by Ed McBain
‘Eight.’
‘What?’
‘It’s only eight.’
‘Terrific. Eight guys dragging a woman into the bushes...’
‘They’re working the subways.’
‘Better yet. You’ll end up on the fucking tracks with another scar on your...’
He stopped all at once. “I’m sorry,’ he said.
She was silent for a long time.
Then she said, ‘That’s the point, isn’t it? I’m afraid I’ll get hurt again.’
‘You don’t have to prove anything,’ he said.
‘I’ll call Jordan,’ she said, sighing. ‘I’ll tell him I’ve thought it over, and...’
‘No.’
‘Bert...’
‘Why, damn it!’ he said, and took her in his arms. Eileen,’ he said, ‘I love you. If anything ever happened to you...’
‘Who told you to start up with a cop?’ she said.
‘You did the right thing. I’d have turned it down, too.’
‘You wouldn’t have.’
‘I would’ve’
They were both silent.
‘I love you, too,’ she said.
He held her close.
‘I don’t want anything to happen to either of us,’ she said. ‘Ever.’
‘Nothing will happen to us,’ he said. ‘Ever.’
‘But I’m going to call Jordan...’
‘Eileen, please...’
‘... tell him I want a bigger backup team. All over the platform. Men and women. Wall to wall cover.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I want to.’
‘You don’t want to.’
‘I don’t want to, right. But I have to,’ she said. ‘Or I never will again.’
She looked at the clock.
‘You’re going to be late,’ she said.
‘Will you be all right?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Go. Come back soon.’
He kissed her gently and went to the door.
‘Be careful,’ she said.
The clock on the dresser read a quarter to eight.
* * * *
In the park across the street from the station house the Deaf Man watched them trickling in. Big men, most of them. You could almost always tell a detective by his size. All of them bundled up against the cold. A very cold night. Well, they’d be warm enough soon enough.
He looked at his watch.
Ten minutes to eight.
In exactly twenty-five minutes ... Armageddon.
He began pacing again.
The snow blew furiously around him.
He hoped none of them would be late.
* * * *
By five minutes to eight on the squadroom clock, all but three of the invited detectives had arrived. Since none of the detectives knew who had been invited, none of them knew who was missing. But since they knew that anyone there had been invited, they felt free to talk about the party.
‘What’s it for?’ Brown asked. ‘You got any idea?’
‘Did you bring a present?’ Genero asked.
‘No,’ Hawes said. ‘Were we supposed to bring presents?’
‘Anybody know what it’s for? Brown said.
‘It said eight o’clock, didn’t it?’ Delgado asked. ‘The invitation?’
A man in the detention cage said, ‘What the hell is this?’ He had been arrested by Parker not ten minutes earlier. ‘I’m locked up in a fuckin’ cage here, like a fuckin’ animal here, and you guys are havin’ a party?’
‘Shut up,’ Parker said.
‘Where’s my lawyer?’ the man said.
‘On the way,’ Parker said. ‘Shut up.’
Even the four detectives who had the duty were all dressed up. Suits and ties, polished shoes. Parker was upset that he’d got blood on his shirt while arresting the man in the detention cage. The man in the detention cage had slit his wife’s throat with a straight razor.
‘My wife’s dead, and you guys are havin’ a party,’ he said.
‘You’re the one killed her,’ Parker said.
‘Never mind who killed her, is it right to have a party when a woman is dead? Anyway, I didn’t kill her.’
‘No, that razor just jumped off the sink all by itself,’ Parker said.
‘That wasn’t even my razor.’
‘Save it for when your lawyer gets here,’ Parker said. ‘You got blood all over my fuckin’ shirt.’
He walked to the sink near the supply closet, tore a paper towel loose, opened the cold water faucet, and began dabbing at the blood stains.
Inside the box in the supply closet the timer moved into the 8:00-to-8:15 sector.
Carella was just walking into the squadroom.
Genero noticed at once that he was carrying a present.
‘Where’s Harriet?’ Carella asked.
