Gatac

  “We're there,” Berkovitz said.

  Sean eased off the gas and rolled the car up to the well-worn curb. A colony of warehouses with their loading docks stretched along the street. The ground was covered in a yer of wispy snow, hiding the ice patches beneath. Sean scanned for activity and saw nobody moving outside, but that wasn't surprising. Even if the Russians didn't care about witnesses, the weather favored an indoor deal. Berkovitz pointed out the right warehouse, with Sean not being altogether sure it wasn’t a random choice, given the ck of distinction between the various buildings. That left him with one question.

  “What's the pn?” Sean asked.“I'm gonna do the heavy lifting up front,” Berkovitz said. “I need you watching the back, in case we get runners or other surprises.”“Hey, if that’s the worst you’re worried about, sure,” Sean said. “So, when do I kick in the door?”“It’s not a raid, it’s a friendly chat,” Berkovitz shot back. “I don't need backup for a friendly chat. I know these guys. They're gonna fold like napkins.”“Well, I wouldn’t wanna make your payoff awkward, either,” Sean replied with a smirk.“Oh, yeah, the payoff,” Berkovitz said. “At least pretend to be outraged, kid.”“By what?” Sean asked. “That you're shaking them down or that you're not cutting me in?”

  Berkovitz ughed. Sean’s smirk stayed on. If Berkovitz was on the take — Sean had seen no hard proof he was, but if — then, Sean imagined, it was for spending money in exchange for overlooking minor issues. Sean couldn’t think worse than that of his partner, after all. He wasn't so sure about getting in on that action for himself, either, considered himself the w and order type, at least nominally.

  “Alright, let's go,” Berkovitz said. “You circle around on foot. If I don't come fetch you in ten minutes, feel free to textbook.”“See you then,” Sean replied.

  Berkovitz opened the door on his side, letting a gust of cold air sweep through the car. Sean went over his options. They had vests and shotguns in the trunk, and for a raid, they'd be the smart choice, but this wasn't supposed to go down like that. And when you didn't know who was watching, you didn’t want to look like a wannabe ESU1Emergency Services Unit. Broadly simir to the LAPD-type SWAT teams, but with a wider skillset in search and rescue in addition to tactical skills. thug — or worse, a rival gang member — aiming to crash the party. So Sean went as he was, wool jacket instead of vest, Service Six2At this point, the NYPD was still a couple of years away from having semi-automatic pistols as service weapons, let alone having them be commonly carried. The Ruger Service Six is a pretty representative example of a police revolver of the era. Like all NYPD service weapons, this particur model came with a heavier trigger pull, intended to prevent accidental discharges. The civilian fanbase of weapons in this configuration is small precisely because they’re not very nice to actually shoot with at the range. instead of shotgun. The revolver rode in a holster sitting forward of his left hip, a little crossdraw3Crossdraw holsters require you to reach across your chest to draw the weapons. Some shooters cim they’re slower to draw from and less safe because you sweep a rge arc in front of you with the gun’s muzzle when you draw from them. Others think they’re fine and make it easier to have a comfortable concealed carry. I have neither relevant expertise nor an opinion in the matter. number that was not exactly regution. On the other side of his belt, he affixed his badge. So if he ran into someone, all he had to do was figure out which side of his jacket to lift.

  Thus prepared, Sean circled around the warehouse slowly, keeping his eyes peeled for a lookout and signs of more activity on his way to the rear. All that achieved was he got his shoes good and wet in the half-melted snow. When he went through an open door in the wiremesh fence closing off the back half of the building, there were some signs of life. He could see some steam escaping from a chimney and the dim hint of light within the warehouse. Something was definitely happening, but the ck of people outside didn't sit too well with him. That open door had been opened recently, to judge from the dispced snow. And why have it open? Either the padlock had gone missing recently or a terrible curse kept the curious and desperate from going back here.

  “Hold it.”

  Sean froze while his brain spooled up to speed, squeezing the juiciest information from those two words. Source behind him? Yeah, behind him. Ten, twenty feet on the outside seemed about right from the volume. And a woman’s voice, too, he was fairly sure of it.

  “There is a weapon aimed at your back,” the woman continued, “so I will warn you once, Sir. No shouting, no sudden moves. Do we have an understanding?”Sean's head tilted ever so slightly backwards without turning to look. He didn't know what exactly he had walked into, but panic wasn't going to get him out of it. “Put the gun down,” he said, “I'm NYPD.”“I said, do we have an understanding, Sir?” the woman asked.“…we do,” Sean said.“Good,” the woman said. “Now, please, slowly raise your hands and tell me what weapons you are carrying, Sir.”“Revolver on the left hip,” Sean said. He humored her with the hands, raising them up to about eye level. The wool jacket was flexible enough to stretch and follow without riding up on his arms.“Where is your backup piece?” the woman asked.“Don't carry one,” Sean said. “But maybe I can interest you in my badge.”“We will see to that matter in a moment,” the woman said. “For now, please take off your jacket and put it on the ground.”“Slowly?” Sean asked.“Naturally,” the woman answered.“Just so we’re clear, that’s a real, loaded gun you say you got, yeah?” Sean asked, unable to suppress his smirk. “Didn't hear you cock it or snap off the safety.”4My research indicates guns don’t make noises unless fired or during manipution of their controls. If your gun rattles when you swing it around, I’d recommend finding a competent gunsmith.“For the same reason, Sir, you missed me moving up on you,” the woman said. “Now, so there is no unfortunate accident — I do have a pistol aimed at your back, and if your actions in the next few seconds do not reflect your cognizance of this fact, I would see no alternative but to escate the situation. I don't want that and I presume you don't want that, either. So please humor me and do as I say, would you, Sir? Take off the jacket.”

  Sean lowered his arms and slowly slipped out of the jacket before bundling it up in his hands. If he had kept a gun in his pocket, he surely could have gotten to it without the woman seeing him — but she'd still have the drop on him and could shoot him while he turned around, so what was the use of even thinking about pying with fire? He put the jacket down on what looked like the driest spot in reach. He did slowly turn his hips, left and right, hoping to demonstrate both the gun and the badge.

