The Drill Is Death

by FRANCES

  Cutler had had false teeth, both upper and lower. There were no teeth in the skull which the police uncovered to the Suffolk sunshine.

  But, most unfortunately, the false teeth which the dentist who made them might have identified, were not to be found. This was merely stated; Shapiro could imagine that the statement was made reluctantly and that the effort to find the missing teeth had been intensive. False teeth do not walk away. Men do not remove false teeth, and throw them away, when on the point of being murdered. Nor do—at least Shapiro so supposed—murderers extract the false teeth of their victims, keeping them as interesting mementoes, filing them among their souvenirs.

  “Interesting it should turn up just now,” Shapiro said.

  “The worst storm they’d had in years,” Stein said. “Nobody arranged the storm.”

  “Rings and watches can be put where they’ll do the most good,” Shapiro said, and Stein nodded his head. “It’s a funny thing about the teeth,” Nathan Shapiro said.

  Stein agreed that it was a very funny thing about the teeth.

  He waited for Shapiro to go on, but Shapiro apparently had finished. He was looking, with an expression of utmost gloom, at the ceiling, which had cracks in it; which needed painting.

  Stein recognized the expression on Shapiro’s face. Nate Shapiro was thinking. He always looked most sad when deepest in thought.

  Actually, Shapiro was groping. He searched through his mind for something he felt he had lost there—sifted things seen and heard through his mind’s fingers, as one may soft sand or soil for something dropped. Nathan Shapiro felt uneasily that what he had lost in his mind was something of potential value. Like, for example, an ignition key dropped on a sandy beach.

  After a time, Shapiro got up and walked to the office’s small window—a window which needed washing—and looked through it. Fog and rain again; a miserable evening again. His tour of duty was over, and past over. He ought to go home and walk the dog. No use in Rose’s having to go out on a night like this.

  “Why not knock it off for the day, Nate?” Lieutenant Stein said. “May be brighter tomorrow.”

  “I doubt it,” Nathan Shapiro told the window, told the rain and fog outside the window. “But—”

  At which moment the telephone on Stein’s desk rang loudly.

  At the foot of the sandstone steps which led up to the front door of the house he lived in, Reg Grant hesitated. He looked up and down the short block of East Twenty-first Street, seeking a familiar car. Cars were parked on both sides of the block. One of them was a saloon which might be the gray one. He had no way of being sure. All American cars looked pretty much alike. He had no idea what the other car—the one which carried the “guvner” and Bennie—looked like. He was not even sure that the two men, with accents so divergent while being both of England, were coming here.

  I’m not, Reg thought, sure of anything—not sure that they are bringing the girl here. “His” place might be anybody’s place. If they’re coming here—in two cars, one of scouts, the other of—of killers—they ought to be here by now.

  But not even that was certain. They had left first; Bennie and the “guvner” by some minutes. Reg had not seen the gray car after it pulled out of the garage; if he had seen the other he would not have recognized it. They knew the town, and he had, he was certain, wasted time groping through unfamiliar streets in Riverdale before he found the parkway. They, presumably, hadn’t. But after that—

  The little black Porsche was all a little black Porsche ought to be, and had had a chance to prove it—a chance under hands which knew their business. Whatever the speed regulations were on the Henry Hudson Parkway, on the elevated highway down to Nineteenth Street, they lay in tatters behind the speeding, dodging, little Porsche. The horns of other cars, cut in on, run around, snarled in rage after the little Porsche; brakes squealed behind the little Porsche. (Nobody had needed to brake like that. What did they want in clearance? Feet?)

  Under normal conditions—when he didn’t want them; didn’t need them—there’d have been a swarm of coppers, Reg thought, darting down the narrow ramp to Nineteenth Street, jumping a light for a left turn. Their sirens would have torn holes in the night.

  He had gone crosstown very fast indeed, and still no policeman stayed. He had found a parking place in Twentieth Street without too much delay. He might be ahead of them.

  Far enough ahead to find a telephone, call the police for help? (The police who ought to have stopped him long ago, listened to him, cleared a way for him with their sirens.) There was no way of telling that.

