“Not his fault,” said Serge. “He doesn’t know what his clients will do with the info—and he took extra precautions with this gal, even though the last thing she appears to be is a killer. But right now time’s the new enemy.”
He ran back into the foyer, tossed the badge on a table and shook Brook hard by the shoulders. “You have to wake up right now!”
“W-what?” Her eyes weakly opened.
“We work for Mahoney, so don’t faint on us again.” Serge propped her into a sitting position. “We’re here to help you.”
She looked around. “Dear God, I’m still here. It’s not a dream.”
“Or a novel,” said Serge. “But right now you have to tell me as quickly as you can what happened here.”
“Just scare him! I, he, TV on. Rum, badge, Dad, La-Z-Boy, shotgun, karma . . .”
“Okay, not that fast,” said Serge. “Take deep breaths.”
Outside, a Beemer started up, but the headlights remained dark. It rolled so slowly you could hear bits of broken beer-bottle glass from teenagers who had moved on to a vacant lot. The sedan stopped directly across the street from the Maddox place. The driver checked his ammo clip one last time and racked a hollow-point bullet into the chamber. He looked up and down the street a final time and opened the door of his car . . .
Inside the house, Brook caught her breath. “I swear he was already dead when I got here! You have to believe me!”
“We do,” said Serge. “Someone blew his head off with a shotgun.”
“I did that,” said Brook.
“But I thought you told me—”
“He already had a gunshot wound in his chest. Then I got the shakes and my finger slipped.”
“That’s not good.” Serge stood up. “But there’s still time to get my arms around this. I’ve sanitized many a crime scene . . . Tell me, where’s the gun?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“It flew out the window. I think it went over the fence and landed in the neighbor’s yard because I heard their dogs barking.”
“That’s also not good,” said Serge. “But you didn’t touch anything, did you?”
“Yeah, the whole wall down that hallway. I was having trouble standing up.”
“So we’ve lost control of the weapon and left prints everywhere,” said Serge. “But that’s it, right? I mean you didn’t leave any other evidence that might be helpful to police, like a DNA sample?”
Brook promptly jackknifed over and threw up.
“And that completes the hat trick.”
“I don’t think I can handle this,” she said.
“You have to.” Serge pointed at a table. “See that badge? You got the real agent mixed up with the fake one.”
“But I didn’t kill him.”
“Right now that means less than nothing.” Serge turned to Coleman. “Go out back and look for that gun in case it didn’t clear the fence.”
“How do I get there?”
“I don’t know. Take a stab at that thing over there called a back door.”
Halfway across the front yard, Enzo crept with a pistol pressed against his thigh. No ambiguity this time. The junta had given him total clearance for any eventuality, which meant two immediate taps to the chest of everyone found at the house, to drop them, followed by two more in the back of the head on the way out. Enzo reached the bottom porch step and eased his weight onto the wood.
Suddenly he was lit up and blinded in a blaze of high-beam headlights from several vehicles that converged on the residence. “What the hell?” He sprinted back to the Beemer and sped away as more cars arrived. Tires screeched and braked to a stop at various angles on the lawn.
Inside, Brook leaped at the sound of squealing rubber. “The cops!”
Serge ran to the window. “No, not the police. They’ve got drinks. But who the hell
A swarm of almost twenty people in identical T-shirts spilled out of the vehicles and headed up the walkway with an unmistakable air of torches and pitchforks.
“This looks like trouble,” said Serge. “Especially the guys wearing Pittsburgh and Mets jerseys. We better get ready.” He put the chicken head back on.
Heavy pounding on the front door.
Serge opened the door. “How can I help you?”
The gang was prepared to unleash a merciless dialectic blitz on whoever answered. But the sight that greeted them created a confused pause.
“You’re . . . a chicken?”
“Correct,” said Serge. “Next question.”
“Are you the guy going by the name Rick Maddox?”
“Not today.”
“Do you know where he is?”
Feathers pointed. “In the den.”
The Mets jersey pushed through the pack. “Well, if you’re a friend of his and know what’s good for you, you’ll step out of the way.”
The others:
Serge raised his wings. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”
They shoved him aside and charged down the hall, running into the den, yelling profanities that even a sailor never heard.