  “Thank you,” the woman said. “For step three, please bend down and lift your scks off your shoes. If you have a weapon strapped to your ankle, Sir, now would be a good time to tell me about it.”“I told you, just one gun,” Sean said. He bowed down to grab the legs of his scks and pulled them up. “See?”“It is as you said,” the woman said. “Now please raise your hands one more time and tell me why you are here.”“There's a drug deal going down inside, with the Russians,” Sean said. “At least, that's what I heard. Look, I'm not here to bust anyone, I just need some information.”“Then our motivation runs along simir lines, Sir,” the woman said. “Tell me everything you know about the deal, if you please.”“That's all I know, there's a drug deal,” Sean said. “What the fuck does it matter?”“The particurs would be helpful in determining my stance toward the parties involved,” the woman said.“Well, I guess you’ll have to py it by ear,” Sean said. “Now, this has been a real fun waste of my time, but you’re really not making this any easier on yourself. I told you I’m a cop. You insist on menacing me. You might as well ditch the gun now and let me sp the cuffs on, it’s your license and your piece but you might plead down to community service on a first offense. But if you’re gonna keep this up, that’s assault on a peace officer, css C felony. You won’t like that one, I guarantee it. All of that’s assuming you have a license for your heater, which I’m starting to doubt because if you did, you would already know exactly how much trouble you’re in. So if that’s not a registered firearm aimed at my back, whoo boy, you’re signing up for the full ride.”“I have no designs on you, Sir,” the woman said. “If what you are saying about the deal is true, I have a part to py inside and I cannot brook your interference. Are you positive you can't tell me more? Perhaps you do know something about the substances after all. Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, synthetics? Anything about the participants other than ‘Russians’?” Sean's silence answered her question, so she went on. “Well then. Please put your weapon on the ground and walk up to the wall, then put your hands against it and lower your head.”“Okay, st chance,” Sean said. “You put your gun down and surrender yourself. You don’t get it, do you? All I have to do is shout for help and you'll be in a world of hurt. Liable to get yourself shot and killed right there.”“Probably,” the woman said. “But you will be dead first.”“Goddamn it,” Sean said, “what part of ‘you’re about to ruin your whole fucking life’ do you not understand?”“Actually, I want you to understand, Sir,” the woman said, “because we are wasting time, my time. I have never assaulted an agent of the w and I don't mean to start now, because it is a problem both practically and morally — but not so big a problem that I wouldn't do it if my hand was forced. Now, I should like to see you on your way unharmed. My pn in its entirety is I go in there and ask these gentlemen a few questions. If it turns out their answers are not to my satisfaction, then their day won't go so well. If you get in my way or do anything I might mistake for you taking a hostile interest in me, your day will not go so well, either. If, however, you follow my instructions, you will have nothing to worry about. Am I understood, Sir?”“Yeah, yeah, Jesus Christ, ease off,” Sean said. “Okay, fine, whatever. Let’s not have anybody shooting anybody right now. Look, I gotta reach down to get my gun, so either you won't see what I'm doing or I have to turn around. Which one is it?”“The former,” she said. “And you can leave your badge as well.”

  Sean complied. For all his talk, he’d always been good at complying. Gun and ID holder went into the snow and Sean walked forward to embrace the brick wall. Behind him, he heard the woman’s footsteps, now that she seemed to pay less attention and followed where he had pre-crunched the snow with his shoes.

  “Hm,” she said. “Detective Sean Collins. I will have to remember that.”“Now can we stop and talk about this?” Sean asked.“Another time, Detective,” she said. “Stay here, please.”

  Sean heard her crunch the snow some more, walking away with his gun and his badge. He knew she had taken them without having to look to confirm it, just fucking knew it, because anything less than that precise amount of shit pouring out from the heavens all over him would have been out of character for the universe. He couldn’t change a thing about what had already happened, so he started thinking with all his might about what, exactly, he was going to do next.

  The woman sank the badge holder into the right outer pocket of her coat, while the cop's wheelgun rode on the left side. Her own gun went back into the holster hanging under her left shoulder. Her gear was getting pretty crowded and despite the cold, she was quite hot under her Kevr vest. Wearing that meant an undershirt beneath to wick the sweat and stop it chafing, a looser light shirt on top to hide the vest and a sweater to stay warm, the holster rig on top of that and all covered up by her coat, which was now weighed down by the confiscated revolver. She would have preferred to not have w enforcement here for this at all. They made everything complicated. But she'd sort the w out ter. What mattered was the deal inside the warehouse. She was prepared for it, as prepared as she could be given the information she had.

  Earlier in the morning, she had walked the warehouse, getting a feel for the exits and nes of fire. She'd also gone ahead and picked the lock on one of the back doors, taped the spring tch down to keep it from locking again, then gone outside and taped the door shut from there. If the gangsters missed it in their security check, she had a silent way into the building. If they found it — well, she didn't exactly have a detailed pn for this eventuality, more than likely everyone would go home and think a little more on matters of operational security. But it sure beat being heard getting inside, or not getting inside at all. The deal including drugs, though…that worried her a little. For a moment, she considered rolling down her bacva to hide her face, but she might as well have gone in with a drawn gun. No, she was going to give them a chance to expin first.

  The door opened quietly enough and she slipped inside, ending up in a small storage room with three brooms leaned against the wall and not much on the shelves. Supposing a smart investigator saw this, they might surmise there was little legit business happening here still if nobody bothered to stock cleaning supplies for the inevitable spills and accidents, but she figured these were unspoiled grounds, poputed by animals too compcent to hide from hunters.5The term for this is ecological na?vete or isnd tameness, so named as many wild animals on isoted isnds seem to have no instinctual fear of humans. Because fleeing is a big expenditure of energy, wild animals only run away from things which pose enough of a threat to be a significant evolutionary pressure on their popution.Of course, evolution toward developing such fear requires those pressures do not colpse the breeding popution. The extinction of the dodo is a partial example. They were rather trivial to hunt on account of being both flightless and not afraid of humans. However, predation by introduced animals and habitat loss also pyed a role. The door to the warehouse proper had been open when she went through the first time, but the gangsters had closed it, to their marginal credit. She gingerly twisted the handle, getting the door open without creaking — catching just a hint of Russian. Those were the voices she had expected to hear. That would make one thing easier and everything else harder. She straightened herself up and opened the door carefully. There were three men there, two heavies, one driver sitting in the cab of a gray delivery truck, all having a little pre-deal chat. The heavies, she knew. The driver, she didn’t.

