by Ed McBain
"Yes, here we go, Miranda. I'm not sending up a man you can use as a shield to get out of that apartment."
"What kind of a louse do you think I am?"
"Do I have to answer that one?" Byrnes said, and again the crowd chuckled. This was beginning to get good. None of that grim stuff any more. Just a plain old battle of wits, like a good television routine.
"All right, cop, what do you want from me?"
"Number one: we're sending up an unarmed man who insists he wants to see you alone as a representative of God. I want you to respect that, Miranda." God forgive me, Byrnes thought.
"All right, all right."
"Number two: I want you to talk to him. About coming out of there. I don't know why you want to see him, and I don't care. But I want your promise that you'll talk to him about coming out."
"Is that all?"
"Do I have your promise?"
"What makes you think I'll keep any promise I make?"
"This is a man of God, Miranda."
"Okay, okay, I promise."
"Did you hear him, Father?" Byrnes asked Carella.
"I heard him," Carella answered.
"You can enter the building any time you like."
Carella nodded, sucked in another deep breath, walked directly to the front stoop of the tenement, and entered the hallway.
Byrnes put down the megaphone, looked at his watch, and then told Captain Frick he wanted four of the best marksmen he could find. Then he began praying.
16
If you're God, you've got all these little things to take care of, you see. Oh, not the business of getting the sun to rise on time, or the stars to come out. And not riding herd on the seasons so that they arrive when they're supposed to, not things like that. Those are the big things, and the big things almost take care of themselves. It's those damn little things that get so bothersome. And if you're God, you can't just ignore them, you know. You can, of course, move in mysterious ways your wonders to perform. This means that you can leave a few loose ends here and there and nobody will question them because you are, after all, God. Maybe you've got a bigger design in mind which will not become apparent to us poor slobs until maybe decades from now. Or centuries. So who are we to question? Being God, you are perfectly entitled to occasional sloppiness.
Or maybe these things aren't even in your control, who knows? Maybe you just sort of set the universe every day, the way somebody sets a clock, and then let it run on its own, fast or slow, however it wants to, without touching it again until it's run down and needs another winding. Maybe that's the way you operate, and nobody's going to question that either, God, you can bet your life on that, God.
Only sometimes, no offense meant, you ought to work a thing out and not just let it happen, you know? Like take that Puerto Rican girl and that sailor, take them for example. Now, being God, you could fix them up real fine, couldn't you? Like, for example, Zip and Cooch could find her, you see, and Zip is dragging her down the street towards Alfie's pad when wham! who should appear? The sailor! How's that, huh? He didn't go off with the whore Marge, you see. He only started to, but then he changed his mind. And here he is back on the street, face to face with China. He looks at her, and she looks at him, and their eyes lock, and slowly they walk across that street to each other, and tolerance and understanding flash in the sailor's eyes, I love you, China, coupled with a little bit of honest lust, I love you, Jeff, wham they clinch, and we fade out on Zip who shrugs his shoulders and says, "Oh well, what the hell, easy come, easy go."
How's that, God?"
That's great.
But that isn't the way it happened.
The street was impossible. The crowd was anxious for the kill now, anxious for the die to be cast either way. They didn't much give a damn at this moment whether or not Miranda would kill the priest and the police lieutenant and the commissioner and the mayor and the governor and even the president. They didn't care whether or not a cop on one of the rooftops would fire a lucky shot and catch Miranda splank between the eyeballs. They only wanted it to be over and done with, either way. And so the crowd was restless, and a little mean, and hot, and uncomfortable. It was a crowd which was beginning to resent this tie game which had run into fourteen innings. The tenth inning had been a treat and the eleventh a distinct bonus and the twelfth a lovely dividend, but the thirteenth brought on thoughts of other things to be done. Watching a game was great fun but life was real and life was earnest, and life was going on outside that ball park.
So the crowd resisted the shoving of Zip and Cooch, and occasionally the crowd shoved back at the two boys and cursed a bit, and did everything possible to make the task of locating China unimaginably difficult.
