All things considered, later, Babe thought he reacted rather well. He didn’t panic, didn’t scream or run. Instead he just dove across the room toward his desk, ripped the bottom drawer open, and then the gun was in his hand, and as he stood he cocked it, and as he cocked it he aimed and moved dead at the window.
Obviously, there was no one there.
It had just been a creak, old buildings did that, this one more than most, and the rest had been his imagination. Babe stood still, the weapon in his hands, and he didn’t feel stupid and he didn’t feel proud.
He felt frightened.
He remembered the precise moment the fear entered him: It was when he grabbed the gun. Because that was reality, and reality was a brother murdered and maybe him standing somewhere in that same line.
Babe began to sweat.
Jesus, he wanted air. He started toward the window, stopped. That wasn’t air outside. It was just floating dirt. And besides, it was very dark by the fire escape, a killer could hide by the fire escape.
Perspiration was pouring off him now. His tongue felt dry and what would have really tasted good would have been an egg cream, cool and relaxing—stomach-settling too. Probably the old egg-cream guy on the corner would be closed now, but maybe not, maybe on hot nights he stayed open as long as business stayed good. But even if he was shut, it would be better than staying alone, panic building, pointing a pistol at sounds. So, carefully concealing his weapon deep in his windbreaker pocket, Babe took out his wallet and key and left his room.
Heart, goddammit, pounding.
Cagney wouldn’t have even thought twice, Bogie would have gone unarmed after the egg cream, and here he was, panicked as he crept down the reasonably well lit stairs in what he knew was a fruitless quest for a mixture of chocolate and cold milk and club soda.
Babe moved at a slow pace down toward the main floor. Every half dozen or so steps, he brought himself to a sudden stop and whirled around, watching and listening, making good and damn sure no one could sneak up behind him.
He continued down, continued his eccentric halts and spins, his right hand deep in his windbreaker pocket, glued to the gun.
God, the swings of fear, Babe thought.
Just a few moments before, joy at adventure.
No more.
He reached the landing of his brownstone, hesitated, peering through the doors toward the street, trying to spot the police.
He saw nobody.
Carefully, heart still pounding, ready to fire, he stepped outside into the night. It was Indian Summer gone berserk; no wind, nothing to help it along.
“Hey, Melendez,” one of the stoop kids said, “it’s the creep.”
“Hey, creep, past your bedtime,” Babe heard, and he turned, fighting the temptation to point his pistol in his windbreaker pocket, because he knew it was the stoop gang. There were four of them drinking beer and smoking on their steps. A couple of girls, one pretty. Probably marijuana in the vicinity.
The one who mentioned his bedtime, their leader, evidently Melendez, sat bare-chested and jeaned in the awesome heat. “Hey, creepy, ain’tcha scared you might catch cold with just that little jacket,” he called to Babe. “Wanna borrow my parka awhile?” The others laughed.
That Melendez is cleverer than I am, Babe thought. He dwelled on that awhile, because it took his mind off the stupidity of his situation, looking for an egg cream after one in the morning with a pistol cocked and ready in his pocket. A sixteen-year-old delinquent shouldn’t be able to outwit me, Babe decided. He did his best to sound unruffled, casual: “Where’s the nearest egg-cream place, I wonder?”
“You mean the nearest open egg-cream place, don’tcha?” Melendez replied. “You can probably break into the one down around the corner if you’re really desperate—that’s how most of the other egg-cream addicts handle things.” The gang hooted again.
Humiliated, Babe backed inside. What a wipeout—totaled by a Spanish Milton Berle. Babe bolted back up the stairs, ran to his room, unlocked it, stepped carefully inside, locked it behind him securely. Then, gun clear of pocket, he checked the window to see that it was still locked, the bath room to see that it was still empty. He jerked open the closet door, made sure no one was hiding behind his sport coats, quickly, foolishness growing, dropped to one knee, making certain no one was scrunched up under his bed. After that he crossed the room, dialed the Carlyle, asked for 2101, and before the second ring there came Janeway’s voice, urgent and loud: “What?”
Babe felt embarrassed. “It’s just me.”
“Yes, Tom, what? Go on.”
