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Deep breaths, Jimmy. Deep breaths.

"Uh... haha, right. Fresh air."

Jimmy stumbles toward the stairs after the pretty young thing who was to be performing that night. Either she and the gentleman didn't hear his veiled pleas for help, or didn't care. This wasn't going to end well.

Suddenly, there is the distinct sound of two gun-shots. Glancing back at the big guy, Jimmy says, "Ya know, maybe I will go back into the kitchen. You were right. Dangerous out there." That derringer ain't worth this much trouble!

Eddie's escorting the pleasant young lady named Mimi up the stairs when he hears the gunshots, and the world stops moving for a second. Two shots from the parking lot. The lot that Truck is in. The Truck that Dog is tied to. He runs. Eddie sees a blood-covered child and fears the worst: Dog attacked someone and got shot!

He reaches the parking lot and looks to his Truck, immensely relieved to see Dog still sitting where he was tied. The mutt was okay! Nobody was shooting at Dog after all, they were shooting at that corpse on the ground. Everything's gonna be A-o... waitaminute, corpse?

Mimi, for a moment, allows the annoyance to flit across her face. The kitchen help should not be out in the bar. The man smells. Something horrid. Fresh air will be nice.

The gun shots, after one short breath of the calm outdoors, are startling. The man who escorted her upstairs takes off running. "Help!" Mimi yells. She doesn't think he should be leaving her. Not now. She moves forward, slowly, drawn. Oh god...is that...is it? A small boy runs past her. "It's blood..." she says, looking around for someone else to confirm it. "It's blood," she says a little more insistently. Shouldn't someone do something?

Marcie, observing the goings on, sees her opportunity. Rising from her chair, she sidles nearer to the table where the woman is still sitting in front of her her lasagna, careful not to attract attention. When the gunshots ring out, Marcie sees her chance. When the woman at the table still doesn't move, Marcie silently snatches the purse from the table and immediately backs into the kitchen.

Mother fucker. That was the sound of the entire night being ruined. John bolts upstairs to take a look at the scene.

When the boy's closer to the entrance to the lobby, those of you that are upstairs can see that his right side has been peppered with birdshot. Everything's still attached, but he's bleeding badly, and it doesn't look like his right eye is ever going to work again.

The child's mother blinks a couple times, then jumps to her feet. Panicked, she shrieks, "Charlie!" and then furiously, "Yorba!" and kicks off her shoes to make a wild dash for the staircase. The bartender frowns, wipes his forehead with a dishcloth, and pulls a black automatic from underneath the bar.

Hidden just inside the kitchen, Marcie extracts the two envelopes from the purse, opens them and glances over them both, and then reappears inside the bar, placing the purse back where she found it. She returns to her seat in the corner, this time observing the stairs leading to the entrance.

Slinking in the shadows, William sees the figure in the car and yells "Watch out!" to the man and boy, with all but the first syllable muffled by the ringing gunshots. William runs to the body, while taking out his old reporter's ledger which he has kept with him for years. Knowing that by the time he calls his driver the car will be long gone, he scratches down the car's details, puts away his ledger and checks for a pulse on the shot man while the boy runs screaming. The man is dead.

As Jimmy cautiously returns to the kitchen, he notices someone exiting it.

"Hey lady, you ain't supposed to be in there. If ya wanted somethin' to eat, just lemme know, no need to be all sneaky-like."

John goes up to the man checking the body. "He's dead, is he? You see who did this?"

Fucking great, John thinks. Now who am I going to get my money from?

Dog is fine, but the kid? Not so much. Blood's pouring out of him like the rain ain't pouring out of the sky, and it looks like Eddie's the only one on hand who can do anything to plug the leaks. Calling upon what meager medical training he picked up over the years, he removes his shirt and uses it to staunch the flow of precious vital fluids from the boy. The kid's stable now, but barely.

There is a rush of activity. Several men stand next to the dead man on the ground. The man she came upstairs with is trying to salvage what is left of the child, applying pressure to his wounds. Mimi feels she is at a loss. She is not sure what she can do...what she should do. She turns to go back to the club, back down the stairs, hoping it will bring her back in time. The room is darker than she remembers it, and there are fewer people here, now. For a moment, she is selfish; Who will watch me perform? She's angry at herself for the thought, and sits back down at the bar. It is then that she notices that the bartender has a gun.

A thought occurs to John. "Did anyone see where that woman went? Maybe she knows something, I'm sure she'll be of great help."

Lou Yorba's lying face-up, with a hole the size of a dinner plate that goes about halfway through his gut. Birdshot again. There's a spot where the ground is pitted from the second shot, the one that hit the kid. Not too far off, but far enough to be clear that it wasn't just intended to finish off Yorba. Other than blood, there's not much else worth noting on the ground.

The kid's hardly been put on the ground with fresh bandages when his mother charges through the door. She sees him immediately, and runs to his side, where she falls on her knees, grasps the boy's good hand and arm, and sobs.

The Bartender notices Mimi coming down the stairs and, with obvious effort, composes himself again, tucking his weapon into his jacket. Through a slight accent, he asks, "What is it, miss? Should I phone the police?"

William - All you could see of the car was that it was a Model A phaeton, black.
Marcie - In the first envelope, the one that the woman was holding, there's $500 in cash. Lou's envelope is full of identification papers: a Pennsylvania birth certificate; a New Jersey driver's license; two police photographs, also from Jersey. They look like they belong to the same woman, only with longer, lighter-colored hair than she has now. They give her the name Emily Martincage.

John goes up to the woman. "Ma'am," he says, "it looks as if your associate has deceased. However, I believe you still have something of his, in your purse, something that belongs to me. Mind if I see those envelopes, ma'am?"