Swan Dive

bottle at me in a whippy, underhanded way that made it carom off my collarbone and smash against the wall over my head, the red liquid staining as it ran down and along the woodwork. I rubbed the bone and didn’t say anything about my security deposit.
    ”I gotta dive down when Terdell see me. He already have out this cannon, he start yelling my name. ‘Niño, you fucken little shit, you was the one, you was the one,’ and like that. Well, he get the two shots off, I don’t even get the chance to say nothing, if I did I couldn’t hear it ‘cause the fucken noise from the shots like to break my ears open. Then J.J. coming up behind him, at the next junction in the tunnel. J.J. start spraying this Uzi all the fuck over, and maybe three slugs hit Terdell in the back. Fuck, Terdell not there, taking up so much of the tunnel, some of JJ.’s shots find me, you know it? So I low crawl to Terdell to get his piece, and somehow he stinking worse than when he was alive, musta had ten pounds of soul food shit coming out his ass when the muscles let go. J.J. ot too good with the Uzi in real life, probably bought it and took it out somewheres, learn how to shoot it but never seen no real combat with it, don’t conserve his ammo.”
    ”You caught him reloading?”
    ”Fucken A. He didn’t even have the other load out,
    I bring up Terdell’s piece, put one square in J.J.’s chest, man, he like explode. He tumble back, I wait on him, then check him out. Ter-mi-nat-ed, man.”
    I moved my head toward the gun pointing at me. ”That’s not Terdell’s?”
    Niño looked disappointed. ”What you think, I got shit for brains? You think I carry away a piece that killed somebody?”
    ”What did you do with it?”
    ”I wipe it some, then put it back in Terdell’s hand, press his fingers around it.”
    I thought for a second. ”Which hand?”
    Niño shook his head. ”His shooting hand. Madron!”
    I said, ”You didn’t shoot your own gun in there?”
    ”Never got it out.”
    ”Then the cops probably don’t have the physical evidence to say anybody else was involved.”
    ”The best I could do was leave it like maybe they had a business dis-a-gree-ment and did each other.”
    ”With each other’s weapons.”
    ”I didn’t know how much time I have, ‘cause I didn’t know if the cops still tailing J.J., ‘cause I didn’t know that you was inviting J.J., too.”
    ”The main cop involved in the surveillance is a sergeant named Dawkins. He told me he was off this weekend.”
    ”How come you didn’t tell me, huh?”
    ”Somebody else was probably on. But you figure nobody saw you?”
    Niño just said, ”You fucken set me up, man. I saved you fucken life that night, and you fucken set me up.”
    ”Put yourself in my position. You see any other way for me to get J.J. off the widow and the child?”
    ”You ‘position,’ huh? Back in the Nam, I had a lieutenant, fucken butter bar new guy, try to use me and my buddy to sucker some NV one night. My buddy come back in a green bag, man. The butter bar got his ass reamed by a grenade somebody leave lying around.”
    ”You told me you were the best, Niño, remember? King of the tunnel rats. I set it up, sure, but I set it up so I thought you’d take care of J.J. and Terdell no sweat.”
    ”So you so thoughtful for me, I shouldn’t just blow you away now?”
    ”No, you shouldn’t.”
    ”I still ain’t heard no reason, man.”
    ”In the Angel’s apartment. You said you wanted the guy who killed her.”
    ”You tell me Marsh kill her, and he’s dead.”
    ”Yeah, but J.J. was the real reason she was dead. You think Marsh would set up a crazy frame like he was working if he wasn’t crazy himself from the drugs?”
    Niño looked at me. ”So I kill J.J., it’s like me getting the guy who did the Angel, huh?”
    ”Right.”
    ”Right, shit. If you right on that, then I oughta kill you now, ‘cause without you rousting Marsh, he never get your gun or try to set you up or even fucken know you.”
    ”Even without me in it, Hanna would have demanded the house, and Marsh would have tried to set up Chris through the Angel, just with another gun.”
    Niño seemed to think it over. ”What if all that shit ain’t enough reason?”
    ”Then try this. When you were driving me back Tuesday night, you said you figured you were better off me owing you a favor.”
    ”So?”
    ”So now you’re twice as well off as before. Now I owe you two favors, and you got an innocent