Til Death

by Ed McBain

  “You saw him?”

  “Yep. Walked right up the street.”

  “Thanks,” Meyer said gratefully. “That’s swell. Thanks a lot.”

  “You can go to hell yourself, young man,” the man with the ear trumpet said. “I was only trying to be helpful.”

  Night was falling. The sky was a multicolored bowl, light blue to the west where the sun had dropped below the horizon, a deeper blue above that, the blue of a sailor’s eyes, and above that a blue that was almost black, drenched with stars, the velvet, diamond-sprinkled sheath of a sexy blonde in an all-night bistro.

  “We’re close to the Carella house, aren’t we?” O’Brien asked.

  “Charles Avenue is the next block,” Meyer said.

  “Think we’re getting close?”

  “Maybe. I’m getting tired, that’s for sure.”

  “There’s another customer,” O’Brien said. “Shall we ask him?”

  “We’ve asked everybody else so far. Why begin discriminating at this point?”

  The new customer was an eight-year-old boy. He sat on the curb with a penknife. He kept throwing the penknife into the air and watching it land, handle first, into the patch of earth in front of him. It did not seem to occur to him that a slight shift of the knife would have allowed it to enter the earth blade first. The boy seemed quite content to simply throw it into the air and have it land with a sickening thud. Over and over again, he repeated the impotent act. Meyer and O’Brien watched him for a while.

  “Hello, little fellow,” Meyer said at last.

  The boy looked up. His face was dirt-smeared in the fading light.

  “Drop dead,” he said.

  Meyer laughed feebly. “Now, now, little fellow,” he said, “we only want to ask you a question.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  Meyer phrased the question carefully. “Did you see a man with a trombone case walk by here?”

  The boy pierced him with stiletto eyes. “Drop dead,” he said. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  “Trying to get the knife to stick into the ground?” O’Brien asked pleasantly.

  “Don’t be a jerk,” the boy said. “Anybody can do that. I got a caterpillar here in this hole.”

  “A caterpillar?” O’Brien said.

  “Sure. I’m trying to see how many times I can clobber him before he dies. I clobbered him thirty-four times already, and he’s still moving.”

  “Have you tried stepping on him?” Meyer said.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” the boy asked.

  “About this man with the trombone case, did you happen to see him go by?”

  “Sure,” the boy said. He picked up the knife and dropped the stubby handle onto the caterpillar’s back. “Thirty-five,” he said.

  “Where did he go?”

  “Probably up to the wedding on the next block.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Thirty-six,” the boy said as he dropped the knife again. “I think he’s getting weak.”

  “What makes you think the man went to the wedding?” Meyer said.

  “Because he probably cut through the back yard. Either that, or he went into the house.”

  “What house?”

  “He was heading that way, anyway. He stopped on the sidewalk and turned in right there,” the boy said. “Thirty-seven. So he either cut across the back yard to play at the wedding, or else he went inside. What else could he of done? Thirty-eight. I can count all the way to a hundred.”

  “Which house?” Meyer said.

  “Birnbaum’s,” the boy answered. “The third house on your right.” He looked down into the hole. “I think I got the bastard,” he said. “Wow, look at all that gook come out of him.”

  Meyer and O’Brien did not pause to look at the gook. Hastily, they started up the street toward the Birnbaum house. In the distance, they could hear the beginning of a faint rumbling sound—like faraway thunder.

  “Can you see him?”

  Him, him, him, him, him…

  “Yes. I’ve got him in the sights.”

  Sights, sights, sights, sights, sights…

  Don’t miss this time, I won’t, take careful aim, I will, they’re starting the fireworks now, the little ones, I don’t like the sound of fireworks, reminds me of guns going off, I hate guns going off, Marty, shut up, concentrate on what you’re doing, I am, look they’re setting off the pinwheels, can you still see him, yes, don’t fire until the big ones go off, we need the cover of the explosions, don’t fire yet, Marty, I won’t, I won’t.

  Won’t, won’t, words, words, people talking, jumble of words, thunder in the distance, gunshots, fire, don’t, won’t…

  Cotton Hawes climbed the echoing tunnel of unconsciousness, voices and sounds blurred meaninglessly, reverberating inside his head as blackness gave way to brightness, pinwheeling brightness outside, fireworks, yes, fireworks going off outside in the…

  He blinked his eyes.

  He tried to move.

  He was trussed like Aunt Sadie’s roast; his hands tied to his feet behind him, he sprawled on the floor like the base of a big rocking horse. By turning his head, he could see the window. Beyond the window, the bright dizzy gleam of the fireworks split the night air. Silhouetted in the window was Neanderthal, squatting over the rifle, and standing above him, one hand on his shoulder, leaning over slightly, the red silk stretched taut over her magnificent buttocks, was the girl who’d clonked him with the shoe.

  “Take careful aim, Marty,” she whispered.

  “I am, I am, I’ve got him. Don’t worry.”

  “Wait for the big ones. The noisy ones.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “You can do it, Marty.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re a man, Marty. You’re my man.”

  “I know. Shhh. Shhh. Don’t make me nervous.”

