The Taking of Pelham 123

by John Godey

  Berry shut his eyes and dozed again. When he woke, it was because the resident was pinching his nose.

  “There’s a girl outside,” the resident said. Deedee was standing in the doorway. Berry nodded. “About ten minutes,” the resident said.

  The resident left, and Deedee came in. She was solemn and on the verge of tears.

  “That doctor said you weren’t badly hurt. Tell me the truth.”

  “Mere flesh wounds.”

  A few tears spilled out of her eyes. She took her glasses off and kissed him on the lips.

  “I’m all right,” Berry said. “I’m glad you came, Deedee.”

  “Why wouldn’t I come?” She frowned.

  “How did you know where I was?”

  “How wouldn’t I! You’re all over the radio and telly. Is there much pain, Tom?”

  “Heroes never feel pain.”

  She kissed him and left tears on his face. “I can’t stand the idea of your hurting.”

  “I don’t feel a thing. They’re taking terrific care of me. Look out the window. Some view!”

  She picked up his hand and put her cheek against it. She kissed his fingers and then released his hand. She looked out the window.

  “Terrific view,” Berry said.

  She seemed indecisive for about a fifth of a second, then said, “I must say this. You risked your life in an unworthy cause.”

  I’m not up to it, he thought, and tried to divert her. “A little while ago the mayor and the police commissioner were here to see me. I’m promoted to detective. Third grade, I guess.”

  “You could have been killed!”

  “It’s my job. I’m a cop.”

  “Killed to save the city a million dollars!”

  “There were people involved, too, Deedee,” he said gently.

  “I won’t argue with you now. I can’t fight with you when you’re hurt.”

  “But?”

  “But when you get better, I’m going to make you promise to quit the pigs.”

  “And when I get better, I’m going to make you promise you’ll quit the Movement.”

  “If you don’t know the difference between being a fascist epigone and the struggle for freedom and the people’s rightful—”

  “Deedee. Don’t make a speech. I know you’ve got beliefs, but so do I.”

  “Pigs? Is that what you believe in? You’ve said yourself you had a million doubts.”

  “Maybe not a million, but doubts, yes. But not quite enough to discourage me.” He reached for her hand. She drew back, then surrendered it to him. “I like the work. Not all of it. Some parts of police work are shitty. I haven’t figured out the proportions yet.”

  “They took you in.” Her eyes darkened, but she didn’t relinquish his hand. “They sold you the whole bundle, and you bought it.”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to stay with it until I know how I feel. Then I’ll either buy the whole bundle or get out.”

  The resident appeared in the doorway. “Time’s up. Sorry.”

  “I guess we better stop seeing each other,” Deedee said. She walked quickly to the door, then stopped and looked back at him.

  He thought of some temporizing things, even winning things, he might say to her, but he didn’t say them. The game was over, the exasperating, amusing, but, finally, childish game they had been playing for so many months. The issue was real and maybe irreconcilable. It had to be faced.

  “It’s up to you, Deedee,” he said. “Just one thing—think it over first.”

  He didn’t quite see her leave because the resident was in front of her, blocking his view. “In about ten or fifteen minutes you might start to hurt a little,” the resident said.

  Berry looked at him suspiciously, then got it straight. What the resident was talking about was physical pain.

  LONGMAN

  Longman finally turned on the radio at nine o’clock. The news was a rehash. No fresh developments, and only one reference to the missing hijacker—the police were bending every effort toward his apprehension. He switched off the radio and went into the kitchen, for no particular reason except that he was restless and had been doing a lot of moving from room to room. He was wearing the money jackets again—the bed didn’t quite seem the place for half a million dollars—and had put his topcoat on, partially to conceal the jackets, partially because it was chilly in the apartment; as usual, they were chintzy with the heat.

  He looked at the linoleum on the kitchen table and for the first time appreciated how ugly it was, how badly worn, how marred with slices and cuts. Well, he could well afford a new linoleum now. He could well afford to live somewhere else, too—any part of the country he chose, any part of the world, for that matter. It would be Florida, as he had planned. All year sunshine, not too many clothes, fishing, maybe even a shack-up with some widow looking for a little action….

  Half a million. It was too rich for his blood. So was a quarter of a million. Still, it beat a boot in the ass, didn’t it? He smiled, for what must have been the first time in a week. But the smile disappeared when he suddenly remembered the three bodies being brought out of the tunnel, three mounds, covered with canvas, and maybe—though the camera didn’t pick this up—maybe even leaking a little blood. Three dead, and one survivor—Wally Longman, of all people.

