“They think that’s the kind that killed Franny.”

  “He was shot close?”

  I nodded. “Head and neck.”

  “That’s all a. 22 is good for is close-ups. Otherwise, you’re better off throwing it at a guy than shooting him with it. Now this-this is the one: a Beretta 9-mil, the Cougar model. This is good. This is nice. Not too heavy, not too long a barrel-a little under four inches-packs ten rounds and there’s hardly any recoil. Not too accurate from a distance, but if you need it at all, it’ll be up close.”

  “If I-me? You brought me here to get me a gun?”

  “They tried to kill you twice already. You want to keep going up against them unarmed?”

  “I’m not licensed to carry a gun.”

  “Neither is Ricky the Clip, for Chrissakes. Neither is Marco or Phil or me for that matter. We don’t have licences but we all got guns.”

  “If I get caught with an illegal weapon, I’d lose my investigator’s licence.”

  “Get caught without one, you’ll lose a lot more. Suppose Ricky shows up at your door. What are you going to do, demand to see his licence?”

  “I can’t take it. I won’t.” My stomach was twisting and my breath seemed harder to find. It wasn’t the penalties I was thinking about, or my licence. It was the feeling of hot desert air filling my lungs, of sand stinging my eyes.

  He held the Cougar out to me, butt first. “If you walk out of here without the gun,” he said, “keep walking. Make your own way back to town.”

  “Why? Why is it so important that I carry a gun? You care that much about me?”

  “Pal, I care about me. If we’re in this together, you might wind up having to watch my back and I don’t want you there empty-handed. You might be good with your fists but you can’t throw a punch fifty feet. Someone’s drawing down on me, you gonna stand around yelling Haiee-ya! maybe break a plank with your head? Uh-uh. Not how I work. You’re going to take the gun, you’re going to fire the gun until you know what the fuck you’re doing, and then you are going to take the gun home so you can stay alive until this is over and keep me alive if it comes to it.” He pointed to the far end of the basement where life-sized silhouettes of men were taped to the walls.

  “A practice range?” I asked.

  Ryan went to the nearest wall and pulled away the curtain to reveal what looked like sheets of egg cartons. “It’s pretty soundproof.” One of the silhouettes had a black and white photo where the face would be. “Recognize him?”

  I did. It was Stewart McClelland, chair of TFTOC, the Task Force on Traditional Organized Crime. “We call it Tough Talk,” Ryan said, “because that’s all they fuckin’ do.” He racked the slide on the Beretta, pushed off the safety and pumped three shots where the heart would have been. The three holes he made were close together; any one of them would have been a kill shot.

  He handed me the gun again. This time I took it. “Aim for the chest,” he said.

  I closed my hand on it and felt the weight. About the same as the one I’d once carried, one and three-quarter pounds. It had been so long since I had held one. So many years ago. So many dreams.

  “Don’t stand stiff-legged,” he said. “It’s okay to crouch a little like you’re in a batting cage. You lefty or righty?”

  “Lefty.”

  “Don’t pull the trigger, just squeeze it. And don’t forget to breathe. It’s not healthy.”

  I remembered Roni Galil saying the same thing to me. With his heavy Israeli accent it came out “breeze.” Breeze, Yonah, before you shooting. Don’t forget to breeze.

  I remembered lying in bed Tuesday night, feeling pain where Marco had cut me, feeling alone and vulnerable and wishing I had a gun. Now I did and I felt worse.

  I took a breath and settled into the modified Weaver stance Roni had taught me. Left hand holding the gun, left arm extended, right hand cupped around the left, right elbow tucked against my body. Right leg forward, right knee bent, weight evenly placed. Centred. Rock solid. Back on the bike.

  I pictured Marco up there instead of Stewart McClelland. Marco standing over Lucas Silver with that stiletto of his, pulling Lucas’s head back by the hair to expose his throat all soft, all white. I pictured the mother screaming and Marco smiling, the knife going toward the boy’s jugular and me the only one who could stop him. I exhaled and fired at the centre mass of the silhouette in front of me. And kept firing until the clip was empty.