In fifteen minutes' time, Zip and Cooch gave up the search.
It was just as well that they had, because China wasn't in the neighborhood any longer. China had gone over to the park where she had sat by the lake and watched the people in the rowboats. That's where China was. She cried a little, yes. In the park, by the lake, watching the rowboats.
The sailor? Did he wander back to the street? Did he amble over to the park?
The sailor went to bed with a prostitute named Marge. Marge was a practiced whore, and she pleased the sailor immensely. The sailor paid her fifteen dollars, which was nearly every cent he had. Then he walked to the subway, got on a train, went downtown to where his ship was docked, started up the gangway, saluted the ensign on the fantail, saluted the officer of the deck, went to the rear compartment, took off his whites, put on a pair of dungarees and a chambray shirt, climbed into his sack, and went to sleep until the loud-speaker amidships announced, "Chow down." He ate a good dinner, saw a movie on the boat deck that evening, went to bed about eleven o'clock, and sailed for San Diego the next morning. He never saw the Puerto Rican girl named China again in his life. He probably went back to Fletcher, Colorado, eventually. Maybe she flashed into his mind every now and then like once every twelve years. Maybe he remembered her dimly and wondered what had become of her. Maybe, married to Corrine and running an insurance business, he sporadically thought of China in an idealized way, the most beautiful girl in the world, exotic, that day in a strange city, far away, I wonder what became of her, I wonder.
She sat in the park and wept a bit and watched the rowboats.
You are God, and you can do it any way you want to. You can even get them married the next day before his ship sails. Anything you want to do. All the possibilities are there. And you're God, and there isn't anyone who's going to slap your wrist, no matter how you do it.
But God, man, that is the way it happened.
Steve Carella knocked on the door. There were bullet holes in the door, and Carella remembered that Pepe Miranda had shot a patrolman through that door, and he suddenly wanted his .38 in his hand.
Now, easy, he told himself. Now just take'it easy, and don't panic. We are going to play this Miranda's way because there are a lot of people out there on the street, and we don't want them to be getting shot. So be cool. Your hand is shaking, and you are itching to pull that .38 so that you'll have something more than a set of prayer beads in your fist when that door opens, but be cool, Steve-o, be cool and...
The door opened.
A .45 automatic was the first thing Carella saw. The door opened just a crack, and there was the .45, its big ugly snout pointing into the hallway. Carella's mouth felt very dry.
"I'm ... Father Donovan," he said to the automatic.
The door opened wider. Carella's eyes panned up from the .45, the hand holding it, the thin wrist, the black hair curling on the arm, the narrow shoulders, the sweat-stained undershirt, the sudden puff of black hair in the hollow of the throat, the wings of the man's collarbones, his thin neck, and high cheekbones, brown eyes, puffed lids, a balding head, and desperation. Add a man up, add the parts, form a total picture, and the total is desperation. It was there in Miranda's eyes and in his mouth and even in the way he held the .45, his head tilted
to one side, his shoulder sort of leaning into the gun, the gun close to his body as if it were something he cherished, a tie to reality.
"Come in a minute," Miranda said.
Carella stepped into the apartment. The place was a shambles. The furniture, the floors, everything in the room bore the ravaging marks of gunfire. It was inconceivable to think that a human being had been in this bullet-pocked room and managed to escape getting shot.
"Looks like they dropped an atom bomb in here, don't it?" Miranda said.
"Yes," Carella answered.
"You're not scared, are you? They won't shoot with you in here, it's all right."
Carella nodded. He was not scared. It was only ... he felt odd all at once. He did not feel like a cop. Miranda was not treating him as if he were a cop. Miranda was behaving as if he were truly a priest, a person he could talk to, relax with. He wanted to say, "I'm not what you think, Miranda! Don't show yourself to me!" but the words would not come.
"Boy, this has been murder," Miranda said. "Look, I didn't ask you up here to confess to you or nothing. I think we ought to get that straight."
"Then why did you ask me to come up?"