“Nothing. Nothing crucial or anything.”
“Tom—you called me, remember? You must have had something on your mind.”
“I just ... I was about to take a bath and hit the sack, and I wanted you to know everything was fine.”
“Lie.”
Babe could almost see the quick blue eyes boring in at him. “After you left, I was terrifically excited, but that didn’t last—I got scared, Mr. Janeway, and I wanted to talk, that’s all. To anybody. You qualify ...” Babe waited, but there was only silence from the other end. “That was supposed to be a joke,” Babe said.
“Are you still frightened?”
“No, I would never have called until I had control and everything, I wouldn’t want to come out a jerk.”
“Lie.”
“I’m a lot better. I don’t want you to think I’m walking around here giggling to myself, but I’m definitely on the road to recovery. True.”
“Do you want me to come over?”
“No sir.”
“Do you want me to come get you and bring you back over here?”
“No, really.”
“I’m not offering charity, you understand.”
“I do, yes sir, but if you came here, they’d know I wasn’t alone, and if I came there, they’d know my place was empty. Let’s just leave things like they are, it’s best.”
“They probably won’t move tonight anyway—they don’t even know that Scylla’s gone—if they went back to where they got him, they’d find he wasn’t there. They’ll have to check around to see, and that takes time. You wouldn’t be ruining anything if you came here, and I’ll be honest, I don’t like the way you’re sounding.”
“Maybe that’s because I’m a little bothered on account of the real reason I called was to tell you there isn’t any surveillance outside, Mr. Janeway. The police never showed.”
Silence from Janeway.
“I checked very carefully; I’m really right.”
“You went outside,” Janeway said, and Babe could hear his anger building. “The one thing I said don’t do, you did.”
“Only for a second, in and out, like that.”
“Levy?”
“Yes sir?”
“You’re not supposed to be able to see surveillance. I’ve got four men from Division on the first shuttle down in the morning. Do you think when they take over, they’re going to wear sweatshirts saying, ‘Do not disturb, I’m on surveillance’?”
“You don’t have to humor me, I just had some information I thought you ought to know.”
“I’m not humoring you, if I had you here I’d kick your ass across the Carlyle. When I left tonight, there was a cop there. He wasn’t in uniform but he was there, with nice long hair and pretending to be stoned.” He paused a moment. “I don’t like the way you’re acting or sounding. Give me a few hours’ rack time, I’ll be there by six. Set your alarm for a quarter of, because when I get there, if coffee isn’t ready, your life will really be in danger.”
“Thank you, Mr. Janeway.”
“De nada. I was a friend of your brother’s.”
They hung up, and then, at last, Babe started to undress, taking the bloody clothes from his thin body. He went to the bathroom, turned on both spigots till the water stopped being rusty, drained the tub, turned the spigots back on again. He continued undressing, pondering whether or not to take his gun in with him w
hile he bathed. He was so jumpy, he’d probably shoot his thing off reaching for the soap. “Rhodes Scholar Emasculates Self in Tub,” the Daily News might headline “Thought He Heard Meanies.”
Babe shoved the weapon into its proper place in his bottom desk drawer, went back in, turned off the water, then padded out again for something to read. He did a lot of his best work in the tub; you couldn’t beat warm water when it came to ruminating, going over notes, or rereading history books. But which to study now? He looked around his place; it was starkly lit, with just four cheap unshaded lamps set in strategic places, one by his bed, two flanking his desk, one by his reading chair in the corner.
He decided on Cowles’s 1913, because even though she was not a noted historian, she had selected an interesting year worldwide, because there were points and minutiae you had to comprehend fully before you could really grasp not just the war that followed, but the twenties that followed the war. He grabbed a pair of clean pajamas and entered the bathroom.
What about locking the door?
Babe put the pajamas over the towel rack and pondered. He could begin to feel his heart again. Why should he lock it? He never had before, and he wasn’t about to be stampeded into it now. Shut it, sure; that was okay, even though in the past he had not made it a blind habit. Still, nothing wrong with shutting it, it didn’t mean you were chicken.
