on his rifle. He could have chosen which eye to plug me through.
Behind me Charlie White said, ‘Joey, get me out of here, will you?’
But Joey didn’t answer right away, which gave me a glimmer of hope. Maybe he was setting foot on a road that might lead somewhere useful. It’s a DNA thing. Like rats.
Behind me Charlie said, ‘They’re armed, Joey. They have guns and knives.’
Joey nodded, an inch down, an inch up, which looked millimetric, given his bulk. The guy with Bennett let go of his elbow and started patting his pockets. He came out with the switchblade, now closed up again, and a SIG-Sauer automatic, a P226, I thought, favoured by Special Forces everywhere. Then the guy with Casey Nice did the same thing, and out came her Glock, and her linoleum knife, and finally her pill bottle, its lone occupant rattling quietly. Joey held out his hand, the size of a trash-can lid, and the guy put the bottle in it, and Joey held it between a huge finger and a huge thumb, and he brought it up close to his face, and he said, ‘Who is Antonio Luna?’
Casey Nice started once, and started again, and said, ‘A friend of mine.’
‘Are you addicted?’
Nice paused a beat and said, ‘I’m trying not to be.’
Joey used a thumbnail the size of a golf ball and popped the lid, which fell away to the floor, and he upended the bottle into his palm, where the lone pill looked tiny.
He said, ‘Do you want it?’
Casey Nice didn’t answer.
‘Do you?’
No answer.
‘You do, don’t you?’
No answer.
Joey slammed his palm to his mouth, and he swallowed the pill.
He dropped the bottle on the floor.
Charlie White said, ‘Joey, come on.’
Joey reached out an arm the size of a tree limb and nudged his guys aside, one way and the other, making them haul Nice tight against the wall and Bennett tight against the window, elbows around their necks, guns visible now, aimed at me, Browning High Powers from Belgium.
I took my hands out of my pockets.
Joey turned sideways and came through the gap between his guys, one freakish stride, and then he stopped and stood face to face in front of me.
Or face to collar bone. He was six inches taller. And six inches wider. He was all bone and muscle. Not a bodybuilder. Like a regular guy, but a strong one, and all swollen up uniformly, like his house. He smelled of sweat, sharp and acid, and there was a pulse jumping in his neck. All of which hit the ancient parts in the back of my brain, especially the most ancient part of all, which had kept us safe for seven million years, and counting. The flight reflex, and mine was screaming at me to get the hell out of there. But I didn’t. I had no place to go. Wall behind me, wall to the left of me, wall to the right of me, and Joey ahead of me. I looked up into his eyes, and in the recessed shadows I saw one pupil blown the size of a dime, and the other like a pinprick.
I said, ‘What else are you taking, Joey?’
He said, ‘Shut up.’
He lifted his hands. His fingers were long and thick. Not like sausages. Wrong description. They were wider than that, and harder. More like soda cans, jointed at the knuckles, with fingertips twice as wide as mine, and nails twice the size.
He hooked those fingertips into my coat pockets, and wormed them deep, four inches maybe, coming close, breathing on me, and then he jerked back and tore the pockets right off my coat. My gun and my knife spilled out and clattered to the floor. He scraped at them with his feet, and kicked them behind him. Then he turned and stepped back to the door, the same giant stride in reverse.
Charlie White said, ‘Joey, don’t walk away from me.’
Joey shifted his weight, one foot to the other, and the floor creaked, and the balanced flashlight fell over, and shone a rolling beam across our ankles. Charlie White started moving, getting impatient, testing the tape on his wrists. I figured Joey had about a second and a half to make up his mind. Any longer than that, and there was no going back. Bonds of trust would have been destroyed. Suspicions would permanently linger. Charlie would always know it had passed through his subordinate’s mind to do exactly what I had outlined to Bennett.
A second