Mitchell Smith (66 page)

“Counselor,” Ellie said, “-you’ve made a friend for life.”

Tucker, in white shirt and gray tie, a dark blue suit and gray raincoat, rode over the river just after dark. It was his first trip on the tram, and he loved it. It was like flying, without flying’s unease. The machinery, he’d heard, was Swiss-and that was a country another NCO had told him was loaded with trams and funiculars, which made sense with so many mountains. White man’s machinery at its most reliable 2he hoped-took off his dark glasses and put them in his raincoat pocket.

He’d used ice packs, and his face was looking better, felt a little better, too.

Below him, the East River, glossy black, held all the lights of its banks-but elongated, shimmering out from the shores in long, wavering fingers of blue and red, yellow and green, This would be a great trip for the kids.

… He turned and excused his way through the passengers to the downstream side. Through the windows there, the Queensboro Bridge loomed from another age-all brutal iron in angles and pillars, riveted, welded and hammered together, bearing, as Tucker watched, an entire hurtling train, up out of the subway tunnels and high into the air-and at other levels, a steady threading of cars, trucks and buses, all lit, as the train windows were lit in endless small shuttling rectangles, by lights of their own. Headlights, running lights, tail-lights, brake lights in every shape and shade of blue-white-, yellow, orange and ruby-red. It would be something for the children to see, Tucker thought, worth keeping them up a little late.

It was his experience that gorgeous things rich with light, seen young, stayed with men and women all their lives-‘as the sun, the out-islands and sea of South Carolina had stayed with him.

At the island end, when the tram car sank down to dock, Tucker walked off and along the ramp, passed the parked bus, and crossed the street to stand back against a fence, out of the light. When the bus pulled out, he watched the way it went, then strolled after it through the cooling night. On the main street, after a few minutes walking-the street well-fit, fairly busy with shoppers, people going home-he paused beside a travel agency (Hawaii posters in the windows … Diamond Head, Maui, the Pipeline . . . ) to glance at a small piece of paper, put it back into his raincoat pocket, the same pocket with the glasses. The posters reminded him of Schofield . . . all those times.

He found the building, right on this main street-looked to be the only street they had-and walked past it, turned around a little farther on, came back and walked past it again. There was a night security-man on the desk.

Tucker crossed the street, and walked all the way down it, this time, to the mall beside the big parking garage—empty except for two couples walking home on the other side-then turned left, went down to a low fence along a strip of grass above the island’s edge. He strolled there until he found a narrow shadow thrown by a streetlamps pillar, then walked along this shadow to the fence, put his hands up on the wire, the horizontal pipe supporting it, vaulted over and down into the grass on the other side, and walked away into deeper dark.

Behind the buildings, though, the areas were lit. Tucker paid no attention. People rarely looked out their windows at night-reflection was all against it; the coziness of warm, lamp-lit rooms turned people inward in their views.

The apartment, numbered for the ground floor, had to be one of two.

Children-a small boy, a smaller girl-were watching television in the back bedroom of the first.

In the second, there was a cat on the windowsill, a woman singing in the kitchen-a melody to no song he could recall.

Tucker reached into his other raincoat pocket, took out his Swiss Army knife, opened it, and lightly sliced the window screen in a large L, across the bottom, and up one side-then folded the blade, and put the knife away.

When he pushed this flap aside, the cat, quite small, leaped past him and out into the night. Tucker took the cat’s windowsill place for a moment, then was in.

The singing stopped, and Tucker stood still in the living room-then heard a pot clatter, eased his raincoat off and let it fall, and walked across the room, smelling cooking potatoes. . . .

He paused beside the kitchen door, looked along the short hall, lit by a ceiling fixture . . . noticed a dark doorway to the left-into the bedroom, he supposed and felt the rest of the apartment empty. The woman was humming, now. A pleasant sound.

Tucker walked through the door as she turned from the stove-and saw a big saucepan behind her, and a Teflon frying pan with two hamburger patties starting to brown.

“Who the fuck are you?” Barefoot, startled in a white terry-cloth bathrobe-frightened, but still in balance. His tie, his blue suit helped.”

