couple of possible cops, probable goons, not that those are mutually exclusive categories. But my head hurt, worse than if they’d sapped me, and the nausea had what was left of the Musial’s meal churning, wanting out.