Murphy dug his fingers into the white flesh of her shoulders. “I need to know what you told them, and you’re going to tell me.”

The girl’s eyes were wide and frightened, but back of the fear was an ocean of anger. She smiled at him, baring small, widely spaced teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never said nothing!”

He shook her until her jaw rattled. “Don’t feed me that. Word on the street is the long pork’s looking for me and not for anything minor, either. Now, there’s only one thing they could want me for, and there’s only two people that could’ve tipped them off. Since I didn’t say anything, that leaves you. Spill!”

She drove her knee into him, but the angle was wrong so all she got was the flat muscle of his thigh. Murphy slapped her, her unlovely face rocking back and forth with every open-handed blow. “Spill!” There was a line of blood running from her lip down her neck. The fear in her eyes was gone; only the anger was left, flat and murderous.

“You oughtn’t to have hit me, Danny. There’s a lot I’ll take and getting slapped’s not part of it. If the cops know something, it’s not from me. It’s death between me and you from here on out. You get out and stay out. I so much as see you on the street, Danny boy, I’ll kill you and take my chances.”

Murphy snorted and slapped her again, for luck. The first bullet tore the knee out of his leg as he turned to leave and left him crumpled up in a ball on the floor, a paper doll with all the glue dried away.

“You oughtn’t to have hit me,” his sister repeated. “You oughtn’t to have hit me at all.”

When the police finally broke down her door all that was left was the red ruin of a large man and an envelope with the word ‘Here’ written on the front.