"Well..." Miranda shrugged. He seemed like a young kid in that moment, a young kid who is about to tell a priest that he took off a girl's underpants on the roof. Carella kept staring at him. Miranda held the .45 in his hand loosely, expecting no trouble from this man he thought was a priest, embarrassed because he was about to reveal something, dishonorable to him. "I'll put it to you straight, Father," he said. "I got to get out of this apartment."
"Yes?"
"So ... so you're going to take me out."
"I am?"
Miranda nodded. "I know that's pretty crumby. But I got
to get out of here."-"Where do you go from here, Pepe?"
"I don't know." Miranda shook his head. "You know, Father, you reach the point where ... where there ain't many places left to go." He laughed nervously. "Where..." He laughed again. "I don't know. I don't know where I'll go once I get out of here."
"There're a lot of cops out there, Pepe."
"Yeah, I know." He sighed. "Man, this kind of stuff ... I hate this kind of Public Enemy Number One stuff, you dig? I just hate it. Oh man, it's like ... like something is expected of me, you know what I mean? I've got to be the bad guy. I don't know if it makes any sense to you, Father."
"I'm not sure it does," Carella answered, puzzled.
"Well, like ... like there are sides. I'm the bad guy." He shrugged. "I've always been the bad guy. Ever since I was a kid. So I'm still the bad guy. They expect me to be the bad guy. The people, I mean. It's like ... I don't know if I can explain this. It's like sometimes I don't know who is the real Pepe Miranda, and who is the guy I ... the pictures of the guy, you follow? The various pictures of the guy."
"I don't know what you mean," Carella said.
"The pictures," Miranda repeated. "Like the cops have a picture of me." He chuckled. "It's got a number right across the face of it." He chuckled again. "And the people in the street got another picture of me. And the kids got a picture. And you got a picture. But they're all different pictures, and none of them are really me, Pepe Miranda."
"Then who is?" Carella asked.
"I don't know."
"You've killed people, Pepe."
"Yeah." He paused. "I know." He shrugged, but it was not a shrug of indifference, not a shrug which said, "So I killed r people, so what?" If it had been that, Carella would have instantly felt like a cop again. But it was not that. It was simply a shrug which said, "I know I've killed people, but I don't know why," and so Carella still felt like a man who had come up here to talk to Miranda, not to harm him.
"Well, anyway," Miranda said, "I've got to get out of here."
"Because the people in the street expect it?" Carella asked.
"No. No, I don't think that's..."
"Then why?"
"Well..." Miranda sighed heavily. "I ain't got a chance, Father," he said simply.
"Then give up."
"Why? Go to jail? Maybe the electric chair if that woman dies? Don't you see? I got nothing to lose."
He recognized in an instant that Miranda was absolutely right. Moreover, if Carella were in his position, in this apartment, surrounded by policemen, facing either a lifelong jail sentence or death in the electric chair, he would undoubtedly react in exactly the way that Miranda was reacting. He would try to get out of that apartment by fair means or foul. He would try to escape.
"Well..." he said, and he fell silent.
The two men faced each other.
"You see what I mean, Father?"
"Well..."
Miranda shrugged. The apartment was silent.
"So ... so I got to use you as a shield, Father. They won't shoot if I come out with you in front of me."
"Suppose they refuse to recognize ..."
"Oh, they won't. They won't try nothing. I'll tell them I'll shoot you if they try anything."
"And if they should try something? Will you shoot me, Pepe?"
Pepe Miranda frowned.
"Will you, Pepe?"
After a long while he said, "I got to get out of this apartment, Father. I got to get out of here!"
There were two patrolmen on either side of the stoop. Captain Frick had chosen them from his ranks, had chosen four of his best shots, and then they had gone to Lieutenant Byrnes for their instructions. Their instructions were simple. Shoot to kill.
And so they waited on either side of the doorway now, four marksmen with their pistols drawn, waiting for something to happen.
From the first-floor windows of the tenement, Miranda's voice came.
"Lieutenant!"