He started to get in the tub, testing it with his big toe; it was too hot. He spun the “cold” spigot, but it made too much noise, he thought suddenly, because what better time to sneak in than behind the curtain of water thundering down? Thundering? His crummy trickle of a cold-water spigot and he was calling it “thundering”? Babe waited foolishly by the filling tub for the temperature to make itself bearable, and when it did he got in, expertly flicked off the “cold” spigot with his big toe again, and began thumbing through the book. Then he took the book, closed it, held it between his hands, shut his eyes.
That was his way, often, of finalizing facts. He would almost command a book to obey him. Once he had read it carefully and gone back through it again, he would hold it tightly and then by force of will order the facts to file into his brain. The summer in London had been hot. Deaths from the heat wave. Carpentier knocked out Bomber Wells in mere seconds, a Frenchman annihilating an Englishman. The suffragettes were building, and one of them threw herself under the king’s horse at the Derby and was killed for her gesture. The tango was the dance sensation. Babe paused a moment, because even though he didn’t dance, he was quite sure there was something basic in the enterprise, that somewhere there was a paper in it, minor, to be sure, but worthwhile, comparing an era’s chosen dances with its morals, perhaps not its politics, but certainly its lust for sex and blood and—
—and click.
Jesus Christ what was that? Babe lay frozen, except for his eyes, and they would not stop blinking, because he had heard it, had heard it!—heard what?—what the hell was that sound, that click—it came from outside, from his empty room, so what could it be?
Nothing, he told himself. Just like all the other sounds tonight have been nothing. It was a creak from an old rotting cripple of a building, and that’s all!
Except it didn’t sound like that. It was different, it sounded sort of like a lamp being clicked off. No, not “sort of”; it sounded exactly like a lamp being clicked off.
Babe leaned out of the tub, trying to get a glimpse under the door to see if the room beyond seemed darker, but he couldn’t tell a damn thing. So what, he was big enough to handle himself, especially when there was nothing to take care of.
Nothing.
Now, he had four lamps out there, so if there were four sounds like that, four clicks, then you might have a situation on your hands. But you don’t, so forget it.
Back to 1913.
Germany was having a bitch of a time getting their Zeppelins to work right. Benz was already a thriving car company, and the Krupps were already richer than anybody, all this even before things started heating up, before munitions became an A-number-one priority or—
—or click.
Babe half dove out of the tub, locked the bathroom door. In doing so, he created a small wave and considerable splashing, so it was hard to hear for a bit, but once he was back in the water, things quieted, and he shut his eyes, trying desperately to listen.
No sound.
Two of his four lamps could have been clicked off, or it could have been two creaks. He remained very still, and even though he was undeniably concerned, he was also more than a little pleased with the fact that his panic was not growing. Better, his mind was functioning, logic was his, and logic said that if there were people outside turning off lights, they wouldn’t stop with two or three, they’d need total darkness, which meant don’t sweat it till you’ve heard the big fourth, and if that happened, well then—
—then click.
1913, Babe commanded, the book clenched all he had in his thin hands. Russia. He shut his eyes tight. Russia. The Sleeping Giant. Nicholas was still running things, but Rasputin was coming up fast on the outside, his hold on Alexandra stronger by the month, each time he cured another of her son’s hemophilia fights while the doctors stood around helpless. Lenin was humping the cause of restlessness when and where he could, making headway. And in America? Money. M-o-n-e-y, thazzall. The Vanderbilts gave a little soiree with not just Franz Lehar himself doing the orchestra conducting, and not just Kreisler and Elman sawing away on their fiddles; no, for the capper they had Caruso entertaining the guests with his tenoring. How about that? The world sliding down the tubes, and over here you just didn’t count unless you could have old Enrico himself belting his lungs out for the entertainment pleasure of you and your four hundred intimates. Amazing. How could we have been so out of things? Is it any wonder that it all exploded, that finally—
—finally click.
Babe was ready for it. He just calmly put the book down and said to himself, There will be a fifth click. And if there is, that means all the clicks weren’t clicks at all, they were creaks, and my four lights still burn, and all is well with the union.
There will be a fifth click, he repeated.
I have complete confidence that the fifth click will come, because logic dictates that it will, and if you’ve put your life in logic’s hands, you don’t say “So long” at the first sign of a little uncertainty.
