kids back here, you don’t open the goddamn door.’
Sharky took a fast peek over the divider in the front of the bus and ducked back quickly as Mary’s gun roared and the bullet sighed overhead and cracked through the windshield. Everyone behind Mary was on the floor. There was no time to negotiate. Mary was in a killing mood and had to be stopped fast. Sharky bad soft-nosed loads in his pistol. There was little chance they would go through the pusher and hit someone behind him. He had to take the risk.
Sharky reached over to the bus driver’s coin changer and clicked a dozen tokens out of it. He knelt and threw them across the bus behind the driver’s seat. Mary took the bait. He stood and fired two more shots into the driver’s seat. As be did Sharky rose up, throwing both arms over the retainer, and squeezing off a single shot. It hit Mary in the cheek. The right side of his face burst open. Blood gushed down his face and onto his chest. The shot slammed him back against the wall at the rear of the stairwell.
The elderly lady, less than two feet away, continued to clutch her shopping bag and stare straight ahead.
Mary looked surprised. He shuddered as blood poured out of his face. He started to raise his gun hand again.
Sharky lowered his aim an inch or so and fired twice more. The automatic jumped in his hands. Two more holes appeared in Mary’s chest, less than half an inch apart. He moaned, turned sideways, and fell on his knees on the bottom step, his hands between his legs and his forehead resting against the door. Sharky stepped over the driver, who was huddled on the floor with his hands over his ears, and pushed the release button. The door opened and Mary pitched out head-first.
Sharky opened the front door and jumped out.
Two uniformed cops were eight feet away, leaning across the hood of a Chevrolet, their service revolvers trained on Sharky.
‘Hold it right there.’
Sharky held his ID. high over his head and strode towards the rear of the bus.
‘Sharky, Central Narcotics,’ he yelled. ‘Get an ambulance.’
‘I said, “Hold it right there,” ‘ the cop yelled again.
Sharky threw the wallet at him. It bounced off the hood of the car and spun around, opened at his shield.
‘I said, “Call a goddamn ambulance,”’ Sharky said and kept walking. He reached Mary’s still form lying face down in the street and stood over him, his gun aimed at the back of the dope dealer’s head. He slid the .25 away from the body with his foot, then slipped it under High Ball, and rolled him slowly over.
The dealer looked straight up at the dark sky. Blood rattled in his throat. The eyes turned to glass and rolled up in his head. Sharky stuck his gun in his belt and reached down, pressing his fingers into Mary’s throat. Nothing.
One of the two cops was shouting into his radio mike. The other joined Sharky and handed him his wallet. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked.
‘I just retired a junkman. Better have your partner call the ME too.’
People pressed in from all sides. Horns blared as the traffic built up. Inside the bus, passengers crowded to the windows, pressing their faces against the cold glass. The elderly woman suddenly opened her mouth and screamed over and over at the top of her lungs. A flashgun went off, blinding Sharky.
‘What the hell was that?’ he yelled.
‘Somebody took a picture.’
‘No pictures, goddammit! No pictures!’ Sharky barked.
‘Too late,’ the cop said.
More noise. More confusion. A siren was shrieking nearby.
Sharky leaned against the bus. He felt suddenly tired, disgusted, used up, sick to his stomach. ‘Ah, shit,’ he said, half aloud.
He leaned over 1-ugh Ball Mary’s body, his fingers feeling the coat lining. He felt the bags, then a zipper, and pulled it open. Inside, in small pockets sewn into the lining of the coat, were fifteen one-gram bags of cocaine.
Chapter Two
He arrived at the station at 9:45, fifteen minutes before his appointment. Jaspers’s secretary was a hard-faced, sour- tempered policewoman named Helen Hill, a competent officer turned mean after eight years tied to a desk. She was less than affectionately known in the House as the Dragon Lady.
‘Sit over there,’ she snapped, pointing to a hard oak chair without arms. She glared at his scruffy exterior for a moment, then ignored him.
The outer office was Spartan. Nothing to read, no pictures on the wall. The Dragon Lady got up once, poured herself a cup of coffee from an urn on a ta6le near the door, and sat down again. She did not offer Sharky coffee, a drink of water, the time of day, or a kind word. Finally he got up and helped himself to a cup.
‘Don’t you ask?’ the Dragon Lady growled.
‘May I have a cup of coffee?’ Sharky said with a mock smile. He sprinkled half a packet of sugar into the cup, stirred it with his finger, licked it off, and returned to his seat. The Dragon Lady ignored him. He slurped his coffee loudly and stared at her. She continued to ignore him. The minutes crawled by. Fifteen minutes seemed to take an hour, at least. At exactly ten o’clock the phone on her desk buzzed.
‘Yes, sir? Yes, he is. Yes, sir.’ She hung up. ‘All right. You may go in now,’ she said, without looking at him.
He plopped the half-empty cup in the middle of her desk. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘for starting my day so cheerfully.’
