Trophies (52 page)

No one moved. Surely this was just a
nightmare, public or private, a dream sponsored by homemade hooch
and more trauma than the human brain could endure. Finally and too
late, the car in the street exploded.

"Great timing," I said to Father. Now that
the moment had arrived, I didn't need to think. I jumped in front
of him.

Something snapped behind me. A white-hot
brand slapped my right shoulder, sending me stumbling into Father.
I fell across the ropes crisscrossing his chest, my cheek smashing
his gagged mouth. But I
knew
I couldn't keep my balance. I
knew
I was going down—

—I ignored the background
crump
of
artillery fire and panned the rifle's scope along the enemy
emplacement, atop the ridge overlooking our sandbagged trench.
Beneath the camouflage netting and wilting tree branches I made out
one big field gun with its muzzle recoiling, another, a third—

—the enemy spotter stood contemptuously in
full view, binoculars to his eyes, gazing off to my left but
sweeping this way. The rangefinder showed the distance at eight
hundred meters. I set the elevation turret and aligned the sight's
upper chevron on his center of mass, drifting aside by one hash
mark to compensate for the gentle flow of air across my right
cheek. Binocular lenses flashed sunsparks. His lips moved as I took
up the initial pressure on the trigger—

—a line of machine-gun fire stitched across
the sandbags below my perch. Whines ended in hard thuds, felt more
than heard. Dark dust puffed out and billowed in the breeze, into
my face, carrying the acrid tang of gunpowder. I recoiled, jerking
the Mauser to my chest like a shield. Behind me Sherlock swore and
someone screamed, a shrill sound that went on and on and on—

—the dust and gunpowder caught at the back of
my throat. My innards contracted at the piercing smell of blood.
Had I been hit? I felt nothing, but they say it sometimes happens
that way. On the ridge, the machine gun chattered again. The
spotter, my intended target, had spotted us and his gunners were
getting our range—

—it was my job to protect the troops. I threw
myself atop the sandbag and raised the Mauser, locating the spotter
through the scope within seconds, and he lowered the binoculars and
stared right back at me, lips moving. Again the guns rattled—

—fire lanced across my back like one of
Theresa's explosions mishandled. Icy blackness threatened to swamp
me, driving me into myself as if I'd never surface again. It was
all I could do to remain conscious, empty nothingness boxing me in.
The agony on my back flamed brighter. I lay across the sandbags,
the rough, dirty canvas stark criss-crossed lines in the sunlight.
The screaming behind me got shriller and shriller. It sounded like
my own heart screaming and in that moment I
knew
I was
dead—

—but the spotter was still alive, still
directing enemy fire onto our position. He was my job and I hadn't
done it. I forced myself to sit up. Every nerve in my body and soul
screamed at me to stay down, out of the line of fire, and I wanted
nothing more than to listen to them—

—there was the Mauser, in my hands. I ignored
the pain, raised the rifle to my shoulder, and focused through the
scope. The glass had cracked, but I aligned the upper chevron once
more upon the spotter's center of mass and adjusted for wind—

—he stared, head thrown back, looking down a
Roman nose at me, eyes wide and getting wider. Any moment he'd jump
for cover so as he moved I squeezed the trigger and his body
jerked—

—a hole appeared in his neck to match the one
in my back. Blood spurted in a thick stream. It spread out and
sprayed across his uniform and the ground and the surrounding air.
He held onto the artillery piece as if it could save him, then the
blood spurted again. I'd drilled him through the large artery, I'd
slit his throat and he would bleed to death within moments—

—and he still stared at me, man to man, human
to human. His terror was my terror. He was dead where he stood, I
was dead where I lay, we'd killed each other, and in that
pain-wracked second I felt closer to him, my enemy-brother, than
I'd ever felt to anyone else in my life and he was dying, sliding
down the carriage of the artillery piece—

—I dropped the Mauser. There was Sherlock,
eyes wide and staring in his unscarred face. I knew I was sobbing,
face streaming with tears, and I didn't care, because it was
Sherlock and the guns were still on us—

—Glendower's gun was still on us. The
showroom, impenetrable in the blackness, smelled of gunpowder and
disaster. Something else thudded to the floor behind me. If I fell,
nothing would protect Father. I grabbed the ropes binding him to
the chair and held on. In the glare of the spotlights, a crimson
stain blossomed across his pinstriped shirt. But there had been no
snap of a silenced gun, so it was my blood spurting onto him. He
was still uninjured and it was my job to keep him that way.

