by Ed McBain
"Who's that?" Whittaker asked at once.
"He's unarmed," Eileen assured him. "He'll be signaling to the pilot, telling him where to put the ship down. We don't want any mistakes."
"I want him out of there soon as it lands."
"Inspector?" Eileen said into the walkie-talkie.
"Here," Brady said.
"He wants that man out of there as soon as the chopper touches down."
"He's got it," Brady said.
"Did you hear that?" she asked Whittaker.
"No."
"He'll get out of there as soon as the ship lands."
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"He better."
Dolly was still sitting alone in the open window. The other two were somewhere in the darkness of the room beyond. Eileen was talking to no one she could see. But she was certain Whittaker could see out of the room; he had spotted the man in orange running toward the cleared sandlot on the side of the house.
"Ain't nobody leavin' this house till that man's back where he belongs," he said from out of the blackness.
"Don't worry about it. He's signaling now," she said. "You can't see him from where you are, but he's signaling to the chopper."
The sharpshooter could see the man below swinging a red torchlight in a circle over his head. The sliding door on the right-hand side of the ship was open. The pilot would bring the ship down with that side facing the house. The moment Whittaker was in place, using the pilot as a shield, facing the police line out there, the sharpshooter should have a clean shot at the back of his head. The pilot hoped.
"Hedgehog, this is Firefly, over," the pilot said.
"Come in, Firefly."
"We've got your man sighted, ready to take her down."
"Take her down, Firefly."
"Ten-four."
A police code sign-off, even though this was air-to-ground radio traffic and a wilco might have been more appropriate. Neither the pilot up there preparing to land and be seized by an armed killer whose head the sharpshooter might or might not succeed in blowing from his body, nor Chief of Patrol Curran, talking to him from the ground, had exchanged anything but landing instructions. These days, nobody knew who was listening on what frequency, and there was still a sixteen-year-old girl in that house.
"Coming in," Eileen said.
"I'm sending Sonny back to the kitchen with the girl," Whittaker said. "He yells loud enough, I can hear him from back there. Minute he tells me the chopper's down, I'm
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headin' back myself. Ress is up to you whether anybody gets hurt or not."
"Just about down," she said.
"You hear me?"
"I heard you."
"Move it on out, Sonny."
The leaves on the bushes outside the house shook violently as the chopper skids came closer to the ground. Over the roar of the ship and the rush of the wind, Eileen said into her walkie-talkie, "Sonny's heading toward the kitchen now." With all that clamor, she hadn't expected Whittaker to hear her, but he had.
"Why you tellin' him that?" Whittaker shouted over the noise.
"We don't want any mistakes, you know that." Into the walkie-talkie, she said, "Chopper's down, Inspector, better get that man out of there," but this was really for the benefit of Carella and Wade, who were standing on the landing just inside the cellar door.
"Diz!"
Jesus!
His voice sounded as if it was right at Carella's elbow, just outside the door!
"Move it, bitch!"
Running by in the corridor now, past the door.
"Ow!"
The girl's voice.
"I said move it! Diz! Can you hear me, Diz?"
"You don't have to poke me with the damn ..."
"Diz!"
A bit further away now. Yelling from the kitchen, Carella guessed. Visualizing the floor plan in his head, the narrow corridor running from the outside porch to the kitchen. Sonny Cole, his father's murderer, standing in the kitchen, yelling to his partner at the front of the house.
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"Diz! It's down, I can see it! It's on the ground! Diz, can you hear me?"
They could not hear anyone answering him.
But there were footsteps again, coming back toward them in the corridor outside. Carella kept the walkie-talkie pressed to his ear, fearful of a sound leak that would give away their position. There was sudden laughter just outside the door, startling him again.
"We goin' to Jamaica," Sonny told the girl, laughing, his voice high and shrill.
That's what you think, Carella thought.
"That was Sonny jus' then," Whittaker said. "He says the chopper's down."
"He's right, it is," Eileen said.
"So I'm headin' back there now." He sounded almost sad to be leaving. "You sure you got this all straight in your head?"
"I hope so," Eileen said.
"Me, too," Whittaker said, "otherwise somebody goan die, you know? Minute I see the pilot standin' out there, I'm headin' for the chopper. You know the ress."
"I do."
"Better be no tricks."
"There won't be," she said.
"No surprises," he said, and suddenly appeared in the window. "So long, Red," he said, and grinned, and was gone into the darkness again.
"It's Eileen," she muttered under her breath, and then, immediately, into the walkie-talkie, "Whittaker's moving back."
Carella would have been blind without Eileen's voice coming over the walkie-talkie. The voice of a good cop and a good friend filling him in, giving him updates on when it would be all right to come out and say hello to his father's killer. "Chopper's down ..."
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And then:
"Whittaker's moving back ..."
And now:
"Pilot's out of the ship . . ."
Carella waited. Wade stood tensely beside him, his ear pressed to the cellar door, listening for any sound from outside there in the corridor.
Both of them had drawn their guns long ago.
Now they simply waited.
"Putting his hands up over his head ..." Eileen said.
