by Ed Kurtz
There were heavy sighs, partly from frustration but also in part from relief. Charley stuffed his hands into his hip pockets and turned to head back toward the elevators.
“Where are you going?” Eve asked.
“Not sure,” he said. “Not here. Nobody’s home.”
“Nobody’s answering the door. That doesn’t mean nobody’s home.”
“Then what do you suggest? That we kick in the door? I don’t think it’ll budge much.”
“Can you pick a lock?”
He grimaced at her. She cracked a bashful smile.
“I didn’t think so,” she said.
“And I’m not going out on the ledge, either. Come on. I’ll let you buy me a cup of coffee and we’ll hash this out.”
She said, “That’s really chivalrous of you,” but the last couple of syllables were rendered inaudible under the loud report of a gunshot. Green and gold wallpaper ruptured between their heads; had either of them been two inches closer to the other there would have been a corpse on the carpet. Eve ducked, lacing her fingers over her head, but Charley lurched forward to determine the origin of the shot.
The hallway was vacant at first, but then someone edged around the corner by the elevators. He was aiming a large, silver handgun for a second shot and now Charley could see who it was doing the aiming.
“Hold it right there, McCormick!” John Walker shouted.
Charley’s heart literally skipped a beat, and the next few after that one, too. He stood, frozen, across the hall from a police detective, a man he sort of knew and mostly trusted, who had just taken a shot at him. His mind reeled.
“What the hell, Walker?”
The cop advanced, digging into his coat pocket for his handcuffs, keeping the gun leveled at Charley. Walker was breathing hard and his face was pearled with beads of sweat.
“Don’t you make a move, now,” he gravely warned.
Charley displayed his palms like a crook in an old movie and took a couple of slow steps back until he came up against the wall.
“I don’t know what you think,” he said, leaving it at that.
“I think I’m arresting you. And your chick, too. Multiple homicides, tampering with evidence, terroristic threatening. Not to mention setting fire to a junky’s place in the Bowery and what looks like a pretty interesting connection with some Eye-ties I know a little about. It’s a pretty ugly list, kid.”
Charley trembled. It seemed maybe a little reasonable to be looking at charges like that, even if he had not been directly responsible for any of it. But that was how the system worked, wasn’t it? When you looked guilty, you got pinched, and he knew how guilty he looked. But normally that did not add up to a cop taking potshots at the guilty-looking party in the hallway of a swanky Midtown apartment building. Or anywhere else, for that matter. For that reason, Charley squatted, swept Eve up into his arms and then launched her into the hall, away from Walker and his itchy trigger finger.
She yelped and landed hard on her tailbone and yelped again. Charley broke into a sprint in her direction, but not before Walker squeezed off another shot at him. A light fixture exploded behind him and bits of glass flew into his hair. He rushed at Eve.
“Get up!” he yelled.
Walker bellowed, “Stop, goddamnit!”
Eve scrambled to her feet and stumbled forward, Charley close on her heels. Ahead of them lay a door with the familiar graphic indicating a stairwell beyond, a series of lines connecting in right angles with a stickman walking down them. Eve beat feet for the door, preemptively extending both arms in front of her to push it open. Another shot cracked the unventilated hallway air and Eve spun around like a ballerina before crumpling on the floor, just a foot shy of the stairwell door.
Charley sucked in a lungful of air that got caught in there, his chest freezing up with fear and despair.
She was shot.
He could not breathe particularly well, but he did not hesitate. He lifted Eve up again and slung her over his shoulder like the gorilla absconding with the blonde beauty on all those old pulp magazines. He kicked the door open, felt something give in his lower back, ignored the agony, and plowed into the stairwell. Walker screamed something unintelligible and another bullet tore into the fancy wallpaper.
Charley stomped down the stairs, faster with an additional hundred and twenty pounds on him than he could normally move without it. He grunted and groaned with each fast, heavy step, but he’d covered a flight and a half before Walker came through the fourth floor door. Charley was operating on pure adrenaline now, his brain shut off and his burning muscles working overtime despite the hot, ripping pain.
