Sherlock said, “She’s got Sean to play with, well, along with Lucy Carlyle and his grandmother. It could still happen, Davis. Stay alert.”
It helped, Davis thought, that it was cold and snowing, so Sherlock was all bundled up. Even though she didn’t look a thing like Delsey, what with that hood pulled over her head, no one could tell if she was Delsey or Godzilla.
“Delsey kept saying she’s the Trouble Magnet, so if we wanted trouble, she should be with us.” He gave his head a shake and said, as if the words were being pulled out of his throat with pliers. “The girl’s kinda cute, though.”
“That’s what she said about you, Davis, or something close to that.”
Davis called out, “Hey, Marvin, is that Ariel playing?”
Agent Dane Carver shouted from behind them, off to their left, “Under the black Toyota!” Both Sherlock and Davis dove to the ground and rolled, pointed their guns toward a row of parked cars on the street, Marvin right beside them, trying to pull Sherlock under him with one big hand, and aim his gun in the other. Even though Marvin was a civilian, it didn’t occur to her to tell him to get away, not Marvin. There was a single shot, then a long burst of gunfire from all of them, and a yell. There was silence for a bare second before Savich called out, “You shot him, Dane. Sherlock, you and Davis okay? Marvin?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Regular snow angels. Marvin? He’s a lovely, very big snow angel. Hey, Marvin, get off me, I can’t breathe.”
There were two more shots from the night, unexpected, and then Coop shouted, “Another one down, over here.” They waited, then searched the street. There was no one else.
Savich looked down at the two tattooed young men in turn, both painfully young, both moaning and clutching their wounds. One of them was close to the sketch of the man Griffin and Delsey saw in the alley in Maestro, the same man who’d tried to use the extension ladder to break into his house last night, if he had to guess.
Savich prayed they’d survive and one of them would talk. He heard sirens approaching as he leaned down and searched one of the young men’s pockets. No wallet, no ID, nothing, and so he couldn’t believe it when his fingers closed over a cell phone. He pulled out a small flashlight and looked at it, Sherlock, Davis, Marvin leaning over his shoulder. It was a throwaway, but it was a start.
Marvin was pumped. He slipped his gun back into his pocket and announced, “That all happened in a drunk second, didn’t it? It’s really fine to see these morons whupped right outside my club. Stupid is as stupid does, right, Sherlock? Sorry I nearly squashed you.”
She grinned up at him. “Hey, thanks for protecting me.”
Marvin patted her cheek and walked back into the club to deal with all the excited voices he heard coming from inside. He closed the door behind him. He was bombarded with questions, but simply raised his hands and said, calm as a judge, “It’s all over, folks. The FBI are outside, and they’ve asked everybody to stay inside here for a minute. Everyone can have a beer on the house while we’re waiting.”
There was a cheer, and he quickly nodded to Ariel. She looked a bit on the pale side, true, but she was game, he thought, proud of the tiny Croatian woman who hardly spoke a word of English but played like an angel. She put her flute to her mouth, and her achingly beautiful melody was instant balm. The buzz still circling the room quieted, and the patrons slowly returned to their seats and their free beers—not the imported beer, though, the cheap beer on tap. Ms. Lilly’s people knew her well enough for that. They didn’t want to get punched in the nose.
Sherlock heard Ariel begin her flute solo again outside the club. As usual, Marvin impressed her. He was ready for anything they could dish up. Sherlock wondered where Ms. Lilly was. Surely she’d heard the gunfire. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Speak of the devil, here comes Ms. Lilly.”
“A force of nature, that woman,” Davis said as they watched the owner of the Bonhomie Club come steaming out, a man’s coat pulled over her white satin dress and her five-inch stiletto heels, her magnificent bosom leading the way. She wasn’t happy.
She threw back her head and yelled over the sirens, “Dillon! Where are you, boy? You brain-dead or something, bringing trouble here, to my club? And now our local law enforcement is going to come here and try to roust me? Thank you so much! Come over here, I’m gonna kick your fine butt!”
Sherlock heard Dillon laugh, then shout, “I’ll be there in a second, Ms. Lilly; we got us two perps here who wanted to hurt Sherlock. We got it taken care of. Everything’s over. We had agents all over the place, and nothing happened inside.”