One for My Baby (Phoenix Noir Book 4) by Barry Graham Read Free Book Online Page B

Don’t worry, she’ll be following right behind you. Proceed, Fitz.”
    Mark tried to roll away from Fitzgerald, but he was in so much pain it was hard to draw enough breath to make the effort. Fitzgerald raised the sap to hit him again, and it fell on Mark with an explosive sound, the sound of Rankin’s service weapon as he shot Fitzgerald in the face.
    Mark lay there, deafened by the noise, trying to understand what had happened, what was still happening. After a while—seconds or minutes or more, he couldn’t tell—he managed to roll over onto his side, and found himself looking into the face of Fitzgerald, who had a small hole just beside his nose and a big hole in the top of his head out of which dark blood pumped and red meat sprouted. It occurred to Mark that it looked as though Fitzgerald had hemorrhoids sticking out of his head. That seemed funny, and he thought he heard himself laughing, and then he realized it wasn’t him.
    It was Linda. Handcuffed to her chair, she was giggling like a little girl, staring at Fitzgerald’s corpse.
    Mark sat up and looked around. Rankin was holding the gun he had used on Fitzgerald, but now he had it pointed at Casci.
    “You’ve just gotten too crazy, Serge,” he was saying. “I mean, your fucking bartender, and now the girl? Come on. If it had just been this idiot, I wouldn’t have minded, but you’ve gone off at the deep end. This isn’t business, it’s turning into serial killing.”
    “Oh, fuck you,” Casci said. “What do you think you’re going to do? You think you can just walk away from this?”
    “I’m winging it, but I think I had to kill you and Irish to rescue these two unfortunates whom you were about to kill. I’m just heroic that way. Is that a story you can get behind, Sharpton?”
    “No objection from me,” Mark said, his voice shaking.
    “How about you, Linda?” Rankin said. “You’re good at lying to cover up crimes.”
    Linda kept giggling, but didn’t speak.
    “It sounds like she’s lost it,” Rankin said. “Better take her outside so she doesn’t have to see this. Can you stand up?”
    “I’m trying to,” Mark said.
    “You’re all fucking pathetic,” Casci said. “That cackling bitch might be the sanest one of you. You really just gonna kill me, Owen?”
    “That’s the plan.” Rankin put a hand in his pocket and pulled out handcuff keys. He tossed them at Mark, and they landed on the floor beside him. “Here, take the cuffs off Linda, and both of you go outside.”
    “Okay,” Mark said. He got slowly to his feet. His left arm was numb from shoulder to fingertips, but his right felt okay. He bent down and reached for the keys, reached past them, picked up Fitzgerald’s sap, turned around and laid it across the side of Rankin’s head.
    Rankin went into a seizure as he fell. Mark stumbled backward, tripped over Fitzgerald’s corpse and fell. Casci let out a shuddering breath of relief and started to walk toward Rankin. Mark crawled after Casci, threw his arm around his legs and pulled them from under him. Casci cried out in pain as he hit the floor, but the sound of it was drowned out by Linda’s giggles. Mark crawled past Casci, got Rankin’s gun, rolled over, pointed it at Casci.
    “What now?” Casci said.
    “I don’t know. Do you?”
    “No. Why did you brain Rankin? He was letting you go.”
    “I don’t like him. He let your fucking goon hit me with the sap before he shot him. I don’t trust him to fix this.”
    “I think he might be dead.”
    “Good. If he isn’t, one of us should kill him.”
    “Us? What does ‘us’ mean? I don’t like you. I don’t like you at all.”
    “I don’t mind if you like me, dislike me, or scream my name during orgasm. I’d like to shoot you right now, but I think we should call it even and work something out.”
    “Why?”
    “Because if I shoot you, all I’ve got is three dead bodies and a woman having a breakdown. I can’t make all that disappear, but I’m