The stairwell did not terminate at the door marked with a 1, but instead kept curling its blocky spiral down to two basement levels, P1 and P2. Charley was eventually deposited at the very bottom in an underground parking deck. The air was thicker and muggier than the hallway above, and it was filled with gas fumes and dust with nowhere to go but into Charley’s heaving respiratory system. He took it in, hacked it back out, and began his frantic search for either a way out or a place to hide. Walker’s stamping feet were already audible in the stairwell behind him. Time was short.
A cursory scan of the dark cavern revealed no immediate means of escape—a great many of the bulbs had burned out and those that remained were dimmer than penlights—so Charley turned his attention to a dull orange Plymouth Duster parked in the foreboding shadows across the deck to their right. The long, boxy car was edged up against the besmirched gray brick wall, leaving just enough space for him to squeeze in and pull Eve after him. He cleared her limp legs as the stairwell door flew open and slammed against the outer wall. The clang of the impact echoed across the sepulchral chamber, but there was no one but Charley to be startled by it. He managed to keep quiet, and Eve was far from conscious.
“McCormick!” Walker bellowed.
His baritone voice resonated, bouncing off the thick concrete columns that kept the building up. Charley waited for the echo to die out before placing his ear next to Eve’s face. Her breath was shallow as hell, but she was breathing. Slowly and silently he began sliding his free hand all over her body, like a gentle lover but with no such purpose in mind. He was looking for the wound, searching for the place where she had been shot. After he covered the torso and moved south of her waist, his fingers plunged into warm, sticky wetness at Eve’s inner thigh. The wound was not spewing, not anymore, but it still seeped blood at a quick enough pace from what Charley morosely guessed to be her femoral artery. He’d seen enough slashers on the Deuce to know that was bad news. Eve needed to be in an emergency room, she’d needed that ten minutes ago, but between her and the nearest hospital was a man with a gun who was trying his damnedest to kill them both. Charley hadn’t the faintest idea why that should be the case, in fact he was sure it shouldn’t, but there it was and there was no sense in trying to parse the situation now. All he needed—all they needed—was to get the hell out of that building without getting blown out of existence by Police Detective John Walker.
The detective’s heavy footsteps pounded on the oily cement floor, clomping slowly, step by step. Charley could not see him from the hiding spot behind the Plymouth, but he knew perfectly well that Walker’s service revolver was up and ready, his eyes carefully searching the shadows for any sign of his quarries. How big the second level of the parking deck was Charley did not know, but it was not going to be long before Walker decided to check out that spot. Then they’d be found. Then they’d be shot to death. End of story.
Eve shuddered. It was a weak little shiver, barely perceptible. But movement was good. Movement indicated life, most of the time. He squeezed the sticky wound with his hand, just as he had done only yesterday when Ursula was bleeding out. His eyes filled. The echoing steps drew nearer.
In a last ditch effort, Charley reached up and tried the handle on the driver’s side door. Astonishingly, it was not locked. Either the Plymouth’s owner was new to the city or he suffered
from dementia. Either way, Charley acted quickly. He pulled the handle and opened the door as far as it would go in the narrow space provided. It whined at the hinges, which he pretty much expected, and Walker’s stalking footsteps instantly strode more rapidly. Charley clearly heard the hammer of the detective’s revolver click, ready for use.
The opening was no more than eight inches or so, just enough for Charley to slide his arm into the driver’s side and probe around. He was looking for a tire iron, a bat, anything to use as a weapon. He had been in enough cars in town since he moved there to know people usually had something in the event of an emergency. But then people also normally had enough common sense to lock their cars. And, as Charley then discovered, those who did not also did not carry bashing tools around with them, either. He kept probing, blindly, but the best he could come up with was a map of the city, refolded incorrectly.
“Gotcha,” Walker hissed as his silhouette loomed at the Plymouth’s tail.
