Carella was ready. He'd been waiting for the movement ever since they'd left the apartment. He'd been wondering where he would look if he were Miranda, and he'd realized that nobody could shoot from the other side of the street, and so any trap would have to be set on this side of the street, any shots would have to come from behind.
So Carella knew that Miranda knew, and he'd been waiting for the sideward movement of Miranda's head because he had further reasoned that Miranda would begin shooting the second he saw the cops on either side of the stoop.
Zip saw the cops the same moment Miranda did. It was too late to shout a warning.
Carella felt Miranda's head and eyes flickering to the left.
He went.
No one said a word. Miranda turned toward Carella in the same instant that Carella threw himself headlong down the flight of steps.
And then the shooting started.
"Pepe!" Zip yelled. "Pepe!" But he was too late.
The crossfire was true crossfire. Miranda whirled to the left, and the bullets suddenly smashed into him from the right side of the stoop, spinning him around. He slammed into the railing and fired a shot at the patrolman who seemed closest to him, and then suddenly there were shots on his left, and he realized he was caught in a deadly crossfire, and he ran off the stoop toward where Carella lay sprawled at the foot of the steps. Byrnes began firing from the other side of the street, and Parker began firing from the crate, and then it seemed that every cop on that block had been waiting for just this moment because the street suddenly reverberated with ear-shattering sound as the bullets caromed into the gutter.
He seemed to be bleeding from a dozen places.
The white undershirt seemed to sprout blood like poppies in an instant. His own gun kept bucking in his hand, but there was blood dripping from his face and into his eyes, and he just fired blindly and sort of groped out toward the crowd as if he were reaching for salvation and didn't know whose face held it.
Parker came down off the crate, his service revolver trembling in his hand. The cops on the rooftops stopped firing all at once, and the men behind Miranda stopped firing as he stumbled blindly across the street, moving toward Parker who was similarly drawn toward him. It was almost as if someone had placed two magnetic figures on a long table. They moved toward each other inexorably, Miranda blinded by blood, and Parker drawn into that street by something he would never understand.
Miranda's gun clicked empty, and he looked at Parker in supplication, blood dripping into his eyes and bubbling out of his mouth, the mouth open, the hands limp now, the head twisted to one side like a Christ who had climbed down from the cross.
"Give me a break," Miranda whispered.
And Parker fired.
His shot took Miranda in the throat at close range, nearly ripping away the back of his neck. A fresh blossom of blood erupted, exposing Miranda's windpipe as he staggered forward again. His voice bubbled from his torn throat, a whispered voice that sounded as if it were coming from one of those trick underwater recording chambers, a voice directed only to Parker, a voice that sought out Parker on that spinning red street.
"Can't you… can't you give me a break?" And again Parker fired. And this time, he kept his finger on the trigger, tightening the pressure each time a slug roared from the barrel of the gun, watching the slugs rip into Miranda, watching Miranda topple into the gutter lifelessly, and then standing over him and pumping bullets into his body until his gun was empty, and then grabbing a gun from the patrolman standing next to him and beginning to fire at the dead Miranda.
"That's enough," Carella shouted.
Zip pushed past the barricade and flung himself at Parker's back. Parker brushed him off like a pesky fly, swinging his huge shoulders, knocking Zip to the pavement.
"Leave him alone!" Zip shouted. "Leave him alone!"
But Parker was hearing nothing. He fired the patrolman's gun at Miranda's head, and then he fired again, and he was preparing to fire a third time when Carella grabbed his arms and pulled him away from the body.
"Somebody get up there to Frankie!" Lieutenant Byrnes shouted. "On the double!"
Two patrolmen rushed into the tenement. Byrnes walked over to Miranda and stared down at him.
"Is he dead?" a reporter called.
Byrnes nodded. There was no triumph in his voice. "He's dead.'"
"They killed him," Zip said to Cooch. "They killed him. The bastards killed him." He clutched Cooch frantically. "Where's Sixto? Where's Papa? We're gonna get him now, you hear me, Cooch? They killed Pepe, Cooch. You understand that? They killed him!" His eyes were wild. A thin layer of sweat covered his entire face.
"What about China?" Cooch asked. "You said we needed China to…"
"The hell with China! Alfie's gonna get his, you hear?"
