by Howard Fast
They were almost out on the center of the meadow now, and still the great field was empty, empty and glowing with the lovely April twilight. Some kids were on the Mall, about a hundred and fifty yards away, and Gonzalez could hear their thin, excited, reedy voices.
“This is enough,” he said to her, “right here. Now we’ll do as we did before back at the Mall. We’ll stand almost back to back, not quite, but in that way we can watch a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle by very slight movements of our heads. You will watch half the circle, I will watch the other half. He’ll come.”
“You’re so sure?” she asked him.
“No, I’m not sure. That’s a guess too. But if I guess right, he’ll come in the next ten minutes, and we must know when he comes and from what direction and act accordingly.”
“Why can’t he just walk out here to us and kill us?” Sally asked Gonzalez.
“Why can’t he?” Gonzalez agreed. “Do you know, Sally, when Joe Louis, the fighter, was fighting one of his big fights, the manager of the man he was fighting came into his dressing room before the fight and, because Joe Louis was a colored man and because that was before the big Civil Rights movement began, he talked down to Joe Louis and he told Joe Louis what his boy was going to do to Joe Louis in the ring. I don’t remember all the details of the story, but he told Joe Louis how his boy was going to hit him in the belly and cut him up around the eyes and do what he wanted to do to his nose and ears. Joe Louis listened to all this very calmly, very quietly, and then, when the other boxer’s manager had finished, Louis said, ‘Mister, while your boy is doing all that, what do you suppose I’m going to be doing?’”
“What does that mean?” Sally asked him with some irritation.
“Think about it. We’re in a remarkable spot here. Maybe we’re in the best spot in New York City for the trouble you are in. I told you before that I carry a Colt thirty-eight and I’m good with it. Our killer carries a thirty-two-caliber pistol. Maybe he’s good with it too, but right now all the odds are that he’s not as good with his thirty-two as I am with my thirty-eight. He’s tight. I don’t mean that he’s drunk; I mean that his nerves are tight, they’re pulled hard. He’s in a spin of compulsion, and he is going to keep on killing and he must keep on killing. That’s why I’m gambling that he’ll come at us. He’ll come at us and at a certain range the fight will begin. Now listen, Sally, just listen to me carefully. All you know about pistol fighting is what you’ve seen in the films or on television. I want you to put it aside, because everything you’ve seen is a lie and an impossibility. In the old days in the old West men were killed in two ways—either the gunman or the murderer went right up on top of the victim, jammed the gun into the victim’s ribs, and pulled the trigger. Or else the shooting was done at long range by frontier marshals and gunmen who had steady nerves and a steady hand and who took their time and aimed carefully. Many a frontier marshal, Sally, lived to tell the tale because he waited at long range until an excited gunman had emptied his guns. And then the marshal took his long shot carefully, unhurriedly, and usually hit his mark. That is exactly what I am going to do tonight if our killer shows. He’s going to come up on us and, when he is in firing range, I’m going to cut him down.”
“Meanwhile he’ll be shooting at us, won’t he?” Sally asked.
“He will, and he will not hit us if you don’t panic.”
“There he is,” Sally whispered. “Oh my God—Frank, there he is!”
Gonzalez turned. The gunman was coming from the northeast. When they had been sitting on the Mall, his observation point must have been on Mt. Rumsey, which was not a mountain at all, but a rock hill on the other side of the mall. Now he was coming down from the northeast, across the Sheep Meadow, with long strides, almost at a half run. He was the same man—black trousers, gray sports coat, blond hair. The long blond hair blew in the evening breeze. His blue eyes were dark spots in his face now.
“Stand behind me,” Gonzalez said to her calmly and quietly. “Obey. Don’t question anything I say.”
He faced the appoaching gunman and Sally took her place behind him. Gonzalez continued, “Sally, we will live or we will die to some extent depending on how well you obey me and how well you resist any inclination to panic. You will have such inclination, but no matter what happens, even if I am hit, you are not to move unless I tell you to move. If by some chance I am killed, run! Kick off your shoes and run as fast as you can. But so long as I am standing on my own two legs, you stay here behind me and obey me.”
