Aaron Elkins: Good Blood

He tapped the horn. “Come on, come on, let’s go!” he yelled to the one in front, still jiggling its way into a position from which it could drive forward. That one, he saw now, had two men in the front seat. He got a little edgier. This had been really stupid of him. The hell with the kid’s French class. He’d known better, he should have used his head. They should have waited it out with everybody else on the Corso.

“Enrico, for Christ’s sake,” Achille said angrily, with his hands to his ears, “you could at least warn me before you blow that thing. With these stone walls-”

“Shut up,” Enrico said. “Get down on the floor.”

Achille was shocked into stuttering. “Wh-wh-what is it? Those men-”

“Get the hell down! Now!” Enrico snapped when the boy didn’t move, and Achille hurriedly dropped out of sight behind him.

Enrico’s eyes were fixed dead ahead. The Audi’s doors had opened. The men were clambering out, brandishing handguns, their heads covered by stocking masks, their hands gloved. His nervousness had hardened into a sort of instant, stony calm. His mind was suddenly still, focused, stripped of extraneous thought. It was an instinctive reaction that had once made him a good cop and, later, a more-than-good soldier-for-hire. And it made him good at what he did for a living now.

Acting with disciplined speed, he made sure the doors were locked, pressed the button to roll up all the windows, flicked open the snaps on his holsters, jogged the grips of the handguns to make sure they were at the ready, and hit the memory button on the cell phone to dial the carabinieri. The two men ran up to the limo, one on either side, looking like a couple of monster twins, their features squashed and deformed by the stocking masks.

“Put the phone down!” Ugo Fogazzaro shouted through the gauzy skin of the mask, hammering on the window with the heel of his hand. “Put the goddamned phone down!”

They’d just begun but already things were going wrong. If the boss was such a great planner, how come nobody had mentioned the phone? From the first day he’d had a bad feeling about this job.

The window glass was tinted, but Ugo could see that the driver had the telephone to his ear but wasn’t speaking into it yet. Whoever he was calling hadn’t yet answered. The driver stared ahead, stiff-faced, without moving, ignoring the guns directed at him from either side. Ugo whacked the window with the butt of his gun, a heavy, snub-nosed Ruger. 357 magnum. The safety glass held up. He hit it again, harder, and this time it buckled, a hole opening up in the middle. Now he could hear the driver’s voice.

“I’m in a car on-”

Using the barrel of the gun, Ugo reached in and batted the phone away. A welt appeared on the driver’s temple, where the muzzle had scraped it, and quickly beaded with blood. The driver didn’t move. Ugo put the Ruger up against the corner of his jaw. “Turn off the engine.”

The driver did as he was told.

“Now unlock the doors, all of them.”

“The ignition has to be on.” He was still staring stolidly ahead, his jaw muscles working. A tough guy.

“No, it doesn’t. Don’t mess with me!” He shoved the muzzle hard against the man’s jaw and clicked back the hammer with his thumb. “Hurry up!”

There was a soft tick as the locks unlatched. Ugo pulled open the front door. On the passenger side, Marcello did the same.

“Keys,” Ugo said.

The driver took them from the ignition and handed them to him. Ugo flung them over a stone garden wall beside the church.

“Now,” he said, “both hands on the wheel, up at the top. Okay, now use your left hand to get your gun out of the holster. Two fingers only.”

“I don’t carry a-”

“Don’t bullshit me! I told you once.” He dug the muzzle of the pistol with its jutting front sight into the tender place where neck and jaw intersected, and twisted. He could feel ligaments grind in there, and the driver grunted and tried to pull his head away. What do you know, not so tough after all.

The driver’s gun-one of those pretty little German 9mm semiautomatics-was withdrawn between thumb and forefinger. Ugo snatched it out of his hand, a welcome fringe benefit; the damn thing was worth three times as much as his.

He released the safety on the semiautomatic and focused both handguns on the driver. “All right, now raise your hands. Up high, push them against the roof. Marcello, if he moves, you kill him.” He pulled open the back door and leveled the two guns-he liked this two-gun stuff-to point down at the floor. “Okay, kid, come on out of there. Hurry up.”

Achille didn’t move. He was on his knees, scared to death, milk-faced and shivering. “Just tell me what you want, I know I can-”

“All I want is you. Now don’t make me-”

“My father will kill you for this. Do you know who my father is?”

“Yeah, I know who your father-”

A movement by one of the driver’s hands caught his eye. “Hey!” he said. “What did I tell you? Marcello, you-Ai!”

His first thought was that a bee had stung him on the wrist, but then he heard a clink, and when he looked down, his own. 357 magnum, which he’d thought was still in his right hand, was on the pavement, and his wrist was spouting blood, and he knew he’d been shot. Before he could tear his eyes from his shattered wrist, there was a second stinging jab-he heard the shot this time-in his abdomen, dead center, a little below the breastbone. More like a punch than a jab, and this one really hurt. That bastard driver, he’d had a second piece, some stupid little-old-lady gun, tucked down his back behind his neck. And now he’d ducked down and was rolling around on the front seat, getting off shots, twisting and coiling like a snake, almost too quick to see. Where the hell was Marcello?

Now, hardly aware of what he was doing, Ugo was shooting too, spraying bullets from the driver’s semiautomatic in his left hand- crakcrakcrakcrak -at the writhing, whirling body. “Bastard, you shot me!” Crakcrakcrak. The little pistol flew out of the driver’s hand. For a moment Ugo thought he was throwing it at him, but then the man arched, gave a shuddering sigh, and lay still on his back, one foot sticking out the door on Ugo’s side. There was blood all over his face and on his shirt. Next to his head, the leather seat was wet.

Ugo was shaking. He’d never been shot before. He’d never killed anyone before. He was losing a lot of blood, he saw now, rhythmic gouts from the wrist, a thick, pumping flow from his abdomen. He pressed his right hand against the hole below his breastbone and stuck his wounded left hand under his right arm, but he could still feel the blood pushing out. He struggled to make himself move, to make himself think, but he’d grown confused. He felt frozen, petrified, as if time were flowing by somewhere outside him, too blindingly fast for him to step back into it. He’d lost track of the semiautomatic. He began to worry that he wouldn’t be able to make it back to the car.

“Ugo!” Marcello said, coming tremulously back into sight from where he’d been crouching behind the hood of the car. He looked terrified.

“You lousy-you lousy-” Ugo screamed. “You just let him-you just let me-”

Marcello was staring into the car. “Ugo, Ugo, you shot him!”

“Yeah, I shot him! Where the hell were you?”

He was having a hard time focusing. His pant leg was blood-soaked, clinging to him; his shoe was squishy with it. “Marcello, I’m not.. . uh…”

He was sitting on the pavement, his back against the jamb between the limo’s front and rear doors. He didn’t remember going down. “Marcello, you better get me back to the car,” he said, only his head was rolling around on his neck and his mouth didn’t work right, and all that came out was this horrible mewling, like a cat that had been run over. He could no longer move his head, but from the corner of his eye he saw Big Paolo running heavily toward them from the rear car. Paolo-big, dumb, stupid Paolo-had forgotten, in his excitement, to put on his mask.