Frank still had one hand on Stavro. With his other hand, he reached to his waistband and pulled out a pistol. But the man in the skullcap was right there. His knife was long and nasty, and he lunged with it at Stavro, who stepped back sharply, away from the knife, and bumped hard into Frank. Frank’s gun hand had been swiveling to point at the man in the skullcap but Stavro’s body knocked it sideways, so it ended up pointing at the parked Mercedes, and Frank fired a bullet into its right front fender. The driver, the banker from the synagogue, was out of the car, a gun in his hand, pointed at the man with the knife, but that meant pointing it at Stavro, too, and at Frank, and at Catherine and Rafe, so he did not fire but ran toward them, and Rafe and Catherine leaned back hard against the bank’s closed door.

The banker had to run around the front of the Mercedes to get to them, which gave the man in the skullcap time to lunge again at Stavro, who jerked to his left as the knife came, which exposed Frank to the blade, which sank into his left side between two of his ribs. Frank fell to the sidewalk and the man in the skullcap pivoted with surprising speed and held out his knife as the banker ran straight into it. He fired his gun as he was falling and the bullet flew between Catherine and Rafe, inches from her head and his shoulder.

This had all taken eight seconds.