Charley could not make out the gun, but he knew it was there. Walker was not going to wait, either—he had them in a nice, soundproof, entirely vacant corner of the world where no one was ever going to be able to pin the killings on him. It was ideal, for a murderer.
Left with no other option and a silent curse in his mind for the jerk with the Duster who didn’t bother to take care of himself, Charley launched his left leg in the air as hard and as fast as he could. His shoe, a Stacy moc toe slip-on, flew off his foot and struck Walker on the chin. The cop turned to block the hit but his brain didn’t inform his gun hand what was up; he fired, sending a bullet into a concrete column that ricocheted off into somebody’s windshield. The glass shattered, musically tinkling down on the cold, hard floor.
Walker cried, “Shit!” and swung the gun back at his intended victims.
Charley launched the other shoe.
But Walker was ready for it this time. He easily batted it away with his other hand. The one that did not still have a revolver pointed at Charley’s face.
Walker gave a nasty grin, turning his Fred Williamson mustache up at the corners.
“Goddamnit, McCormick,” he said like a coach chastising a high school football player for missing a pass at practice.
Charley ground his teeth and tensed his shoulders. Then Walker squeezed the trigger.
The gun clicked.
Walker had expended all of his rounds. Now, Charley instantly realized, it was just the two of them, no guns involved.
Detective Walker was still holding the gun. And he was still grinning like the devil.
“Well, how do you like that?” he said.
Slowly, Charley strained his twitching back and rose to his feet.
“Huh,” he said.
“Huh what?”
“I guess you’re a bought cop.”
Walker gave a cruel laugh.
“I guess so.”
“Who’s paying the tab?”
Walker grimaced. “None of your goddamned business, kid.”
“Not the Italians.”
“The hell you know, living in bum-fuck New England all your life?”
“Ever hear of Whitey Bulger?”
“Friend of yours?”
“Sure, we go way back.”
“I’ll bear it in mind. Come over here.”
Walker gestured with the revolver. Charley did not budge.
“I said move it, kid.”
Charley sneered. Even the sneer seemed to aggravate the twinge in his lower back.
“Maybe I forgot to tell you,” he said, taking an arduous step forward, “but I really hate it when pricks like you call me kid.”
Charley swung a right hook at the cop, connecting with his chin. Walker jerked his head, rolling a little with the punch but enough to save the knuckle on Charley’s little finger from breaking apart upon impact. He was cradling his throbbing paw when Walker snapped his head back and let out a guttural growl. The most Charley had achieved was to piss the detective off.
“You gonna hit me?” Walker taunted him. “You gonna hit me?”
Walker swung at him, but Charley leapt out of reach. Walker grunted when he hit air. Charley barreled at the policeman and planted his hands on Walker’s chest. He meant to give to bigger man a shove, but Walker trapped Charley’s hands and fell into a crouch, effectively bending Charley’s wrists a great deal further than they were meant to bend. Charley cried out in pain and tried to yank away. Walker let him go, but not before delivering a swift kick to his groin. Charley’s testicles caved into his pelvis and he collapsed into a pile on the dirty floor. The white hot agony was intense, the pain so overpowering that he all but forgot about his back and his wrists. He whimpered pitifully.
“I was in Korea, you little bastard,” Walker warned. “The hell’d you ever do?”
Charley was laboring to lift himself up, using the Plymouth as a stabilizer.
“Huh?” Walker went on. “The hell you ever do?”
“Broke…,” Charley croaked.
“What? I can’t hear you, kid.”
Walker’s smile slashed across his face.
“Broke a guy’s nose,” Charley wheezed.
“Yeah? You do that? Punk like you?”
Charley straightened out, his back muscles fighting him every centimeter of the way, and took a clearly painful step closer to Walker. The cop was chuckling at him, deeply amused at his distress.
Charley frowned. Then he thrust the heel of his left palm at Walker’s nose, catching the septum and crunching it inward to the bone. Blood burbled out of both nostrils, and Walker’s eyes slammed shut, blinded by tears.