  “When it’s over, Marty. You and me. Take careful aim.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  He’s going to shoot Tommy, Hawes thought helplessly. Oh my God, he’s going to shoot Tommy, and I can’t do a goddamn thing to stop him.

  “What…what happened?” Ben Darcy asked.

  He pulled away from the wet cloth Carella held in his hand. He blinked and sat upright, and then suddenly clutched his head.

  “Oh, my head. Oh Jesus, it’s killing me. What happened?”

  “Suppose you tell me,” Carella said. “Here, keep this wet cloth on the swelling.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” He blinked again, puzzled. “What’s…what’s all that noise?”

  “They’re beginning the fireworks.”

  “Have…have Tommy and Angela left yet?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Carella said.

  “I’m not too sure. I was walking out back here when—”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “What were you doing back here in the bushes?”

  “I wasn’t feeling so hot. All the confusion in there, and the row I had with Tommy. So I came here where it was a little more quiet.”

  “Then what?”

  “Somebody hit me.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You yelled first,” Carella said. “You yelled for help. Why’d you do that?”

  “Because somebody grabbed me around the neck. That was when I yelled. My God, what did he hit me with? It feels as if my head is broken.”

  “It was a man, Ben?”

  “Yes. Yes, it felt like a man’s arm around my neck.”

  “And you yelled for help?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the man say anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘You lousy son of a bitch, I’m going to kill every one of you.’”

  “What kind of a voice did he have?”

  “Deep. Husky. He sounded like a big
man.”

  “How big?”

  “Very big. His arm was strong.”

  “How tall are you, Ben?”

  “An even six feet.”

  “Would you say he was very much bigger than you? From what you could tell?”

  “No, not that big. I mean, maybe six-two, six-four, something like that.”

  “And he said, ‘You lousy son of a bitch, I’m going to kill every one of you.’ Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then he hit you?”

  “Yes.”

  “On the head?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that the only place he hit you?”

  “Yes.”

  “He didn’t knock you to the ground and kick you or anything?”

  “No.”

  “He simply put his arm around your neck, pulled you backwards, and then hit you on the top of the head, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “A tuxedo, I think. I only saw his arm, but I think it was the sleeve of a tuxedo.”

  “You saw this?”

  “Yes.”

  “It wasn’t too dark to see?”

  “No. No.”

  “What color was the tuxedo?”

  “Black.”

  “Not blue?”

  “No. Black.”

  “You could tell that? In the darkness here? Under the shade of the tree here?”

  “Yes. It was black. I think it was black.”

  “And the man spoke and then hit you? Or did you yell for help first? Which?”

  “First he spoke, then I—no, wait. I yelled for help first, and then he cursed at me, and then he hit me.

  “Only once, right?”

  “Yes. He hit me on the head. That’s the last thing I remember.”

  “And you fell down unconscious, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “One last question, Ben?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why are you lying to me?”

  The pinwheels had sputtered out, and the Roman candles had filled the night with red. And now, standing behind the platform, the caterers from Weddings-Fetes, Incorporated, stood at the ready, anxious to light the fuses for the grand finale. Tommy Giordano stood alongside his father-in-law and his bride, bathed in the light from the bandstand, waiting for the medley of explosion and light that would come in the next few moments. He did not know that the crosshairs of a telescopic sight were fixed at a point just above his left eye. He smiled pleasantly as the caterers rushed around behind the platform, squeezed Angela’s hand when he saw the first fuse being touched.

  The fuse burned shorter, shorter, and then touched the powder. The first of the rockets sailed skyward, exploding in a shower of blue and green stars, followed by the second rocket almost instantly afterward, silver fishes darting against the velvet night. Explosions rocked the peaceful suburb of Riverhead, shockingly loud explosions that threatened to rip the night to shreds.

  In the attic room, Oona Blake dug her fingers into Sokolin’s shoulder.

  “Now,” she said. “Now, Marty.”

  The men worked together as a highly efficient team, and perhaps everything would have gone smoothly, bloodlessly, had not Bob O’Brien been a part of the team. It was certain that once the men returned to the squadroom, legend and superstition would prevail to single out O’Brien as the culprit.

  They had drawn their service revolvers on the front porch of the Birnbaum house. O’Brien stood to one side of the door, and Meyer turned the knob and eased the door open. The living room on the ground floor of the house was dark and silent. Cautiously, both men entered the room.

  “If he’s here and plans to use a rifle,” Meyer whispered, “he must be upstairs.”

  They waited until their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. They found the staircase then and began climbing it, hesitating when their weight caused the treads to creak. On the second floor, they checked the two bedrooms and found them empty.

  “An attic?” O’Brien whispered, and they continued climbing.

  They were in the hallway outside the attic room when the fireworks started in the Carella back yard. At first, they thought it was gunfire, and then they recognized it for what it was, and both instantly formed the conclusion that their sniper—if he were indeed in the house—had undoubtedly been waiting for the fireworks before opening up with his rifle. They did not speak to each other. There was no need to speak. The operation they were about to perform had been acted out by them hundreds of times before, either together, or as part of other teams. The fireworks in the yard across the way simply added urgency to the operation but they moved swiftly and without panic, Meyer flattening himself against the wall to the right of the door, O’Brien bracing himself against the corridor wall opposite the door. O’Brien glanced at Meyer, and Meyer nodded soundlessly.