His eyes glared, huge, into mine. The chair
rocked. My arms shook. My right hand refused to close. Equally, I
refused to let go. That right shoulder was numb and useless. With
my left hand, I yanked at the ropes and threw my weight into it.
More pain flashed from the stitches in my left shoulder. The chair
overbalanced. We went down together. Another shot snapped behind
us, whining past my ear. The chair crashed, horribly loud. I slid
down Father's bright red chest to the floor and could no longer
protect him.

"
Sherlock!
"

"You bastard." The words rasped like a file
across stone. "You
son
of a bastard."

I looked up. Glendower stood over us. The
spotlights' circle revealed a warped and greyed parody of the City
gentleman from the scrapbook photos. He held the silenced Browning
in his right hand, a jumble of brilliant gemstones in his left. The
barrel wasn't aimed at me. It aimed at Father. And it was far too
close to miss.

"I told you to come alone. I told you what
would happen if you double-crossed me."

The helplessness was total. There was nothing
I could do. Father was going to die. I'd failed and this time, it
wasn't the aftereffect of the flashback but horrible reality. The
fight was over and I lost. I could only watch as Glendower's finger
took up the initial pressure on the trigger.

Then bright light flooded the gallery. I
started. Above us, Glendower flinched. His body twisted. His finger
closed reflexively. The thud of the bullet into the floor was
louder than the snap that escaped the silencer.

"Good night." That was Sherlock's drawl,
tight, angry, and satisfied, coming from across the room.

Glendower knew his number was up. He started
to duck and turn. But it sounded as if another car exploded, then
another, then a third, all inside the gallery showroom with us.
Three red stars glittered in Glendower's chest and his body bucked
between them as if he'd been kicked by a horse. Blood spurted over
us, over the black drop cloth protecting Sidnë's artwork, into my
brain, and I knew it was all over. I closed my eyes. The welcome
warmth of shock closed over me like a sheet of water. I didn't care
how long I stayed down; until I drowned, I hoped. Beneath my
clenched left fist, I felt the uneasy rhythm of Father's damaged
heart.

"Still with me, Robber mine?"

Sherlock crouched over us. Gently he
disengaged my grip from the binding ropes, then sliced them open
with a pocketknife. Blood and bits of things unmentionable covered
Father's shirt, and me. Some mine, some Glendower's.

I swallowed bile and didn't bother trying to
sit up. "Still here. What happened to you?"

"Nothing I couldn't handle." He sawed at more
ropes.

"Right," I said. "You tripped, didn't you?
The man who can sneak up on a damned cat tripped over his own feet.
Am I right?"

He grinned; it seemed lopsided, from that
angle. "I hate it when you are. But actually it was Glendower's
phone cord, the one he trailed across the floor from the jack to
the display he hid behind. And if I hadn't tripped over that, I
would have run smack into him a step later, 'cause I couldn't see
him at all in the dark. So I guess all's well that ends well."

In other words, it wasn't his injury. Thanks,
boss.

The shock wore off fast and the pain in my
right shoulder grew in equal proportion. Sherlock helped me sit up,
and one-handed, I helped Father. It took all three of us to remove
the gag that covered half his face.

"Father?"

"I'm all right, son. You?"

Outside the building, someone shouted.

"That's the police." Sherlock scooped up the
scattered pieces of jewelry, counted them, stuffed them into my
pocket, then crossed to the gallery's front door and shouted
through it. "Man down, people, man down. This door's locked but the
back's open. Bring the medics."

The cry was taken up beyond the door by what
sounded like a crowd of disembodied voices: man down, man down, we
need a medic.

I knew a medic. Actually, I loved a medic. I
smiled.

"Charles?" Strain lines deepened in Father's
face.

