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Brian snorted. "You were always a cheap hood, Jerry. Scum for brains."

This much hadn't changed in twenty years: it was like I wasn't there. Unless there had been some reason to tease or torture me, I was so far beneath their notice that I cast no shadow. Though I'd lately conquered my invisibility with Brian, to Jerry I was the same fag cipher I'd always been. It made for a strange detachment in me, even with the pistol in his hand, as if I was too insignificant to shoot. Stripped like this, I realized my insignificance was a kind of shield.

"This is my last stop, buddy boy," Jerry said, swagging his arms behind him along the rough-wood mantel. "Nobody knows where I am, and nobody's gonna. I'm history. And listen, it's not like I need the seven. I got a mint out there." He waved the pistol toward the ocean, as if he had a pirate ship moored in the bay, its gunwales to the water from the weight of gold. "I just don't want
you
to have it, Bri. 'Cause you tried to put me away. Your best buddy. Shit, I put your first rubber on you—with my own two hands."

He boomed with laughter at his own joke, lolling against the mantel, his outstretched arms making him look like Miss Jesus on the cross. He was ripped on some kind of downers. The thought of which finally made my blood run cold, to realize how very loose was the cannon in his hand.

"Fuck you, Jerry," snarled my brother. "So how come
my
name was on all your toilet paper? You set me up, jerk-o." He slammed a fist into the sofa arm, snapping Jerry to red-faced attention. The barrel of the pistol swung dead-on, trained on Brian's skull. My brother didn't so much as glance up, let alone stare it down. In his sullen disdain he seemed singularly unmoved by the presence of firepower. A twist of fear cramped my belly as I realized Brian would play this scene like a game of chicken.

Jerry gave an impatient shrug, and the hand with the pistol fell to his side. For the moment the score was even, as far as the hurling of accusations. Jerry flashed a gelid smile, a used car in every garage. "Gee, I was hopin' to say g'bye to Susan and Daniel." He swiveled the smile to me. "Ya know, I'm his godfather."

"How very comforting," I replied tightly.

"All right, Tommy," Brian declared, "I want you to go upstairs and stay in your room. This is between Jerry and me." The last bit was clearly a warning, as if there were still some rules of battle here, a kind of Geneva Convention that covered the blood feuds of bandits.

"Hold it, hold it," snapped the hulking grizzly in the white shirt, though I hadn't moved a muscle. "Tommy and me, we hardly had a chance to say hello."

I returned his pigface stare, not about to go anywhere. If I was moved by Brian's impulse to put me out of the line of fire, I was even more ready to stand this ground beside him. "You got fat," I' offered without expression.

Jerry chortled. "I sure did, fella," he retorted with sneering merriment. "I didn't stay in training like your brother here. Mr. All-American." The hate was palpable now, a labyrinth of old grudges. "After my wife took off wit' my kids, I kinda let things go. But I guess you wouldn't know about that, bein' a fag."

"Oh, I know about letting things go." There was something wonderfully quickening, a sort of hormonal buzz, finding myself on the old field of hard feelings. Who needed electrolytes?

"'Cept you got
skinny
," grinned my nemesis.

"Leave him alone," said Brian through his teeth.

"Hey, who's dumpin' on him? I think he looks real pretty, all skin and bones like this. Huh, Tommy?" I froze as the gun swung toward my face. I could feel my brother clench the pillows. Jerry stroked the point of the barrel under my chin. "Isn't this how they like 'em? The muscle boys fuck the girlie ones. Right, Tommy?"

"Jerry, don't—" Brian's voice was ashen, pleading in spite of himself.

"Whoa." Jerry pulled back surprised, the gun veering away. "You suddenly gettin' all soft on your baby brother? Fuck. 'Scuse me while I blow my nose."

"Let him go," whispered my brother, his windpipe choked with rage.

"I got a better idea," retorted Jerry, practically purring now. The pistol lifted again, and he held it against the center of my forehead. "I think you were just about to tell me where that money is. Am I right?"

Talk about chicken. I must've been on an adrenaline high. Plus, a gun at your head turns out to be a fabulous tool for gauging how little you've got to lose. "I'm dying anyway, it doesn't matter," I observed with impeccable sang-froid. "Just tell the Hemlock guys I caught an earlier flight."