  The woman considered her options. Reaching into the pocket of her coat, she retrieved the cop's revolver and pressed the cylinder release to inspect the load — only five rounds in the six-shot cylinder 6Carrying a revolver with the chamber under the hammer empty is a sensible precaution with guns like the Colt Single-Action Army, which are not drop-safe: that is, if they are dropped, there is a chance that the hammer even on an uncocked gun could impact the primer of the bullet underneath hard enough to set the cartridge off. There are degrees of this, too. Many semi-automatics that are for all practical civilian purposes drop-safe do discharge when they get dropped from extended heights onto concrete for further testing during military adoption trials.The Ruger Service Six used here, however, has a special design. It features a so-called transfer bar which sits between hammer and cartridge, but only rises into a fireable position when the trigger is fully pulled back. Dropping the hammer when the bar is not in pce physically cannot result in a primer strike. So that’s definitely drop-safe barring freak accidents and deliberate sabotage. However, pulling the trigger on a double-action revolver like this will not only cock the hammer, but also advance the cylinder by one chamber, so it makes no practical difference in terms of getting that first shot off. Sean clearly sacrificed a sixth shot for a little peace of mind while carrying. And a bobbed hammer 7Many pistols have an external hammer with a hammer spur that can be cocked by hand with the thumb of your shooting hand. Other pistols have entirely internal hammers or other firing mechanisms (like strikers) that cannot be directly maniputed from outside. Between those options, you find bobbed hammers: hammers that are external, but without a hammer spur, often additionally ground down to sit flush with the rest of the weapon when not cocked. These hammers can’t be manually cocked, but they’re also less likely to catch on something when drawn, so this configuration is more common with concealed carry weapons than with range toys. Why not carry a weapon with an internal hammer / striker, then? Well, just because it’s inside the gun doesn’t mean it needs less travel to set off the primer on the cartridge, so these types of guns need to be longer in the ‘tail’ above the grip to enclose the mechanism, which makes them bigger and less conceable. By contrast, a snubnosed revolver with a bobbed hammer can be made very small and still be chambered in a caliber that packs enough punch for self-defense, like, say, a .38 Special., too. Wonderful. She gritted her teeth and pushed the cylinder back into the frame until it locked into pce, indexed on the empty chamber and pocketed the revolver again. Time for the easy part.

  “Privjet!” she called out by way of greeting to the Russians. Seeing them flinch and squirm as they reacted to her entry put a momentary smile on her face. How cleverly she had slipped through to them! She stretched her hands out of the doorframe into the light of the warehouse hall, showing she held no weapons. “Shto nowora?”

  “Suka blyad!” 8I get into why ‘suka’ isn’t a nice word elsewhere, but in this context, this is the Russian equivalent of “What the fuck?”. the first thug said. “Come out, Simmons! Nice and slow!”“Where the fuck did you come from?” the second thug added. “You’re…you weren’t invited, Simmons.” 9“Dude, you missed the italics on the st word!” No, this is another little wrinkle I’m adding to the formatting. When using proper names, italics indicate the name is pronounced as it would be in the respective foreign nguage, while an unitalicized formatting indicates an American-type pronunciation. So the first one said something like “sea-monns”, while the other guy’s got a better handle on it.“I have to keep you on your toes, Rusn,” the woman — Simmons — said, stepping out into the open. “And I heard you boys were moving some hardware.”“You seem to know everything, Maid Marian,” the first thug said. “Are you here on assignment?”“Nothing like that, Bolesv,” Simmons said. “I am here on behalf of your buyer. He just wishes to be assured everything is in order before he arrives with your money. Is everything in order?”“…yeah,” Rusn said. “Yeah, we're good, I guess.”“And the shipment?” Simmons asked, lowering her arms. Nobody challenged her on that.“Nothing special,” Bolesv said. “Couple of AKs, as ordered.”“A couple?” Simmons said. “You ought to know how many you are trading to an outsider when you make your report to the council. Perhaps I can help you count them.”“So nice of you to want to help on your day off,” Bolesv said. “No need. There are three dozen.”“I see,” Simmons said, shooting a gnce at the crates on the truck’s bed. She registered four of those with their military markings. The most immediately relevant marking was ‘10 ЩT’. 10Soviet (and now Russian) military way of counting items; the NATO equivalent would be ‘10 EA’. The EA is derived from ‘each’, but I can’t tell you what the ЩT stands for. My personal guess is it is derived from the German ‘Stück’ for ‘piece’, as Russian contains quite a few German loanwords for technical/military terms, but it really is just specution. “Three dozen exactly?” she asked.“…maybe a few more, how can I say it, dealer samples?” 11What’s a dealer sample? Well, buckle up. First we have to ask, what’s a machine gun? To quote an ATF ruling on the AR-15 ‘auto-sear’: “The National Firearms Act, 26 U.S.C. 5845(b) defines ‘machine gun’ to include any combination of parts designed and intended for use in converting a weapon to shoot automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”So, that’s quite a broad category and includes not just machine guns in the military/technical sense, but also assault rifles, SMGs and machine pistols, as well as parts designed to convert a semi-automatic weapon of any description into being able to fire in bursts or full-auto. Anyway, the NFA highly regutes the manufacture and possession of machine guns by private citizens, chiefly through its machine gun registry. Before 1985, you could pay for a tax stamp to register a machine gun, just as you can today still pay to register a suppressor, a short-barreled rifle, a short-barreled shotgun, a destructive device or the banally-named Any Other Weapon category of novelty / disguised firearms. The 200 price tag on those stamps dates from the 1934 National Fireams Act, so you can imagine exactly how onerous that registering process was supposed to be. Even as of time of writing, 200 dolrs is a pretty significant amount of cash, but it’s no longer several times the price of the actual gun. Anyway, these registered machine guns are ‘transferrable’ between civilians with the right federal firearms license, unless barred by local w. The machine gun registry was closed in 1985, though, so registered machine guns today are all pre-1985 weapons and increasingly rare, with even such retively crude WW2-era weapons as a STEN submachine gun fetching low five figures in auctions. By way of comparison, civilian-legal versions of assault rifles that are far better weapons than a STEN save for the ck of full-auto capability range from sub-1000 for perfectly adequate AR-15 builds to a few thousand bucks for gucci modern rifles like the FN SCAR. So on top of their rarity, registered machine guns are often only borderline functional due to their age and also increasingly technologically outdated.Now, there’s a way for civilians to get more modern full-auto weapons: as so-called ‘dealer samples’, which are procured for the purpose of product testing by w enforcement agencies and can then, in theory, remain the property of entities that are both firearms dealers with a Federal Firearms License and have a so-called Special Occupational Taxpayer status. But this hardly even counts as a backdoor for people who want to collect these types of guns. The most basic requirements are that you need to prove, in writing, that you’re dealing with a w enforcement agency who wants to procure machine guns through you. You also need to continue to run an actual firearms dealership with all the headaches that includes. If you go out of business, the dealer sample machine guns need to be sold to another SOT or surrendered. The ws are strict and viotors get shut down hard. And all this? Actually still a severe oversimplification. Once state or local ws enter the equation, you’re really gonna have your head spinning.Put succinctly: if you actually manage to legally acquire a ‘dealer sample’ machine gun, government agencies are gonna be all up in your business for at least as long as you own the gun and even a hint of impropriety is gonna bury you in legal trouble. So, this is not exactly the domestic terrorist/criminal demographic. Accordingly, most full-auto weapons that might actually be used in a crime are illegal conversions of extremely dubious workmanship. Smuggling in foreign full-auto weapons as depicted here is strictly high-level organized crime and even then has only gotten much more difficult, especially post-9/11. Bolesv added, smiling at that. “Come on, Simmons. I could almost believe you’re doing the bck guy a favor, but I know you don’t take a shit without the old man pointing at the bowl he wants you to use. No need to worry either of them. Everything is fine.”“I find that hard to believe,” Simmons said. “I am not your only uninvited guest. This pce is crawling with garbage.”“Oh, uh, Berk?” Rusn said. “You mean him? Yeah, we dealt with him. Told him everything is fine, too, and sent him on his way.”“We should’ve whacked him for busting in,” Bolesv said. “It’s very dangerous to walk in on a deal you’re not invited to. Everyone knows that.”“Keep it in your pants, Bolek,” 12Diminutive of Bolesv. I’ll just let the Bolek and Lolek jokes make themselves. Rusn said, rolling his eyes. “So, he just left, in fact. Is that…is that all?”“I caught another one sneaking around the back,” Simmons said. “No need to worry about him as of yet, I got to him first. He is currently rethinking his career options.”“Well, thank you kindly for saving us,” Bolesv ughed. “Always so helpful. Where would we be without you, Simmons?”“Riker's,” 13Riker’s Isnd, New York City’s main jail. Incidentally, were Simmons to be arrested, she would probably be held outside of New York City, as Bayview was only medium-security, though she might have a pre-trial stint at the (then) fairly new Metropolitan Correction Center. After that, it’d probably be a trip upstate to Bedford Hills for her. she said. “Anyway, things appear to be in order and I should be calling the buyer. I recommend you conduct your business quickly and rethink how you organize your next deal. I will handle the other cop on the way out.”