  From inside the room, they heard a woman’s voice say, “Now. Now, Marty.”

  O’Brien shoved himself off the wall, his left leg coming up, the left foot colliding with the door in a powerful, flat-footed kick that splintered the lock and shot the door inward. Like a fullback following a line plunge, O’Brien followed the door into the room, Meyer crossing in behind him like a quarterback ready to take a lateral pass.

  O’Brien was not anxious to fire.

  His gun was in his hand as he entered the room, following the jet-catapult of the door, his eyes sweeping first to the window where the man crouched over the rifle, then to the floor where Cotton Hawes lay tied in a neat bundle, and then back to the window again as the blonde in the red silk dress whirled to face him.

  “Drop the piece!” he shouted, and the man at the window swung around with the rifle in his hands, the rockets exploding behind him in the back yard illuminating his eyes, pinpointing his eyes with fiery light; and O’Brien’s eyes locked with his, and in that moment he weighed the necessity for firing.

  “Drop it!” he shouted, his eyes locked with the other man’s, and he studied those eyes for the space of three seconds that seemed like three thousands years, studied the fright in them, and then the sudden awakening to the situation, and the rapid calculation. And then the eyes began to narrow and O’Brien had seen the instantaneous narrowing of the eyes of a man with a gun before, and he knew the eyes were telegraphing the action of the trigger finger, and he knew that if he did not fire instantly, he would drop to the floor bleeding in the next split second.

  Meyer Meyer had seen the eyes tightening, too, and he shouted, “Watch it, Bob!” and O’Brien fired.

  He fired only once, from the hip, fired with a calmness that gave the lie to the lurching beat of his heart and the trembling of his legs. His slug took Sokolin in the shoulder at close range, spinning him around and slamming him up against the wall, the rifle dropping from his hands. And all O’Brien could think was Don’t let him die, Dear God don’t let him die!

  The blonde hesitated for a fraction of an instant. With Sokolin slowly crumpling from the wall to the floor, with Meyer rushing into the room, with the world outside disintegrating in a shower of sparks and a cacophonous welter of explosions, she made her decision and acted upon it, dropping instantly to her knees, pulling the skirt back in a completely feminine gesture as she stooped with masculine purposefulness to pick up the rifle.

  Meyer kicked her twice. He kicked her once to knock the rifle upward before her finger found the trigger, and then he kicked out at her legs, knocking her backward to the floor in a jumble of white flesh and sliding red silk. She came off the floor like a banshee out of hell, lips skinned back, fingers curled to rake. She wasn’t looking for conversation, and Meyer didn’t give her any. He swung his .38 up so that the barrel was nested in his curled fingers, the butt protruding below. Then he brought the gun around in a side-swinging arc that clipped the girl on the side of the jaw. She threw her arms and her head back, and she let out a slight whimper, and then she came down slowly, slowly, like the Queen Mary si
nking in the River Harb, dropping to the floor in a curious mixture of titanic collapse and fragile gracefulness.

  O’Brien was already crouched over Sokolin in the corner. Meyer wiped his brow.

  “How is he?”

  “He’s hurt,” O’Brien answered. “But he isn’t dead.”

  “I knew there’d be shooting,” Meyer said simply. He turned to where Cotton Hawes lay on the floor in his rocking-horse position. “Well, well,” he said, “what have we here? Take a look at this, Bob.”

  “Get me out of these ropes,” Hawes said.

  “It talks, Bob,” Meyer said. “Why, I do believe it’s a talking dog. Now isn’t that a curiosity!”

  “Come on, Meyer,” Hawes pleaded, and Meyer saw his battered face for the first time, and quickly stooped to cut the binding ropes. Hawes rose. Massaging his wrists and ankles, he said, “You got here just in the nick.”

  “The Marines always arrive on time,” Meyer said.

  “And the U.S. Cavalry,” O’Brien answered. He glanced at the blonde. “She’s got crazy legs,” he said.

  The men studied her appreciatively for a moment.

  “So,” Meyer said at last, “I guess this is it. We’ll need the meat wagon for that joker, won’t we?”

  “Yeah,” O’Brien said listlessly.

  “You want to make the call, Bob?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  He left the room. Meyer walked to the blonde and clamped his handcuffs onto her wrists. With a married man’s dispassionate aloofness, he studied her exposed legs for the last time, and then pulled down her skirt. “There,” he said. “Decency and morality prevail once more. She had a wild look in her eye, that one. I wouldn’t have wanted to mess with her.”

  “I did,” Hawes said.

  “Mmm.” Meyer looked at his face. “I think maybe we got another passenger for the meat wagon. You don’t look exactly beautiful, dear lad.”

  “I don’t feel exactly beautiful,” Hawes said.

  Meyer holstered his revolver. “Nothing like a little excitement on a Sunday, is there?”

  “What the hell are you kicking about?” Hawes asked. “This is my day off.”

  “Lying?” Ben Darcy said. “What do you mean? Why would I…?”