I felt the pressure of the barrel lift as his eyes darted from Brian to me. He gave me a second's blank stare, then shifted to the pale violet bull's-eye on my cheek. The gun still pointed, ready to blow my brains out, but now his nervous eyes were everywhere. The lesion on my shoulder, the one by my left nipple, the double one on my thigh. I watched it dawn on Jerry the same as it dawned on Susan a week ago, a kind of claustrophobic terror. He swayed a step backward.

"Don't worry, I won't sneeze on you," I declared, but not even trying to conceal the exhilaration of having shocked him. "Though if you're planning to use that"—I nodded toward the gun, a foot away now and trembling slightly—"I can't swear I won't
bleed.
I don't suppose you brought a rubber suit."

His eyes still raked me, inch by horrible inch. I could've told him there were eight altogether, plus two lumps between my toes, as yet not showing any color. Blooming, Robison called it. But I wasn't feeling especially leprous, despite the appalled intensity of Jerry's gaze. No, the opposite: I was charged with a drunken thrill of power, because I had just upturned the chessboard.

Jerry's sluglike torso rippled with an involuntary shiver. He grunted and shook his head. "Tough break, Tommy," he mumbled, eyes on the floor, almost sheepish.

There followed a queer embarrassed silence, awkward as a baby's wake. Or any occasion where men took off their hats in the presence of great sorrow, a last vestigial link of Irish brotherhood. I strained to hold my stoop-shouldered pose of noble pathos, all the while willing my brother to make his move. Now, while the bully labored to process his revulsion, uncertain whether to breathe in my vicinity. Now, before he fell back into the wiseguy mode.
Now.

But nothing happened. No brilliant black-belt leap off the sofa—no flash of diversion—no improvised weapon. Helplessly I watched as Jerry recovered his balance, the curl of the sneer returning. "Hey," he remarked with an arched brow and a one-note snicker, "I hope you had yourself some fun gettin' there."

With a bloodless shift of gears his cold glare fixed once more on Brian. I knew the moment of turning the tables had utterly dissipated. Stung with defeat I shot a bewildered glance at my brother, sullenly staring at the arm of the sofa, indignant and strangely aloof. Suddenly he wasn't my father at all but my mother, a shell rather than a time bomb, spent from so much bad luck and the wrongness of the world.
Don't hit his head. I have no sons.
The surrender of the will to escape. Here I was, the only one with enough rage to get us out of this, no fear for myself at all, and I'd lost my shot.

"So where is it?" Jerry crooned with near-lascivious delight, producing from my brother a desiccated laugh like an old man coughing. They'd reached the wall. If Brian was telling the truth and he had no seven mill to trade, then this was the deal right here. Nothing further to bargain with, and the gun just aching.

"What's happening?"

I was the only one who didn't turn, my back to the stairs and my heart stopped. Jerry spun about, more agile than he looked, and bawled at the figure on the landing: "And who the fuck are you?"

There was the faintest clearing of the throat, as if to censure the ill-mannered tone of the question. Then Gray announced: "This is my house."

"Izzatso?" mocked the fat man. I was staring straight at his belt buckle, a twenty-dollar gold piece. The gun swung lightly from his left hand at about hip level. "Well, I'm havin' a private talk here with a couple my old buddies. So why don't you go crawl back into bed, and maybe tomorrow morning you'll still be a fuckin' homeowner. "

Gray sniffed, a blip of defiance worthy of his aunt. "Are you the one who blew up Brian's house?"

Jerry lurched to face him direct. "I said move," he barked, the pistol swinging up to punctuate the rabid threat.

A blinding rush in my head seethed like the sea in a shell. That instant of the gun pointing at my lover, I saw into the whitest fire of outrage. How I spoke at all I'll never know, except that acting was my only commando training. "Gray, it's all right," I tossed back over my shoulder, a truly ridiculous lie, and all the while staring at Jerry's hip, a foot from my ravenous fury.

A shuffle behind me on the stairs, as Gray reluctantly followed my command, too polite to disagree. Then Jerry's hand with the gun fell to his side again—and I lunged and clamped like a bulldog.

Right through the swell of flesh between his thumb and fingers. Blood gushed into my mouth, metallic, as if I'd bitten the gun instead. His shout was a horror of being infected, rather than rage, so he panicked and flailed when he should have gone for the kill. I don't know why the gun didn't go off, except my teeth were hooked on tendons, paralyzing the finger that kissed the trigger.

