the gunman. Shelley had moved to the left between Josh and the countertop. Two young girls, maybe 8 and 10, stood in front of her.
All eyes were now on me.
Not good at all.
I looked at the man holding Josh. He was in his forties, with an olive complexion. He had a wide nose and high cheekbones.
“Mazhar is dead, ” I said. I didn’t know if he was. “This is his gun.”
I noticed Josh’s torso. He was thinner than the gunman, but I still didn’t like the shot. The man needed to take his weapon off of Josh’s head. I couldn’t risk shooting the guy and having him inadvertently pull the trigger.
Josh’s eyes darted from me to Shelley and then back to me. I relaxed, keeping my gun on the intruder, but allowing my focus to stay wide. I could see Shelley and her young girls to the left, Josh and the gunman in the center, and dishes and glasses on a small counterspace near the fridge on my right.
I really didn’t have a shot, but I smiled. “You’re fatter than the rabbi,” I said to the man holding the .45. “I’m going to shoot you in the side and then I’m going to shoot you in the head.”
I spoke to the two young girls in front of Shelley, but kept my eyes on my target. “Girls,” I said, “Close your eyes and keep them closed until your mom tells you to open them, okay?”
The two girls looked at Shelley who nodded. They closed their eyes.
I lowered my gun slightly and pointed it at the gunman’s side. The man behind Josh moved his head out and began to aim at me.
I raised Mazhar’s gun and pulled the trigger.
2
The concussive sound of the gunshot hung in the air, but the action was over in a split second. The gunman had just moved his .45 away from Rabbi Mandel’s head when I fired. The bullet hit him at the junction of his nose and his forehead. When hit, his finger didn’t twitch and he didn’t reflexively pull the trigger. The man’s head was knocked back ever-so-slightly as he collapsed backward to the floor. Behind him a spray of blood appeared on the wall.
“Josh, Shelley, take the kids upstairs. Go out this way,” I indicated the opening to the dining room behind me. “Watch out for the body in the hallway.”
They ushered their kids out in front of them, the girls’ eyes still tightly shut.
I looked at the Czech pistol in my hand, released the magazine, and ejected the round from the chamber, locking the slide open. I put the clip and single bullet in my jacket pocket, and placed the gun on the kitchen island in front of me. The body at the other end of the room instantly had that look of something discarded on the floor. A small pool of blood was collecting under the dead man’s head.
I took a deep breath and tried to calm the sudden energy surge that my autonomic system dumped into my body.
So, who were these guys? What were they doing here? A home invasion with the family still at home? No, something else. Someone had sent them...the man who had driven off in the Buick? Maybe I should reload the gun.
I stood over the body, very much wanting to go through the man’s pockets. But I didn’t. Didn’t want to mix my fingerprints with this guy’s. The police would tell me what they found. Nate would tell me.
I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Nate D’Allesandro’s number. Nate, who was not related to Baltimore’s old political family – though probably if you went far enough back, there had to be some connection – was a police homicide captain. He was a friend born from the aftermath of an extremely tense situation. A few years ago, his daughter was hiking with a girlfriend in the extreme north of Israel, when late one evening – early morning really – they happened across a team of Hezbollah terrorists on their way to a nearby kibbutz to kill as many Israelis as they could. She told them she was an American. They killed her friend and took her hostage. I led the unit that went in to get her. The rescue was a success, and when I came to Baltimore later, I followed up with Nate, and we became friends. His number has resided in my phone ever since.
As soon as Nate answered his cell, I knew he was in a restaurant. I could hear the background noise. “Yeah, Gidon, hold on.” My number must’ve been in his address book to come up on his caller ID.
For about twenty seconds there was the sound of silverware clattering, someone asking about chicken, a sizzling sound, and then quiet. He must’ve moved into an entry area, between inner and outer doors. Or maybe he was in the men’s room.
“What’s up? You should be out with Katie at dinner or something.”
“Well, I was on my way to dinner…”
“Oh, Christ. What happened?”
I told him…the whole story from being invited over the Mandels, to spotting the Buick, to the guys going in the house, to the Buick taking off, to what happened in here.
“All right, I’ll call it in. What’s the address?”
I gave it to him.
“The uniform guys will be over first. Don’t shoot them when they come to the door.”
I laughed.
“I’ll have the waiter pack up my steak, which I just started by the way, drop off Rachel and be over.”
“Apologize to her, please.”
“You apologize to her when you come over this week.”
“Deal.” I paused for a minute, looking at the body at my feet. “You will tell the uniform guys I’m a good guy, right?” All I needed was for them to enter this little scene, spot the guy on the floor, and draw the wrong conclusions.
He hung up without responding.
I looked around. What a mess. The guy in a heap at my feet had stopped oozing blood onto the floor. What about his partner? Hopefully, his heart was still beating. I stepped around the corpse and then into the hallway. The guy in jeans and a windbreaker – and former owner of the Czech CZ 75 – was where I had left him, facedown on the floor. The pulse in his neck, was faint, but still there. While his heart was still beating, I couldn’t vouch that any of his appendages still worked after that smash to the base of his neck. There was no need to tie him up, so I headed back into the kitchen and filled two glasses with water.
I found Josh and Shelley and the two girls in what must have been the girls’ bedroom. It was painted light purple with a flowery border along the ceiling, had a poster of Masada and some blond kid from a television show, a white bookcase, and a pair of matching dressers. The Mandels were spread out on two beds: Josh and the older daughter on one bed, Shelley and the younger one on the other.
“Well,” I said, “the police are on their way. “They’ll need to speak with you,” I looked from Josh to Shelley. They appeared shell shocked. I held out the two glasses of water. Each took one, but didn’t drink.
“What…?” Shelley tried to start a question, but couldn’t get the words out.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll figure it out. Meanwhile, maybe the girls have friends on the block they can spend the night