She was standing midway between Truck One and the helicopter, the flaps of her blue jacket dancing in the wind produced by the whirling blades, watching the pilot as he came to a stop just beyond the ladder leading down from the ship, sliding door open above him and behind him, his hair flapping wildly, his hands high over his head. She could not see anyone inside the ship.
"Kitchen door's opening," she said into the walkie-talkie.
She caught her breath.
"Whittaker's poking his head out, looking around ..."
She waved to him. Let him know she was here. Everything according to plan, right? Soon as you've got the pilot, you let the girl go, and I'm waiting here for her. He did not wave back. Come on, she thought, acknowledge my presence. Let me know you see me. She waved again, bigger movements this time, more exaggerated. He still did not wave back. Just took a last look all around to make sure nobody was waiting out here to ambush him, and then began running for the helicopter.
"He's on his way to the chopper!" she shouted into the walkie-talkie. "Girl's still inside the house, hold steady. Inspector?"
"Yes."
"Who calls the play?"
"I do. Just tell me when the girl is clear."
"Yes, sir."
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Silence.
"He's just about there now." More silence.
"He's behind the pilot now. Signaling to the door. The girl's out! Dollyl" she yelled. "This way! Over here!" "Assault One, go Brady shouted.
They would later, in a diner near Headquarters downtown, over coffee and doughnuts as another hot day dawned over the city, try to piece together what had happened next, assemble it as they might have a jigsaw puzzle, pulling in separate pieces of the action from various perspectives, trying to make a comprehensive whole out of what seemed at first to be merely a scattering of confused and jagged pieces.
The girl was runni
ng toward her.
Purple hair like a beacon in the night.
"Dolly!" she shouted again.
"Hey! Red!"
She was startled for a moment, his voice coming out of the darkness near the helicopter where he stood behind the pilot. She turned to locate his voice, taking her eyes off the girl for just an instant.
"I liedl" he shouted.
And the girl exploded in blood.
They broke out of the cellar the instant Brady gave them the green light. Sonny had just released the girl and was poised for flight inside the side door, like a runner toeing his mark while waiting for the starting gun. The starting gun came from behind him, a shot fired from Wade's thirty-eight, catching Sonny in the right leg and knocking him off his feet before he could step out onto the porch. They were all over him in the next ten seconds, Wade kicking the nine-millimeter out of his hand as Sonny tried to sit up and raise the gun into a firing position, Carella kneeing him under the chin and slamming him onto his back on the linoleum-covered floor in the narrow corridor. Green linoleum, he would remember later. Yellow
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flowers in the pattern. Green and yellow and Sonny's wide-open brown eyes as Carella put the muzzle of his gun in the hollow of his throat. Jagged pink knife scar down one side of his face. "Do it," Wade whispered.
The girl came stumbling forward, rosebud breasts in the lavender blouse erupting in larger red flowers as the slugs from the assault rifle ripped into her back and exited in a shower of lung and blood and gristle and tissue, spattering Eileen in gore as the girl fell forward into her arms.
"Oh dear God," Eileen murmured, and heard the shots from inside the helicopter as the sharpshooter fired twice and only twice, but twice was more than enough. The first bullet took Whittaker at the back of his neck, ripping out his trachea as it exited. The second shot caught him just above his right cheek as the force of the first bullet spun him around and away from the pilot. He was dead even before the shattered cheek sent slivers of bone ricocheting up into his brain.
Behind the barricades, even The Preacher stopped chanting.
"Do it!" Wade whispered urgently.
There was sweat in that narrow corridor, and fear, and
anger, and every sweet thought Carella had ever had for his
father, every emotion he'd ever felt for him, all of these
burning his eyes and causing his gun hand to shake violently,
the muzzle of the Police Special trembling in the hollow of
Sonny's throat, great gobs of sweat oozing on Sonny's face,
Wade's face close to Carella's now, all three of them sweating
in that suffocating corridor where murder was just the tick of
an instant away. "Do it," Wade whispered again, "we all alone
here."
He almost did it.
Almost squeezed the trigger, almost pulled off the shot that would have ended it for Sonny and might have ended it for himself as well, all the anger, all the sorrow, all the hatred.
But he knew that if he heeded those whispered words Do it
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- and oh how easy to do it here in this secret place - he would be doing it not only to Sonny, he would be doing it to himself as well. And to anyone in this city who had ever hoped for justice under law.
He swung himself off the man who had killed his father.
"Up!" he said.
"You shot me, you motherfucker!" Sonny yelled at Wade.
"Up" Carella said again, and yanked him to his feet and clamped the cuffs onto his wrists, squeezing them shut hard and tight. Wade was looking at him, a puzzled expression on his face.
"I'm gonna bring charges," Sonny said. "Shootin' me, you motherfucker."
"Yeah, you bring charges," Wade said. He was still looking at Carella. "I don't understand you," he said.
"Well," Carella said, and let it go at that.
13
He called his brother-in-law from the diner and told him he'd be picking him up on the way home. When Tommy asked why, he said, "Because you have twin daughters, and I think you ought to go see them."
Tommy said Wow, gee, twin girls, holy moley, wow.
In the car on the way to the hospital, Carella told him he knew Tommy was doing cocaine.