  CHAPTER 29

  Buffalo: the previous March

  “ How much do I owe you?” said the woman at the door.

  “Lady, you have no idea,” said Ricky Messina, his face breaking into a wide grin. “No idea at all.”

  He put his hand in the vinyl warmer and brought out his High Standard Victor. An absolute beauty, five and a half inches of blue steel with gold-plate detailing. She didn’t seem to care for it much, but that was fine by Ricky. Her scared eyes and open mouth just added to her allure, which was considerable, even though she was on the old side for Ricky, letting her hair go grey.

  “Who else is in the house?” he asked.

  She glanced around wildly, a pulse beating visibly in her throat. He laid the barrel of the gun against where it beat. “Tell me how many,” he said. “Or you’ll be one less.”

  “Two,” she said quickly.

  “Men?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “They have guns?”

  “I–I don’t-”

  “Strictly yes or no,” Ricky said.

  “No.”

  “Where are they?”

  “The den. Right there.” She indicated a closed door with a nod of her head.

  “Knock.”

  She swallowed as if trying to wet her throat enough to speak.

  “Knock, I said. Now.”

  She rapped on the door with the heel of her hand. “Barry?” she called.

  “Just a sec,” a man answered.

  Ricky heard footsteps on the hardwood floor, two sets, and a high-pitched giggle. When the door opened, he saw two men in their fifties: a Mutt ‘n’ Jeff act, one of them tall and thin with longish grey hair, the other shorter, rounder, balder. Both froze when they saw the gun pointed at Amy.

  “Let’s adjourn to the living room, shall we?” Ricky said.

  Neither one moved.

  He pushed the gun into the soft tissue of her throat, making her gag. When he pulled it away, the suppressor at the end had left a circular imprint. “Fucking adjourn, I said.”

  “Okay, okay,” the tall one said, his hands up-though he hadn’t been told to put them up. The pear-shaped one followed him out of the den.

  “Either one of you assholes her husband?” Ricky asked.

  The tall one took long enough to say, “Me.”

  “I don’t know,” Ricky said to the woman. “Couldn’t a cute girl like you have done better?”

  This was working out beautifully. He could have found himself up against real heavies like he had at other times, gun-nut bikers or connected shitheads with ambition. But here were two softies, grey old farts looking like they’d die of fright before he had a chance to kill anyone.

  In the living room, he made them sit together on the couch, bunched together like they were in the back seat of a small car. He stayed standing, the gun held casually in their direction without pointing at anyone in particular.

  “Look, man,” the tall one said.

  “Don’t call me man, man,” Ricky said. “My name is Ricky. And you are?”

  No one on the couch answered.

  He pointed the Victor squarely at the tall man. “Did you not hear me ask your name?”

  “Barry,” said the tall man.

  “Barry what?”

  “Aiken.”

  “And you?” he asked the woman.

  “Amy Farber.”

  “You didn’t take his name?” Ricky asked.

  “No.”

  “Just as well. You might not be married much longer. What about you, pudge?”

  “Richard Leckie,” the chub said, looking down at the ground.

  “Another Richard!” Ricky exclaimed. “You don’t by any chance go by Ricky, do you?”

  “No,” he stammered. “Rich, mostly.”

  “That’s good, Rich,” Ricky said. “You might have just saved your own life, ’cause there’s only room for one Ricky and that would be me.”

  “Um… Ricky?” Barry said. “We have some cash in the house. And a laptop and a digital camera and an iPod, the four-gig nano.”

  “You think I’m here to rob you?” Ricky said.

  “I guess-”

  “You calling me a thief?”

  “No!”

  “Good. Because that would really insult me, coming from a friend and partner.”

  Barry gaped at him. “I don’t get it.”

  “Sure you do, Barr. You took something that belongs to me and that makes you my partner. Right?”

