SEAN AND WHITEY were coming up the stairs when they heard the racket, someone screaming in the apartment and the unmistakable snaps of flesh hitting flesh. They heard a man scream, "I'll fucking kill you!" and Sean had his hand on his Glock as he reached for the doorknob.
Whitey said, "Wait," but Sean had already turned the knob, and he stepped into the apartment and saw a gun pointed at his chest from six inches away.
"Hold it! Don't pull that trigger, kid!"
Sean looked into the bloody face of Johnny O'Shea and what he saw there scared the shit out of him. There was nothing there. Probably never had been. The kid wouldn't pull the trigger because he was angry or because he was scared. He'd pull the trigger because Sean was just a six-foot-two video image, and the gun was a joystick.
"Johnny, you need to point that gun at the floor."
Sean could hear Whitey's breathing from the other side of the threshold.
"Johnny."
Johnny O'Shea said, "He fucking punched me. Twice. Broke my nose."
"Who?"
"Brendan."
Sean looked to his left, saw Brendan standing in the kitchen doorway, hands down by his side, frozen. Johnny O'Shea, he realized, had been about to shoot Brendan when Sean came through the door. He could hear Brendan's breath, shallow and slow.
"We'll arrest him for that if you want."
"Don't want him fucking arrested. I want him dead."
"Dead's a big thing, Johnny. Dead's never coming back, you know?"
"I know," the kid said. "I fucking know all about that. You going to use that?" The kid's face was a mess, blood pouring from that broken nose and dripping off his chin.
Sean said, "What?"
Johnny O'Shea nodded at Sean's hip. "That gun. It's a Glock, right?"
"It's a Glock, yeah."
"Glocks kick ass, man. I'd like to get me one of those. So you going to use it?"
"Now?"
"Yeah. You going to draw on me?"
Sean smiled. "No, Johnny."
Johnny said, "The fuck you smiling for? Draw on me. We'll see what happens. It'll be cool." He thrust the gun out, his arm straight, the muzzle maybe an inch from Sean's chest now.
Sean said, "I'd say you got the drop on me, partner. Know what I mean?"
"Got the drop, Ray," Johnny called. "On a fucking cop, dude. Me! Check it out."
Sean said, "Let's not let this get out-"
"Saw this movie once, right? Cop's chasing this black guy on a roof? Nigger threw his ass off. Cop's like all 'Aaagh' and shit the whole way down. Nigger's so bad-ass he don't care the cop got the wife and little shits at home. Nigger's that cool, man."
Sean had seen this before. Back when he was in uniform and sent as crowd control on a bank robbery gone bad, the guy inside gradually growing stronger for a two-hour period, feeling the power of the gun in his hand and the effect it had, Sean watching him rant and rave over the monitor hooked up to the bank cameras. At the start, the guy had been terrified, but he'd gotten over that. Fell in love with that gun.
And for one moment, Sean saw Lauren looking over at him from the pillow, one hand pressed to the side of her head. He saw his dream daughter, smelled her, and thought what a shitty thing it would be to die without meeting her or seeing Lauren again.
He focused on the empty face before him. He said, "You see that guy to your left, Johnny? The one in the doorway?"
Johnny's eyes darted fast to his left. "Yeah."
"He doesn't want to shoot you. He doesn't."
"Don't care if he does," Johnny said, but Sean could see it got to the kid, his eyes getting rabbity now, jerking up and down.
"But if you shoot me, he has no choice."
"Ain't afraid of dying."
"I know that. Thing is, though? He won't shoot you in the head or nothing. We don't kill kids, man. But if he shoots you from where he's standing, you know where that bullet's going to go?"
Sean kept his eyes on Johnny, even though his head seemed to be magnetized to the gun in the kid's hand, wanting to look down on it, see where the trigger was, if the kid was pulling on it at all, Sean thinking, I don't want to get shot, and I definitely don't want to get shot by a kid. He couldn't think of a more pathetic way to go. He could feel Brendan, ten feet to his left and frozen, probably thinking the same thing.
Johnny licked his lips.
"It's going to go through your armpit and into your spine, man. It's going to paralyze you. You'll be like those kids on those Jimmy Fund commercials. You know the ones. Sitting in the wheelchair, all frozen up on one side, head hanging off the chair. You'll be a drooler, Johnny. People will have to hold the cup up beside your head so you can suck from the straw."
Johnny made up his mind. Sean could see it, as if a light had clicked off in the kid's dark brain, and Sean felt the fear seize him now, knew this kid was going to pull the trigger if only to hear the sound.
"My fucking nose, man," Johnny said, and turned toward Brendan.
Sean heard his own breath pop out of his mouth in surprise, and he looked down to see that gun sweeping away from his body, as if revolving on top of a tripod. He reached out so fast it was as if someone else was controlling his arms, and closed his hand over the gun as Whitey stepped into the room, Glock pointed at the kid's chest. A sound came out of the kid's mouth-a gasp of defeated surprise as if he'd opened a Christmas present to find a soiled gym sock inside-and Sean pushed the kid's forehead back against the wall and stripped the gun from him.
Sean said, "Motherfucker," and blinked at Whitey through the sweat in his eyes.
Johnny started to cry the way only a thirteen-year-old could, as if the whole world was sitting on his face.
Sean turned him to the wall and pulled his hands behind his back, saw Brendan finally take a deep breath, his lips and arms trembling, Ray Harris standing behind him in a kitchen that looked like it had been hit by a cyclone.
Whitey stepped up behind Sean, put a hand on his shoulder. "How you doing?"
"Kid was going to do it," Sean said, feeling the sweat that drenched every inch of his clothes, even his socks.
"No, I wasn't," Johnny wailed. "I was just kidding."
"Fuck you," Whitey said, and leaned his face into the kid's. "Nobody cares about your tears but your mommy, little bitch. Get used to it."
Sean snapped the cuffs on Johnny O'Shea and took him by the shirt, led him into the kitchen, and dropped him in a chair.
Whitey said, "Ray, you look like someone threw you from the back of a truck."
Ray looked at his brother.
Brendan leaned against the oven and his body was sagging so bad, Sean figured he'd fall over in a light breeze.
"We know," Sean said.
"What do you know?" Brendan whispered.
Sean looked at the kid sniffling in the chair and the other kid, mute, looking up at them like he hoped they'd leave soon so he could get back to playing Doom in the back bedroom. Sean was pretty sure once he got a sign language interpreter and a social worker and questioned them that they'd say they did it "because." Because they had the gun. Because they were there on the street when she drove up it. Maybe because Ray had never really liked her. Because it seemed like a cool idea. Because they'd never killed anyone before. Because when you had your finger curled around a trigger, you just had to pull it or otherwise that finger would itch for weeks.
"What do you know?" Brendan repeated, his voice gone hoarse and wet.
Sean shrugged. He wished he had an answer for Brendan, but looking at these two kids, nothing came to mind. Nothing at all.