"You got a lotta guts comin' up here," Joe said quietly. "And cops can't pass themselves off as someone else that good. So who are you, and what do you want?"
"It's quite simple, really," Phil explained. "I quite honestly don't care what extortion charges the cops down there say they have against you. You've got two hostages that I've been asked to find and retrieve. None of us is going home until I get 'em back."
"Shit," Vincent breathed. "You're FBI, aren't you? That Hostage Rescue Team or something."
"If I were with the FBI," Phil said, "they'd never let me come up here by myself. Besides, the FBI was after me last I checked."
Joe's face paled. "Unidentified."
"What's that?" Phil asked, his grip on the gun tightening.
"You're the Unidentified Man," Joe said, turning around slowly. "You're that guy who killed all those people in New York."
"Shit," Vincent repeated.
Phil sniffed the air and frowned. "Couldn't you have held it a little longer, Vin?" He chuckled. "Yeah, that's me. If you had read the whole story in the papers, my goal wasn't to kill people. I was trying to rescue people who had been kidnapped. Unfortunately, I had to... eliminate a few people who got in my way." He paused and smiled at Joe. "Are you in my way, Mr. Forelli?"
"Put the gun down," a voice ordered behind Phil. He turned to see two more mobsters pointing weapons at him. "You just walked into a whole lot of trouble, mister."
Phil looked at the two and grinned. "Nice to know that folks still have company over now and then." He looked back at the Forellis. "I'm afraid that you gentlemen don't realize your predicament. You're between a rock and a hard place on this one."
"Put the gun down!" the one with the shotgun repeated.
"Don't make me kill you," Phil said calmly, without missing a beat. "Even if you did get past me, you'd have the cops outside to deal with. They've got backup on the way, and if you keep this up long enough, they will kill you. I, on the other hand, am being charitable at the moment, but even my patience has limits."
"Look, we don't gotta do this," Joe pleaded. "We can talk this out."
"Can we?" Phil asked, smiling.
"You ran from the cops before," Joe reminded Phil. "You know what it's like. We can give you the girl and her mother back, and you can help us get out of here."
Phil laughed. "You're joking, right?"
"Come on!" Vincent shouted. "Can't you negotiate on this?"
"I don't negotiate," Phil replied. "You think I'm gonna let you get away with everything you've done?"
"You did," Joe challenged.
Phil glared at him. "I pay the penalty for what I've done every time I look in the mirror. Prison time is an easy penance compared to what I go through." He looked at the two mobsters pointing guns at him and laughed. "Don't your arms get tired?"
"Look, man, we can make it easy for you," Vincent said. "We can get you money, security, anything. Just help us out here, okay?"
Phil sneered at him. "I won't say that I can't be bought, but I'm definitely not interested in selling out to you."
"Look, man," Joe snapped, "if you're gonna do something, you don't got a lot of time. You better make up your mind pretty quick."
He was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass. A SWAT flash-bang crashed through the window and bounced across the floor, coming to rest in the middle of the cluster of men.
"Damn," Phil murmured as the room was enveloped in a blinding glare.
