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I got out and stood next to him.

“Sorry about the sucker punch. Better than pushing you on the tracks, am I right?”

Eye Bags wasn’t in a talking mood either.

It was that blue Lincoln that had been following our car, and it pulled to the curb.

Just like art theft isn’t like you see in the movies, neither is the business of killing. I was finding out firsthand. There was no room for discussion, for bartering. It was common knowledge that the mob would kill people by acting like a friend. Get close, and when the victim’s guard is down, make the move from behind. I had been moving around too much for them to surprise me, much less pretend to be my friend. Though maybe that was why Bridget didn’t want me going out again. Instead, they had to bait me with Bridget, hook me in the town car, and reel me in to the scrap yard.

The town car zoomed away. From the blue Lincoln, two members of the broken nose squad made for the gate. Jimmy was under a streetlight next to the driveway. Bridget was to the side. There was a loud buzz, and the sheet metal fence began to roll up.

I looked behind me at the gas station a hundred or more feet away. There was a car or two at the pumps, someone inside the mini mart at the register, but they had no reason to look past the shadows to where the scrap yard was. The back of the gas station was in deep shadow.

Eye Bags jabbed me in the ribs with the gun.
Move
.

I stepped forward and stopped at the curb, next to the streetlight.

Eye Bags gave me another jab.
Keep moving
.

The gates rattled and locked into place, the mountains of scrap and the grabbers wide before me.

If I went in those gates, I was dead. I had to previsualize a way out. If I could manage to twist and not take a fatal shot from Eye Bags’s gun, the other goons would have a hard time drawing and targeting me from any distance. What little I know about pistols is that people usually can’t hit anything with them beyond twenty feet. Unless they practice. Most hoods don’t rely on finesse, so they don’t need to practice.

There was an orange flash from behind me.

The right side of the gate support exploded in flame. So did the goon standing next to it—shrapnel tore through his trench coat and his scalp. He fell flat, a puff of his hair floating in the smoke where he had just been standing.

I fell flat, too, only I was still in one piece and aimed to stay that way if I could.

Guns ratcheted on all sides.

In front of me was the mob with pistols; behind me was Gustav the lovesick assassin with a grenade launcher. That’s what I call a rock and a hard place.

I heard only one gun go off before a bunch of orange flashes boomed back by the gas station and I heard the gate and fence exploding, sparks like fireworks in the air, sheet metal clattering to the ground. I felt a jolt to my calf, like I’d been whipped with a rope, and my leg went numb. That would mean I was hit.

Heart pounding, I listened to see if I was going to hear my pulse stop, and then feel myself fade into whatever is on the other side. I almost hoped so, because so far whatever had happened didn’t hurt too bad. Yet.

The explosions had stopped, a wave of spent grenade shrapnel falling onto the pavement all around me. Ringing in my ears drowned out my heartbeat. It was my cell phone ringing. Probably Atkins.

When the phone stopped ringing I heard footsteps.

They approached from the direction of the gas station.

Gustav.

I rolled on my side.

Yup, here came the punk kid from the shadows behind the gas station, with what looked like a giant black revolver cradled in his arms. The weapon was about the size of a sawed-off shotgun, with a bucket-sized ammunition drum on the underside. Smoke from the gun trailed behind him as he limped toward me. White surgical taped crisscrossed the left side of his face and ear, across the chin and right neck. Only one of those rosy cheeks was showing.

I could hear people at the gas station, across Smith Street, saying:

Did you see that?

That dude blew up that fence
.

Whoa!

My leg was stinging. I tried to look at it, but the streetlight was out. I looked at the fence, where the grabbers and the mountains of scrap loomed. The gate was in tatters, and nobody was standing. I couldn’t make out what was what, but there seemed to besome heaps that were probably Robay, the goons, and Bridget. Sparks were drizzling down from the busted streetlight, which was bent and leaning out over me.

The footsteps stopped.

Gustav was standing over me, his spiked hair silhouetted by the light of the gas station, the roar of the Gowanus Expressway beyond. Sparks from the streetlight flecked his watery eyes with fire.

Man, this really sucked.

Breathe slowly in through the nose; close the eyes.

