"I don't know," I said. I wanted to get a chance to really talk things
out with her, and this wasn't the place for it. "Anyway, this is no
place to talk business. Walk out of here as if I'd turned you down, and
go up the street. I'll catch up to you."
"Okay." She got up and walked out.
"Sorry, Honey," I called after her, loud enough for everybody to hear.
A snicker went up. I cut it off with a look at the characters lined up
against the bar, and got back to my drink. I finished it casually, put
it down, paid, and walked slowly to the door. I let everybody get a
good look at me turning down the street in the opposite direction from
the one Pat had taken.
I ducked into the first cross street and moved swiftly over to the
alley that paralleled the street that Pat was on. I was thinking all
the way.
Being a D.O. was one thing--getting into something solo was another. I
could get killed, for all I knew, and maybe by a lawman's gun. That was
a risk I ran on every job, but in this case, I didn't even know, yet,
what was going on. The smart thing to do would have been to pass the
word to my SBI contact, but that would take too much time. There was
nothing I could do but dive into this mess head-on, and hope I'd have
time to yell for help later.
I was about to turn into another alley that ran back to the main street
when I heard the coughing of a Saro airgun and the faint sizzle of a
Colt in reply.
Instantly, I was running silently up the alley. One hand unzipped the
chest of my coverall, and the other one dove in and grabbed the butt of
the heavy Sturmey that's my favorite man-killer. I reached the mouth of
the alley and stopped abruptly in the shadows.
A man lay in the middle of the street, unnaturally flat against
the concrete slab. The street lamp up the block was dark, its base
surrounded by shattered glass.
The Saro went into action again from the roof of a building across the
street. I saw the slugs chip cement from the railing of a flight of
steps four doors up. A pale blue flare winked from behind the railing,
and the man with the Saro ducked, but was up again as another gun raked
the stairs from a spot on my side of the street. I didn't like that
setup one bit.
The Sturmey in my hand went _whoomp!_ and the man on the roof sailed
out over the street and landed with a crunch. The other gun cut off
abruptly. Two Colt beams probed for it from the stairs, and that
clinched it. It was Pat, all right, and somewhere, she'd become a fair
hand at street fighting.
"Hey, Pat!" I yelled, and ducked away from the storm of bullets the
other gunman flung at me. The result was what I'd hoped for. The man
had exposed himself to Pat's fire by shooting at me. The Colts sizzled
viciously, and the burst of Saro noise stopped in mid-clip.
A gun clattered on cement. I poked my head cautiously around the
corner. Silence blanketed Rocket Row, and then was tempered by a
scuffing noise. Up the street, a leather belt was being pressed against
the side of a building by the weight of a body that was sliding slowly
downwards. I spotted a glowing dot that was a tunic smoldering around a
Colt burn.
"Ash!"
"Yeah?"
"You okay?"