  For a moment, Simmons considered actually making the call and leaving. That was what she had agreed to; just look at the deal and see if it’s a trap. Which, of course, it might very well have been, with Rusn being so nervous and the stranger trying to hide from her in the truck. Or maybe they were just in over their heads and thoroughly frazzled by things not going to their all too simple pn. Too many unknowns for a clear determination. Even if it was a trap, it wasn’t her duty to spring it. It wasn’t too te to just walk away. She’d never been too good at just walking away, though. And despite how she didn’t want to — she knew. The devil had taught her to read the lies off their faces, the menace off their hands. She knew how it had to go and how she would get there.

  “Actually, about those AKs,” she said. “What condition are they in, anyway?”“Just some Afghanistan surplus,” 14The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as memorably depicted in such luminaries of historical accuracy as Rambo III, followed a period of political upheaval in Afghanistan arguably from 1973’s coup d’etat which ended the Afghan monarchy. It is often consider the Soviet Union’s equivalent of the Vietnam War, buttressing a friendly but unpopur regime, then bogging down in widespread guerril resistance all the firepower in the world couldn’t overcome. The whole process is far too complex for me to summarize (especially in a footnote), so I’m just going to say I think Afghanistan’s nickname as ‘Graveyard of Empires’ is a pretty messed-up way to think about a country with its own history and culture, as if the only thing that matters about it is how often it was invaded.Further reading for those who are interested: Sorayi Tarzi, Ahmad Shah Massoud, Rory Stewart’s The Pces In Between. Bolesv said. “74 models. Fshy, but nothing that would interest you.” 15If you’re not into guns, it might surprise you to hear that the infamous AK-47 is actually a very rare firearm. Technically, only the initial stamped receiver trials and pre-production rifles (about 1500) were the real AK-47. When the rifle was accepted into service and production started in earnest, it was simply called the AK (Automat Kashnikov). When problems developed with the durability of those, production switched to more expensive milled receivers. These weapons are known as AK Type 2. Simplifying those yielded the Type 3, still with a milled receiver. Collectively, the milled receiver versions are also known as the AK-49. The definitive stamped receiver version (after working out the bugs) was introduced in 1959 as the AKM (AK, modified). This was also the point at which the AK actually became the primary infantry weapon of the Soviet military; previous versions had been used more like submachine guns by specialized troops to supplement the semi-automatic SKS carbine. Beyond those ‘true’ AKs, you’ll see licensed and unlicensed copies as well as local variants in the wild, most of them being based on the AKM. The first batch of China’s extremely widespread Type 56 rifles were AK-49 clones, then they switched to AKM clones after its introduction. There are also guns developed from the AK that are not straight clones, like China’s Type 81 or Finnd’s RK 62. Not to mention stuff that looks a lot like an AK but isn’t, like the Czech vz. 58. Then there’s the AK-74 mentioned here, which introduced a faster, smaller cartridge to more directly compete with NATO’s move to 5.56mm for their assault rifles. And the RPK-74, a squad automatic weapon derived from it. Plus so much more. We’re not even getting into weapons that look different but use all or part of the AK’s operating mechanism — that list starts with the Israeli Galil rifles and just keeps on going from there.“Suppose I wanted to get one for myself,” Simmons said. “Would you sell me one?”“Like Rusn said, this deal is by invitation only,” Bolesv said. “And inviting yourself doesn’t count.” Rusn chuckled to himself.“Now,” Simmons cautioned, “I didn't want to py this card, but I just did you boys a big favor. You are sure you can't sell me one lousy piece? Not even one of your…dealer samples?”“Very sure,” Bolesv said.“Yeah, Ilya was, uh, he was very specific, no side deals,” Rusn added.Simmons felt her body tense while her smile stayed on. “Ilya should be the st to compin about side deals,” she said. “I will make it worth your while.” She pulled the left side of her coat open, leading to Bolesv raising his gun. It was a needless risk, but the devil assured her he wouldn’t shoot her. Not yet, not while he was thinking about how to sell it ter. “Easy, just getting my money,” Simmons said, slipping the Ruger into her left hand and behind her back while she did a little show with her shiny money clip in her right hand to keep their attention on it.“No deal,” Bolesv said, lowering his weapon again. “Put it back.”“Do you feel the same way, Rusn?” Simmons asked him. “I just want the same deal you had with Glenmore.”“…who the fuck is Glen…more?” Bolesv said.“Hey, hey, it’s not like that, Simmons,” Rusn said, walking between them and raising his hands toward each of them in the universal gesture of hold-your-horses. “We're cool, right? Maybe next time.”“The hell is she talking about?” Bolesv said. “What the fuck, Rusya?” 16You guessed it, the diminutive of Rusn.“Not now, Bolek!” Rusn barked at him.

