[Chapter 2: Apartment]

Murphy awoke with a groan. The morning sun glinted harshly off the white ceiling, making him squint, which set his entire head to throbbing. He lifted an arm to shield his eyes, wincing at the stab of pain that shot through his neck and shoulder muscles, and the sting of a fresh scab cracking open on his elbow.

His elbow? He opened one eye for a peek. It was a rough, ugly scab—how had he gotten that? Oh, right…dodging bullets. The fog in his mind began to clear, but the picture wasn't pretty. He let his arm drop over his eyes and felt a sharper pain on the back of his head. Feeling carefully with aching fingertips, he discovered a golf-ball sized lump on the back of his skull that was more than a bit tender. Luckily since he hadn't had a haircut in so long, it probably wouldn't be too noticeable.

The urge to sink back under the covers warred with the need for food until finally his stomach won. The bed was low, and his legs actually shook with the effort of standing—one more reason to be grateful he no longer shared a bedroom with his pitiless brother.

They'd happened upon the housing deal of the century – a two-bedroom apartment with a harried landlord only too happy not to have to handle cleaning out the place after the previous renter kicked the bucket. He and Connor were just glad the old guy had been found dead in his recliner and not his bed, since the mattress would have been a lot harder to get rid of. With the last of the Russians' money, they'd paid six months' rent up front, giving the landlord an excuse not to look too closely at their application. Murphy had won the coin flip for the double bed in the master, leaving Connor in the second bedroom with the futon and the electric-red lava lamp.

Murphy pulled on jeans and shuffled across the gold shag carpet to the dining room where Connor sat at the pockmarked oak table cleaning his gun. The morning sun glared viciously through the window and he jerked the thin curtains closed, succeeding mostly in giving the room a sickening avocado-green tint.

"You look like shit," Connor said. "How's your head?"

"Been worse." Although not by much. "Not a scratch on you I see."

"Twisted my ankle in that pothole," Connor said, flicking Murphy's sunglasses across the table to him. "That make you feel better?"

"It does a bit." Murphy slipped the glasses on gratefully and headed for the kitchen.

"Don't bother," Connor told him. "Damn food fairy fucked us again."

Murphy opened the fridge anyway and for a minute considered the ketchup and the half-inch chunk of butter. Maybe later, if he got really desperate.

He sunk into the chair across from Connor and eyed the cleaning kit warily, knowing he ought to finish the chore now while the supplies were out. Swallowing a groan at the movement, he stretched for the duffel bag at Connor's feet.

Connor stopped cleaning and stared at him.

"What?" Murphy asked defensively. So he wasn't the gun-maintenance master that Connor was, but there was no need to rub it in, especially on a morning like this. He dug through the bag, pushing aside the rope and extra holsters, feeling more and more annoyed as Connor continued to watch him.

Then it hit him.

"Son of a bitch. That cocksucker made off with my gun!"

"Genius you are."

"Damn it, that was a good weapon. That was an instrument."

Connor went back to his pistol. "I won't ask you if it was clean."

Murphy's skin bristled. "It was clean," he answered evenly. "It's always clean."

"And the-"

"Bullets, too, aye. What the hell do you think I bought the latex gloves for?"

"Do you really want an answer to that?" Connor closed an eye and peered down the gun's barrel critically. "It probably doesn't matter anyway. If the bastard's smart, he's already tossed it in a dumpster."

Murphy watched him expertly reassemble the gun with a surprising ache of loss. "If the bastard's smart, he's already sold it on the street. The silencer alone's worth six hundred bucks."

"Maybe he'll hold on to it, then. When we find him you can ask for it back."

Murphy scoffed. "You planning to find him?"

"You planning to let him walk away?"

Murphy shrugged and immediately regretted it as pain shot through his back and neck. "I hadn't really thought about it," he said, easing his bruised shoulder blades against the back of the chair. "Scuderi's dead. Mission was a success."

"A success? How hard did you hit your head? We left behind four fucking bodies and an eyewitness."

"Three bodies. I think the paramedic was okay."

Connor gave him a look.

"All right, so it was a total cluster fuck," Murphy admitted. "Scuderi's still dead."

"So is some innocent old woman."