"It's not serious."

"There's a lot of blood."

"No, really, it's not."

I pushed myself straight. His arms,
surprisingly strong, wrapped about me, giving me traction.

"You recognized that pipe."

He touched my face, wiped a swollen thumb
beneath my eye. It came away wet. But because it was Father, I
didn't care. "It was my father's."

We looked together at the motionless, huddled
lump. Father said what I was thinking.

"He died disappointed in her."

Caren, medical kit in hand, followed the
police into the showroom. She knelt before me, her face white.
Sherlock murmured in her ear. Her chin dipped in the barest of
nods.

"Come on, tell him it's not serious," I
said.

Her fingers probed gently. I swallowed a
scream.

"You're right. It's not."

The room swam. It didn't matter whether it
was serious or not. I was injured, and as usual that was too much
for me. As Caren, unseen by the police swarming the showroom,
slipped the jewelry from my pocket into her little black bag, I
fainted gracefully into Father's arms.

no time

Again I was inside the yellow crime scene
tape. Again I wasn't certain how I'd gotten there.

I sat on the gallery's landing and leaned
against the doorjamb, smearing blood across Prissy's nice clean
woodwork. Her lousy security company had finally unearthed her, at
the house of a male friend, and not long after her arrival she'd
vanished into the rear mews, arguing with the forensics team every
step of the way. Served her right for ignoring my advice.

Rain pattered on the concrete, dripped from
step to step, tingled when it struck my face. Squad cars blocked
the street and lit it with their headlights, doors hanging open,
emergency lights washing the dripping street with blood then wiping
it clean, over and over again. Even when I closed my eyes, I could
see it. Even in my memory, I could smell it.

My shoulder hurt, a sharp monotonous
throbbing that went on and on. Caren had said something about an
ambulance. I wished it would hurry.

She stood beside me like a sentinel, her
little black bag open at her feet. Her hand rested on my uninjured
shoulder. One finger stroked my neck inside the fatigue collar,
over and over.

The family huddled in a knot in the middle of
the street. William's arms encircled Patricia on one side, Lindsay
on the other, but his roving attention missed nothing. Father, my
blood congealing and blackening on his pinstriped blue shirt, sat
on one of Prissy's folding metal chairs. He stared at me and saw
nothing else, that little smile still on his face.

Theresa and her questionably legal case had
vanished. But Bonnie in her unremarkable civvies blended into the
crowd on the far side of the street. She was waiting, I knew, for
me to faint again so she could laugh at me.

Beside me, Caren gasped. Wingate escorted
Sherlock from the gallery. His scarred hands were cuffed in front
of him.

"You still with me, Robber?"

"Still here, boss." I tried to pull myself
together and go to his aid, but I couldn't force myself through the
stream of consciousness that surrounded me.

He seemed to understand. "We'll let the nice
detective do his job, okay?" He turned to Patricia, ignoring Bonnie
and leaving her cover unblown. "Would you call one of my team, have
them call the Kraut?"

Her eyebrows skyrocketed, probably at the
derogatory term.

Sherlock popped his eyebrows and grinned. It
still looked lopsided. But then, he'd just killed a man, and that
knocked any photo off-kilter.

Patricia dug her cell phone from her purse.
Across the street, Bonnie already spoke into hers.

"Sherlock?"

"Yeah, Robbie?"

I looked up. His little smile was gentle.
Like my father's.

"I remembered."

He understood me immediately, of course. "Did
you now?"

Wingate glanced from one to the other of us,
openly eavesdropping. I didn't care. Neither would Sherlock.

"Yes. I remembered." I opened my mouth to say
what I ought to say to this man who'd helped me more than any
other—

—
I very nearly said it—

—then Sherlock's gentle smile morphed into an
evil grin. And I came to my senses. In time, thankfully.

"Yeah, Robbie? You got something to say,
Robbie? What you gonna say, Robbie?"

I started to laugh, even if it did hurt. "Go
directly to jail. Do not pass go."

Sherlock snorted. "And do not get paid for
this week."

In the middle of the street, Father's smile
broadened. It lit his face like a lamp.