  Get up to his flat. If they were ahead, do what he could about it. If they were not, telephone from there. That was the drill, not to stand at the foot of sandstone steps, wasting time in thought. He went fast up the steps; inside, more slowly, as quietly as he could manage, up the stairs to the floor he lived on.

  He was quiet, too, along the corridor to his own door. A day it had been for creeping down passageways, hugging walls for silence. He listened outside the door—listened for what seemed a long time; felt, as he listened, exposed in the stair hall of the house he lived in. A man in flight, apprehensive.

  He heard nothing behind the door. That did not mean nobody was behind the door. All of them might be there, waiting with a variety of weapons.

  He put his key in the lock and turned, and the slight sound of metal on metal made a din in his ears. He opened the door. He had never noticed before that the door opened noisily. He waited a moment, listening again, before he slid into the darkness of his flat.

  Darkness. Did that mean he was ahead of them? Or that he had guessed wrong and they had gone—taken the girl—to some other place? Or—that they preferred to wait their prey in darkness?

  He closed the door behind him and heard the lock click home. For a moment the inclination to make doubly sure was almost irresistible—to snap in the chain which would stop the door from opening more than a few inches. Lock the world out; lock danger out.

  And—lock the girl out; close a trap against entry. That would be more than a bad show. That would be no show at all. He reached for a light switch, flicked it up and waited, tight inside himself, again feeling himself exposed. And nothing happened.

  It took, then, only seconds to find that he was alone in the apartment, that if it had been a race, he had won the race. The front room, the living room with windows above the street, was empty; so was the slightly smaller bedroom in the rear. That was the apartment, except for the corridor between the rooms on which the front door opened, from which there opened a bath and, next it, a small kitchen. Bath and kitchen empty, too.

  The telephone was in the hallway, on a little shelf. How did one call for the police when one needed the police? Needed to talk to authority, tell authority he ran no longer; that “Missing Poet” was theirs for the picking up, and that a girl—a girl with deeply red hair, with the bluest of blue eyes—needed help. In London—

  He wasn’t in London. Ask—no time to get the directory out of a closet and look it up. Ask. He spun the dial from “O.” It seemed as if a long time passed. Then a voice said, “Operator.”

  “I want the police,” Reginald Grant said.

  The operator said, “One moment, please.” There was no surprise in her voice. Outside this inexplicable maelstrom in which he and a red-haired girl were caught the world proceeded calmly, without excitement. One called the police to report—what? Some minor inconvenience. He waited.

  “Police headquarters. Sergeant Grogan.”

  “Grant here,” Reg said.

  Sergeant Grogan, catching at Headquarters, said, “Yes sir?”

  There was only politeness in his voice; only patience.

  For an instant, Reginald Grant had, as in recent hours he had so often had, an overwhelming sense that reality had left the world; that he lived, lonely, in a nightmare. He pushed that away; steadied his mind.

  “Reginald Grant,” he said, and his voice was as patient as the sergeant’s. “Y
ou’re looking for me in con—”

  “Reginald Grant?” Grogan said. “Yes, Mr. Grant?”

  The sergeant’s voice had a different sound. The sergeant had it now. It didn’t seem to excite him, but he had it.

  “Right,” Reg Grant said. “That Grant. Send somebody. I need—”

  He stopped. He heard footsteps outside the door beside the telephone. The footsteps stopped outside the door.

  “My place,” Reg said. “They—” There was no time for that. He heard a key rasp into the lock. He could reach the light switch. He flicked off the light.

  “Flat,” Reg said. “My—”

  The key turned in the lock. Reg put the receiver in its cradle, and turned as he heard the door begin to open. Too late to run either way in the hall, toward living room or bedroom. Just time to get across the hall into the nearest of the small rooms opening off it.

  The nearest room was the tiny kitchen. Reg closed the kitchen door behind him as the front door opened. He hoped he was in time. He would find out soon enough.