When he couldn't shake me he pounded my head with his other fist, but now Brian was on him from behind, wrenching his arm away. So that all I had to do was heave my shoulder like a tackle, jamming the barrel into his bulging gut. My hand squeezed over his, and then we were dancing.

An ocean of blood poured through the shreds of his banker's shirt. Somehow it seemed more terrible that he never cried out after that first shout. He gulped in a great heave of air, standing rigid in stunned surprise, holding his breath like he was swimming underwater. The gun clattered to the hearth, a sound as hollow as plastic, a toy after all.

Doused in red I rose upright, just in time to see him teeter. His hands were pressed to the sieve of his belly, the look in his bugged eyes already far at sea. Then he keeled and went down hard, with a sickening whump of his head against the base of one of the andirons. The blood pooled around him on the hearthstone, the stone drinking it in like a pig's altar. Then the breath came guttering out, a queer inhuman whine of incalculable regret.

I looked up into Brian's eyes, staring at me in blank astonishment. I think I tried to shrug, except I was so bone-weary I could hardly move. No triumph in that first moment, not even relief. If anything, a pang of protective guilt for my brother's sake, that he should've had to witness the letting of the monster's blood. If I'd had a hand not slick with death, I would've reached out to shield his eyes. He wasn't nearly godless enough for this.

Then Gray's arms were around me, gathering me to his chest. I gratefully collapsed against him, but struggled to keep my bloodied hands from touching the faded blue cotton of his robe. They flailed the air above him like a pair of clipped wings, the drying blood beginning to stiffen. "Thank God," he breathed in my ear. Thank
me,
I thought with stubborn pride, never flinching from a credit dispute with the infinite. Already I was only half there, racing ahead to the cops' arrival. Determined that I would bear the full responsibility, leaving these two out of it. I braced for the shriek of sirens.

"I better go call Nigrelli," Brian declared uncertainly.

"Wait." I struggled out of Gray's embrace, my arms still raised as if I was being robbed. "We have to get our story straight. You guys shouldn't even be here."

"What story? You saved my ass."

I laughed. "Who's gonna believe
that
? I'm just this frail little AIDS victim. I'm telling you, they'll think you did it."

"Look, I don't give a shit—"

"Well, I do," I retorted impatiently. "'Cause I don't want anyone stopping you from getting out of here. Or else you'll
never
make it back to the kid." Why was it I had to remind him what his goal was? His eyes wouldn't leave the body, wincing in disbelief, unready to go anywhere. I turned to Gray, his robe smeared with Jerry's blood despite my excruciating care. "Listen, you take him down to the Chevron. Call the Gucci lawyer. The feds can pick up Brian there."

"And leave you with
him?"
protested Gray, pointing at the ritual slaughter on the hearth.

"So what? He's gonna bite me?" I made a rude Italian gesture toward the dead man, feeling the caked blood crack along my wrist. But I also realized why they were acting so confused and indecisive. Neither of them really liked my attitude—not enough hush in the face of death. It only made me feel ever more drunkenly cavalier, for death was the very last thing that awed me anymore. As to having killed the torturer of my youth, I felt nothing—no, less than nothing. Lady Macbeth in a gym towel.

"When you get back," I declared with some belligerence, "we can plant him in the yard somewhere. Up by the fishpond, maybe—"

"That's okay. We'll take care of it."

No sirens at all. Agent Evans stepped down from the dining room, sharp in a charcoal suit and rep tie. If it had been Potato-face I might've turned and bolted, but the black man had struck me as a fount of empathy by comparison. I could feel Gray and Brian stiffen on either side, turning over the wheel to me to navigate the whirlpool. Evans's smile was as tailored as his suit, not the flicker of a glance at the problematic object on the hearth. No bulge of a gun was visible either, though he surely had one.

It was some small comfort to know he'd decided to keep it holstered, that he felt no threat from any of us. Because it was dead obvious that he'd witnessed the whole of what had happened. I just couldn't tell whose side he was on. "This is Jerry Curran," I explained, not pointing or nodding. "I killed him."

Evans frowned, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. "Ah, let's just say he doesn't exist anymore."

Our side, one to nothing.

"Brian, you'd better get ready," he continued. "Agent Dana will follow us in Curran's car. We'll be going to Reno first, to ah..." He finally looked at the corpse. "...drop him off." He made an elaborate show of checking his watch. "It's three-eighteen now. We'll be leaving in five, as soon as we get him packed." Another curt nod at the walrus body on the hearth.