Howard Shrier - High Chicago

"Don't do this," I said. I took a step toward him but he stepped back and told me to stay where I was.

"So I get Adele instead. She lives from headache to headache. Music's too loud? A headache. One of the kids cries? A headache. A glass of wine, the lights too bright, the lights too dim-a headache. And God forbid Avi wants a little action. Major headache time."

"You going to shoot me, Avi?"

"No. But someone will."

Curry said, "The line starts here."

"He'll kill you too," I said to Avi. "Curry will kill all of us."

"I don't think so," he said. "Not with my insurance policy." He patted his coat pocket.

"Why don't you give me one of the guns?" Curry said. "Doesn't have to be mine. Keep that if it makes you feel better."

"I don't think so," Avi said.

"The girl down there, she has a gun too."

"I'll deal with her when we get down there. I think she'll give up her gun before she lets Jonah get shot."

"Have it your way," Curry said. "You ready?"

"Yes."

"You, Simon?"

Birk said yes.

We all walked over to the side of the building where the hoist waited.

"There's just one more thing to do before we go down," Curry said.

"What?" I asked.

He didn't answer. He just grabbed Simon Birk by the shirt collar and belt and threw him screaming off the side of the building.

"What the fuck!" Avi yelled. He didn't know who to point the gun at now. He finally settled on Curry.

"Everyone needs insurance," Curry said. His hairless, bulbous head looked pale and rubbery as an unpeeled garlic clove. "You have yours, right in your pocket," he said.

"Birk was mine for a long time."

"Then why did you-"

"You saw how he cracked. He would have thrown us all to his lawyers. He became a liability the minute he let Geller turn him." He gave me a look that was mean as a snake's, a furious cobra that would take on a mongoose to get me.

"I told you before, Geller, I'm ex a lot of things. I had to scramble plenty of years after I left the force, believe me. Low-paying security jobs, personal protection gigs, but nothing I could seriously live on, until the day Simon Birk beat his wife into a coma on camera and I got a job for life! An easy two hundred a year," he said. "And I mean easy, feet-up easy, an occasional walk around his buildings, a few drive-by checks, a very good lunch most days, plus every expense I could dream up. But," he said to Avi, "he would have sold me out faster than you sold out your friend Geller. Now you take my advice, Stern. You come to a dance like this, you stick with the one that brung ya. You stick with me if you want to resume a normal family life after tonight. You quit waving that piece around and let me do what needs to be done."

"Avi," I said. "I understand how you felt about Dalia-"

"How I feel, haveri. How I feel."

"But it's not just me now. You think you had a right to sell me out, fine! But you're going to have to kill four of us now. You have enough revenge in your heart for that?"

He stood there silent as a dead man. I searched for light in his frosty blue eyes but saw none. "Four," I said. "There's me, Avi. You were okay with that, I was the guy who took your girl. But now there's also Ryan and Jenn. You didn't know about them till today, you couldn't have predicted it, but here they are. The three of us plus you have to throw in Henry."

His lips pursed and his eyes narrowed as he said, "Henry?"

"The old rent-a-cop down there. You're not a killer, Avi. Give me the gun."

"I think I'll just stick to the plan for now," he said.

"I'm your only chance to get out of this with anything," I said.

"You'll get more from me," Curry said.

Ryan said, "If I got anything to say about this-"

"Jonah!" Jenn's voice came crackling in over the walkie-talkie hooked to my belt. "Jonah, come in! I thought I saw somebody fall."

I reached for the walkie-talkie. Avi levelled the gun. "If I don't answer," I said, "she'll know something's up."

"Don't do anything stupid," he said. "Tell her there was an accident and we're coming right down."

He watched me as I unhooked the walkie-talkie from my belt.

"Jenn," I said. "It was an accident. Birk fell over the side. I repeat, an accident. Over."

"What should I do?"

"Stay in the trailer," I said. "We're coming down."

I looked at Avi as if to say, Okay?

"Turn it off," he hissed.

"Over and out," I said. I held up the unit and made a show of turning it off, then flipped it to him underhand. Only I flipped it a little to his left where he'd have to step over and catch it. He did and there was a loud cracking sound as all of his weight came down on a sheet of plywood bridging two sections of corrugated metal, the same one that had bent under him before. This time it broke in half, and his right leg plunged through it. As he fell, his hand hit the deck and the gun clattered away. Curry went for it without hesitating. I went too, launching myself off a bruised knee, trying to drop him with my shoulder. But I hit him with my bad side, my shoulder barely holding together, and he bodied me aside, ahead in the race for the gun. He was closing his hand on it when Dante Ryan said, "Don't."

His pant leg was pulled up to reveal an ankle holster and he had a Baby Eagle in his hand: the same model he had given Jenn. I remembered from our earliest meetings that he rarely travelled without at least two guns, along with his favourite stiletto.

Curry took a long look at Ryan and didn't like what he saw. He let the gun lie, sighed and shook his head.

Avi let out a low moan. "I think my leg is broken," he said.

"Give me a minute," Ryan snarled. "I'll break the other one too."

Ryan told Curry to get Avi out of the hole he was in. "And don't throw him over," he said. "There's got to be a limit to how many people you can toss off a building."

Tears were running down Avi's face. His right leg was bleeding through his pants. I picked up the Beretta from the floor and pointed it at him.

"I'll take the recorder," I said.

He took it from his pocket with a shaking hand and gave it to me. I wiped it on my jacket front and stowed it in my pocket. "You still sweat like a pig," I said. Then I picked up the walkie-talkie and turned it on. "Jenn?" I said. "Sorry, we were turned off for a minute. We're all okay."

There was no answer. Just a hiss and crackle.

"Jenn? Come in, Jenn."

Still no answer. Then the hiss and crackle died. Either her batteries had suddenly died or her unit had been shut off. I looked at Ryan. "Nowhere to go but down."

Once again, we divided up guns. Ryan put Curry's Beretta in his shoulder holster for safekeeping. It was a mess as far as prints went, because all of us had handled it, but Hollinger could at least test it against her Toronto homicides, settle once and for all on the idea that Curry was her killer.

Ryan gave me back my Beretta, the 92FS, and reholstered the Baby Eagle. We all got into the elevator and pulled the gate down. I kept a gun on Avi; Ryan kept his Glock on Curry. The hoist slid down the track, gusts of wind blowing through the sides, rattling the Plexiglas sheets in their frames.

Simon Birk had landed on his back on the rutted earth, not far from a line of portable washrooms and a dumpster filled with odd lengths of wood and rebar. A pool of blood was fanning out around his head but the rest of him-his top half anyway-looked fine, good enough for an open-casket funeral. Most of the damage would be on the underside and internal: pulped organs beneath the intact skin.

"And there you have it," Curry said. "Simon Birk's final groundbreaking."

We made Curry walk ahead of us toward the trailer, supporting Avi with an arm around his waist, Avi moaning and limping, all the adventurousness knocked out of him. Then Curry said, "Fuck it," squatted and got his shoulder under Avi and stood, grunting, hefting him like a fireman would. A lot stronger than his slim frame suggested, handling Avi's weight and staying sure-footed among the deep ruts created by earthmovers' treads.