  Something that sounded an awful lot like denial started coming out of Barry’s mouth so Ricky stepped forward and kicked Rich Leckie hard on the kneecap. Rich toppled to the floor, clutching his knee, his eyes screwed tightly shut. Amy came off the couch but Ricky put his free hand between her breasts and shoved her back into a sitting position, then aimed his pistol at Rich’s head.

  “I’m guessing Rich is a friend of yours and you don’t want his brains all over the rug, am I right?”

  Barry shook his head, too frightened to speak. The woman, to her credit, at least cried, “No,” and then in a tight, choking voice said, “Please.”

  It didn’t take long for Ricky to get the story. Barry babbled it out like a child caught stealing by his dad. He hadn’t known who the goods belonged to. He hadn’t meant any harm. He’d acted on impulse. He’d give it all back, every last pill.

  “That’s all right,” Ricky said. “You can keep it.” Which provoked a stunned “Wha?” from Barry.

  Ricky said, “You keep it, you sell it, you give the money to me.”

  Barry nodded his head vigorously, saying, Of course, of course.

  Then Ricky said, “Same with the next batch. And the next.”

  “What do you mean?” Amy said. “What next batch?”

  “You work for me now,” Ricky said. “You’re my new distributors.”

  “How can we do that?” Barry said. “We’re not drug dealers.”

  “You are now,” Ricky grinned.

  “But-”

  Ricky kicked Rich Leckie’s other knee, drawing a howl of pain, and told Barry to shut the fuck up. “You took the goods from Kevin’s house with the intention of selling them, right?”

  Barry nodded.

  “So obviously you had customers in mind.”

  “Just friends.”

  “Well, your friends are my friends now,” Ricky said. “And together we’re going to get happy. Any questions?”

  “No,” Barry mumbled.

  Then he told Rich to stand up. Rich tried but fell back onto the carpet.

  “Pick him up,” Ricky told Barry. Barry knelt down and put his arms under Rich and stood him up. Then Ricky waved Barry back to the couch with his gun.

  “How you feeling, Rich?” Ricky asked, using his nice voice, his wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly voice.

  “Okay,” Rich gasped.

  “I hope you understand that was nothing personal there,” Ricky said. “Business sometimes requires out-of-the-box thinking, if you know what I mean.”

  Rich said nothing.

  “Do you?” Ricky asked.

  “Do I…”

  “Know what I mean about out-of-the-box thinking.”

  Rich nodded.

  “Good,” said Ricky, then slammed the butt of his gun against Rich’s nose. The breaking cartilage sounded like pretzels snapping. Rich’s hands flew to his face but blood flowed freely from inside his nose, as well as a cut the gun butt had opened on the bridge.

  “Oops,” Ricky said. “Guess you’ll have to get that rug cleaned after all.”

  “What was that for?” Amy demanded. “He didn’t do anything to you.”

  Ricky asked her if she had ever read a book called The Manager Inside Me or heard it on tape.

  “No.”

  “There’s a very strong chapter about cultivating your employee culture. That’s what that was for. You work for me now and you need to know what that means. You listening?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “And you?” he asked Barry.

  Barry nodded, his eyes bloodshot through half-open lids.

  “The rules are simple,” Ricky went on. “You do what I tell you, when I tell you, and everything’s fine. You account for every penny and every pill. In return, you get your medications free. Understand?”

  “Yes,” Amy said. Barry just nodded.

  “But if you steal from me, you die. You tell anyone about me, you die. You question anything I tell you, you die. And not quickly. I’ll skin you both alive and roll you in salt. That clear?”

  They both nodded.

  “Then it’s settled,” Ricky said with a smile, as if he’d just concluded a minor transaction with a friend or neighbour. Sure, you can borrow my lawn mower, friend. Just have it back by Sunday.

  Then he turned to Rich. “But what about you?” he said. “What do I do with you?”

