Zanche lay bleeding. She moaned. I couldn’t tell whether she was conscious, but the way she looked up at me—with that wide, black face of hers—some part of me, down in my own darkness, took satisfaction in seeing her humbled. But it was only part of me. Johnny went to the desk and gathered up the valise. Then Dazio and his girl appeared at the other end of the hall. At the sight of us the girl tugged at Dazio’s hand, trying to pull him back. Her instincts were right, but Dazio ignored her. No, I thought. Run. But Dazio wouldn’t run, I knew that, or he wouldn’t run fast enough, and Johnny would beat him the way he had just beaten Zanche, only more. He would break Dazio’s face into pieces, shattering it like so much fine glass.

I reached behind the clay planter and turned to face my brother.

I held the gun in my hand, my pistola para mujer.

“Sister,” he said.

His eyes sparkled in the way I’d seen a million times. He had that hunger in his eyes, that debonair glint, as if he could persuade me to do anything.

It was true, maybe, but only if I let him speak.

He lowered his hand, imploring me—a funny gesture I remembered from when I was a kid.

I was damp with sweat, and the film was all over me.

I fired.

It was a small-caliber gun, with small-bore bullets. He raised his hand, the one with valise, eyes wide, too wide, and reached with the valise to the spot, below the gut, where the bullet entered. He clutched the valise in one hand and Zanche’s gun in the other, and there was an instant in which he could have fired back. The instant passed. I fired again. Then twice more. The bullet holes made a tufted pattern on his chest. He dropped the gun and fell.

“Go,” I told Dazio. “Go now. Both of you. The back way.”

“You must come, too.”

My brother was still alive, facedown, panting into the floor. Zanche’s gun lay on the carpet next to him. I picked up her purse and put the gun inside, and the money from the valise. It wasn’t all the money. The rest was still in the bank.

“Just go.”

“Where?”

“Far away.”

“Where?” he asked again.

I gave him the name of a city somewhere along the coast.

“There’s a beach there. A long beach. It goes on forever.”

“You’ll meet us?”

I glanced at my brother, on his side now, curled painfully on the floor. I thought about the men on the street, watching the front of the house and the alley alongside. They needed distracting.

“Are you coming?”

My brother’s eyes beseeched me. His hand opened and closed.

“Don’t wait for me,” I told Dazio. “Just go.”

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