The night seemed to be filled with uncountable barking dogs, all close but out of sight, as though they were falling with the rain, coming down through the black sky, soon to land in packs on all sides.
Three houses beyond the ultramodern pile with the floodlamps, the beam of a big flashlight suddenly speared out of the darkness and the rain, fixing on Del.
The man behind the light shouted, ‘Stop right there!’
Without any cry of warning, another guy erupted from the gloom and blindsided Tommy, as if they were professional football players and this were the Superbowl.
They both skidded and went down on the slick concrete decking, and Tommy landed so hard that his breath was knocked out of him. He rolled into some patio chairs that tumbled over with a tubular-steel ringing. Stars swarmed behind his eyes, and he cracked his left elbow squarely on the ulnar nerve – the ill-named funny bone – sending a disabling painful tingle the length of his arm.
To the man with the flashlight, Del Payne said, ‘Back off, you asshole, I’ve got a gun, back off, back off!’
Tommy realized that he had dropped the Mossberg. In spite of the numbing pain in his left arm, wheezing noisily as he struggled to get some air into his lungs, he pushed onto his hands and knees. He was desperate to find the weapon.
The foolhardy tackler was sprawled facedown, groaning, apparently in even worse shape than Tommy. As far as Tommy was concerned, the stupid son of a bitch deserved to have a broken leg, two broken legs, and maybe a skull fracture for good measure. At first he had assumed that the men were cops, but they hadn’t identified themselves as policemen, and now he realized that they evidently lived here and fancied themselves to be natural-born heroes ready to take on a pair of fleeing burglars.
As Tommy crawled past the groaning man, he heard Del say, ‘Get that damn light out of my eyes right now, or I’ll shoot it out and take you with it.’
The other would-be hero’s courage wavered, and so did his flashlight.
By a stroke of luck, the nervous beam quivered across the patio, revealing the shotgun.
Tommy crawled to the Mossberg.
The man who’d tackled him had managed to sit up. He was spitting out something – possibly teeth – and cursing.
Clutching at another patio table, Tommy pulled him-self to his feet just as Scootie began to bark loudly, urgently.
Tommy glanced to the east and saw the fat man two properties away, silhouetted against the bright backdrop of the floodlamps at the ultramodern house. As the Samaritan raced toward them, leaping a low fence into the property next door, he was no longer the least bit clumsy but as graceful as a panther in spite of his size, his raincoat billowing like a cape behind him.
Snarling fiercely, Scootie moved to intercept the fat man.
‘Scootie, no!’ Del shouted.
Assuming a shooter’s stance as naturally as if she had been born with a gun in her hands, she opened fire with the Desert Eagle when the Samaritan cleared a hedge and splashed onto this patio, where they were apparently going to be forced to make their last stand. She squeezed off three rounds with what seemed to be calm deliberation. The evenly timed explosions were so thunderous that Tommy thought the recoil of the powerful handgun would knock her flat, but she stood tall.
She was an excellent shot, and all three rounds appeared to hit their target. With the first boom, the Samaritan stopped as if he’d run head-on into a brick wall, and with the second boom, he was half lifted off his feet and sent staggering backward, and with the third, he spun and swayed and almost fell.
The hero with the flashlight had thrown it aside and had fallen to the deck to get out of the line of fire.
The tooth-spitter was still sitting on the puddled concrete, legs splayed in an infantile posture, hands clasped to his head. He was apparently frozen in terror.
Edging away from the patio table, toward Del and Scootie, Tommy remained riveted by the wounded Samaritan who was turned half away from them, who had taken three rounds from the .44 Magnum, who swayed but did not drop, did not drop.