Ed McBain (30 page)

He had been sitting on the bench for ten minutes when Snow White and the two cops pulled up. The white top of the squad car reflected the brilliant October sun, and it struck the old panic within him, but there was no place to go except the river, so he sat still and bulled it through. He heard the car doors slam shut with the solidity of bank vault doors, heard the empty, hollow clatter of the cops' shoes on the pavement, and then saw shadows, long and thin in the afternoon sun, fall across the bench.

"Watching the water?" one cop asked.

He looked up, trying to feign surprise.

"Yeah," he said, his voice trembling a little. "I've been watching the water."

"We got a dead man," the second cop said drily.

He blinked up at the cop, condemning himself for feeling guilty when he was completely innocent.

"A dead man?" he said. "Yeah?"

"This is all news to you, huh?" the first cop said.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is."

"He got it with a zip gun, this guy," the cop went on. "You ever own a zip gun?"

"No," he lied. He had owned a zip gun once, before the cops had begun giving the gangs a lot of trouble. He had ditched the gun then, together with a knife that was over the legal limit in blade size.

"You never owned one, huh?" the cop said drily.

"No, never," he lied again.

"You know a guy called Angelo?" He knew instantly that it was Angelo Brancusi they were speaking of. He wet his lips. "Lots of guys named Angelo," he said.

"Only one guy named Angelo Brancusi. You know him?"

"I know him," he said. "Sure. Everybody knows him."

"But you particularly, huh?"

"Why me, particularly?"

"Maybe because your name is Johnny Trachetti."

"That's my name," he said. "What's this all about?"

"Maybe because Angelo tried to rape your kid sister, say two or three weeks ago. Maybe, let's say, you and Angelo had a big tangle outside the RKO on 125th, with Angelo pulling homemade brass knucks and trying to rip your face apart with them. Maybe that's why you know him particularly, huh, boy?"

"Angelo tried to work over lots of guys. Everybody knows his brass knucks. He made 'em from a garbage can handle. Besides, he stayed away from me since that time near the RKO. Angelo don't bother me or my sister anymore."

"You're right there, boy," the first cop said.

"What do you mean?"

"Angelo ain't bothering anybody anymore," the cop said. "It was Angelo who got zip-gunned."

He wet his lips again. Out on the river a tug sent a blast to the sky, high and strident. The blast hung on the silence of the October air, and he could almost taste the brackishness of the river.

"I didn't shoot him," he said.

"I know," the first cop told him. "That's why you ran like a rat when we came on the scene."

"Look," he said, appealing to their common sense now, "I didn't shoot him. I didn't like him, but there was lots of guys didn't like him. Look, why should I shoot him? Hey, come on, you don't really think..."

He saw the look in the first cop's eyes. That same look was mirrored on the second cop's face. He saw, too, the irrefutable logic there. Angelo had been gunned down. Angelo was scum, but he was a citizen of this fair city. Someone had gunned him, and it was like tagging someone for a parking violation. Some big boy upstairs would raise six kinds of hell if this sort of thing went on, people cluttering up the streets with worthless garbage like Angelo. There was only one way to handle a case of this exceptional caliber. Pull in the nearest sucker. Take Johnny because he was as neat a patsy as the next guy, all made to order with an attempted rape on his sister, and a knock-down-drag-out right on 125th, where Angelo had done his best to kill him.

Whatever you do, avoid trouble on your beat. Squelch trouble on your beat. Step on trouble.

Step on Johnny Trachetti.

He read the logic. You can't fight logic. He didn't try to.

He brought his knee up into the groin of the first cop, and then clobbered him on the back of the head with both hands squeezed together like the head of a mallet. The cop fell to the pavement like a pile of manure, and his buddy unsnapped the Police Special hanging in the holster near his right buttock. The shot rang out on the crisp autumn air, but Johnny was already behind the squad car, ducking around the grille, heading for the door near the driver's seat. He knew it was crazy, and he knew you didn't go around driving cops' cars, but taking the rap for Angelo's kill was just as nuts, and he had nothing to lose now, not after the logic he had read.