“I’m a police officer,” Tucker said to this small, dark woman-not the one he’d come for-and still saying it, stepped into the kitchen, reached out and got her by the hair.

He’d intended something neater, a blow of some sort, but the woman fought him handily, savage as a small animal, saying, “Oh, no . . .

oh, no - . .” while she bit and kicked. Finally, for room, he dragged her out and into the hall, and, after a tussle, managed to hug her hard with his right arm to hold her still, catch her frantic head in a simple lock with his left-squeezing to choke off her commencing scream-and twisting one way with one arm, the other with the other, broke her neck or something deeper down, feeling and hearing faintly her spine’s muffled crack and split, She grunted and shuddered as though he’d fucked her, then a little muddy shit ran down her legs—and though Tucker bundled her up into her robe, and carried her into the dark bedroom right away, there was some of it left in the hall.

in the bedroom, he turned on the bedside lamp to take a look at her, be certain she was gone-reached down and rolled her to him. Nothing on, under the robe … a nice-looking girl. Both her eyes were open, though one, the right, showed only white. In her left eye, the pupil was a gulf of black. The bedspread, dark blue, showed smears of manure from her legs. Brown. Shit brown …

shit black … Is that, Tucker wondered, feeling a little odd as usual in the circumstances-is that why they despise us so?

He thought of searching for the letters-getting that much done while he waited-then remembered the feces in the hall. The right woman would be armed and was due. . . It seemed stupid to alert her with turds in her hallway. Tucker turned out the bedside lamp, went back to the kitchen-where the smell of cooking french fries, hamburgers, now fought the other, less pleasant one collected a bundle of yellow paper towels, and went out in the hall to clean up.

He’d gotten it off the floor (hardwood floor, thank God, and not a carpet), had thrown those towels in the kitchen trash, turned off the hamburgers to keep them from burning-and was looking under the sink for ammonia for the smell, when he heard a key in the frontdoor lock.

Ellie opened the door, still in the midst of deciding whether to apologize in the morning, somehow without begging-or just to tell them to kiss her ass. Leahy had frightened her-not such a funny fat man, now. Had made her feel guilty, too, saying Tommy had done her work …

which, sometimes, he had. The thought of losing her shield made her almost sick. She couldn’t believe they’d do it. But if they tried, those fuckers would think it was World War Three. She’d get hold of Avril Reedy and she’d beat those motherfuckers to death with him….

She closed the door behind her, wondering where Mayo was … and smelled an odor of shit, right in the halland cooking, of all things.

“-Mayo, you little bastard,” she said. You better hide!”

As she put her purse on the hall table, she saw a brown cardboard sign propped there. -direct from La Guardia for farewell dinner-Your Ex. P.

S. Used your shower for old time’s sake; no seduction intended.

Ellie walked down the hall to the kitchen.

“Clara?”

A big black man in a blue suit was leaning against the refrigerator.

Something was cooking in a saucepan on the stove. There were hamburgers in a frying pan, too. The big man smiled at her. ‘-Clara’s in the bathroom,” he said. “My name’s Bryant. I’m a cop. -Anderson sent me to pick up those letters. . . .”

“Where’s the cat?” Ellie said.

“She took him in to clean him up. -Little accident.”

“You look as though you had an accident, yourself,” Ellie said, and turned her head to call, “Clara … P’ “She’s in the bathroom,” the black man said, “-the cat was sick.”

“I don’t think so…. Who hit you in the face?”

“Guess,” the black man said-and came at her like a storm.

If she hadn’t ducked under his arm as he reached for her, Ellie would never have had time to draw her gun, but the big man didn’t seem to care

. He reached out again as sfie fell back against the broom closet, swatted the revolver out of her handsent it clattering, skidding under the table-received her desperate kick on his right thigh, then closed with her, got her right wrist tight-and slapped her terribly hard across the side of her head, slapped her again when she was trying to scream, and knocked the scream into a yelp and out of her. Ellie hit at him with her free hand, tried to get her fingernails in his eyes, and he said something she couldn’t hear and hit her again-with his fist this time, she was sure, because it made her float for a moment, as if she were becoming something lighter. Then, from behind, he put his open hand over her mouth and nose, and she couldn’t breathe at all.

