Leon started to call for help, so I came around the desk, covered his mouth with my hand and kneed him in the groin. He dropped as well. Agent Oscar staggered to his feet, the hinge of his jaw swollen and lumpy. Erica took the baton in both hands and pulled it tight across his neck from behind. Oscar started to cough and gurgle while he fought to push the baton away.
“Wait!” I said. “No killing. We don’t know that they’re dirty.”
Erica rolled her eyes. In one swift move she replaced the baton with her left arm while she used her right to press against the back of his head. I’d never seen a sleeper hold administered in real life, other than when I was twelve and my dad took me to WrestleMania. Pretty sure the one Hulk Hogan put on Ravishing Rick Rude was a fake. This one, however, worked like a charm. And fast. Within thirty seconds, Oscar was out.
Agent #1 was starting to get his wind back, but another sleeper hold did the trick on him as well. Erica grabbed him by the arms while I did the same to Oscar, and we pulled their unconscious bodies toward Leon, who was still on his knees. I picked my gun up off the floor, held it to Leon’s head for what seemed like the fiftieth time that night, and told him to hold his cuffed wrists out. He did, and we looped the agents’ arms around his before cuffing them both. The three of them were now linked together like the interlocked rings in a magic trick. Except in their case, smoke and mirrors wouldn’t be enough to get them apart. Erica and I took both sets of handcuff keys from the agents’ pockets and put them in Leon’s desk drawer along with their guns.
“What took you so long?” I asked her as we finished up.
“Did you see the ass on that girl with the heels?” she replied. “I wasn’t leaving until her set was over.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, shaking my head. “If I’d known that was going to be a problem I might as well have brought Joey in and left you outside to drive the car.”
“Joey wouldn’t have gotten her number.”
“You’re dead,” Leon said. “Both of you. You know that, right?”
I crouched down, close enough to smell the garlic on his breath. “Leon,” I said.
Then I headbutted him. It was a perfect shot. I heard his nose splinter at the bridge. His eyes rolled in the back of his head and he fell forward, landing on top of Agent Oscar.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Erica.
We walked past Marcus and the lead bouncer (Erica had taken care of Pink Shirt on her way in; he laid next to them on the floor, a baton-shaped welt rising on the side of his head) and closed the door behind us. Drops of blood from Leon’s shattered nose were on my face and Erica still had the baton in her hand, but I’d holstered my gun. Nobody said anything to us, but we got more than a few stares as we made our way across the floor to the exit.
The DJ had segued from Madonna to something more modern and local from the Belgian artist Stromae.
We didn’t see the cop right away. He was stationed on the other side of the curtain separating the main floor from the front ticket area. The two young women who were at the table by Leon’s office stopped to talk with him on their way out. Erica and I were too far away to hear what they said above the pounding electro-beat of “Alors on danse,” but we didn’t need to. When one of them turned and pointed at us while the other nodded her head, the message was pretty clear.
Erica, the consummate pro, casually pivoted toward the bar but I froze. When the cop thanked the two women and stared at me, I stared right back. I’d paid off plenty of people in the Brussels-Capital Ixelles police force, but this guy’s face was foreign to me. The drops of blood on my own face from Leon’s busted nose felt like bright, glowing neon. Erica noticed I wasn’t with her and came back to grab my arm, just as the cop pressed the button on the side of the walkie pinned to his shoulder.
“They may not be here for us,” I said, knowing how foolish it sounded. Erica didn’t dignify it with a response, other than to sigh as she pulled Marcus’s pistol from the back of my pants. She raised it into the air and fired twice, the reports cutting through the French hip-hop and sending the two dozen or so patrons to their feet in unison. Instant panic and the few seconds of cover we needed.
“Run,” she said, pulling me toward the back corner behind the DJ booth. I had just enough time to register the cop’s oh shit expression before my attention turned to dodging a sea of middle-aged men with suddenly shriveled hard-ons all scrambling for the front door at the same time. Erica weaved among them like a seasoned slalom skier while I elbowed and shouldered through the mass like a drunk hockey player. I almost dropped my phone twice as I dialed but managed to get it to my ear.
“Joey!” I shouted when he picked up. “Change of plans, we’re coming out the back. Meet us around the block at the end of the alley.”
“Good idea,” he said. “There were two patrol cars waiting out front and I can hear a bunch more on their way to join them.”
“Fuck,” I said as I hung up.
“What’s wrong?” Erica asked. We had made it to the swinging double doors leading to the small kitchen where Leon’s staff reheated frozen bar food and microwaved bowls of soup for anyone pathetic and lonely enough to order a meal here.
“Our getaway isn’t going to be easy,” I said.
She scrunched her eyebrows at me and said, “You thought it would?”
We made our way through the kitchen—empty, the workers likely having fled after they heard the shots and the screams—and opened the door to the alley. I saw the first cop but didn’t have time to warn Erica before his partner grabbed me from behind and slammed me against the wall, my right arm bent up and pinned against the small of my back. I tried to push off with my left but he kicked my feet out from under me while keeping the pressure on. The rough, sandpaper edges of the brick scraped the top layer of skin from my face as I slid down the wall.
I grunted through the pain and collected myself for one last push before he had a chance to secure my other arm and cuff my wrists together. In my head, I counted down.
Three . . . two . . . one
On two, the pressure against my back went away and my right arm fell free, but I was already committed. When I reached one, I pressed off as hard as I could against nothing but air, effectively launching myself into a puddle of oily alley water. Erica held out her hand and grabbed my forearm, pulling me to my feet. Both cops were unconscious, their foreheads bleeding.
“Two more seconds and I had him,” I said, rotating my sore right arm.
“Your ass is wet,” she replied.
“Your . . . Mom’s . . . wet,” I said, just in case she needed an example of a poor comeback for when we bantered in the future.
From the rear mouth of the alley came the sound of screeching tires, and Joey’s voice shouting, “Move!”
He’d pulled up on the other side of the empty cop car that was blocking the exit from the alley, its blue lights still flashing. We ran to Joey’s little hatchback—which he thought helped him remain inconspicuous, despite the fact that a man his size driving a car that small was the main attraction in most circuses—and slid over the roof of the cop car into his backseat. Before he pulled away, Erica shot out the front and rear passenger-side tires on the patrol car.
We could hear shouts of other officers running through the alley as we pulled away. Erica and I both lay as flat as we could across the narrow backseat. At the intersection Joey turned left, away from Leon’s and the swirling blue lights collecting in front of it. It wasn’t until two blocks later, when another patrol car—its own blue roof lights flashing—sped past us without stopping that I felt safe enough to sit up. The streets were otherwise deserted at this early morning hour.
“Joey,” I said, “I owe you one.”
“You owe me five thousand, to be exact,” he said, “but you don’t have to pay me right now.” I laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Where to?” he asked.
“We can go to my place,” Erica said. “They won’t be watching it.”
“Rick?” Joey asked, his eyes in the rearview mirror waiting for my approval.
“We have to make a stop first,” I said.