Breathe slowly out through the lips; stroke back my face where the beard used to be.

Breathe slowly in through the nose; open the eyes.

Breathe slowly out through the lips; focus on the punk kid who was about to shoot me full of fragmenting explosives.

“What is this you do, Yop?” he said, one eye cocked. His voice was unexpectedly deep. I would have thought he’d sound like a teenager, kind of squeaky.

“It’s a tantric exercise I do to improve the energy flow from my head to my heart. I’m experiencing some anxiety right now.”

A car slowed as it passed us, the driver looking out curiously but not stopping.

He says, “A last time, hm? Tell to me, Yop the Ogre, where is my Yvette?”

So I says, “Miami. She was just arrested there. That’s all I know. I tried to send her your messages, but she was kind of hard to reach in jail. Can I ask why you have to call me Yop the Ogre?”

“That is your name now. I am Girp. So Gorta is arrest? Police?”

“Gorta? You mean Yvette?”

“Yes, of course.”

“She was staying with friends who were growing grass in the basement.”

“Grass?” Another car passed slowly, the occupants wide-eyed at Gustav’s gun.

“Pot. You know, marijuana.”

His forehead creased. “This sounds like something that would happen to my Gorta.”

“It does, doesn’t it? I have to tell you, Gustav, that Gorta is no end of trouble.”

“You are telling this to me, Yop?” He gestured toward the shredded fence and crumpled bodies. Then he pointed at his bandaged face. “Hm?”

“So you know.” I sighed. My leg was aching, and I hoped it wasn’t bleeding too much. I didn’t want to pass out while I had the kid going. “A little advice, Gustav? She isn’t worth it. No woman is worth all this destruction, which, if I do say so, is not doing your karma a lot of good.”

“Karma? What is this?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think good things happen to good people?”

“My father, he spoke of this.” Gustav cocked his head, grimacing philosophically. “Blood washes your enemy into the pit of hell.”

“Never mind. How are the cats?”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, you know, the one is not eat, and the other is not go in the box, and the other has the shots. Hm?”

I laughed, weakly. “The Fuzz Face Four are a pain in the neck, aren’t they?”

“Yes. The other one is make food from stomach on bed.” Gustav smiled. “Are you bad injured?”

“I don’t know.” I growled as I moved my leg. “I can’t tell for sure.”

“Should I kill you?”

I had to chuckle at that, longer than maybe I should have.

“What is so fun?” He sounded serious again, not conversational, as he waved another gawking car past us. “In my tradition, it is courtesy to ask.”

“I just thought the question was sort of ironic, Girp. Had you asked Yop the Ogre that question a month ago, when Gorta left, he would have said go ahead, sure, do me a favor. Now, I dunno. I just about had Gorta out of my life until you came around. It was a good feeling. Well, do what you have to. I’m exhausted. Careful, though. Better step back if you’re going to shoot me with that cannon. You’ll hurt yourself.”

There was a zap-pop overhead, and a fresh cascade of sparks rained down on me from the streetlight bulb, Gustav and his grenade launcher shimmering before me in a fluttery glow. Real pretty in a way, sort of like how dark clouds sometimes light up red just before sunset.

A shout came from the gas station. “Hey, man, you need the cops over there?”

Gustav looked back toward the gas station.

The streetlight croaked, then whooshed.

Half the streetlight crashed down across the road next to Gustav, and he fell backward into the road. I heard the gun clatter onto the pavement, a car screech and honk.

My leg wasn’t too badly injured. How did I know? Because it was under me, taking me past the splayed bodies of Robay and his goons and into the scrap yard. Why into the scrap yard? It was the only place to go where Gustav wouldn’t have a clear shot at me with his automatic cannon.

Ahead were the mountains of scrap; the monster grabbers eyed me from above. I veered right, behind a welding truck and next to a metal shed.

BOOM
.

Fire erupted from the mountain of rust, one of the grenades sending scrap high into the air.

Someone screamed, and it wasn’t me.

It was Bridget. In the half-light, I could see her face was bloody but couldn’t tell if it was her blood, Robay’s, or one of the goons’.