“I will do as you say,” she answered simply. “Please, Frank, don’t worry. I will do as you say.”
“All right,” he said. “You are strong. I admire you for your strength. Two of us, together now.”
The killer was coming nearer. He ran a few steps and then he stopped. He faced them at a distance of a hundred and twenty yards. He walked toward them unhurriedly, evenly, short steps now, steps that became slower and slower. At a hundred yards he paused and stared at them.
“Why don’t you draw your gun?” Sally whispered to Gonzalez.
“Time for that. Plenty of time for that. Meanwhile he doesn’t know whether I have a gun. Let him think about it. It will give him something to think about and maybe shake him a little.”
The killer came on, step after step. Gonzalez counted his steps. Twenty-two steps. He paused again. About eighty yards, eighty-two yards, Gonzalez guessed. The killer paused there and observed them. He reached inside his jacket, across his breast, and drew his gun from a shoulder holster. It was an automatic pistol. He stood there now with the pistol hanging loosely at his side. Already the far edges of the Sheep Meadow were blurring into twilight, and as the light lessened, more and more details of the killer vanished. When they first saw him, he had a sort of blurred prep-school boy’s face. He had no face now—only a dark circle under his long blond hair.
He began to walk toward them again, and now Gonzalez reached under his jacket and drew his service revolver. He took it off safety. The killer was about seventy yards away now. At that distance he halted and raised his gun, and Gonzalez shouted at him, “Throw it away, you lousy little punk! Throw it away, you stinking, cowardly son of a bitch!”
He had fired against Gonzalez’ yell. Sally steeled herself, fought the desire to sceam out her own panic, to run, to fling herself flat on the ground and dig into the ground with her bare hands. She buried herself in the ground now in her thoughts.
The gunman fired again—twice. Two shots? She wondered. Or had she simply heard the reverberation of the first shot? No, there were two shots. Gonzalez was quiet now. Where had the two shots gone? How could a man shoot at them twice, his bullets taking absolutely no effect? People shot at you and you died. This was a killer, a professional killer.
“Easy,” Gonzalez said. “He can’t hit us at this range. Easy. He’s nervous and taut and his hand is shaking—see? Those bullets were wide. My guess is he never could hit anything at long range. He’s a close-in killer. He’s no gunman. He’s a cheap, dirty, contract murderer.”
The killer fired again. Gonzalez raised his voice and shouted, “You’re a lousy shot and you don’t have the guts to walk in here and kill. You’re a fraud! You’re a dirty little punk! Killer? I’ve seen better killers than you on the Metro back lot, you lousy son of a bitch! You stinking scum!”
The killer reached into his pocket. He was reloading his gun. Sally whispered to Gonzalez, her voice quivering, “I didn’t know you were ever in California.”
“I wasn’t.”
“He’s coming!” Sally cried.
The killer had begun to walk toward them again. He took half a dozen steps and Gonzalez’ voice lashed out at him, “That’s enough!”
The killer raised his pistol. Almost in precise time with his motion Gonzalez raised his own revolver.
Standing behind Gonzalez, Sally Dillman watched him. She was amazed at the steadiness of his hand. He shifted his body slightly, so that his left side was tow
ard her, his right side toward the killer, his arm extended at full length from his body. As he sighted down his weapon, the killer fired again. The bullet pinged into the earth, and Sally saw dirt fly about ten feet wide of them.
Apparently Gonzalez had been right, and for the first time she actually comprehended the game Gonzalez was playing. It made her blood run cold to realize how coldly and deliberately he had staked their lives against the killer’s nerves.
Then Gonzalez fired for the first time. He had taken his aim carefully, and as he squeezed the trigger she could not see the slightest movement of his hand. The Colt .38 roared and the killer went back as if slapped by an invisible hand, staggered, fought for his feet, managed to remain on his feet.
“You hit him!”
The killer crossed his right hand, his gun hand still holding the gun, over to his left shoulder, rubbed the flesh of his left arm between shoulder and elbow. “I think I hit him,” Gonzalez said. “I think I hit him in the arm. Not a bad wound, but it may stop him.”