  Simmons's eyes flicked to the truck's rear-view mirror. A nice, big mirror, letting her get a good look at the driver, his fresh face — and the submachine gun he had retrieved from below the seat.

  “And by the way,” Simmons added, “it was rude not to introduce your new friend to me.”“Look, you, you gotta go, now!” Rusn barked at her. “Everything’s fine, Reid is getting what’s his, it’s not your fucking problem, Simmons!” He looked at Bolesv. “I will expin everything ter!” Simmons’s smile disappeared when she saw Bolesv’s hand creep toward his holster. He must have thought she couldn’t see with Rusn between them, but his shoulders gave him away.“There will not be a ter,” she said.

  The st thing Rusn did was look at her. Now, the devil shouted.

  She dropped the money clip, snapped up the Ruger and drilled two shots into Rusn — one went through his liver and into Bolesv 17Basic firearms safety: check your background. You always have to be certain of your target and what’s behind it. Internal ballistics — i.e., what bullets do once they enter targets — are still less understood than external ballistics, and considering all the factors that go into it, it can be very difficult to predict how far a bullet will penetrate into a body or even what path it will take. That said, ricochets and other freak deflections aside, your assumption should be that it’s coming out on the other side at a potentially still lethal velocity. And on that other side had better not be anything that shouldn’t be hit by said bullet., the other bounced off his shoulderbde straight into his lung. Rusn facepnted onto the concrete floor, while Bolesv stayed on his feet, bent over in shock at his own gut wound. He looked up just as Simmons fired a third time. That bullet smashed through his nose and out the side of his jaw. He fell to his knees and screeched, trying to decide whether to futilely hold his guts or futilely hold his face. Simmons's look swept to the truck, where the driver threw the door open, leaned out, leveled the gun at her — a MAC or an Uzi 18There are quite a few other period-accurate submachine guns with a simir look that could be listed in the same breath, but a) they’d be unlikely to turn up in the hands of criminals in this situation and b) I am trying to keep the worst of the gunbunny stuff in these footnotes so I can give you the skinny without turning every scene into a lecture. So here’s a short list: Milkor BXP (introduced the year before in 1988), the Jatimatic (though it has a seperate pistol grip, but if you squint…), Minebea PM-9 (which never made it out of Japan and wasn’t actually produced until 1990), the CZ Model 25 (which arguably started the trend the Uzi and the MAC SMGs were following), the Polish PM-63 and PM-84 (the tter in particur), the Socimi Type 821 (another obscure one, from Italy), the Star Model Z84, the Steyr MPi 69 and the Taiwanese Type 77. Note that this is explicitly limited to guns at least theoretically avaible in the story’s era; since then, there have been plenty of other, simir weapons making their way onto market. Which proves again that imitation is the sincerest form of fttery (and also that telescoping bolts were a pretty good idea for compact submachine gun designs)., hard to tell in a split second — and…he hesitated. 19This may be giving away the mission statement, but there are very people who go from 0 to KILL in a heartbeat. Simmons can do it, her opponent clearly can't. Simmons got the revolver pointed where she wanted and shot him two times, two solid hits center-mass. 20Most firearms training emphasizes aiming for center-mass, i.e. the target’s torso. It’s big, it’s full of vital organs and if your shot deviates a bit from the center, that’s not gonna be too big a problem. By contrast, aiming for limbs is heavily discouraged. If you’re discharging a gun in anger, you’re not doing trick shots, you’re trying to stop an active threat as safely and expediently as possible. You’re not going to shoot someone’s gun out of their hand and no, shooting someone in the leg isn’t a safe less-lethal option, either — even if you don’t damage a major artery, you’re liable to do gross structural damage that will afflict the target for the rest of their life. Headshots are a special case. Very hard to pull off, naturally, and there are a surprising amount of actual hits to the head that ended up not killing the target after all.Two training exceptions do apply here:One, some police sniper units train to hit the ‘apricot’ aka the Medul oblongata, a part of the brain which controls involuntary movement. The reasoning here is that even an otherwise lethally-wounded person might still be able to move and thereby be a threat to others, whether by using a weapon or triggering an explosive or other such ‘finger on the trigger’ scenarios. Snipers don’t usually get a quick follow-up shot, either, so the first hit positively needs to take away the target’s ability to move. That said, it’s not called the ‘apricot’ for nothing — it is just the size of that fruit, so the shot requires utmost precision. This just isn’t going to happen with a handgun in a firefight on foot, but requires a sniper rifle properly braced, dialed in and aimed at a mostly stationary target.Two, the ‘Mozambique’ / ‘armor defeat’ drill is a close-quarters technique that involves a quick double-tap center-mass, followed by a reassessment and then, if needed, a carefully-aimed headshot. The idea is that the first two shots will either kill the target or — if they’re wearing body armor — stun them long enough that you can then aim the follow-up shot more carefully and shoot where they’re unprotected. The famous alley scene in Colteral is a good example. He went limp and fell out of the cab onto the floor, smashing his skull and right shoulder on the concrete, while his feet still hung from the cab for a spell before gravity finished the job. At that point, he was not strictly dead yet, but comfortably outside the reach of the medical arts.

  Breathe, the devil whispered. Mary-Anne Simmons, you’re alive. Prove it.

  Her ears were ringing from the shots, but she kept her eyes sweeping the scene in front of her for more threats. That's when she realized Bolesv was still on his knees, still trying to scream. No longer a threat, but…untidy. So she took aim at him and pulled the trigger again. No bang. 21And there’s that empty sixth chamber. It’s a contrivance that she immediately realizes what happened and stops trying to pull the trigger, because the immediate action drill for a double-action revolver is to try pulling the trigger again for another go with the next cartridge. Until video game HUDs make their way into real life, there’s no good way to tell at a gnce whether that DA revolver you’re holding is out of ammo. Sure, you could count bullets as you fire, but are you certain you can keep track of it in the heat of a firefight? Harry Calhan famously wasn’t so sure. Simmons gritted her teeth. Bolesv looked up at her, seconds from passing out, but her mouthing “Prastee, pozhaluysta” was all the time she had for him.

