Page 67 of Dressed to Kill
Click.
Arlo screamed after, the way you do when your body's already decided it's dead and your ears have to argue it back.
I wrinkled my nose. “Christ man. Ye piss yerself on the first one?”
Niko stepped back from the spreading puddle beneath Arlo.
"One down," Aleksi said. "Five to go. Try again."
"I cut leather, I take orders, I swear to God I don't—"
"He's lying," I said. "That recess in the oxblood never came off an order form. I’ve seen it before."
Arlo looked at me properly then. “You. You’re the Scotsman. They said you were dead.”
"Fin’s a little harder to kill than he looks," Aleksi told him, near enough fond. He thumbed the hammer back. "Who brings them?"
"Renzo." The name came out of him with the snot and everything else. "Renzo, I don't have a last name. He collects the pieces when they're finished, that's all, that's all I do—"
"When?"
"Thursdays. He came this Thursday; he's coming back—there's a big one going out, a case, he said somebody's flying in for it himself—"
Aleksi went still. So did I, for my own reasons, because Thursday was two days gone and coming round again, andsomebody flying in to collectwas the nearest any of this had got to the man at the top of it.
He lowered the gun, looked at me instead of Arlo, and the corner of his mouth tipped up.
"There," he said. "Was that so hard?"
He stood, knees cracking, and held the gun back over his shoulder without looking. "Here."
Niko took it. And in the same half second, Arlo came off the chair one last time, his good arm diving for the drawer he'd been so keen on earlier. The gun went off once.
The shot echoed through the room so loudly I flinched back and covered my ears. I must’ve winced too because when I opened my eyes, Arlo’s head was a big red smear against the back wall.
Nobody said anything for a second.
Then Aleksi looked down at himself. The front of him was wearing a fair bit of Arlo now on his shirt, his jaw, and the whole front of him was ruined. He pinched the end of his tie between his fingers and stared at it. “What the actualfuck, Niko?”
Niko lowered the gun. "He was going for a gun."
"This was my favorite tie!"
"I’ll buy you a new—"
"They don'tmakethis tie anymore." He took a step. Niko took one back, both hands up, the gun held off to the side like a man who'd finally clocked it was the problem. "I will backhand you into next week, I swear to God—"
"He was going for a gun! Fin, tell him—"
"Leave me out of it," I said. "Ye shot the man. Ye can answer for the tie an' all."
And there it was, the thing I'd not have believed if you'd told me a year past I'd find it fetching — the most dangerous bastard in three states, gone red in the face over haberdashery, chasing his brother round a dead man like the pair of them were ten years old. I watched Aleksi Laskin get one good cuff in across the back of Niko's head, and I thought, God help me,that's mine.That whole ridiculous murdering man is mine.
Aleksi got out his phone and made a quick call in Russian before turning back to his brother. "Niko." He didn't look round. "You did it. You wrap it."
For a second, I thought Niko might argue, but he sighed, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work. He complained the whole time, but he did the work, wrapping what was left of Arlo up in a tarp they found out back.
Niko was elbow deep in the sudsy water, scrubbing the floor when the cleaner arrived. He was a fresh-faced kid of twenty at most, come in from the rain in a coat a size too big and a scuffed up duffel. The lad took one look at Aleksi and got stars in his eyes.