She kicked back as hard as she could, wishing she was a horse and could kick him to death, and he lifted her up off the floor by her right wrist and the hand over her face, and slung her to one side, then the other, so when she kicked back, there was nothing there. She was feeling sick from not being able to breathe, and from the way the kitchen was spinning slowly around. He was handling her very roughly. She tried to breathe as hard as she could, and scratched at his hand with her nails, but he didn’t seem to care. She tried to bite the hand, but it pressed hard and flat against her nose, her mouth, and there was nothing to bite. She was glad it didn’t cover her eyes. -11at would have been worse than anything. Her eyes were hurting, and her chest was hurting, too. If he wasn’t careful, he would kill her. She said that to him, against his hand, but he didn’t seem to notice.

He threw her to one side and she hit against the refrigerator. She hoped that would knock his hand away, but it didn’t. “Tommy!” -She thought she was able to call Tommy right through the hand, and Tommy would be in from the living room and that would be that. . . .

The big man had set her down on the floor; she was almost sure her feet were on the floor. When she looked right in front of her, everything was becoming black in the middle; she could only see on the sides. She thought Mayo would grow huge and come and help her, and she would see his sudden head in the kitchen doorway, great as a tiger’s. She stopped trying to breathe, because all that did was hurt. -Mayo won’t come help me, she thought. -This man’s too strong. She thought he was wonderfully strong-though not as strong as the fire had been, and she’d done all right then. -I did damn well, then, she thought. Now, whirled back to the stove, trying to look to the side of that blackness, just along the edge of it, Ellie thought she saw something like the saucepan, something cooking in there. She reached down with her free hand, picked the saucepan up, and threw what was in it over her left shoulder-screaming into the hand right away as something went broiling down her back.

Then-as if she had done something perfect-the hand was gone, and Ellie lay on the kitchen floor, already feeling better, breathing deep, whooping breaths. Everything would have been wonderful, except that her neck and back were burning. That was what made her scream the way the big man was screaming, standing fiddling with his eyes. But he stopped that, and so did she, and Ellie saw him reach to a shoulder holster, bring out a semiautomatic pistol with something odd added to its muzzle.

A silencer, she supposed. Whining, stepping slowly in place-his left hand plucking at his eyes, tending the skin on his face that still popped softly, sizzled-the big man bent and turned a slow half-circle, listening …

searching blind … blistering head cocked to hear. Then thought he heard-and began to fire his strange pistol.

Ellie saw the shooting, but heard only soft, sneezing sounds. In almost silence, she crawled on her belly through scorching oil and small chunks of potato, past his feet.

He wore big black smooth-toe oxfords that stepped and shifted as he turned while she slid past. She heard only that sneezing for gunfire, but its effects were all around her, showering down in fragments as glass smashed, wood split and splintered, metal achieved sudden dark dots.

Under the kitchen table, beyond the cat-food saucer, the Smith & Wesson lay almost against the wall. She crawled in, reached for it with her right hand, but her hand lay wrong, and wouldn’t go there, so she reached again, and got it with her left-then scooted around so she could see out from under. As the big man, who apparently had heard, fired down through the tabletop above her (she felt the floor jump by her hand where the round went in) Ellie shot him once, up into his chest. The sound, a ringing crack, deafened her so that her second round-going much too high, blowing a hole through her dish cupboard-hardly sounded like-a shot at all. She paused for an instant, steadied down, and put the third into his belly. This last round apparently went through and broke his back, for his legs kicked out from under him and he sat down hard, shaking the floor-and stayed sitting there, lax in a ruined blue suit, his silenced pistol fallen free.

Still alive, though. She saw his left hand crawling by his side, trying-she supposed-to get back to his face, his eyes. He was turning his head very slowly from side to side, taking deep, snoring breaths.

She rolled out from under the table-hit her right arm on the floor, and felt a bone shift inside it. Down under her elbow. The bone was grinding on something there.