The killer backed away. He raised his gun again, more to cover himself than to shoot, and he was moving backward and away from them.
Gonzalez’ gun arm lifted again, and again he waited, sighted, and fired. He missed this time. The range must have been about six or seven yards longer, the light less, and he missed. As he fired a third time, the killer broke into a run, ran about thirty paces, and then turned to face them. From that distance the killer fired wildly four times.
By now Sally was conditioned to this. The four shots had no effect upon her nerves. She felt invulnerable there behind Gonzalez, yet it seemed incredible to her that she could be standing like this in the heart of New York City, in the center of the Central Park Sheep Meadow, watching an antique gun battle between a Puerto Rican detective and a professional killer.
Still less light now. Gonzalez fired again. Once, twice, three times. The killer was moving away. With Gonzalez’ third shot the killer was just a darker shadow in the world of shadows that were closing in upon the meadow.
Suddenly the killer turned and ran—twenty, thirty, forty paces—ran to the edge of the Mall, where he stopped again. He was a dark blur at the edge of the Mall. As they watched him, he became less and less distinct, finally blending into the night that was falling over the park.
“Can we get out of here now?” Sally asked weakly.
“No, now we stay where we are,” Gonzalez told her. “We stay where we are until it gets really dark, decently dark, too dark for him to see us. I loused it up. I could have killed him after I hit him. I didn’t. I waited. I’m a rotten killer.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s in the shadow there. He can still see us. We’ll wait a few minutes more and then he won’t be able to see us.”
“What then?” Sally asked him.
“Then we get out of here. Maybe he’ll expect us to go toward him—to move east. He’ll lay there and he’ll wait if he’s thinking that way.”
The lights went on along the Mall as Gonzalez spoke, two strings of lights along the footpath and the decorative lights over against the bandstand. Not a soul was in sight.
“You know,” Gonzalez said to her, “any other night of the year—any other night of my life—there’d be a couple of cops there on the Mall and there’d be a prowl car coming down here. There’d be a cop who had heard the shots and he’d come racing across the field to us. There would have to be. No way in the world for it not to be. But you have to pick the worst night and the worst cop on the force.”
“You’re very funny,” Sally Dillman said to him. She began to laugh.
“You know what’s happening to you,” Gonzalez said to her.
“You mean I’m getting hysterical?”
“That’s right.”
“No.” She laughed. “No. You are very funny, Frank. I don’t think I’m getting hysterical at all. It’s just so funny. It really is funny. If you could have heard yourself standing there and screaming at him—”
“Let’s get out of here now,” Gonzalez said shortly. “He’s waiting for us over there somewhere.”
“He’s bleeding, Frank.”
“It doesn’t matter with him whether he’s bleeding or whether he’s dying. I don’t think I hit him anywhere that’s going to kill him. But wherever I hit him, he’s like an animal now. He has to move and he has to kill. He’ll wait for us. He’ll do it the easy way because he thinks we’ll go back to the Mall.”
“Suppose he comes back?”
“Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. I don’t know. But we’re moving. Maybe he’ll come back here to look for us. I don’t know what he’ll do now. I don’t know what’s in that head of his that passes for a mind. I don’t know what’s in his soul—if he has a soul …”
As he spoke, Gonzalez led Sally quickly toward the west side of the meadow. It was quite dark now, so dark that Sally could barely see the ground under her feet. But Gonzalez moved with precision, as if every wrinkle of the meadow were engraved on his mind. To an extent it was. He had good visual memory, and when he looked at a thing he made mental notes. He held Sally’s arm and he led her across the meadow almost without stopping, straight over to the West Drive. Not until they had crossed over the West Drive did he put the gun back in his holster.
They walked along the road and then he led her across the bridle path to the Tavern, but it was pre-season and the Tavern was dark. Gonzalez led her out of the park across Central Park West and down Sixty-eighth Street.
“I want to get away from the park now, and I want a phone,” he told her.
“I am so tired,” Sally said, “I can hardly walk. I was all right until now. Oh, my goodness, Frank, I think I’m going to faint.”