  She walked over to the dead truck driver, drawing her own pistol with her right hand in case any of the three gunrunners made another move against her, but that was it from them. Three men went in, three pieces of bloody meat came out, and all that was left was a big mess which had Simmons's instincts yelling at her about containment and forensics. She gnced back at Bolesv. He had toppled over and y on the ground still breathing. One bullet from her .45 would have settled the matter. Would have been decent. Disastrous, but decent. Just how disastrous, well, that depended on what was in those crates. It almost made her hope she'd just killed three men over nothing as she moved back behind the truck. Stacked up there and shielded from anyone coming through the front, she went through post-firefight housekeeping: pocket the spent gun for the moment, control breathing, pat down everywhere in reach with her left hand to feel for fresh wounds. 22You would think it’s obvious when you’ve been shot. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug, though, and the wounds you don’t notice bleed just as much as the ones you do.

  “Fuck!” came the shout behind her, making her flinch — but she didn’t leave it at flinching. Once she moved, she had to move all the way. Simmons pivoted on her heel and instinctively drew the revolver again, bringing both guns to bear. She hadn't heard anyone sneak up on her — big surprise, she wasn't hearing much of anything — and she hadn't paid attention to covering her back, hadn't locked the way behind her. Before she even saw anything, she knew she had screwed up. The sight picture resolved to the rookie cop, hurriedly raising his hands when she aimed at him. Did he know the revolver in her off-hand was theater at this point? He didn’t look it: his face frozen in fear, no hidden backup piece in his hands, had the drop on her and didn't do anything —

  “Jesus Christ!” he shouted, dearly wanting to flinch but just quivering in pce.Simmons steadied the weapons in her hands. The rush of blood to her head brought out the brown in her taupe skin. “Detective Collins,” she said, “I would like you to be quiet now.”“Did you kill them?” Sean asked. “You killed them, didn't you?” It sounded to her like a distant conversation in the recording studio on an uncut session tape, but it wasn't particurly hard to tell the words from the way his lips fpped.“Yes,” Simmons said like she wanted fries with her burger. She shifted her left forearm underneath her right wrist to steady her aim with the pistol. 23A technique often used when handling a fshlight in your off-hand. Not as good as both hands on the gun and highly dubious when done with another gun in your off-hand that’s now pointing God knows where, but still better than the John Woo-style ‘guns akimbo’ in terms of a stable firing stance. Oh, also, when you do use this with a fshlight, don’t keep the fshlight on the whole time. You’re giving away your position to anyone else in the dark with you. That done, she flexed her wrist, pointing the weapon down for a moment before reacquiring her target. “And now I wonder whether I was in any way unclear in my warning to you.”“Woah!” Sean said, but he got the hint; he lowered himself onto his knees and bowed his head. “Let's talk about this, okay?”

  Her reply was choked off by another shout, this one from the direction of the warehouse front.

  “Simmons?” the voice went. “Simmons, is that you? It's Berkovitz. Don't shoot, I'm coming in now.”“Go ahead, Detective,” she said, pressing her back against the truck. Berkovitz wouldn’t just shoot her in cold blood, given the chance, but why give him the chance? “I silenced all three of them. Did you call it in yet?”“Not yet,” Berkovitz said. “It’s all quiet outside, too. We can talk about this, yeah?”“Good,” Simmons said, keeping her sights locked on Sean. The shock to her ears was getting a little better, which meant it was starting to ring less and hurt more. “Yes. I suppose we can talk. About what you and your partner are doing here, to begin with.”“Hey, look, the kid’s alright, he didn’t mean nothing by it,” Berkovitz said, slowly stepping into the warehouse proper. “How about I just take him with me and you clean up here? It'll be like we were never here, you were never here, the goon squad was never here. Just a whole lot of nothing happened. Yeah?”“What the fuck,” Sean said.“I don’t believe this is a viable option in light of what transpired here,” Simmons said. She paused for a moment as her expression grew sterner. “Detective Collins spoke of a drug deal. Is this what brings you here as well?”“Yeah, but we're just following up some leads on another case, we’re not here to bust anybody’s chops,” Berkovitz said. “Hey, like I said, it’s all quiet, just us three, so, uh, could you lose the hardware? My BP’s high enough without your help.”“I suppose I could,” Simmons said. She rexed out of her firing stance and slowly walked into the open. As she went, she put the Ruger onto the ground and her own pistol back in its holster, picked up her money clip from the ground and turned to face Berkovitz, who had gotten to within about fifteen feet and now made a show of keeping his hands in view.“…your gun,” Berkovitz said, looking to Sean. “Kid, why does she have your gun?”“She stole it from me,” Sean said. “After she threatened to kill me. And she killed those…those Russians with it.”Berkovitz looked at her. “Oh,” he said. “You’re not…this isn’t…oh.” He paused. “Oh, no.”“Joe — “ Sean tried.“Tell me there’s a sanction, Simmons,” Berkovitz continued, still looking right at her. “And tell me there’s a damn good reason you needed cop bullets in these guys.”

  She said nothing.

  “…shit,” Berkovitz added. He turned away from her, stepping in pce first one way and then another, as if he half-remembered a dance that could turn back the clock.“You see,” she said, “why making all this disappear is not an option. They will be missed. The question is who should be known as the executioner.”“What the fuck are you still standing around for?” Sean said, louder. “Arrest her!”“No,” Berkovitz said. “Nobody’s doing nothing until we know what’s going on here. Got that?”“She murdered —“ Sean tried.“Zip it!” Berkovitz barked at him. “Do you get it, yes or no?”“…fuck,” Sean muttered. “Yes. Yes, I get it.”“Okay,” Berkovitz said. “Now, we stop shouting and we start talking, okay?”“We could start with some answers from you, Detective,” Simmons said. “Suppose I believe you don’t have a case, but a deal.”“Not with these guys,” Berkovitz said. “Look, it’s like I said. Nothing fancy. I got a call from my CI this morning, said some Russians would be rolling through here with drugs. Not my clowns, not my circus, all I wanted was a minute of Mr. Dolzhikov’s time.”“You may have gained that and more,” Simmons said.

  She spared a look at the bodies and shook her head at the sight. Rusn, she’d killed right off the bat. Not her best work, but quick, at least. Poor Bolesv, though. Bolesv was on his belly. He had tried to crawl toward whatever he thought could save him, but now he was lying there, absolutely still, in a puddle of his own blood and guts. Maybe he wasn’t quite dead even now, but he sure wouldn’t open his eyes ever again.

