Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

second was smaller, closer to my size. He wore a hooded sweatshirt and jeans and a baseball cap, the bill dipped low. The hood of the sweatshirt was pulled up over that.
    The first guy clipped me and sent me into the wall. He threw all his weight against me. I noticed then that he really was no taller than I. But he outweighed me easily, and by a lot. He was wearing a sweat-stained T-shirt and green fatigues and combat boots. His face and neck were covered with pockmarks, his nose scarred and twisted.
    I only needed one glimpse at the bigger man’s ugly face to know that he had once been a boxer.
    He shoulder-butted me twice, driving into me like a bull, forcing me hard into the wall. My body cracked the plaster, leaving a deep dent. The ugly boxer backed away then, fast, moving as far from me as the hallway allowed, then immediately raised a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun to his shoulder, aimed it toward my head, and pulled the trigger without pause.
    I had dropped the instant I saw the butt of the gun touch his shoulder. It was the only reason the buckshot took out the wall behind me and not my head. I was moving toward the man even as the sound of the blast slapped against my ears like two open hands. Bits of flying plaster peppered my back. I reached the ugly boxer fast and straightened up, driving my shoulder into the stock of the shotgun as I rose. The barrel was forced upward. I jammed the man up against the wall and grabbed for the gun with both hands. I was face to face with him now, eye to eye. His breath was foul, stale.
    His hands hung tight onto the shotgun, and I could see his knuckles clearly. They were thick, like small rocks, and his skin was leathery. Several of his knuckles were covered with blood. I knew it had to be Augie’s blood.
    The other man, the smaller one in the cap and hooded sweatshirt, had come rushing out of Augie’s room right behind the boxer. But the narrowness of the hallway, and the size of his partner, had kept him from being able to rush me. I saw him coming now and stepped to the side of the boxer, moving around so the boxer remained between me and the second guy. Once there I found a better leverage position and forced the gun down fast, leveling it with the smaller one’s head. His charge stopped suddenly and he stood there, frozen, facing down the remaining live barrel. I saw his eyes grow wide. Without hesitating, I threw a head butt with all my weight behind it into the face of the boxer, slamming the top of my head into his nose. It broke clean. The smaller man, out of blind fear more than anything else, dropped just as the boxer’s finger twitched on the trigger and the second barrel blew orange sparks and sweet-smelling smoke and punched a hole the size of a fist into the wall.
    The smaller man hit the floor and sprawled out on his stomach, covering his head with his arms. He waited there for only a second, then lifted his head and looked up at me and the boxer.
    Without a word the smaller man scrambled up to his feet and ran toward the living room. I heard him burst through the front door.
    Blood was running from the nose of the boxer. Still, he held onto the gun, his leathery, blood-stained knuckles whitening from the tension.
    For an instant his narrow eyes tried to focus on me through the water that was gathering in them—a side effect of a broken nose. Then he lowered his head the way boxer’s do when they are stunned and want to buy time.
    I gave him no rest.
    I drove the tip of my knee hard into his right thigh then, tagging him in the sciatic nerve. He flinched and spread his legs slightly in response, opening a clear path to his groin. I took it and thrust my other knee upward, landing it deep between the legs. He doubled over, and I pried the gun from his hands as he went, holding it by the barrel in one hand like a club. I slammed it down over his right kidney. He twisted and tucked his elbows to protect himself from other such blows. I crouched then and drove the butt hard across his left knee. Then I shot upward as he began to slump and brought the butt down across the back of his head with all I had.
    He dropped like dead weight to the floor. I tossed the empty shotgun aside and started after his partner. I feared he had spotted Tina waiting in my car. But when I reached the door I saw that he was tearing down Little Neck Road, heading in the direction of Montauk Highway.
    I saw that Tina was looking at me, that she was confused and scared. And