I was trying to figure where Kliner was getting his perfect paper, and I was trying to figure if I could get the six o’clock flight back to Atlanta if I hurried, and I was trying to ignore what Kelstein had told me about Joe speaking fondly of me. The streets were clogged and I was busy thinking about it all and scanning for an empty cab, which was why I didn’t notice two Hispanic guys strolling up to me. But what I did notice was the gun the leading guy showed me. It was a small automatic held in a small hand, concealed under one of those khaki raincoats city people carry on their arms in September.
He showed me the weapon and his partner signalled to a car waiting twenty yards away at the kerb. The car lurched forward and the partner stood ready to open a door like the top-hatted guys do outside the expensive apartment houses up there. I was looking at the gun and looking at the car, making choices.
`Get into the car,’ the guy with the gun said softly. `Or I’ll shoot you.’
I stood there and all that was passing through my mind was that I might miss my flight. I was trying to remember when the next non-stop left. Seven o’clock, I thought.
`In the car,’ the guy said again.
I was pretty sure he wouldn’t fire the gun on the street. It was a small gun, but there was no silencer on it. It would make a hell of a noise, and it was a crowded street. The other guy’s hands were empty. He maybe had a gun in his pocket. There was just the driver in the car. Probably a gun on the seat beside him. I was unarmed. My jacket with the blackjack and the knife and the Desert Eagle was eight hundred miles away in Atlanta. Choices.
I chose not to get into the car. I just stood there in the street, gambling with my life that the guy wouldn’t shoot in public. He stood there, holding the raincoat out towards me. The car stopped next to us. His partner stood on the other side of me. They were small guys. The both of them wouldn’t have made one of me. The car waited, idling at the kerb. Nobody moved. We were just frozen there like some kind of a display in a store window. Like new fashions for the fall, old army fatigues put with Burberry raincoats.
It gave the two guys a big problem. In a situation like that, there’s a split-second opportunity to carry out your threat. If you say you’re going to shoot, you’ve got to shoot. If you don’t, you’re a spent force. Your bluff is called. If you don’t shoot, you’re nothing. And the guy didn’t shoot. He just stood there, twisted up with indecision. People swirled around us on the busy sidewalk. Cars were blasting their horns at the guy stopped at the kerb.
They were smart guys. Smart enough not to shoot me on a busy New York street. Smart enough to know I’d called their bluff. Smart enough to never again make a threat they weren’t going to keep. But not smart enough to walk away. They just stood there.
So I swayed backwards, as if I was going to take a step away. The gun under the raincoat prodded forwards at me. I tracked the movement and grabbed the little guy’s wrist with my left hand. pulled the gun around behind me and hugged the guy close with my right arm around his shoulders. We looked like we were dancing the waltz together or we were lovers at a train station. Then I fell forward and crushed him against the car. All the time I was squeezing his wrist as hard as I could, with my nails dug in. Left-handed, but it was hurting him. My weight leaning up on him was giving him a struggle to breathe.
His partner still had his hand on the car door. His glance was darting back and forth. Then his other hand was going for his pocket. So I jackknifed my weight back and rolled around my guy’s gun hand and threw him against the car. And then I ran like hell. In five strides I was lost in the crowd. I dodged and barged my way through the mass of people. Ducked in and out of doorways and ran through shrieking and honking traffic across the streets. The two guys stayed with me for a spell, but the traffic eventually stopped them. They weren’t taking the risks I was taking.