The first thing that Frankie thought of was that maybe what Atchison was planning on doing was letting him do the wife and the business partner, and then he would shoot Frankie. That would be the smart thing for him to do. He would have his wife and partner out of the way, and if the shooter was dead, too, with the fucking gun in his hand, Atchison could tell the cops that when he heard the shots in the basement office he went to investigate and shot the dirty sonofabitch who had shot his wife and his best friend and business partner. And with Frankie dead, not only couldn’t he-not that he would, of course-tell the cops what had really happened, but Atchison wouldn’t have to come up with the twenty-five hundred Frankie was due when he did the wife and the business partner.

Frankie didn’t think Atchison would have the balls to do that, but the sonofabitch was certainly smart enough to figure out that he could do something like that. So he’d covered those angles, too. For one thing, the first thing he was going to do when he saw Atchison now was make sure that sonofabitch had the other twenty-five hundred ready, and the way he had asked for it, in used bills, nothing bigger than a twenty.

If he didn’t have the dough ready, then he would know the fucker was trying to screw him. He really hoped that wouldn’t happen, he wanted this whole thing to happen, and if Atchison didn’t have the dough ready, he didn’t know what he’d do about it, except maybe smack the sonofabitch alongside his head with the. 45.

But Atchison could have the dough ready, Frankie reasoned, and still be planning to do him after he had done the wife and the partner. He had figured out the way to deal with the whole thing: first, make sure that he had the dough, and second, when he came back to do the contract, either make sure that Atchison didn’t have a gun, or, which is what most likely would happen, make sure that he always had the drop on Atchison.

All he had to be was calm and professional.

Frankie steered his five-year-old Buick convertible into the left lane, turned left off Kennedy Boulevard onto South Nineteenth Street, crossed Market Street, and then made another left turn into the parking lot at South Nineteenth and Ludlow Street. During the day, you had to pay to park there, but not at this time of night. There were only half a dozen cars in the place. He got out of the car, walked back to Market Street, and turned right.

He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in a storefront window. He was pleased with what he saw. There was nothing about the way he was dressed (in a brown sports coat with an open-collared maroon sports shirt and light brown slacks) that made him look any different from anyone else walking up Market Street to have a couple of drinks and maybe try to get laid. No one would remember him because he was dressed flashy or anything like that.

He pushed open the door to the Inferno Lounge and walked in. There were a couple of people at the bar, and in the back of the place he saw Atchison glad-handing a tableful of people.

“Scotch, rocks,” Frankie said to the bartender as he slid onto a bar stool.

The bartender served the drink, and when Frankie didn’t decorate the mahogany with a bill, said, “Would you mind settling the bill now, sir? I go off at eleven.”

“You mean you’re closing at eleven?”

“The guy who works eleven ’til closing isn’t coming in tonight. The boss, that’s him in the back, will fill in for him,” the bartender said.

“Hell, you had me worried. The night’s just beginning,” Frankie said, and took a twenty-his last-from his wallet and laid it on the bar.

So far, so good. Atchison said tonight was the late-night bartender’s night off.

Frankie pushed a buck from his stack of change toward the bartender and then picked up his drink. There was a mirror behind the bar, but he couldn’t see Atchison in it, and he didn’t want to turn around and make it evident that he was looking for him.

Frankie wondered where whatsername, the wife- Alicia -was, and the partner.

I wonder if I should have fucked her. She’s not bad-looking.

Goddamn it, you know better than that. That would have really been dumb.

“What do you say, Frankie?” Gerry Atchison said, laying a hand on his shoulder. Frankie was a little startled; he hadn’t heard or sensed him coming up.

“Gerry, how are you?”

“I got something for you.”

“I hoped you would. How’s the wife, Gerry?”

Atchison gave him a funny look before replying, “Just fine, thanks. She’ll be here in a little while. She went somewhere with Tony.”

Tony is the partner, Anthony J. Marcuzzi. What did he do, send her off to fuck the partner?

“Tommy,” Gerry Atchison called to the bartender. “Stick around a couple of minutes, will you? I got a little business with Mr. Foley here.”

There was nothing Tommy could do but fake a smile and say sure.

Atchison started walking to the rear of the Inferno. Frankie followed him. They went down a narrow flight of stairs to the basement and then down a corridor to the office.

Atchison closed and bolted the office door behind them, then went to a battered wooden desk, and unlocked the right-side lower drawer. He took from it a small corrugated paper box and laid it on the desk.

He unwrapped dark red mechanic’s wiping towels, exposing three guns. One was a Colt. 38 Special caliber revolver with a five-inch barrel. The second was what Frankie thought of as a cowboy gun. In this case it was a Spanish copy of a Colt Peacemaker, six-shot, single-action. 44 Russian caliber revolver. The third was a Savage Model 1911. 32 ACP caliber semiautomatic.

“There they are,” he announced.

“Where’s the money?” Frankie asked.

“In the desk. Same drawer.”

“Let’s see it.”

“You don’t trust me?” Atchison asked with a smile, to make like it was a joke.

“Let’s see the money, Gerry,” Frankie said.

He picked up the Colt and opened the cylinder and dumped the cartridges in his hand. Then he closed the cylinder and dry-snapped the revolver. The cylinder revolved the way it was supposed to.

The noise of the dry snapping upset Gerry Atchison.

“What are you doing?”

“Making sure these things work.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I checked them out.”

Yeah, but you don’t know diddly-shit about guns. You just think you do.

The Colt was to be the primary weapon. He would do both the wife and the partner with the Colt. The cowboy gun was the backup, in case something went wrong. Better safe than sorry, like they say. The Savage was to wound Atchison in the leg. Frankie would have rather shot him with the. 38 Special Colt, but Atchison insisted on the smaller. 32 ACP Savage.

Atchison held out an envelope to Frankie.

“You get this on delivery, you understand?”

Frankie took the envelope and thumbed through the thick stack of bills.

“You leave it in the desk,” Frankie ordered, handing the envelope back to Atchison. “If it’s there when I come back, I do it.”

Frankie next checked the functioning of the. 44 Russian cowboy six-shooter, and finally the. 32 Savage automatic.

He put them back in the corrugated paper box and folded the mechanic’s rags back over them.

“I sort of wish you’d take those with you,” Atchison said. “What if somebody comes down here and maybe finds them?”

“You see that don’t happen. I’m not going to wander around Center City with three guns.”

Atchison looked like he was going to say something, but changed his mind.

“I’ll show you the door,” he said.

Frankie followed him out of the office and farther down the corridor to the rear of the building. There a shallow flight of stairs rose toward a steel double door.

With Frankie watching carefully, Atchison removed a chain-and-padlock from the steel doors, then opened the left double door far enough to insert the padlock so that there would be room for Frankie’s fingers when he opened the door from the outside.