Death's Door (10 page)
Authors: Betsy Byars
“Turn the corner!”
“Which way?”
“Any way! Left! Left!”
She pointed, glancing back over her shoulder. The gunman was there. He started after them on foot. He stopped and raised his pistol, holding it with both hands.
“Turn! Turn!” she cried.
“I
â
”
â
”
Herculeah grabbed the steering wheel and turned it herself. The car made the corner, and Herculeah straightened the wheel. Helplessly, Uncle Neiman tried to regain control of the car, but Herculeah was at the wheel now.
“Faster! Faster!”
“I can't go any faster,” he protested. “I can't see.”
“Well, I can! I've got the wheel. You just give it some gas. Faster. He's behind us. Faster! Faster!”
They took the next corner with the tires squealing.
“Is he still there?”
“Yes.”
“You see him?”
“No, I don't see him, but he's still there. Turn here!”
“I can't.”
Herculeah spun the steering wheel around and they made the corner. Herculeah glanced at the street ahead. “Ah,” she said. “We're back in traffic.”
“Well, don't stop steering.”
“Let's get about four or five blocks between us and him and then we'll pull over. I wish I could see a phone booth.”
“Did you get it?” Uncle Neiman asked.
“What?”
“The money.”
“No! No! How can you think about your stupid money when I was almostâBrakes!”
Uncle Neiman put on the brakes and they both fell forward.
“I can't stop trembling.” Herculeah took one hand off the steering wheel to show him. “You probably can't see that, but it's shaking like a leaf.”
“I can feel it.”
“This is probably far enough. Slow down.”
Uncle Neiman slowed and Herculeah steered them into a parking place.
She sighed.
“Where are we?” Uncle Neiman asked.
“I don't know. I don't care. I'm alive. That's all that matters to me.”
She leaned her head back against the headrest.
“I'm alive ... I'm alive ...”
“So why didn't you get the money?”
“Because he came in. He came in. Heâ”
She broke off, unable to finish. What had happened was too fresh. When she thought of it, it was as if it were happening all over again. She shuddered.
“He is a very, very big man, big as a bull, andâyou probably won't believe thisâbut he has red eyes.”
“I believe it,” Uncle Neiman said.
She knew she would never forget that terrible moment when their eyes had metâthose hooded eyes that seemed to have been lit up by a light of their own.
She put her hands over her eyes to block out the sight. Her knees were trembling. She began to gasp for air. She felt she would never get enough breath into her air-starved lungs.
“Are you all right?” Uncle Neiman asked, peering at her in the dim light.
“I need some air.”
She rolled down her window, and he did too, sending fresh air through the front seat and across her face. She felt as if she might have a fever.
“Is that better?”
“I guess so.”
He hesitated. He was still peering at her anxiously.
“Yes, that's better.”
“Then maybe we better get going.”
“Get going?” she asked incredulously. “Where?”
“I don't know.” Uncle Neiman only knew he was eager to be back on the road. “That worked good with you steering and me doing the rest.”
“It did not work well. We are lucky to be alive. Those were desperate measures for a desperate situation. If we hadn't gotten away from that manâ”
She sat up and glanced back over her shoulder, half expecting to see the gunman there, shoving aside pedestrians with those powerful shoulders, running through traffic, turning those terrible red eyes right and left to find them.
“Oh!” she cried.
“What? What is it?”
“Oh!”
“What? Is he here?”
“It's a police car! There's a police car!”
“Where?” Uncle Neiman asked, glancing around blindly. He was in some ways more afraid of the police than he was of the gunman.
He attempted to turn the steering wheel and get them back out in the road, but Herculeah reached over and held on with an iron grip.
She leaned her head out and waved one arm, not letting go of the steering wheel with the other.
Then Herculeah yelled the words she had been wanted to yell all this afternoon, all her life, it seemed.
“Help! Help!”
25
HOME
“There's a car! There's a car!” Meat cried.
He was still at the window. All his mother's pleas had not moved him. His one concession had been to put on his pajamas. Finally his mother had given up and gone upstairs to her bedroom.
Although Meat didn't know it, his mother had not gone to bed either and was standing at the upstairs window, directly above him, watching too.
“Lieutenant Jones is getting out of the car,” he announced.
He held his breath. Then he was flooded with such joy that tears came to his eyes.
“Mom, it's Herculeah! She's all right! She's back! She's walking up the steps.”
He started for the front door.
His mother came down the steps fast enough to stop him. “Albert, you can't go out there.”
He glanced out the window beside the door. Across the street, the door was flung open, and Mrs. Jones rushed out to embrace Herculeah. She pulled back to look at Herculeah, to make sure she was really there and all right. Then she hugged her again.
“I've got to go. Mom, they'll be in the house in a minute.”
“Exactly where they need to be.”
“Momâ” He struggled with her.
“Albert, you're in your pajamas.”
“But I've got to know what happened.”
“I want to know what happened too, but we cannot disturb them now. That girl has been through a terrible time. Her father had to actually help her up the steps.”
Meat peered out the window again. His shoulders sagged with disappointment.
“Now they're in the house,” he cried in anguish. “Now it's too late.”
“The news about Herculeah will keep until morning, as will the news about poor Neiman. Now go to bed.”
“Momâ”
“I agreed you could stay up until you knew about Herculeah. Now you know. Go to bed, Albert.”
Suddenly Meat was too tired to argue. He started slowly up the stairs, pulling himself along by the banister.
The phone rang. “I'll get it,” he said quickly. He started down the steps.