  Probably one more of the same, Sergeant Francis Grogan thought. A city full of crackpots. Already, since he came on, he—he alone—had caught five squeals on Grant. Three who had seen him, and if all of them had he was a flea to end all fleas. A woman who had said that she was Mrs. Reginald Grant, and that her husband was home in bed. “That’s fine, ma’am,” Grogan had said to that. And now this one. Said to send somebody. A city of crackpots, most of them telephoning the police. However—

  Grogan passed it along, through channels. A notation of time. “Man claiming to be Reginald Grant says is at flat.”

  It went, by telephone, to precinct.

  XIV

  From this hideaway, he could see nothing, could only use his ears. He thought from the sound that only two men came into the flat—two men and, from the click of the heels on the hall’s uncarpeted floor, the girl. Then he heard the snap of the light switch and there was a thin edge of light under the kitchen door.

  “Goddamn it, no,” a voice said, harshly, and the voice was Hunter’s. The light went off, simultaneously with another click. “Back room,” Hunter said. “And get the shades down.” There was the sound of a man moving through the hall, toward the rear. “No you don’t!” Hunter said. “Naughty, naughty.” And the girl said, “Oh!” and it was a sound of pain. Reg reached for the knob of the kitchen door. Then the telephone rang. The sound, even through the door, seemed very loud.

  The bell rang twice and, midway through the third ringing, was cut off. Reg thought that Hunter, who must have been standing within reach of the instrument, had been of two minds. His “Hello?” was very low. Then he said, “Wait a minute,” and, in a slightly louder voice, to the man in the other room, “Come here and get her, will you?” There was the sound of movement in the other room and then a gasp from the girl, the sound of her heels clicking with strange uncertainty on the floor.

  Hunter laughed shortly. He said, “Good catch, Gilky.”

  It sounded as if the girl—the slim, graceful girl—had been pushed, almost hurled, the short length of the hallway from one man to the other. I ought to have broken his neck when I had his neck. I—

  “All right, Bennie. Spill it.”

  There was no sound then for some seconds—no sound in Reg’s ears but his own breathing. Then he heard the feet of the man who listened outside move on the floor. Then Hunter said, “What does he say he looked like?” and listened again and said, “Sure it was. The crazy little bastard. Still thinks he’s a hot shot.”

  It wasn’t hard to put it together, listening behind a door. Bennie had found Slasher. Which was a bad break. There seemed to be nothing but bad breaks.

  “All right,” Hunter said. “Walk. Or do you want his nibs to send a car around? And get out of circulation and stay out until I give you a buzz. You think the two of you are bright enough to manage that?”

  Hunter listened again and said, “You’d better,” and Reg heard the receiver go back, angrily, into its cradle. Hunter swore then and Reg waited for him to go back to the other room. But he did not hear Hunter move. Instead, the light switch clicked again and, in the same instant, Hunter’s feet were hard on the board flooring, the door against which Reg stood, hand on knob, came violently open against him.

  Hunter had a gun this time. He had it ready. There was no use jumping a gun pointed a yard from your chest.

  “Well,” Hunter said, “we’ve got sonny boy. Haven’t we, sonny boy?”

  Reg Grant didn’t say anything. They had sonny boy.

  “Banged you up some, didn’t he?” Hunter said, looking over the gun at Reg Grant. Then Hunter smiled. The smile was one of satisfaction. “You know,” he said, “that’s going to fit in good. Real good, Mr. Grant. Marked you up before you finished her, didn’t she? Come on.”

  He stepped back from the door, holding the revolver ready. He did not let Reg get close enough to grab at the gun. He gestured with the gun. Reg went the way the gun told him, to the rear room.

  One lamp was lighted in the room. The shades were drawn. A big man—heavy featured, heavy bodied—stood in front of a chair.

  The girl was in the chair. She looked as if she had been thrown there. Her suit jacket was pulled from one shoulder and, there, her blouse had been tom away and scratches showed red on the white skin of shoulder and upper breast. But she was looking up at the man who stood over her and Reg thought there was rage in her blue eyes, not fear.