* * * *
In the park across the way the Deaf Man looked at his watch again. He had just seen Carella going into the station house. Carella, he knew. Carella, he recognized. In exactly fourteen minutes, though, Carella—and all the others—would be unrecognizable. The moment...
There!
Another one.
Blond and hatless, his head ducked against the flying snow.
The Deaf Man smiled.
Alfred Hitchcock, a director whose work the Deaf Man admired greatly —except for The Birds, that silly exercise in science fiction—had once described for an interviewer the difference between shock and suspense. The Master had used a parable to explain.
There is a boardroom meeting. Twenty men are sitting around a table, discussing high finance. The audience doesn’t know that a bomb has been planted in the room. The chairman of the board is in mid-sentence when the bomb goes off.
That is shock.
The same boardroom meeting. The same twenty men sitting around a table, discussing high finance. But this time the audience knows there is a bomb in that room, and they know that it is set to go off—as an example—at 8:15 p.m. The men keep discussing high finance. The camera keeps cutting away to the clock as it throws minutes into the room.
8:08.
8:12.
8:14.
That is suspense.
The detectives in the squadroom across the street did not know that a timer was programmed to set off an explosion and a subsequent fire at 8:15 sharp. They were in for one hell of a shock.
The Deaf Man, however—in this instance, the audience—did know, and the suspense for him was almost unbearable.
He looked at his watch again.
8:03.
It was taking forever.
* * * *
The confusion started the moment Lieutenant Byrnes walked in.
‘Where’s Teddy?’ he said.
‘Where’s the sandwiches?’ Delgado said.
‘Where’s Harriet?’ Carella said.
The detectives all looked at each other.
‘You jerks got the wrong night,’ the man in the detention cage said.
Brown looked at the clock.
8:05.
The invitation had specified eight o’clock.
‘Where’s my lawyer?’ the man in the detention cage said.
All Genero knew was that Carella had brought a present.
He began moving at once toward the supply closet.
* * * *
Nine minutes, the Deaf Man thought.
He had specifically asked them to arrive at eight because he wanted to be sure they were all assembled by eight-fifteen.
Another man was entering the police station across the street.
The Deaf Man had lost count.
Were all twelve pigs already present and accounted for?
Waiting for the big barbecue?
Which by his watch should happen in eight minutes now.
* * * *
‘I’m Harry Lefkowitz,’ the man at the slatted rail divider said. ‘Is that my client I see in the cage there?’
‘If your client
is Roger Jackson, then that’s your client,’ Parker said.
Lefkowitz came into the squadroom. Genero was opening the door to the supply closet. The clock on the wall read 8:08.
‘I hope you read him his rights,’ Lefkowitz said, and went to the cage.
‘They’re havin’ a fuckin’ party up here,’ Jackson said. ‘My wife’s dead, and they’re havin’...’
‘Shut up,’ Lefkowitz said.
In the supply closet Genero pulled the chain hanging from the naked light bulb. For a moment he forgot where he’d put the lieutenant’s present. Oh, yeah, the box there against the back wall, under the lowest shelf.
‘Okay, Steve,’ Byrnes said, ‘what’s this all about?’
‘Me?’ Carella said.
‘Teddy’s invitation said...’
‘Teddy’s?’
‘Harriet’s,’ Brown said.
‘What?’ Byrnes said.
Genero knelt down and reached for the present. The wrapped pajamas fell off the top of the wooden box and behind it. ‘Shit,’ Genero said under his breath and then quickly looked over his shoulder to check if the lieutenant had heard him using profanity in the squadroom.
“What’s the story, Loot?’ Willis said.
‘Where’s the sandwiches?’ Delgado said.
‘What’s going on here?’ Byrnes said.
Genero lifted the wooden box by its handle, planning to move it aside so he could get at the lieutenant’s present. Something was snagging. The box wouldn’t move more than six inches from the wall. He gave a tug. He gave another tug, stronger this time, almost falling over backward when the short cord attached to the box pulled out of the wall socket behind it. Flailing for balance, he banged his elbow against one of the shelves on his right. ‘Shit!’ he yelled, and lost his grip on the box’s handle. The box fell on his foot—the same foot he’d shot himself in a long time ago.