His position was simple: All he had to do was just wait around for the fifth click and, when it came, go back to hitting the books.
And if it didn’t come?
Still simple. Just wait inside, locked safe and sound, because they built buildings solid when they built his pit, so let them try and break the door, what they’d get for their troubles would be shoulder separations, and screw, what they got they deserved.
Unless they were giants. Giants could splinter the door in pretty quick. Maybe they hired a specialist, a door cruncher, and if they had a guy like that, he’d be in for a few sweaty moments.
“Help,” Babe said, experimentally at first, because he had never called that word before, not and really meant it; oh, as a kid sure, everybody called for help all the time, but then it meant “Make this bee quit chasing me,” not SAVE ME SAVE MY LIFE!—
—click.
Babe lay back in the tub and thanked God that the walls were thick, and so he didn’t have to get out, humiliated and dripping, to explain to some unknown neighbor that there must have been some mistake, he hadn’t been the one that yelled for help, why would he go and do a thing like that? No, Babe decided, that would make the neighbor angry, and the neighbor had, after all, done a good deed, so what he would do is say, “Oh, you heard that yell for help too, so did I, it came from outside in the street, maybe those stoop kids are mugging somebody, wait just a sec till I get dressed and we’ll go investigate.” That would be a good, reasonable thing to say to a neighbor in the middle of the night, except, of course, since the fifth click, it didn’t matter all that much now—
&nbs
p; —now scratch.
Babe held his breath. That was what the fifth sound had been, not a click but something that sounded like it, a scratch, and here it was coming again—
—again scratch.
Scratch.
Someone was taking off the hinges of his bathroom door.
“Help!” Babe hollered, but not loud enough, so he did it again. “Help!” and he was really working into it now, his lungs loosening up fine, but just before he was about to really start to scream it out, he heard something that scared him. Worse than anything.
Rock music was blasting from his room now, blaring out, his radio turned up full, covering even the loudest cry.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Babe got the hell out of the tub and stared around for something to attack with. They were coming in to get him, and son of a bitch, why did he use an electric razor? His father had used a straight razor, and Babe had loved to watch him with it, scraping the whiskers, and if only he’d copied H.V. that way too, then he’d have a straight razor clenched and ready so that when they came in he’d just calmly swipe the shit out of them, and when they were helpless he’d call the cops and wouldn’t that be something—
No it wouldn’t—quit this now—because you don’t have a straight razor.
But he did have the gun.
The problem was getting to it. Babe stood in a corner of the room, naked, desperately trying to figure what the hell to do, but all he could come up with was to get dressed. It would be too humiliating if they roared in and he was naked—you couldn’t fight your best if you didn’t have any clothes on, that was just giving them too much of your vulnerability to aim at—so he quickly got dressed, pajama tops and bottoms, the bottoms tied tight, the top buttoned all the way up.
There, Babe thought. That’s a lot better.
Better? Better, you asshole, they’re coming to get you and you’re feeling like a big deal ’cause you’ve got pajamas on? think of something!
And he did.
“Save me,” Babe shouted. “Save me, help, hellllp,” and they turned the rock music on even louder, which he figured they would, and that was fine with him, because they had to know he was helpless and cringing and ready to fold the way he was calling out “Hellllp for Chrissakes, somebody save me” and that was what he wanted them to think, because as long as they thought that, the last thing they’d expect is that he’d attack them, unlock the door and yank it full open and dive into the darkness, falling toward his desk, and once he got his hands on the gun he’d fire the fucker, he wouldn’t aim it, just fire it, because once they knew he was armed it was all his, every ad point worked his way, because they’d be in a room with an armed man, armed and deadly and ready to kill. “Save me,” Babe screamed, creeping toward the door. “Help please Jesus!” he hollered, his fingers edging toward the lock. “Omigod won’t somebody please do something,” he shrieked, and when he had both hands ready, one on the, knob, one on the lock, he let go one final begging “Pleeeeeeeease!” and then he unlocked the door and threw it open and was all set for his dive and roll toward the desk.
The Novels of William Goldman Page 108