Til Death (16 page)

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
sinking 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…?”

“Come on, Ben. Over to the house,” Carella said.

“What for? What did I…?” A gun magically appeared in Carella’s fist. Darcy studied it for a moment and then said, “Jesus, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Aren’t
you?”
Carella asked, and together they walked out of the bushes. The fireworks were exploding behind them, the sighs of the crowd following each new display of pyrotechnic wizardry. Kling met the pair at the house.

“I’ve been looking for you, Steve,” he said. “It’s past eight, and I’m supposed to pick up Claire at nine. So I’d better be taking off.”

“Hang around a few more minutes, would you, Bert?”

“What for?”

“Hang around, can you?”

“Okay, but you don’t know Claire when I’m late.”

“Inside,” Carella said to Darcy. They entered the house. “Upstairs.” They went upstairs to the room that had been Carella’s when he was a boy. School pennants still decorated the walls. Airplane models
hung from the ceiling. A Samurai sword he’d sent home from the Pacific was hung to the right of the windows, near the desk. In the room where he’d been a boy, Carella felt no nostalgic wistfulness. He had led Darcy into the privacy of the house because he was about to conduct a police interrogation, and he wanted the psychological advantage of the cloistered silence, the four walls, all the appearance of a trap. At the 87th, he’d have used the small Interrogation Room set close to the Clerical Office, and for the same reasons. There were some cops who used the Interrogation Room as a sparring ring, but Carella had never laid a hand on a prisoner in all the years he’d been a cop, and he did not intend to start now. But he recognized his weapons, and he knew that Darcy was lying, and he wanted to know now
why
he was lying. He had drawn his gun with the same psychological warfare in mind. He knew he did not need his gun with Darcy. But the gun added official police weight. And, in following through on his line of intent, he had asked Kling to accompany him upstairs because the police weight was doubled with a second cop along; the feeling of inevitable exposure mounted, the lie would root around in the suspect’s mind searching for a rock beneath which to hide, relentlessly exposed to the overwhelming odds against it.

“Sit down,” he said to Darcy.

Darcy sat.

“Why do you want Tommy dead?” Carella asked bluntly.

“What?”

“You heard me.” He stood to the right of Darcy’s chair. Kling, knowing what was happening, immediately assumed a position to the left of the chair.

“Tommy
dead?”
Darcy said. “Are you kidding me? Why would I…?”

“That’s what I asked you.”

“But I—”

“You said a man slightly taller than you came up behind you in the bushes and circled your neck with his arm, is that right?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s the truth.”

“And then he hit you on the head, right? Once? Right?”

“Yes. That’s what happened. How does that…?”

“I’m six feet tall,” Carella said, “give or take a quarter of an inch. Bert here is about six-two. That’s about the difference in height between you and your alleged attacker, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes, that’s what I—”

“Would you mind grabbing me from behind, Bert? Put your arm far enough around me so that I can see what kind of clothes you’re wearing. You
did
tell me your attacker was wearing a tuxedo, didn’t you?”

“Well, I—”

“Didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Darcy said.

“Okay, Bert.”

Kling wrapped his arm around Carella’s neck. Carella stood facing Darcy, the gun in his right hand.

“We’re pretty close, aren’t we, Darcy? I’m practically smack up against him. In fact, it would be impossible for Bert to take a whack at my head unless he shoved me on the head this way. Am I right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Darcy said quickly. “The attacker
did
shove me away from him. I remember that now. I yelled and then just before he hit me, he shoved me a few feet away from him. So that he could swing. That’s right. That’s just the way it happened.”

“Well, that’s different,” Carella said, smiling. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? So he shoved you away from him, right?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind demonstrating that, Bert?”

Kling shoved out gently at Carella, and Carella stepped forward a few paces. “About like that?” he asked Darcy.

“Well, with considerably more force. But that’s about where I wound up, yes. A few feet ahead of him.”

“Well, you should have told me that to begin with,” Carella said, still smiling. “He hit you from a few feet behind you, right?”

“Yes.”

“That makes a big difference,” Carella said, smiling pleasantly. “And he didn’t kick you or anything, am I right?”

“That’s right,” Darcy said, nodding. “He pushed me away from him and then he hit me. That was all.”

“Then suppose you tell me, Ben, why the hell that cut is in the exact center of your skull, on the top of your head? Suppose you tell me that, Ben?”

“What? I don’t—”

“If you were hit from behind, you’d most likely have been hit either on the side or the back of your head. Unless the man who hit you was an absolute giant, the cut would not be in the
center
of your skull. The size man you described would never have been able to get force enough into a blow that presupposes his extending the weapon above your head and then bringing it down vertically.”

“He…he was bigger than I thought.”

“How big?”

“Six-six, maybe. Maybe bigger.”

“That isn’t big enough! The natural swing of his arm would have brought that gun down on a slant at the back of your head. Or, if he took a side swing, at either the right or the left of your head, behind the ears. How about it, Darcy? The wound was selfinflicted, wasn’t it? You ducked your head and ran into that big maple, didn’t you?”

“No, no, why would I want to—?”

“To throw suspicion away from yourself. Because you sawed through that tie rod end!” Kling said.

“You were out for a walk this morning, weren’t you? That’s what you told me when I first saw you,” Carella said.