"And so is the fucking thug that killed her. Sweet shot, by the way."

"It was a fucking beautiful shot," Connor said, cracking a smile that lasted only briefly. "I should have taken him out sooner."

"Don't. Don't even start with that shit, man. If you really want to go that route, I should have taken him out from the alley."

Connor looked up, surprised. "I thought that wasn't an option."

"It wasn't," Murphy said, not really wanting to open the topic for discussion. "Just like it wasn't an option for you to bend bullets around a human shield. You're good, Con, but those tricks only work in Hollywood."

"I was waiting for the girl to move…she finally did, once the thug started firing." Connor rubbed his face tiredly. "I shouldn't have waited."

"Don't be an idiot. You did what you could, when you could, and it was fucking nicely done."

Connor didn't answer, just frowned and began to put away the cleaning kit.

Murphy knew he'd say nothing more about it, but that didn't mean Connor's issues were put to rest. Murphy lit a cigarette to fill the silence. "Who do you think they were?" he asked.

"Hard to say. Scuderi probably got death threats every other day." Connor zipped the bag closed and thought for a moment. "The victims of his scumbag clients would be my guess."

"But the things the guy was saying – it didn't have the ring of revenge to it. More like…tying up loose ends."

"Maybe the clients themselves," Connor suggested, "those scumbags he's been getting off the hook for all these years."

"His biggest client was Yakavetta. Papa Joe's not reaching out from the grave to cover his ass now."

"Scuderi worked for the whole lot of them, not just Papa Joe. Maybe somebody's trying to move up."

Murphy thought about this while he gingerly tugged on his boots. "Scuderi's been burying the mob's dirty secrets for thirty years. You can bet if there's one asshole out there looking to take Yakavetta's place, there's a dozen, and blackmail's a powerful weapon. Scuderi's a fucking walking textbook of dirty laundry."

"And now he's dead," Connor finished. "If that's the case, then the bastard-and whoever he's working for-are going to have to find another source, assuming it's that important to them."

"It was important enough to kill for."

"And to die for," Connor said, reaching for his own boots. "We did give them the chance to walk away."

"If they killed for this information once, they'll kill for it again. I say more power to them if it's another piece of shit like Scuderi, but we've already seen what they'll do to good people who happen to stand in the way."

Murphy waited for Connor to look up, waited for the resolve he'd seen six months earlier in a leaky holding cell.

Connor's eyes raised and Murphy was not disappointed. "We can't let them hurt anyone else."

Murphy gave him the slightest of nods and the decision was made. Connor returned a ghost of a smile and wandered to the window, parting the curtains to look down on the street below.

The light poured in, but this time Murphy was ready for the pain. "So we go after him—alone?"

"Alone. It'd be grand to have Smecker's help on this, but…"

"I know. It's not worth the risk." Murphy took a breath, pushing forward before his mind had the chance to wander down unpleasant paths. "We need to know where to look. Getaway car's our best clue, but a beater with a bad paint job doesn't exactly stand out around here."

"You didn't notice anything else while you were-"

"Getting my ass kicked?"

Connor grinned. "I was going to be diplomatic and say 'splashing around in the mud puddles.'"

"Fuck you."

"Seriously, man – hair color, missing teeth, anything?"

Murphy closed his eyes, replaying the fight in his mind. "A tattoo," he remembered, "on the…right side of his chest. I didn't see much, just the tip of a tail right here." He indicated the space on his own ribcage.

"What kind of tail?"

"Like a devil's tail, but different."

Connor rolled his eyes. "You didn't try for a closer look?"

"I was a little busy at the time. Come to think of it, I did try. And now I have a concussion."

"Forget the tat, forget the car," Connor said with a wave of his hand. "We've got a body. That fat thug's life may have been a waste, but you can bet his death is going prove very useful."

"Aye. Let's see if they've got a name yet." He pushed out of his chair, mildly annoyed that the most obvious lead hadn't occurred to him. Good thing they didn't both have concussions. He clicked through the channels, seeing nothing but static.

"Damn, they must have finally shut off the cable," Connor said, grabbing the keys off the kitchen counter. "C'mon. We'll catch the news at the Yolk."