He heard the second shot, and the third one, but he was already behind the wheel, his head ducked low, his hand re-leasing the emergency brake, his foot on the accelerator. The car leaped ahead, and then the shots came like bursts from a tommy gun, fast and sharp, pinging against the sides of the car.

He heard the first cop banging his nightstick against the pavement, and the pounding was as loud and as frightening as the bark of the other cop's gun. The last bullet found one of the rear tires, and the car lurched crazily, but he held on to the wheel and kept his foot pressed to the floor, and the rubber flapped and beat the asphalt as he headed for 116th. The cop had stopped to reload, and by the time the next shots came, he couldn't have hit him if he'd been using a bazooka. He drove down to the York Avenue exit, wondering whether or not he should turn on the siren, a little excited about all of it now, a little reckless-feeling.

He ditched the car, and then ran like a thief up to First Avenue, cutting back uptown. He reached 116th Street, wondered where he should go then. Back home? That was the first place they'd look.

He stood on the corner, looking up toward the Third Avenue El, wondering. When he saw the squad car pull around Second Avenue, he made up his mind, and he made it up fast.

He didn't run this time. He walked casually, his head turned toward the shop windows that lined the wide street. The corset shop was in the middle of the street, between Second and Third. The plate-glass window carried the fancy legend
FOUNDATION GARMENTS,
but everybody knew this was the corset shop, and everybody knew it was run by Gussie the Corset Lady.

He walked into the shop quickly. The front room was stacked with dummies wearing brassieres and girdles and corsets and contraptions he couldn't name. He'd worked for Gussie a long time ago, when he was fifteen, delivering the garments to fat women who should have ordered pants with zippers instead. He heard the hum of the sewing machine in the back room, and he looked out at the street once and then parted the flowered curtains and stepped out of sight.

Gussie looked up from the machine. She was a tall woman in her early fifties, with large brown eyes and full, sensuous lips. She wore her own foundation garments, and she was wearing one now that bunched her full breasts up into the low yoke of her neckline, like the heroine on the jacket of a historical novel.

"Well!" she said. "Who's after you?"

"The cops," Johnny said quickly.

She'd been smiling, but the smile dropped from her face now. "What do you mean, the cops? What for?"

"They say I killed Angelo Brancusi."

"He's dead?" Gussie asked. She nodded her head emphatically. "Good. He deserved it."

"Yeah, but I didn't do it."

"I didn't say you did. No matter who did it, he deserved it."

Johnny glanced through the curtains and out at the street again. "I ran away from them," he said. "They were planning a run-through. I don't like working on a railroad."

"You shouldn't have run. That was stupid."

"All right, it was stupid. You didn't see their eyes."

Gussie stared at him contemplatively for a few moments. "Why'd you come to me?" she asked.

"Just to get off the streets. You don't have to worry, I'm leaving."

Gussie's face was worried now.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I don't know. How do I know? Just stay away from them for now, that's all."

"And then what?"

"Somebody killed Angelo," he said. "That's for sure."

"They'll catch you," she said. "And it'll be worse because you ran away."

"I also slugged a cop and stole a squad car. I got nothin' to lose now."

"Stay until dark," Gussie said suddenly. "Stay here in the back."

"Thanks," he said.

"I'm only saving my own skin. If the cops think..."

"Don't spoil it," Johnny said. "I was beginning to think you were human."

"Go to hell, you snot nose," Gussie said, but she was smiling.

He saw the lights come on in the church across the street, saw the streetlamps throw their dim rays into the gathering October darkness. The clock on the wall in Gussie's front room read five ten. The lights all along the street came on, warm yellow lights that built a solid, cozy front against the crisp near-winter blackness.

"You'd better get started," she said. "We're lucky they haven't been here yet."

"I ditched the car on York," he told her. "They probably figure I headed downtown."

"Go through the back way," Gussie said. "You can cut through the yard and climb the fence. That way you'll come out on a Hun' fifteenth. Less lights."

"All right," he said. He hesitated, biting his lip. "You got money?"

"A little."

Gussie walked to a chair and unhooked a black leather purse from where it hung. "This'll help a little. Things haven't been too good lately."

