The only good Lawyer

the forty-five boomed again, another round screaming off the brick kneewall as my cracked ribs screamed at me. This time I kept going, plunging through the leaves until I reached the patio furniture again.
    I stepped over Imogene Burbage, her blood making the burgundy tiles slick. Bending down, I lifted the cocktail table on my left side. Heavier than its size suggested, I tilted it so the marble top was in front of me like a knight’s jousting shield.
    I heard a footstep just before the next shot made a noise somewhere between a thump and a whine as it struck the top of the table. Hunkered down, with the marble covering as much of me as possible, I started running forward. To close the gap between Neely and me, functionally making my shield bigger and hopefully throwing off his trigger timing.
    Another shot and another still, the last ripping a chunk off the meaty outside of my right shoulder. A feeling like being branded. Then the impact of the tabletop on Neely’s chest, a whoofing noise from the lungs as he went backward. I felt his heels catching on something, his hips coming up and—
    The sound of breaking glass.
    Shattering, actually. I’d driven him through one of the vertical panes of the greenhouse right at the knee wall. Neely bellowed as he went out into the air, his arms making whirlygig motions, futilely trying to regain his balance. Seconds later; a whumping sound rose from the street.
    I dropped the table to the tiled floor and forced myself toward the jagged opening in the glass. As I looked down at the body sprawled across the right-hand lane, pedestrians from the sidewalk rushed over to it, then turned away abruptly, probably appalled that a five-story drop in real life wasn’t quite as stylized and sanitized as television dramas had led them to believe.
    Clamping my left palm over the wound on my right shoulder, I watched the scene below until the wail of a siren began growing closer. That’s when I realized my view likely was pretty similar to the one a German soldier would have had fifty-plus years ago, looking down on the casualties from that Ranger battalion heroically scaling the cliff of Pointe-du-Hoc.
    Shock started setting in on me, making my legs rubbery. Before the shakes got too bad, I moved back toward the center of Frank Neely’s greenhouse to say a little prayer over Imogene Burbage.

JEREMIAH HEALY is a graduate of Harvard Law School . He won the Shamus award for Best Novel for The Staked Goat, and has been nominated five additional times for both Best Novel and Best Short Story. His newest novel, Spiral, the thirteenth in his acclaimed series featuring John Francis Cuddy, is currently available in hardcover from Pocket Books.