His mother was quicker. She picked up the phone on the second ring.
Meat came down the three remaining steps and stood beside her. She tilted the phone so he could hear the conversation.
“Mrs. McMannis?”
“Yes.”
“This is Chico Jones.”
“Yes?”
“I saw your light on, and I knew you were anxious about your brother.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Your brother is unharmed.”
Meat felt the tension go out of her body and the relief flood in.
“Oh, thank you. And your daughter?”
Meat held his breath.
“Herculeah's unharmed as well. She's exhausted and shaky, but her mother's getting her to bed.”
“Where is Neiman, Lieutenant Jones?”
“Your brother's in custody now.”
“Custody?”
“Partly for his own protection, maâam. We haven't got the killer yet. We know his identity. He left an arsenal of weapons at the bookshop. His fingerprints were all over everything, but we haven't got him.”
“Will there beâ” Meat's mother paused, apparently familiar with the right word but unable to say it.
Meat supplied it. “Charges?”
“There may be, but there do seem to be extenuating circumstances. Well, I'm sure you need to get to bed. I'll be staying over here tonight, so if there's any trouble, you give me a call. I'll be standing by.”
“Thank you very much, Lieutenant.”
She put down the phone.
“What a lovely, thoughtful, kind man,” she said.
“I thought you didn't like him. You're always criticizing both Herculeah's parents.”
“A person can occasionally be wrong,” she said.
26
HOMOPHONE
“They got him!”
Meat said, “Herculeah?”
He was sitting by the kitchen phone waiting until nine oâclock. That was the absolute earliest his mother would allow him to call. But Herculeah beat him to it.
“Yes! It's me! They got him.” There was a shocked silence so Herculeah added, “The gunman! They got the gunman!”
Meat was already sitting down, but he felt as if he had just gotten lower with relief.
“Guess where they got him?” she went on.
“I can't.”
“At Death's Door. He went back for his guns. This man was not terribly bright.”
“If he was bright at all,” Meat commented, “he wouldn't be a hired killer.”
“Too right,” Herculeah said. “I was hoping you'd stayed home from school today. Can you come over?”
“If they've got the gunman, I can. Otherwise my mom would make me stay in the house for the rest of my life.”
“I'm having a cup of coffee. My dad said I deserved it. ”
“Is there enough for me?”
“Of course.”
“I'm on my way.”
When Meat was sitting across from Herculeah, waiting for his coffee to cool he said, “My mom wouldn't let me call. She said you needed your rest.”
“Actually, I have been awake since dawn,” Herculeah said.
“Didn't your mother let you sleep in?”
“My mother did. Tarot didn't. At first light the parrot started yelling, âBeware, beware.' I said, âGo back to sleep. It's too early for that.' But Tarot kept it up. âBeware. Beware.' Finally my mother came and took him out of the room, but I could hear him all the way down the hall.”
“Did your dad explain what happened? I'm still not sure about things.”
“I know everything. What happened was that a man named Pirannaâit sounds like the fish, but it's spelled differentlyâ”
“A homophone,” Meat said.
Herculeah looked at him in surprise. “How did you know that?”
He tried to act as if it were nothing. He took a small sip of coffee and was proud that he swallowed it without spitting it back into the mug. He managed a modest shrug.
“That's what I love about you, Meatâthat you come up with things like homophone.”
He blushed with pleasure. He would remember that sentence until the day he diedâthe first part anyway.
“So, this fish guy, this Piranna,” she pronounced the word carefully and grinned at him, “he shot at the mayor.
“And your uncle Neiman may not be able to see very well, but like a lot of people with a handicap, his other senses go into overdrive to make up for it. So Uncle Neiman has great hearing.
“In fact he was the only one who heard the shot. He looked upâright at the window where it came fromâbut he couldn't see a thing.
“The gunmanâpiranha Piranna”âshe grinned at Meat againâ“panicked. He had to get out of town, but first he hired a gunman to take care of Uncle Neiman. Uncle Neiman's newspaper picture was still in the gunman's duffel bag.”
“Where is Uncle Neiman nowâstill in custody?”
“No. He's back in his apartment over the shop.”
“That's a relief.”
“And guess what they called the gunman?”
“I couldn't.”
“They called him the Bull.”
She gave a slight shudder, remembering how well the name had fit. In her nightmare she still saw those terrifying red eyes.
“Bull?”
“Yes, don't you get it? The Cretan Bull! You're the one who told me about it when I had my last premonition. Capturing it was one of the labors of Hercules.”
Meat said nothing.
“Isn't it exciting?”
“What?”
“I'm following almost exactly in the footsteps of Hercules.”
21
TICKLED TO DEATH
“So this is the famous hat?”
It was a woman's voice. She was speaking from the entrance to Death's Door.
Both Herculeah and Meat looked up from their work. Meat waited a moment. When no one answered, he called out, “Yes, it is.”
“Oh, there you are.” The woman glanced into the room, waved at them and went back to the hat.
Uncle Neiman had put his hat under a large glass dome. It stood on a table beside the cash register and had become sort of a tourist attraction. The woman admired it a moment more.
“And there's the bullet hole,” she said almost reverently.
Neither Meat nor Herculeah answered, though Meat unconsciously rubbed the side of his head as if to assure himself there was no hole there. The woman crossed to where they were working.
“And are you the person who was wearing that hat when it got that bullet hole?”
Meat nodded.
“And you're the girl who almost got shot, too?”
“I sure am.”
“Well, now I've seen all the celebrities but the one I came to see. Magoo, where are you?”
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