She handed him the sawbuck, and he hesitated before taking it. "You don't have to..."

"Angelo broke my window once," she said simply.

"Well, thanks a lot."

She nodded and he left by the back door, cutting into the concrete alleyway behind the apartment building. He knew there would be steps now leading to the sidewalk. He remembered the times when he and the other kids used to duck down behind the steps like this on his own block, whenever they were too busy or too rushed to look for a toilet.

He passed the garbage cans and the familiar sharp stench. It was dark there where the steps dropped down into the bowels of the tenement. He saw the iron railing up ahead of him on the sidewalk, and the dangling chain that was supposed to stop kids from parading up and down the steps, but which only served as an impromptu swing. He started up the steps, and when he collided with the other man he almost shrieked in terror.

He heard a dull clatter as something dropped to the steps and then rolled away into the blackness near the garbage cans. His fists balled immediately and he waited, hearing the other man's hoarse breathing. He figured the guy for a wino or a stumblebum, or maybe a degenerate.

"You damn fool," the man said. He still could not see his face. He heard only the hoarse breathing, saw only the dim outline of the man in the feeble glow of the streetlight which filtered down onto the steps below the building.

"Where'd it go?" the man asked.

"Where'd what go?" he heard himself answer.

"You damn fool," the man cursed again. He pushed back past Johnny, dropped to his hands and knees, and began scrambling around near the garbage cans. Johnny looked at him for a moment, and then wondered, What the hell am I standing around for? He started up the steps, heard the movement behind him, and then felt the wiry fingers clamp onto his shoulder.

"Just a second, punk," the man said. "If you broke that syringe, then you're going to pay for it." He pulled Johnny back down the steps and Johnny stumbled.

"You think syringes grow on trees? I had to swipe this one from a doctor's bag."

Johnny got up and moved toward the steps again, and the man slammed him back against the wall. He was a big man, with arms like oaks and a head like a bullet. His eyes gleamed dully in the darkness. "I said stay where you are," he said.

He shoved Johnny back into the alley, blocking him from the steps, and then he reached down for something that glittered near one of the garbage cans.

"You did it, punk," he said. "You broke the damn thing."

Johnny saw the jagged shards of the syringe in the man's open hand. And then the fingers of the hand closed around the syringe, hefting it like a knife, with the glass ends crooked and sharp.

"You shouldn't have been shooting up down here," Johnny said lamely. "I didn't even see you. I..."

"How much money you got, punk?" the man said.

"Nothing," Johnny lied.

"Suppose we see," the man said, advancing with the broken shards of the syringe ahead of him.

"Suppose we don't?" Johnny answered, planting his feet, and tightening his fists.

"A smart guy, huh? Break the damn syringe, and then pull a wise-o. I don't like smart guys. If you done something you pay for it, that's my motto."

He stepped closer, reaching for Johnny, and Johnny lashed out with his right fist catching the man solidly on his chest. The man staggered back, raising the hand with the syringe high. The streetlight caught the syringe, gave it up to the darkness again as it slashed downward and up. Johnny felt the ragged glass ends when they struck his wrist. He tried to pull his hand back, but the biting glass followed his arm, ripping the thin sleeve of his Eisenhower jacket, the jacket his brother had brought home in the last war. The glass ripped skin clear to his elbow and he felt the blood begin pouring down his arm and he cursed the addict, and brought back his left hand balled at the same time, throwing it at the addict's head.

He felt his knuckles collide with the bridge of the man's nose, felt bone crush inward and then the face fell away and back, slamming down against the concrete with the syringe shattering into a thousand brittle pieces now. Now that it was too late. He stepped around the man, and the man moved, and Johnny kicked him in the temple, wanting to knock his head off.

There was pain in his arm, and the blood had soaked through the thin sleeve of his jacket. He touched the arm and felt the blood, and when his hand came away sticky he felt a twinge of panic.

He stood at the base of the steps, wanting to kill the addict, wanting to really kill him.

He kicked him again, happy when he heard the sound of his shoe thudding against bone.