  “It shouldn’t have come to this,” she finished.“It did, though,” Berkovitz said. “The sooner we all put cards on the table, the sooner we can work on a solution.”“You understand that I must weigh my words with care, Detective,” Simmons said. She looked briefly to Berkovitz, but turned away and walked to the truck. It felt like she had been circling it for long enough now, avoiding the moves that would confirm her suspicions, and it was about time to get serious with it. “Your CI interests me,” she said. “I would like to hear their name.” She looked over the truck driver again, trying to pce his face but coming up empty.“Sure, as soon as I hear who sent you,” Berkovitz said. “How about we don’t drag anyone else into this right now, huh?”Simmons made no attempt to answer the question. “Do you see a crowbar anywhere?” she asked. “I suspect we all want to look at the shipment.”“I bet,” Sean said. He was still on his knees, hadn’t moved at all from where she had stopped him, but at least he dared to look up again. Berkovitz looked at him but said nothing.“…I will handle it myself,” Simmons said.

  The nearest crate before her was nailed shut, but not exactly airtight at that. She reached under her coat to retrieve a pair of vinyl gloves, which she pulled over the leather gloves she was already wearing. The next reach behind her back produced a knife, whose matte bck 3 inch bde she slid between the crate's body and its lid. It took about half a minute of applied force before the lid came up enough for her to pry it the rest of the way open. Between her breaths and the groaning wood, she tried to listen to what Berkovitz and the younger cop might be saying, but they didn’t seem to be in the mood for a chat. Sheathing her knife again, she reached into the crate and grabbed two rifles from within, ying them out on the ground next to her. And two more, giving her access to the items stashed beneath the guns.

  “Ten rifles in this one,” she said and hefted a pstic bag filled with white powder in her left hand. She said nothing, just held it up for the two cops to see.“…cocaine?” Berkovitz guessed.“I assume so,” Simmons said. “There are packages like this id out along the entire floor of the crate,” she continued. “Would you care to see for yourself, Detective?”“No, we are staying right here,” Berkovitz said. “We’re not touching nothing.”“So what did they say?” Sean piped up.“Huh?” Berkovitz said.“What did they say?” Sean snarled. He didn’t wait very long for an answer. “What did we actually get from your fucking hot tip, partner?” he said. “You left me behind so you could be all alone with your pals, so I have to assume you talked to them.”“Nothing,” Berkovitz said. “Hello, hello, shit weather we’re having, better than Siberia, you boys stay out of trouble now. You know. Nothing.”“Nothing,” Sean repeated. “That’s not a fucking lot!”“It wasn’t supposed to be!” Berkovitz shot back.“What do you make of the cocaine?” Simmons cut in.“Your guess is as good as mine,” Berkovitz said.“…I was only told about guns,” Simmons said.“Who told you?” Sean said. “Who told you about guns and didn’t tell you about the drugs? Who sent you? Why the fuck did you drop these guys?”“I am not accountable to you, Detective,” Simmons said.“Look,” Berkovitz said. “Let’s all think about this for a second. Somebody’s pying someone here, yeah?”“…yeah,” Sean said.“It appears that way,” Simmons said.“Now I know I’m not lying and I trust my partner over here and I don’t think you’re lying, either,” Berkovitz continued.“Hard to lie when she’s telling us nothing,” Sean said.“You come here pnning to kill them, Simmons?” Berkovitz asked.“…no,” Simmons said. “This outcome is…not to my advantage.”“I believe that much,” Berkovitz said. “And we’re all in the same mess now. This is bad enough even if we’re all on the level. No need to be jumping at shadows right now. Let’s all be calm, let’s all stay calm, okay?”Simmons looked around once more, her gaze lingering on the bodies. “They should not have lied to me,” Simmons said.“And you shouldn't have shot them,” Sean quipped.

  Berkovitz's eyes went wide, while Simmons just stared down at Sean.

  “You may rise now, Detective,” she said. There were tears in the corners of her eyes. She grabbed a tissue from one of her coat pockets and dabbed the corners of her eyes dry.“…are you crying?” Sean asked.“No, my eyes are sweating,” Simmons said.“Okay, enough of this bullshit,” Sean said, rising to his feet. “I’ve been waiting for you to realize just how much you need our help, but apparently I have to walk you through it. So, you're talking to cops — plural. Two cops, one more than you by your lonesome! I don't know what understanding you have with my partner and as of right now I don’t give a flying fuck. Where I come from, you'd be over the hood of a cop car getting mirandized right now!” He walked over to his gun and retrieved it from the floor, keeping an eye on her just in case she'd try to stop him, but she didn't move a muscle. “There is zero fucking excuse for what you did. We've got you dead to rights, three counts of at least Murder Two, even if I forget you threatened us both with a deadly weapon. I testify, that's life without parole. 241989 falls within a time period where there was no death penalty on the books in New York. Otherwise, Sean could have threatened her with that. So stow the attitude and work with us.”“You're the one who needs to stow the attitude, kid,” Berkovitz said. “Just…take a breath and listen up. I’m working this, okay? This is my scene. This is not the time for you to try being a big boy. You don't have to like what happened here, you don't even have to understand it. I don’t understand it. I just know we’re stuck with it. And I hate to say it, but this little scene will py better without her.”“Uh huh,” Sean said, opening the revolver to check the cylinder — one empty chamber, five spent cases. He wondered if he could eject them, load a moon clip 25A piece of metal holding cartridges together for quickly reloading a revolver. They come in half-moon and full-moon sizes, half-moon meaning half a cylinder load while full-moon then obviously reloads the whole cylinder. A moon clip will sit over the back of the cylinder, which can sometimes cause problems during operation — you need a revolver with sufficient spacing between frame and cylinder, plus the clip has to not interfere with the ratcheting mechanism that advances and indexes the cylinder. By contrast, a speed-loader is a spring-powered device that’s only intended to get the cartridges into the cylinder, at which point the cartridges are released from the speed-loader. Note that Sean using a moon clip is against NYPD regutions of the time. By the book, he should be using a belt-mounted ‘dump box’ with loose cartridges, which is pretty much the slowest possible way to reload a revolver. Then again, this was also the era where many officers outright defied regutions by carrying unauthorized semi-automatic pistols like the Browning Hi-Power in addition to their nominal service revolver. We’ll get into why that’s a bad idea ter, too.Oh, also, a clip is what you use to load a magazine. Knowing this distinction is the one weird trick to reducing the length of gunbunny lectures you have to endure by half. Weapons with detachable magazines are (usually) reloaded more quickly by switching to a different loaded magazine and often it’s not even possible to charge the magazine with clips while it’s inserted into the weapon. On the other hand, weapons with fixed/internal magazines do require that you actually load the magazine within the weapon, which is either quicker with a clip or outright requires one. Now we could get deeper into the various types of fixed/detachable magazines and clips, but at that level of detail you’re probably well past any gatekeepers and should stop basing your knowledge of firearms on reading my footnotes. and get off a shot quickly enough to matter — if, indeed, just shooting the killer would solve all this. Just for a second, but he did wonder. “Walk me through it. We subtract her from this triple homicide. What does that mean?”“It was just us,” Berkovitz said. “Followed a tip, heard shouting inside, came in to check and ran into these guys. They held me up with their guns, you pyed a hunch and came in through the back —”“Except those two didn't get their guns out,” Sean threw in, nodding toward Rusn and Bolesv.“They were about to,” Simmons said. “I saw them reach.”“That won’t be good enough,” Berkovitz said.“It will be when I am done,” Simmons said and moved toward the bodies. The double yer of gloves over her hands seemed just ridiculously unfair to the CSU 26The NYPD’s Crime Scene Unit. Not CSI. guys who would have to dig through this.“The fuck?” Sean snarled. “Are you out of your fucking mind? You’re letting her tamper with a fucking crime scene!”“They went for their guns first,” Berkovitz insisted, stepping beside Sean to mime out the action of his unfolding story. “That’s the ticket. That works. So, I’m here facing the guns, you come in through the back, get the jump on them. All the right moves, NYPD, drop it! But they don’t know when to quit. They swing in your direction, you take them down. Bang bang bang, you're the hero of the day.”“It will never hold up,” Sean said. “CSU will tear it apart. She came in from the snow and mud outside, which gives us bootprints you can't account for — and we can't clean those without getting mine and raising more questions, not in a hurry.”“It's not great,” Berkovitz admitted. “We work with what we have. The boots could be anyone’s at any time. It’s a warehouse, people come and go. That’s fungible. But your gun, your bullets, your prints. That’s set.”“I expect GSR 27Gun Shot Residue. Some unburned powder (potentially mixed with oils or other lubricants on the gun) is deposited on the shooter’s hand when most kinds of gun are fired. It’s also deposited on the gun’s exterior, so it is possible to get some on your hand if you pick up a gun that was fired and has not been cleaned since., too,” Simmons threw in, reaching underneath Rusn's jacket to undo the snap on his holster. “You shouldn't touch discharged firearms without gloves. As for the rest of the staging, entrust it to me.”