“You are not going to faint,” Gonzalez said firmly. “Fainting went out of the picture fifty years ago. Just get a grip on yourself. We’re coming to the end of this passage.”
“What end? Where is he? Frank, why couldn’t we have followed him? I am so frightened.”
“Because he’s a snake, and you don’t follow a rattlesnake by going to wherever he’s holed up and going in there with a bare hand.”
“Frank, I must sit down,” she pleaded. “Please!”
They were on Sixty-eighth Street, and from an open doorway there came the sound of music. Gonzalez glanced up and saw a sign which read: DELPHI SCHOOL OF MUSIC.
He led her inside. There was a small outer lobby, empty now, an arched doorway, and in front of them—part of it visible—a tiny auditorium. The auditorium was full of the gush of sound. Gonzalez led her through the arch.
About one hundred and fifty people were seated in the auditorium. At one end of the place on a small and makeshift stage an opera was being performed. The accompanist sat at a grand piano across the hall from the entrance. The audience, seated on folding chairs, was deeply concerned with and intent upon the music.
Gonzalez led Sally into the place, down one wall, and he found two empty chairs where they were able to seat themselves.
“Thank you,” Sally said to him. “In fact, I don’t know how to thank you. I really was going to faint.”
“It’s just fatigue.”
“Well, maybe it’s that and maybe it’s more than that. I felt that I had come to the end of it.”
“You’re all right now,” Gonzalez said. “Just relax. Spend the next few minutes here, and you’ll get your breath back, and I’ll find a telephone. You’re all right.”
A teen-age girl came down the aisle with her finger to her lips. She gave them each a program. Out of habit Sally opened hers and stared at it. On the stage an overly histrionic man with a large mustache and Edwardian clothes was castigating a woman and she was defending herself against the accusation. According to Sally’s program, the opera was titled The Secret of Suzanna, and it was subtitled “An Interlude in One Act.” Sally, whose knowledge of opera was limited to an occasional Saturday afternoon of listening to opera on radio, had never heard of The Secret of Suzanna. According
to her program, the music was by E. Wolf-Ferrari and the libretto by E. Golisciani. The Edwardian gentleman in the mustache was evidently Italian and his name was Count Gil. The woman he was castigating was the Countess Suzanna—obviously his wife.
“I think you’ll be all right here,” Gonzalez whispered to her. “I must get in touch with Rothschild, and I must find out how badly he was wounded. Can you sit right here? There must be a telephone in the building and I’ll find it. Will you do that?”
Sally nodded. The thought of lifting her body out of the chair and going elsewhere was more than she could envision at this moment.
“I’ll stay right here,” she said.
“Fine. Don’t worry.”
“This is a good place. I like music anyway.”
People were turning to look at them disapprovingly, and from here and there came sibilant hushes. Gonzalez slipped out of his seat and left the little auditorium. The Countess Suzanna went into a high-pitched disclaimer, and on the program Sally read an account of the secret behind The Secret of Suzanna. According to her program, in the first years of the twentieth century the women of Northern Italy were hardly emancipated. As far as Sally knew, they were still not quite emancipated today. The program went on to point out that Count Gil fell in love with Suzanna and married her. The booming voice of Count Gil filled the hall at this moment. He boomed, gestured, and thrust his right hand accusingly at Suzanna.
Sally discovered from the program that Count Gil had no vices, that he did not smoke or drink or gamble. Not even women occupied any place among his lack of desires or his desires—Sally could not quite make up her mind which. His love was reserved for Suzanna, but the way he was letting go at Suzanna right now made Sally wonder just how fortunate the recipient of his love was. Since the program evidently forbore to reveal the surprise ending, Sally was unable to penetrate the plot and find out exactly what Suzanna had done to be so accused.
She never did find out, for as she sat there, staring dreamily at the stage, Count Gil made his exit. Suzanna dropped into a chair and was silent for just a moment, and in that moment a man entered the concert hall, went to the front, and climbed onto the stage through the right wing. This wing was separated from the rest of the hall by a makeshift curtain. The man thrust the curtain aside and walked through onto the stage. He took two steps toward stage center and then stood on the stage facing the audience.