“All I want is you. Now don’t make me-”

“My father will kill you for this. Do you know who my father is?”

“Yeah, I know who your father-”

A movement by one of the driver’s hands caught his eye. “Hey!” he said. “What did I tell you? Marcello, you-Ai!”

His first thought was that a bee had stung him on the wrist, but then he heard a clink, and when he looked down, his own. 357 magnum, which he’d thought was still in his right hand, was on the pavement, and his wrist was spouting blood, and he knew he’d been shot. Before he could tear his eyes from his shattered wrist, there was a second stinging jab-he heard the shot this time-in his abdomen, dead center, a little below the breastbone. More like a punch than a jab, and this one really hurt. That bastard driver, he’d had a second piece, some stupid little-old-lady gun, tucked down his back behind his neck. And now he’d ducked down and was rolling around on the front seat, getting off shots, twisting and coiling like a snake, almost too quick to see. Where the hell was Marcello?

Now, hardly aware of what he was doing, Ugo was shooting too, spraying bullets from the driver’s semiautomatic in his left hand- crakcrakcrakcrak -at the writhing, whirling body. “Bastard, you shot me!” Crakcrakcrak. The little pistol flew out of the driver’s hand. For a moment Ugo thought he was throwing it at him, but then the man arched, gave a shuddering sigh, and lay still on his back, one foot sticking out the door on Ugo’s side. There was blood all over his face and on his shirt. Next to his head, the leather seat was wet.

Ugo was shaking. He’d never been shot before. He’d never killed anyone before. He was losing a lot of blood, he saw now, rhythmic gouts from the wrist, a thick, pumping flow from his abdomen. He pressed his right hand against the hole below his breastbone and stuck his wounded left hand under his right arm, but he could still feel the blood pushing out. He struggled to make himself move, to make himself think, but he’d grown confused. He felt frozen, petrified, as if time were flowing by somewhere outside him, too blindingly fast for him to step back into it. He’d lost track of the semiautomatic. He began to worry that he wouldn’t be able to make it back to the car.