I grabbed her around the waist and slung her over my shoulder. Bridget was hitting me, but the pounding of her little fists on my back felt like a massage. I guess she thought I was hostile toward her. Well, maybe I would be later. No sense in any more people getting killed.

The scrap was so spread out it was piled up to the side of the metal shed and up to the top of a wall beyond. At the top of the heap I stood on the wall. Below me was a sand pit, part of a concrete mixing plant. Beyond that, a conveyor belt up to the gravel mixer, and cement silos. A few cement trucks were parked on the other side, and at the canal bulkhead was a Cat excavator for unloading barges of gravel.

BOOM
.

WHAM
.

The sky lit up behind me, and the force of the explosion pushed me over the wall. I tossed Bridget to one side. We both landed on our backs on the sand, sliding down the pile.

Flame, debris, and black smoke rolled over the wall where we’d been standing. I guessed the tanks in the welding trucks had exploded. Gustav must have heard me climbing the scrap pile and fired in that direction.

I rolled the rest of the way down the sand pile and tried to get Bridget to her feet. She kept collapsing, so I threw her over my shoulder again.

Flames towering behind me, I trotted toward the canal, hoping there was a path along the bulkhead that would take me up to Hamilton Avenue and the drawbridge there. I heard Gustav yelling.

“Yop! Yop!”

I jogged behind the Cat excavator to catch my breath in the shadows. I tested Bridget’s neck pulse. She had one.

The bulkhead north was blocked by the scrap heaps. To the south, toward Hamilton Avenue, the path was blocked by razor wire. In front of me two feet from the bulkhead was an empty steel barge big enough to park a dozen cars. Beyond that was eighty feet of open canal, then a bulkhead and a Pathmark parking lot.

“Yop!” Gustav’s spiked hair and bandaged head rose above the scrap yard wall, and a second later he and his automatic grenade launcher were framed by the flames from the burning welding truck. He was busy reloading the weapon.

“Yop!”

How many grenades could the thing hold? I had no idea, and wasn’t about to bet my life on guessing.

Remember when Gustav had to jump into the canal? And like I said about the slick of spent condoms, fuel oil, and dead birds and shit? Strong as I was, jumping into the cold Gowanus Canal with a hundred-and-thirty-pound woman over my shoulder didn’t seem like a good plan for escape. If I had to swim for it, there was no way I was putting my head under that water.

I slid Bridget off my shoulder and put her in the bucket of a small excavator parked to one side of the Cat. I took a plastic tarp from the ground and draped it over her.

There was an orange flash.

BAM!

BOOM!

Debris scattered across the canal. To my left, the conveyor to the gravel silo had been shattered.

Behind Gustav there was still the fire, but also the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, and I hoped the police with their largest weapons. A .38 against an automatic grenade launcher would be like a twig against a battleaxe.

There was another orange flash from the launcher’s barrel.

BAM!

A gravel hopper at the base of the conveyor took the next round. The grenade skipped off the top of a gravel pile and landed inside the hopper. No explosion.

BOOM!

For some reason the grenade didn’t go off right away. Curious, but not any help to me. It was clear that Gustav was going to shoot left to right, destroying everything in sight until he hit the thing I was hiding behind. I was right of center, and I didn’t want him blowing up Bridget. Well, if she got exploded, I at least tried to salvage a life out of that mess. I’m just saying.

Bulkhead to the edge of the barge was a short hop, and I was still out of Gustav’s sight lines—but I was behind an obvious target, an obvious hiding place: the excavator.

Orange flash. This grenade missed a rowboat on the bulkhead and landed in the water. The explosion was delayed again.

I trotted along the edge of the barge to the far end and stripped off my overcoat. There was an outer shelf to the barge about four feet wide, outside the rim of the container part of the barge. So I tossed my overcoat down and lay on it on the shelf, out of sight. There were also some tires draped along the back edge of the barge I could use to climb down into that filthy water. I wasn’t sure when I had my last tetanus shot, but I’d need a dozen plus one of them if I got into that muck. Throw in a rabies shot just for fun.

Orange flash. The excavator’s cab windows blew out. I glanced over the edge of the barge, and smoke was pouring from the excavator.