  He thought of them laid out on a morgue slab, and except for Ryder, he had no reaction. Welcome was an animal, and Steever…. Well, he didn’t dislike Steever, but he was an animal, too, a kind of obedient dog, a Doberman pinscher, say, trained to respond to a command. He hadn’t given much thought to Ryder. Yet, in Ryder’s death, he had lost—what? Not a friend, he and Ryder were never really friends. Colleagues, maybe that was the word. He had a great deal of respect for Ryder: his reserve, his courage, his coolness. Above all, Ryder had been kind to him, and not too many people had been that.

  What would Ryder be doing if he had been the sole survivor? Well, he would certainly be calm, relaxed, probably just sitting and reading in his apartment, that large impersonal room furnished as sparsely as an army barracks. He wouldn’t be sweating out the police—what with no record, no fingerprints, no adequate description of him, no live confederates to give him away even by accident, he would feel very secure. Well, Longman thought, even though he was nervous where Ryder would be glacially cool, he was sitting pretty, too.

  He experienced a rush of pleasure at the thought and jumped to his feet. He felt so full of energy that he began walking around the table to work it off before he started letting out whoops that would bring the neighbors on the run.

  He was still loping around the table when someone knocked at the door. He froze, terrified, and the hot flush surged through his body.

  There was a second knock at the door and then a voice: “Hello, Mr. Longman? Police Department. I’d like to talk to you.”

  Longman looked at the door, at the scarred, thickly painted surface half covered by a garage calendar featuring a pretty girl in hot pants and no top, looking down cross-eyed at her own boobs. Three locks. Three strong locks that no cop could manage to open. What would Ryder do? Ryder would do exactly what he had instructed him to do. Open the door and answer the cop’s questions. But Ryder had not anticipated his own death and the fact that the money was here instead of cached away in Ryder’s apartment, as planned. Why hadn’t he thought about the damn money before? He was wearing it, for God’ssake. Still, it was well concealed under the topcoat, and he could easily justify the coat because it was so cold in the apartment. But how could he justify ignoring the first two knocks? If he opened now, the cop couldn’t help being suspicious and might even reason that he had delayed in order to stash the money away. Not answering was a giveaway. He had blown it.

  “It’s just a minor matter, Mr. Longman. Would you mind opening up?”

  He was standing next to the window. The window. The three locks. Without moving his feet, he reached over to the table, picked up the gray Russian hat, and put it on. It was quie
t on the other side of the door, but he was sure the cop was still there, that he would knock again. He turned silently to the window, gripped the sill, and slowly raised it. Fresh night air entered, soft and cooling. He ducked through the window onto the fire escape.

  DETECTIVE HASKINS

  You were supposed to stand clear of a closed door, so that somebody shooting through it would miss you. But the heavy silence inside and the indifferent fit of the door with the jamb were too inviting. So Detective Bert Haskins pressed his ear to the uneven vertical line and heard the distinctive squeal of wood against wood. A little soap, he thought, as he turned away and started down the stairs, a little soap rubbed on the runners and he might have got away with it. On the other hand, if Slott hadn’t taken his ulcer home, he would have been a dead duck anyhow, because one of them would have covered the back way out.

  He made practically no sound going down the stairs. You never learned how to use a magnifying glass in the detective dodge, but you did manage to pick up a few useful aptitudes—the gumshoe bit, for instance. You also learned to case a joint on arrival, so that you knew there was a door under the stairwell that led outside to the rear of the building.

  The door was equipped with a spring lock. Haskins turned the latch, opened just enough of the door to accommodate his body, slipped through, and eased the door back quietly. He was in a small courtyard. Its darkness was broken up in an uneven pattern by spills of light from the apartments above. He took note of a few fruit rinds, a magazine, some newspaper pages and a broken toy. Not too bad. They probably cleaned it up once a week or so. He eased into a shadow and looked upward.

  The man—Walter Longman—was almost directly above him, fiddling with the bracket that hooked the ladder to the guard rail of the fire escape. Forget it, Longman, Haskins said to himself, those things are always rusty and immovable. You’re better off if you just let it be and drop down a few feet from the bottom rung.

  Longman made a last effort to release the bracket, then gave up. Haskins watched him lift his leg awkwardly over the guard rail and probe with his foot for the ladder rung. Very good, Haskins thought, now the other foot… excellent. Longman was no acrobat, in fact he moved like an old man. Well, hadn’t he once put the collar on an eighty-year-old armed robber?

  Longman was dangling, his hands clenched tightly around the rusty metal of the bottom rung, his body swaying. But he seemed reluctant to let go. Shame on you, Haskins thought, a vicious hijacker afraid of a little four-foot drop? Longman’s legs were swinging now, and his knuckles looked dead white. He let go of the ladder rung with one hand, but still he dangled.

  Haskins watched the clenched right hand. As soon as the fingers opened, he took a single step out of his shadow. He was perfectly placed. Longman dropped, and Haskins caught him neatly against his own body. Longman’s head whipped around, presenting a pale, crumpled face and startled eyes.

  “Surprise,” Haskins said.