“Gonna put him where he put her. Gonna put him in a casket.”
And then again everything was a blur. He heard a jumble of noises coming from the table where Nick Andros was telling Dora to shut up and Newton Channing laughed lightly at some comment from the humpbacked wino. From behind the bar the humming sound of Dugan’s tune provided vague background music for the clinking of glasses and the drinkers’ voices. It went on and on like that, with Mooney’s voice begging him to come to the table and have the double shot, and his own voice telling Mooney to leave him alone. Then suddenly he heard a sound that wasn’t glass on glass or glass on tabletop or anyone’s spoken words. It was the sound of the door as someone came in from the street.
He turned his head and saw his brother.
He heard himself making a noise that was like air coming out from a collapsed balloon.
And after that there was no sound at all. Not even from Dugan.
The quiet stretched as a rubber band stretches and finally can’t stretch any more and the fibers split apart. In that instant, as he moved, he sensed Mooney’s hands trying to hold him back and his arm was a scythe making contact with the sign painter’s ribs.
Mooney sailed halfway across the room, came up against a table, sailed over it, and took a chair with him as he went to the floor. Then Mooney tried to get up and he couldn’t get up. He was resting on his side with all the breath knocked out of his body. He saw Kerrigan lunging at Frank, and Kerrigan’s hands taking hold of Frank’s throat.
“I can’t let you live,” Kerrigan said. “I can’t.”
Frank’s eyes bulged. His face was getting blue.
“Your own sister,” Kerrigan said. “You ruined your own sister.” And then, to everyone in the room, to every unseen face beyond the room, “How can I let him live?”