  Rich looked like he was going to lose control of his body functions right there on the rug. “I swear,” Rich said. “I won’t say a word.”

  “You swear? What’s that to me? I don’t know you. How do I know you’re a man of your word?”

  “I am,” Rich gasped, at the same time that Amy said, “He is.”

  Ricky laid the gun barrel against Rich’s broken nose. Rich closed his eyes and tried to stop the trembling of his chin.

  “Maybe if we were friends,” Ricky said. “Maybe then I’d know. How about that? Want to be friends with Ricky?”

  “Oh, God,” Rich said. He began to cry.

  “What?” Ricky said. “Rich and Ricky, Ricky and Rich. What could be cuter than that?”

  CHAPTER 30

  Toronto: Thursday, June 29

  We were heading back to town on the DVP, the traffic only marginally lighter than it had been going north.

  “Admit it,” Ryan said. “You’re dying to tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Where you learned to shoot like that. One minute you’re the all-Canadian virgin scared shitless of a gun, the next you’re drilling the target like the Rawhide Kid.”

  My shots had been every bit as well placed as his, all bunched within a fist-sized area near the heart. “I was in the army,” I said.

  “Get out,” he said. “I thought the army was strictly for jugheads who flunk out of shop.”

  “I didn’t say the Canadian army.”

  “American?”

  “IDF.”

  “What?”

  “Israel Defense Forces.”

  Ryan whistled. “Ah.”

  “Ah what?”

  “They got a rep, don’t they? Being tough. Take-no-shit types. So what, you volunteered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why there?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “So give me the condensed version.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering how much I could tell him. Wondering why I felt like I could tell him things I had never told my own brother.

  “I was living in Banff,” I began, “teaching skiing in the winter and working construction in the summer. I was seeing a Jewish girl from Winnipeg. She wanted to go to Israel for the summer and work on a kibbutz.”

  “A what?”

  “A collective farm. Kind of a Marxist model the early Zionists brought from the old country.”

  “Jewish Commies? Talk about two strikes against you.”

  “I went with her but things between us didn’t work out. She left. I stayed.”

  “Let me guess. You met another woman.”

  “No, I met the woman. Dalia Schaeffer.”

  “Israeli?”

  “Nope. You believe in coincidence?”

  “No. I have no use for it.”

  “She was from Toronto. Grew up maybe ten blocks from me in Bathurst Manor. We even went to the same elementary school, except she was two years behind me and who pays attention to younger kids at that age. So we meet in Israel. She has this wild hair-jet black, piles of it, totally untamed-and the most amazing blue eyes. First time I look in them I’m gone. I am pinned to the mat. And her mouth, Ryan, you couldn’t be in the same room as it and not want to kiss it. And stay kissing it.”

  “Jesus, you had it bad.”

  “No, I had it good. I had it so good. This was the woman I was going to be with for the rest of my life. Make babies with. Curly-headed babies.”

  “Like Pacino in Godfather I, ” he said. “He meets Apollonia and everyone says he’s been hit by lightning.”

  “That’s exactly what it was like. I was so dazed, so in love. Like never before. And never since.”

  “What happened?” Ryan asked.

  “Israel happened.”

  Our kibbutz was called Har Milah. It was in the far north of Israel, on a finger of land that jutted up like a peninsula, surrounded by occupied southern Lebanon on one side and Syria on the other. We grew oranges, olives and avocadoes. Pressed our own olive oil. Grew grapes for a neighbouring kibbutz that made wine: surprisingly rich Chardonnay, grassy Sauvignon Blanc and a deep, spicy Shiraz that could have come from Australia.

  The sabras, the native-born kibbutzniks, were cool to outsiders; they knew most of us weren’t there for the long haul. But if you worked hard enough and stayed long enough you could gain a certain measure of acceptance. After a while they stopped calling me G’veret — Hebrew for Missus-and settled on Yoni, short for my Hebrew name, Yonah. It was tough work, up at four in the morning to get a full day in before the heat became too oppressive.