“Give it up!” I said, my back to the wall. The smell of gunpowder scorched the air. “Place is surrounded. You want out alive, it’s with your hands the hell up!”
The gunfire subsided.
“Slide your rod out in the hall,” I said, my gun out from my coat pocket now. “Don’t throw it,
After a moment or two of hesitation, the guy pitched it. It clunked against the baseboard of the floor at my left, harder than I liked but it didn’t go off; the barrel was still trailing smoke.
“Playing it smart, finally,” I said, stepping back inside, where I saw that he was indeed playing it smart—his version.
He held the small, black-haired, angelic-faced baby around its waist with one hard forearm; the child was asleep, or doped. The blonde was against a wall over at my left; her eyes were round and wet, her hard face distorted with fear, a knuckled hand up against one cheek. She wore a simple blue frock that hugged her curves. Behind her on the wall, crooked, hung a peaceful Maxfield Parrish print.
The razor-thin man had small eyes, but they looked large, the white showing all round. He looked crazed and quite capable of squeezing the trigger of the small automatic pressed to the unconscious child’s head.
“Let me pass,” he said. His voice was as thin as his mustache.
“No,” I said. “Put the kid down.”
“You kidding? He’s my ticket.”
To hell.
“What’s your name?”
“What do you care, copper?”
“What’s your name?”
The blonde said, breathlessly, “Eddie.”
I didn’t know whether she was answering my question, or talking to him. And I didn’t care.
“Put the kid down, Eddie, and I won’t mention you took a hostage. I’ll even lay the resisting arrest off on your dead pal, here.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said, and laughed. He moved forward a step, holding his tiny hostage tight, keeping the nose of the gun against the kid’s temple.
I shot Eddie between the eyes.
Not as impressive a shot as it sounds, close as he was to me; what was more impressive was the dive I made toward him as he dropped the kid. I caught the sleeping baby like a touchdown pass.
I sat on the floor, cradling the slumbering kid in my arms, the smoking gun still in one hand, the corpse of the thin guy at my feet, the other corpse between me and the blonde, who was stuck to the wall like a fly. I had just killed two men, and it would hit me later, but right now I felt good.
“You…you shot Eddie,” the blonde said. She was shaking her head, disagreeing with reality.
“No kidding,” I said. Rocking the child as I eased back onto my feet.
“How could you risk it? He had his finger on the trigger…”
“A shot in the head kills all reflex action, lady.”
“Am I…under arrest?”
“You’re under arrest.”
“What…what charge?”
“Kidnapping.”
She sighed. Nodded.
“This
She cocked her head, like she hadn’t understood me. Her Master’s Voice.
“Well?” I said. “Isn’t it?”
“Mister,” she said, “that’s Hymie Goldberg’s kid.”
“Hymie Goldberg?”
“The bootlegger. In Peoria. He’s loaded. We were gonna get five grand for the little bastard.”
My boss burst in the open door, then. Lou Sapperstein, a sturdy, balding cop of about forty seasoned years. He took off his hat, eyes wide behind wire-framed glasses; snow dusted his topcoat like dandruff. He had a .38 in one hand.
“What the hell are you up to, Nate?”
“I just cracked the Hymie Goldberg kidnapping,” I said.
And I handed him the baby.
1
THE LONE EAGLE
MARCH 5–APRIL 18, 1932
