Gone Tomorrow

happened.
    First, the first guy stopped. He saw that the alley door was closed. Which did not compute. It could not be opened from the outside without the key. Therefore the original searcher would have left it standing open while he prowled the sidewalk. But it was closed. Therefore the original searcher was already back inside.
    The first guy turned around.
    Second thing, the second guy also turned around. To close the inner door quietly and precisely. I let him get it done.
    Then he raised his eyes and saw me.
    The first guy saw me.
    Third thing, I shot them both. Two three-round bursts, brief muted purring explosions each a quarter of a second long. I aimed for the base of their throats and let the muzzle climb stitch upward toward their chins. They were small men. Their necks were narrow and mostly full of arteries and spinal cords. Ideal targets. The noise of the gun was much louder in the roofed alley than it had been out in the open. Loud enough for me to worry about it. But the inner door was closed. And it was a stout piece of wood. Once upon a time it had been an outer door, before some earlier owner had sold his air rights.
    The two guys went down.
    My spent shell cases rattled away across the concrete.
    I waited.
    No immediate reaction.
    Eight rounds gone. Twenty-two remaining. Seven men captured, three more down, three still walking and talking.
    Plus the Hoths themselves.
    I searched the new dead guys. No ID. No weapons. No keys, which meant the inner door wasn’t locked.
    I left the two new bodies next to the first one, in the shadow of the trash can.
    Then I waited. I didn’t expect anyone else to come through the door. Presumably the old Brits on the North West Frontier had eventually gotten wise about sending out rescue parties. Presumably the Red Army had. Presumably the Hoths knew their history. They ought to have. Svetlana had written some of it.
    I waited.
    The phone vibrated in my pocket.
    I pulled it out and checked the window on the front. Restricted Call . Lila. I ignored her. I was all done talking. I put the phone back in my pocket. It stopped vibrating.
    I put my gloved fingers on the inner door’s handle. I eased it down. I felt the latch let go. I was fairly relaxed. Three men had gone out. Conceivable that any one of them might return. Or all three of them. If anyone was inside, watching and waiting, there would be a fatal split second of delay for recognition and a decision, friend or foe. Like a Major League batter sorting a fastball from a curveball. A fifth of a second, maybe more.
    But no delay for me. Anyone I saw was my enemy.
    Anyone at all.
    I opened the door.
    No one there.
    I was looking at an empty room. The abandoned restaurant’s kitchen. It was dark and dismantled. There were shells of old cabinets and gaps in the countertops where appliances had been hauled away to the secondhand stores on the Bowery. There were old pipes in the walls where once faucets had been attached. There were hooks in the ceiling, where once saucepans had hung. There was a large stone table in the center of the room. Cool, smooth, slightly dished from years of wear. Maybe once pastry had been rolled on it.
    More recently Peter Molina had been murdered on it.
    There was no doubt in my mind that it was the table I had seen in the DVD. No doubt at all. I could see where the camera must have been positioned. I could see where the lights had been set. I could see knots of frayed rope on the table legs, where Peter’s wrists and ankles had been tied.
    The phone vibrated in my pocket.
    I ignored it.
    I moved on.
    There were two swinging doors leading to the dining room. One in, one out. Standard restaurant practice. No collisions. The doors had porthole windows set eye-high to an average man of fifty years ago. I ducked down and peered through. An empty room, large and rectangular. Nothing in it except a lone orphan chair. Dust and rat shit on the floor. Yellow light coming in from the street through the big filthy window.
    I pushed the out door with my foot. Its hinges yelped a little but it opened. I stepped into the dining room. Turned left and left again. Found a back hallway with restrooms. Two doors, labeled Ladies and Gentlemen . Brass signs, proper words. No pictograms. No stick figures in skirts or pants.
    Plus two more doors, one in each of the side walls. Brass signs: Private . One would lead back to the kitchen. The other would lead to the stairwell, and the upper floors.
    The phone