The person I’d knocked over had recovered, and I saw the flashlight beam going down to the water. A shot sang out over the river, and ducks began honking and squawking. Wings flapped, and the man shot again. Shouts sounded from the far side.
I tried working my way to the bank. An old tire and a shrub tripped me. I moved backward on my knees and one hand, keeping my gun in front of me. More shots, and then Dornick was spreading his troops in a triangle around me. Dornick shouted a command, and two guns fired in succession, one on either side.
I edged backward while he issued his orders, but the men in the triangle around me were all shining their lights into the brush where I’d landed. I was a fox in the hunt. They had light-finding, heat-seeking missiles, or some crap, that would take care of me.
“Where are the negatives, Vic?” Dornick called.
“My lawyer has them, George.”
“You never made it to your lawyer. We were there ahead of you.”
“I messengered them into town . . . The same time I sent Bobby Mallory his copies.”
Bobby’s name stopped him briefly, but Dornick only said, “We know you were on your way to Carter’s office. We were listening to that girl’s cellphone.”
“Girl’s cellphone? You mean the Reverend Karen Lennon? I bet you were fun as a little boy, Georgie. Bet you were the one who crawled under the jungle gym to look at your classmates’ panties. Did you start with that and then move on to torturing mice and cats? Captain Mallory isn’t going to watch your back anymore, Georgie. Not when he reads my report.”
“Without the negatives, your report doesn’t mean shit,” Dornick said. “You tell me where they are, and I’ll let the drunk go.”
“It’s okay, Vic,” Elton quavered. “You don’t have to do nothing on my account.”
“What happened, Elton?” I called. “How’d they know you had Petra here?”
“Someone in the coffee place across from your office,” Dornick said. “They told us a homeless guy had gone off with the girl, and we started shaking all the winos and weirdos in Bucktown. And a guy like Elton doesn’t take a lot of shaking before he falls off the tree, isn’t that right, dirtbag?”
“I’m sorry, Vic. I know you saved my life and all and I wish you hadn’t, that’s the God’s truth. If you’da let me die, my little girl wouldn’t be in so much trouble. Your little girl, I mean. She’s a real nice gal, Vic. You can be proud of her. So don’t worry about me no more now, you hear? You don’t need to look after me no more, okay?”
Dornick ignored Elton’s quavery apology. “I want those negatives, Vic.”
He ordered his crew to come into the brambles after me. “Alive: I want to search her. I don’t want her dead . . . yet.”
The men crashed down the bank and into the thicket. I fired and hit one of them but missed the other two. And then they had me by the arms, and I was kicking, shooting, but the end was ordained at the beginning. They held me while Dornick ran his hands inside my clothes, squeezed my nipples.
I stomped hard on his instep and kicked back at the kneecap of the man behind me. Both men cried out. They weren’t used to pain. I broke free, but Dornick grabbed me before I could start running. He wrenched my gun away and tossed it into the underbrush. An underling held me while Dornick slapped my face. Left side, right side, left side.
“You watch too many old Nazi flicks, George.” I said. “That’s always what Erich von Stroheim does.”
He hit me again. “You’re not as smart as Tony always claimed you were. Where are the pictures?”
“Freeman has them.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Slap.
“I put them in a FedEx box on Armitage,” I said.
“Take the shack apart,” Dornick ordered. “She wouldn’t even leave them with a messenger from Cheviot. She sure didn’t put them in a box.”
I had shot one man; the second man was holding me. Dornick held a gun on Elton while the fourth man dismantled his home. Elton gave little cries of misery as the walls were peeled apart, plastic bags torn open, his nest of sleeping bags ripped apart. It took a good twenty minutes, but the black garbage bag was gone. Petra must have grabbed it on her way out, determined to save Peter’s hide.
Dornick was angry now. He held his gun on me, and I could see the red triangle of the laser sight in the dark toying with my chest, my head, figuring where best to shoot so as not to hit his lackey.
I went limp in the man’s arms, took a breath—the kind Gabriella always wanted, down, down to my tailbone, shutting my eyes: “Breathe, don’t think. Breathe, don’t think”—and began my mother’s signature aria, “Non mi dir, bell’idol mio” (Say not, my beloved ) .
Dornick’s gun sounded, and I flinched. I couldn’t help it, ruining Mozart’s fluid line, thinking instead of breathing. He’d missed.