Tommy said Wow, gee, cocaine, holy moley, wow, where'd you get that idea?
Carella said he'd got the idea by following him to a house on Laramie Street, which incidentally the police had under camera surveillance, that's how he'd got the idea.
Tommy was about to do the wow-gee number a third time, but Carella cut him short by asking, "Who's the woman?"
Tommy debated lying. The car was moving slowly through heavy early-morning traffic, Carella at the wheel, Tommy beside him. He took a long time to answer. Trying to decide whether he should wow-gee it through or come clean. He knew his brother-in-law was a detective. This wasn't going to be easy.
"She works in the bank with me," he said at last.
"I'm listening."
"It goes back a couple of months."
"We've got time."
Tommy wanted him to understand straight off that there
wasn't any sex involved here, this wasn't any kind of an affair, Angela had been wrong about that, although she'd been right about there being another woman. The other woman's name was Fran Harrington, and this all started when they'd traveled out to Minneapolis together, this must've been shortly after Labor Day last year . . .
"I thought you said a couple of months," Carella said, turning from the wheel.
"Well, yeah."
"Labor Day is the beginning of September. That isn't a couple of months. That's almost a year."
"Well, yeah."
"You've been doing coke for almost a year."
"Yeah."
"You goddamn jackass."
"I'm sorry."
"You ought to be, you jackass."
He was furious. He gripped the wheel tightly and concentrated on the traffic ahead. The automobiles were moving through a shimmering miragelike haze. The first day of August, and summer seemed intent on proving that July hadn't been just a fluke. Tommy was telling him how he and Fran had gone out there to deal with a customer who was on the edge of defaulting and how they'd been able to work out a method of payment that was satisfactory to both him and the bank. This was a huge loan; the man leased snow-removal equipment, which in the state of Minnesota was as essential as bread. So both he and Fran were tickled they'd been able to work it out, and Tommy suggested they go have a drink in celebration. Fran said she didn't drink, but maybe they could scare up something better. He didn't know what she meant at first.
You wouldn't think you could get cocaine in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which Tommy had always thought of as some kind of hick city in the middle of nowhere. But Fran knew a place they could go to, and it wasn't the kind of sleazy joint you saw on television where the cops are knocking down doors and
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yelling Freeze. The one thing Tommy had learned since last September . . . well, yeah, that's right, it had been almost a year now . . . was that it wasn't only black kids doing crack in the ghettos, it was white people, too, doing coke uptown -coke didn't know about racial inequality, coke was the great emancipator. Just the way you used to have slum kids rolling marijuana joints on the street while rich people out in Malibu were offering you tailor-mades in silver cigarette boxes, it was the same thing now with cocaine. You didn't have to go smoke a five-dollar vial of crack in some shitty tenement apartment, there were places where people just like yourself could sit around in pleasant, sometimes luxurious surroundings, snorting really terrific stuff, socializing at the same time . . .
"You stupid jackass," Carella said.
"Anyway, that's how it started," Tommy said. "In Minnesota that time. And we've been doing it together since. She travels with me a lot, she knows all the places. The dangerous thing is getting caught with it, you know . . ."
Tell me about it, Carella tho
ught.
". . . so if you don't make a buy and carry the stuff away, if instead you go to where the stuff is, one of these upscale apartments with people just like yourself ..."
Noses just like yourself, Carella thought.
"... like the one here on Laramie, for example, is really nice, we go there a lot."
"You better quit going there," Carella said. "You're already a movie star."
"Do you think you could . . .?"
"Don't even ask. Just stay away from that place. Or anyplace like it."
"I'll try."
"Never mind trying, you dumb jackass. You quit or I'll bust you myself, I promise you."
Tommy nodded.
"You hear me? You get psychiatric help, and you quit. Period."
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"Yeah." He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Does ... did you tell Angela?"
"No."
"Are you going to?"
"That's your job."
"How do I . . .what do I. . .?"
"That's entirely up to you. You got yourself into this, you get yourself out."
"I just want you to understand," Tommy said again, "this had nothing to do with sex. Angela was wrong. This isn't like sex at all."
Yes it is, Carella thought.
Sitting here by the river, waiting for him to arrive, Eileen looked out over the water at the tugs moving slowly under the distant bridge. The place she'd chosen was a plain, unadorned seafood joint perched somewhat precariously on the end of the dock, all brown shingles and blue shutters and walls and floors that weren't quite plumb. Brown sheets of wrapping paper served as tablecloths, and waiters ran around frantically in stained white aprons. At dinnertime, the place was a madhouse. She was only meeting him for a drink, but even now, at ten past five, there was a sense of hyperkinetic preparation.
She sat at a table on the deck and breathed in deeply of air that smelled vaguely of the sea, activity swarming behind her, the river roiling below. She was feeling pretty good about herself. The minutes passed serenely.
At a quarter past five, Kling came rushing out onto the deck.
"I'm sorry I'm late," he said, "we had a. . ."
"I just got here myself," she said.
"Gee, I really am late," he said, looking at his watch. "I'm sorry, have you ordered yet?"
"I was waiting for you."
"So what would you like?" he asked, and turned to signal to one of the peripatetic waiters.