Free House Reckoning by Mike Lawson Page A

DeMarco. He couldn’t believe how fast the son of a bitch had been.
    Quinn had hidden behind the coffee bags because they were near the number-five door and they provided good concealment, but in order to hide there he had to sit in a squatting position. He’d been waiting for DeMarco for almost an hour and when he rose to shoot him, his legs had cramped up and he stumbled slightly and his shoe scraped the concrete. He should have worn soft-soled shoes.
    When DeMarco heard him, he spun around so fast that Quinn’s first shot passed behind DeMarco’s back. What really amazed him was that DeMarco had his gun out by the time he completed the spin and he was just lucky that he was able to get off a second shot before DeMarco could fire. But he wasn’t that lucky: DeMarco managed to get off one shot before Quinn could fire again, and DeMarco’s bullet hit him high in the chest, near his left shoulder. Fortunately, Quinn’s next two shots finished the bastard off before he could shoot again.
    He was in trouble now, though. He was bleeding badly from the bullet wound and was also having trouble breathing. He wondered if DeMarco’s bullet had nicked a lung. He had planned to hide DeMarco’s body behind some of the crates in the warehouse to delay discovery of the body, but now he couldn’t do that. He didn’t have the strength to move DeMarco, nor did he have the time. He needed to get back to his car and get help before he bled to death.
    He walked to the door he’d used to enter the warehouse and opened it and peered outside. No one was in the alleyway between the warehouses. He walked slowly, pressing his hand against the wound, until he reached the pier. When he reached the pier, he forced himself to straighten up and dropped his hand to his side. Keeping his head down, he walked along the pier sticking close to the warehouse, staying out of the light as best he could. Fortunately, everyone on the pier was focused on the offloading—longshoremen knew if you didn’t pay attention you could get killed by a forklift or something falling from a crane—and no one was paying any attention to him. He wasn’t surprised that no one had heard the shots. He’d used a silencer and the one shot DeMarco fired wouldn’t have been noticed with all the noise on the pier.
    He’d been forced to park his car almost half a mile from the warehouse and had to stop a couple of times while he was walking to rest and catch his breath. Stopping wasn’t good, he knew, because he was losing a lot of blood.
    He finally reached his car. He unlocked the door and slipped in behind the steering wheel, then just sat there for a moment until he could find the strength to start the car. He drove slowly—and erratically. He was going all over the road and if a cop saw him, he’d get pulled over for sure.
    Just when he didn’t think he could drive any farther he finally spotted a pay phone. He lurched from this car and called Taliaferro. He didn’t know what he’d do if Taliaferro didn’t answer.
    “I’m hurt,” he told Taliaferro. “I got the guy but he hurt me bad.” He didn’t want to say DeMarco’s name on the phone and he didn’t want to say that he’d been shot. “I’m in a phone booth, five blocks east of the pier. I don’t know the address. I need a doctor and I can’t go to a hospital.”
    He didn’t hear what Taliaferro said because he passed out.
    Quinn woke up in a bedroom—not a hospital room—but had no idea where he was. He was still wearing his pants and socks but his shirt was gone. His left shoulder was covered with white bandages and it looked like a professional had applied the bandages. He noticed a glass filled with water sitting on a nightstand next to the bed and realized he was incredibly thirsty. He reached for the glass with his right hand but the pain in his left shoulder hit him when he did, and he knocked the glass off the nightstand and it shattered on the floor.
    The bedroom door opened and a man