‘Ow!’ he yelled.
The detectives all turned at the sound of his voice.
‘Damn it!’ Genero yelled, and kicked at the box, hurting his foot again. ‘Ow!’ he yelled again.
Carella came to the supply closet.
He looked at the box.
‘What’ve you got there?’ he asked.
Genero had just become a hero.
* * * *
Nothing happened at eight-fifteen.
The Deaf Man looked at his watch again.
Nothing happened at eight sixteen.
And nothing happened at eight twenty.
By eight thirty-five the Deaf Man began to suspect that nothing would happen.
By eight-forty, when the Bomb Squad truck pulled in across the street, he was certain nothing would happen.
The Bomb Squad team rushed into the building.
The Deaf Man kept watching.
* * * *
They found the cartons of incendiaries in forty seconds flat.
That was after the detectives showed them the open wooden box with the timer and the dynamite inside it. It was Carella who’d unlatched the box. But it was Genero, the hero, who’d found it and yanked it out of the wall socket.
‘Lucky thing you pulled this loose when you did,’ one of the Bomb Squad detectives said to Genero.
‘I try to keep my eyes open,’ Genero said.
‘You guys woulda been cinders,’ the second Bomb Squad detective said. ‘I never seen so many different kinds of incendiaries in one place in my entire life. Look at all this shit, willya? A dozen fire bottles, six cakes of paraffin sawdust, a whole box full of flake aluminium thermite, eight bottles of mineral oil, five bottles of kerosene—you ever see anything like this, Lou?’
‘This timer here was set for eight-fifteen,’ the second detective said to Genero. ‘You unplugged it just in time. Very nice little timer here.’
‘I recognized it right off,’ Genero said. ‘Who gets to keep it?’
‘What?’ Byrnes said.
‘I found it, do I get to keep it?’
‘What?’ Willis said.
‘It might work like a VCR,’ Genero said. ‘To tape television shows.’
‘This city has endangered the safety and well-being of my client,’ Lefkowitz said.
Kling was thinking maybe something could happen to him or Eileen. Maybe it wouldn’t be forever.
Hawes was thinking Annie had come within an ace of wearing the black silk panties. To his funeral.
Carella was thinking that maybe the Deaf Man had played it fair after all. On the first day of Christmas he’d announced his intentions clearly and unequivocally; they’d be hearing from him on the eleven days to follow. On the second to the sixth days he’d sent them all that police paraphernalia to let them know he was planning something for cops. On the seventh day the wanted flyers arrived, a segue from the uniformed force to the plainclothes cops in that the posters could be found in a muster room as well as in a squadroom. On the eighth day he’d let them know he was dead serious, but he’d also told them he was moving into the Eight-Seven itself; the armory was right there on First and Saint Sebastian. On the ninth day he’d started zeroing in. Those nine cars were 87th Precinct cars, no question about it. And on the tenth and eleventh days he’d let them know he was coming into the squadroom itself—ten D.D. forms, which only detectives used, and eleven Colt Detective Specials, a detective’s pistol of choice. The twelve roast pigs—by Carella’s count, there were twelve detectives in the squadroom right this minute, and they’d just come pretty damn close to being incinerated. He never wanted to come this close again.
‘There’s a bottle of scotch in the bottom drawer of my desk,’ Byrnes said. ‘Go get it, Genero.’ He turned to Carella. ‘Also, I bought you a pair of cuff links.’
‘I bought you a shirt,’ Carella said.
‘I bought you a pair of pajamas, Pete,’ Genero said, and hurried into the lieutenant’s office.
‘What’d he call me?’ Byrnes asked.
‘Do you men plan to drink alcohol in this squadroom?’ Lefkowitz asked.
* * * *
The Bomb Squad detectives came out of the station house at a few minutes before nine.
The Deaf Man watched them as they drove off.
Oddly he was neither angry nor sad.
As he walked way into the falling snow, his only thought was Next time.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 0fbf629e-168c-4b41-95b6-217ebd1115ea
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 10.10.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.22, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
Document authors :
Ed McBain
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