  She had already pced Bolesv's gun in his hand, more than enough to establish hostile intent — the open snap one just told the story that Rusn had reached but not finished drawing. It was the note that kept the incident from being too 100%, a detail for the crime scene investigators to stumble over and figure out and put in their report.

  “Why are you fucking us like this, Joe?” Sean whispered. After a moment's reflection, he closed the cylinder of his revolver and holstered it. “All we gotta do is bring her in. Draw on her, while she’s distracted.”“She ain’t distracted,” Berkovitz whispered back. “She’s doing the math on us, right now. Do you see the bodies? Three guys up, three guys down and it was nothing for her. Now she’s a heartbeat away from dropping us next to them and burning the whole pce down rather than deal with any more complications. The only good thing about that is we won’t be here for the shitstorm after. We’re bargaining for our lives with a torpedo28Hooray, we've finally made it to the title drop. Roll the intro. here, okay? All we got is making her think sparing us will help her and that’s a tough sell even when you’re not shouting about arrests and jury trials.”Sean nodded.Berkovitz breathed. “Now, assuming we walk out of here,” he said. “I don't know what happened at the Eight-Nine — don't need to — and I don’t know the game here. But I know there are bodies. Those bodies aren’t going to just disappear without Dolzhikov knowing, defeating the purpose. So they’ll be here for our backup to find alongside the evidence that says you dropped them. The st thing you need is a bad shoot. 29When it comes to use of lethal force by w enforcement officers, there are those appropriate to the situation, or — at least — that would have appeared appropriate to the legal fiction of a ‘reasonable’ individual. Naturally, there’s some leeway here because police officers are people, too, and some allowance is made for decision-making under the stress of combat. Anyway, those are ‘good shoots’. If your use of force is ruled a ‘bad shoot’, though…you will not have a good time.And even if you do get your use of force ruled as a ‘good shoot’, you still employed lethal force against another living, breathing person. That’s not something you leave at your desk when you go home. The st thing Brooklyn needs is the Thieves eating each other over this, which they will if they learn Simmons is doing work they don’t know about. Once that starts it’ll be free for all with everybody taking a swing at changing the board. I sure as shit don’t need this whole mess and being right in the middle having to expin it all, but I’m gonna take that bullet, and I'll owe you, too.”“Fucking hell, Joe,” Sean muttered. “Hey, Simmons!” he said out loud, catching her attention. “Just so we’re clear, the deal is you get off scott-free and you leave us the fuck alone, yeah?”“There is no getting off scott-free in this matter,” she replied while she rifled through Rusn's pockets. “But in the main thrust you have the right of it. If your silence is assured, I will see you on your way safe and sound.”“Fine,” Sean said. “You know, really, fine. Whatever, put a gun to my head, I'll go with your story, I know how to roll with a raw deal. But Joe, I swear to God” — Simmons frowned at that — “if you try to fuck me, I will blow this thing wide open. And you — I know what you look like, Simmons.”“So you do,” she said. “I am sorry for implicating you.”“That’s nice,” Sean said. “But fuck you.”“He doesn’t mean it,” Berkovitz hastened to add.Simmons nodded. “I gathered,” she said.Sean’s next line was cut off by Berkovitz grabbing him by the shoulder. “You don’t like living, do you, kid?” he whispered.“I don’t like bullshit…and this won’t py,” Sean whispered back. “Joe, I’m telling you, this won’t hold up.”“Only way it will is if we both back it, okay?” Berkovitz replied and looked to the killer again. “How long is this gonna take, Simmons?” he asked. “The story only works if I call this in soon.”“Ten minutes should suffice for my purposes,” Simmons said, rising from Rusn's corpse with a folded letter in her hands that quickly disappeared into her coat. “I would appreciate you leaving me to myself, as I suppose you two have some things to discuss.”“No shit,” Sean said.“Come on, kid,” Berkovitz said, releasing his hand from Sean's shoulder only to cp it down again. “Let's give the dy some space.”

  They turned to leave, but Sean couldn't help looking over his shoulder when Berkovitz and he made their way to the front entrance. She wasn't doing much of anything, just crouching over Bolesv's body, looking down at him.

  “Vechnaya pamyat,” he heard her say.