  Her gaze turned to Reg Grant, as he walked into the room, with the revolver almost touching his back. He saw her breasts lift with a suddenly indrawn breath. She raised her hands a little, as if in defense.

  “Brought you a visitor,” Hunter said. “Came along to make it easy for us, he did. Walked right into it, like I figured when Bennie—” He paused a moment. “Knocked the Slasher cockeyed, sonny boy did,” he said. “Quite a boy, ain’t he, Gilky?”

  The big man Reg had never seen before—how many of them were there, for God’s sake?—turned to look at Reg. He looked him up and down. Then he looked at Hunter. “The Slasher ain’t what he used to be,” the big man said, and turned back to look down again at the girl. Peggy Larkin pulled the torn blouse, the jacket, over her shoulder. But the defiance returned to her eyes. A crouched red kitten, beset by dogs.

  “Seems sort of a waste,” the big man—the man called Gilky—said. He had a rough voice. He looked like being a rough man. Be hard to stay away from, if it came to that. It would have to come to something. But—not yet.

  They didn’t know, Reg didn’t see how they could know, that the police would be on their way. Had to be on their way. Stall until the police came. If he could. If, together, they could. He thought, hard, in words, “Stall for time, Peggy Larkin. Stall. Stall. Stall.” There was nothing to it; he had never thought there was anything to it. Force words into her mind? Make her hear unspoken words? Not a chance.

  She did look at him. He could not read what was in her eyes.

  “May as well get on with it, if we’re going to,” the big man said. “Seems a—”

  “You said that,” Hunter said. “You got the other gun?”

  The big man said, “Yeah.” He took something out of his pocket. It was the shape of a revolver—a small revolver. It was wrapped in a cloth which looked oily.

  “They’ll want to find out where he kept it,” Hunter said. “That’s the way they are.” He looked around the room. Looked enough away from them to make it worth the chance? Muscles tightened in Reg Grant’s long body.

  “You in a hurry for it, mister?” the big man said. Reg wasn’t in a hurry for it.

  The girl said, “What do you mean? What are you going to do to—to him?”

  She got no answer. She looked again up at Reg, and her eyes told him she needed no answer. Yet, still, there was not really fear in her eyes—anger and, with it, bewilderment. Maybe she didn’t get it. God knew it was hard to get—hard to believe.

  “There,” Hunter said. “That�
��ll do.”

  The gun pointed toward a table by the bed—a table with a drawer in it. Reg kept—I used to keep, he thought—cigarettes in it, and pencils and a wad of paper to write on if, when sleep delayed, words asked to be put on paper.

  The big man went over to the little table and opened the drawer. He put the wrapped gun in it, but did not close the drawer. He moved the wrapped gun back and forth on the bottom of the drawer. Faintly, there was the smell of oil in the room.

  “O.K.,” Hunter said. “That does it.”

  Gilky took the gun out of the drawer and put it back in his pocket, still in the oily cloth. His pocket would smell of oil. The drawer would smell of oil.

  “You got a gun permit?” Hunter said, and waggled his gun at Reg.

  Why tell them anything? Why give them any help? The gun seemed to tap the air, impatiently.

  “No”

  Hunter nodded. He seemed satisfied, even pleased.

  “Whoever you are,” the girl said, and her voice—her clear voice, her young voice—was strangely steady, “I’ve done nothing to you. If you let me go—”

  Hunter shook his head slowly, almost abstractedly. It was as if the girl’s words were impertinent, an interruption of thought.

  “What are you going to do to us?” she said. “What—why?” The steadiness broke on the last word. She moved as if to get up from the chair.

  Not yet, Reg thought to her. Not yet! He tried to force the caution from his mind into hers. Not that it would work.

  Stall yourself, then, Reg told himself. Make a little pile of seconds. Hide behind the little pile.

  “Who,” he said, “is going to be shot, Hunter? Or—both of us?”

  Again the gun in Hunter’s hand moved with a kind of impatience. Can’t you see I’m thinking? the gesture said. Can’t you see I’m planning it out?

  Tell him the police were coming? Better not. If he believed, he’d hurry things. Let him think he had all the time there was.