whores running for cover, all of Hickey's gun monkeys pointing their guns right at Harvey. Joe watched the realization dawn in Harvey Boule's eyes - even if he got Tim to stop strangling him, Tim's goons would empty four revolvers and one automatic into him. He dropped to his knees and soiled himself with a loud venting sound. He lay on his stomach, gasping, as Tim pressed his knee between his shoulder blades and wrapped the excess cord tight around one hand. He twisted and pulled back all the harder and Harvey kicked hard enough to knock off both shoes.
Tim snapped his fingers. One of his gun monkeys handed him a pistol and Tim put it to Harvey's ear. A whore said, "Oh, God," but just as Tim went to pull the trigger, Harvey's eyes turned hopeless and confused, and he moaned his final breath into the imitation Oriental. Tim sat back on Harvey's spine and handed the gun back to his goon. He peered at the profile of the man he'd killed.
Joe had never seen anyone die before. Less than two minutes before, Harvey had asked the girl who brought him his martini to get him the score of the Sox game. Tipped her good too. Checked his watch and slipped it back into his vest. Took a sip of his martini. Less than two minutes before, and now he was fucking gone? To where? No one knew. To God, to the devil, to purgatory, or worse, maybe to nowhere. Tim stood and smoothed his snow-white hair and pointed in a vague way at the casino manager. "Freshen everyone's drinks. On Harvey."
A couple of people laughed nervously but most everyone else looked sick.
That wasn't the only person Tim had killed or ordered killed in the last four years, but it had been the one Joe witnessed.
And now Tim himself. Gone. Not coming back. As if he'd never been.
"You ever see anyone killed?" Joe asked Emma.
She looked back at him steadily for a bit, smoking the cigarette, chewing a hangnail. "Yeah."
"Where do you think they go?"
"The funeral home."
He stared at her until she smiled that tiny smile of hers, her curls dangling in front of her eyes.
"I think they go nowhere," she said.
"I'm starting to think that too," Joe said. He sat up and gave her a hard kiss and she returned it just as hard. Her ankles crossed at his back. She ran her hand through his hair and he looked into her, feeling if he stopped looking at her, he'd miss something, something important that would happen in her face, something he'd never forget.
"What if there is no After? And this" - she ground herself down on him - "is all we get?"
"I love this," he said.
She laughed. "I love this too."
"In general? Or with me?"
She put her cigarette out. She took his face in her hands when she kissed him. She rocked back and forth. "With you."
But he wasn't the only one she did this with, was he?
There was still Albert. Still Albert.
A couple days later, in the billiards room off the casino, Joe was shooting pool alone when Albert White walked in with the confidence of someone who expected an obstacle to be removed before he reached it. Walking in beside him was his chief gun monkey, Brenny Loomis, Loomis looking right at Joe like he'd looked at him from the floor of the gaming room.
Joe's heart folded itself around the blade of a knife. And stopped.
Albert White said, "You must be Joe."
Joe willed himself to move. He met Albert's outstretched hand. "Joe Coughlin, yeah. Nice to meet you."
"Good to put a face to a name, Joe." Albert pumped his hand like the pumping would get water to a fire.
"Yes, sir."
"This is Brendan Loomis," Albert said, "a friend of mine."
Joe shook Loomis's hand, and it was like putting his hand between two cars as they backed into each other. Loomis cocked his head and his small brown eyes roamed over Joe's face. When Joe got the hand back, he had to resist the urge to wring it. Loomis, meanwhile, wiped his own hand with a silk handkerchief, his face a rock. His eyes left Joe and looked around the room like he had plans for it. He was good with a gun, they said, and great with a knife, but most of his victims he just beat to death.
Albert said, "I've seen you before, right?"
Joe searched his face for signs of mirth. "I don't think so."
"No,