"Yes?"
"This is Miranda! I've got the priest. I'm coming out."
"What do you mean, Miranda? You're giving up?"
"Giving up, my ass! The priest is coming out with me. If you've got any cops in the hallway, you'd better get them out now. You hear me?"
"It's gonna work," Parker whispered to Byrnes.
"There are no policemen in the hallway, Miranda."
"There better not be. I want a clear path when I come out. This priest is staying with me all the way. Anybody so much as looks cockeyed at me, the priest gets it."
"I thought you made a promise, Miranda."
"Don't make me laugh! I'm coming out."
Byrnes put down the megaphone and quickly drew his revolver. He turned slightly, so that his body hid the revolver which hung in his hand alongside his right thigh. Parker drew his gun, too, and then looked around for a good spot from which to fire. Behind the squad car? No, no. There! There was a place! The packing crate over there. He pushed his way through the crowd and climbed onto the crate. He checked the chambers of his .38, wiped his upper lip, and then faced the doorway. The street was very silent now. Upstairs, inside the building, they could hear a door slamming.
"Any cops in the hallway?" Miranda shouted. "Any cops here?"
There was no answer. Standing, watching the doorway, watching the patrolmen flanking the stoop, Byrnes thought, All he has to do is turn his head. He'll see the patrolmen, and he'll put a bullet in Steve's back. That's all he has to do. Patiently, Byrnes held his breath.
"I got the priest," Miranda shouted from the hallway. "Don't try nothing, you hear?"
The crowd had turned toward the doorway to the building. They could see nothing beyond the door. The hallway was dark, and the bright sunshine did not reach beyond the flat top step of the stoop.
"Clear a path!" Miranda shouted. "Clear a path, or I'll shoot into the crowd! I don't care who gets hurt!"
The crowd could see a pair of figures in the hallway now, dimly. The priest was almost invisible because of his black cassock, but Miranda could be seen fairly clearly, a short thin man in a white undershirt. They hesitated in the vestibule, and Miranda peered past Carella's shoulder and into the street.
Zip pushed his way through the crowd with
Cooch. The street was terribly silent, and he wanted to know why. What the hell was happening? He was angry because they'd been unable to locate China, angry because he wanted this Alfredo Gomez thing to end now, angry because things seemed to be going wrong, and he wanted them to go right. But, in spite of his anger, he was curious. The silence intrigued him. He pushed up to the barricade just as Carella and Miranda came onto the front stoop.
Miranda's eyes flicked the street. He was partially covered by the priest, so that a shot from across the street could not be risked. That left only...
And Miranda turned to look to the left of the stoop.
Carella was ready. He'd been waiting for the movement ever since they'd left the apartment. He'd been wondering where he would look if he were Miranda, and he'd realized that nobody could shoot from the other side of the street, and so any trap would have to be set on this side of the street, any shots would have to come from behind.
So Carella knew that Miranda knew, and he'd been waiting for the sideward movement of Miranda's head because he had further reasoned that Miranda would begin shooting the second he saw the cops on either side of the stoop.
Zip saw the cops the same moment Miranda did. It was too late to shout a warning.
Carella felt Miranda's head and eyes flickering to the left.
Go! he told himself.
He went.
No one said a word. Miranda turned toward Carella in the same instant that Carella threw himself headlong down the flight of steps.
And then the shooting started.
17
"Pepe!" Zip yelled. "Pepe!" But he was too late.
The crossfire was true crossfire. Miranda whirled to the left, and the bullets suddenly smashed into him from the right side of the stoop, spinning him around. He slammed into the railing and fired a shot at the patrolman who seemed closest to him, and then suddenly there were shots on his left, and he realized he was caught in a deadly crossfire, and he ran off the stoop toward where Carella lay sprawled at the foot of the steps. Byrnes began firing from the other side of the street, and Parker began firing from the crate, and then it seemed that every cop on that block had been waiting for just this moment because the street suddenly reverberated with ear-shattering sound as the bullets caromed into the gutter.