“Yeah,” Charley said breathlessly. “I did that.”
The cop made wet, anguished noises that might have been words but were incomprehensible. On the floor between the Plymouth and the wall, Eve moaned softly. Charley gritted his teeth and drove a fist into Walker’s paunchy midsection, sending him tumbling down with a gasp and a groan. He was done, for now.
Charley checked out Walker, making sure he was really down for the count and snatching his revolver and wallet for good measure. Then he scrambled over to check on Eve. She was only semiconscious, mewling quietly like a kitten. The dark thought that she was not going to make it crossed Charley’s mind. Andy had made it, and Ursula was probably going to pull through, but three friends in a row facing death because Charley could not leave well enough alone was tempting fate too much. He rushed around to the passenger side of the car and slipped in, hoping madly that the idiot went ahead and left his keys in there, too. He hadn’t.
He suppressed a scream. Then he let it go. His grief shook the second level of the building’s parking deck.
Crouching down over Eve he held her head in his hands. She opened her eyes, barely, making narrow slits of them.
“Need doctor,” she whispered.
Tears spilled out of Charley’s eyes. He was shell-shocked. He could not think straight.
The door to the stairwell creaked open, and Charley shot to his feet. A man in a wrinkled blue suit came through it, fumbling with a key ring, undoubtedly heading for his car. Eve moaned again.
Charley winced from the twinge in his back and strode quickly toward the man in the crumpled suit.
There was an argument, which was followed by a scuffle. The man had no interest in carting a pair of complete strangers, one of them positively dripping with blood, to the nearest hospital, or anywhere for that matter. He complained that he could not understand why Charley refused to simply call for an ambulance, and he reasoned that it would be faster, anyway. That was approximately when Charley produced Walker’s service revolver, which was unloaded, but the man could not have known that.
Hence, Charley scored a ride to the hospital.
He lied to the admitting nurse at the ER, saying that he’d just found her that way and, as a concerned and responsible citizen, thought it best to see she got some help. Eve was mumbling something too soft to hear when the technicians wheeled her away. To Charley i
t sounded a bit like, “Don’t leave.”
The poor guy Charley had more or less kidnapped for the duration of the journey to Roosevelt Hospital was long gone by the time he went back out. Probably he had gone straight to the nearest cop to report what happened, with fresh blood stains all over his back seat to prove it.
The hell with him, Charley thought coldly. Polyurethane doesn’t stain.
Worse, he realized that he must have left Walker’s service revolver in the guy’s car, because he sure didn’t have it on him anymore. He pushed it out of his mind. It did not matter. What mattered was putting an end to the whole bloody circus he’d gotten himself into. He cradled his swollen right hook with his left hand. The still, frigid air squeezed it right where the knuckle had shattered. Charley did not need a doctor to tell him from a boxer’s break—where his left hand made a right angle at the little finger, the right just sloped off now, the majority of the knuckle distributed throughout the rest of the hand. It hurt badly, but he was just going to have to suck it up. There was too much to do to worry about a little thing like a fractured knuckle.
And too little time to do it. Walker was far from out of the picture. Charley had incapacitated him, but only for the time needed to get away. By now he was probably on the mend, maybe being tended to by some police doctor or already cruising around the island in search of his prey.
Charley bristled. He should have known better than to trust a cop. All the films would have a bona fide Yankee like Charley convinced that it was the Deep South where you had to really steer clear of the local constabulary, Macon County Line style. But the truth of it was that you could not trust anybody, anyplace, any time; particularly when that somebody could be bought and paid for, like a cop. He ground his teeth together. If he got the chance, he figured it would be worth it to annihilate his surviving pinky knuckle on that bastard’s face.
His anger was fierce. Before all of this, before Eve and Ursula and Walker and the sticky hot blood all over the floor of the Harris balcony, it took a lot to even frustrate Charley. Now he raged. He’d seen a great deal of blood spilled these last couple of weeks, and now he felt like spilling a little of his own.