finger found the trigger.
I walked over to the closet door and took Echevarria's jacket from the knob. I don't know what I expected to glean from it. I studied the shoulder patches, poked around in the pockets, put it back where I'd found it.
I moved to the dresser and looked at the articles on its top. Coins, subway tokens, earrings, ticket stubs, perfume bottles, cosmetics, lipstick tubes, hairpins. I wondered who Ms. Lepcourt might be, and how she'd gotten involved with James Leo Motley. And what the involvement might have cost her. I reached to open the top dresser drawer, then told myself to quit wasting time. I wasn't going to find her in there, or him either.
The apartment layout was typical for tenements of that sort, three small rooms in a row, with the
doorways lined up. From the apartment's front door you could see straight through to the window I'd entered through, and for a moment I considered closing the window so that he wouldn't spot the change the minute he walked in. But that was silly, he wouldn't notice it, and as soon as he opened the door I'd be standing in front of him with a gun in my hand, so what possible difference could an open window make?
Even so, I took my time getting into position to wait for him. I passed through the middle room, and checked the little bathroom with its clawfooted tub. I hesitated at the archway leading to the front room. I stood there, holding the gun out in front of me like a torch, wishing it would cast a beam. Still, I could see well enough in the darkness. There was some light coming from the bedroom window behind me, and more light from windows in the living room that faced onto an airshaft between the building and the one next door.
I started into the room.
Something came out of nowhere and slammed down onto my arm a few inches above the wrist. My hand went dead and the .38 went flying.
Two hands fastened on my arm, one in the middle of the forearm, one near the shoulder. He heaved, and I went stumbling across the room as if launched by a catapult. I careened into a table, upending it, and my feet went out from under me. I reached out for support, grabbed at empty air, bounced off a wall and wound up on the floor.
He stood there and laughed at me.
'Come on,' he said. 'Get up.'
He was wearing Echevarria's uniform, everything but the jacket.
The shoes were wrong, though. The uniform code calls for plain black shoes with laces. He was wearing brown wing tips. He'd switched on a lamp; otherwise I wouldn't have noticed the color of his shoes.
I got to my feet. He just didn't look like a cop, I thought, and it wouldn't make any difference what shoes he wore. There are a lot of cops who don't look like cops either, not since they killed the height requirement and allowed facial hair, but he didn't look like any kind of cop, regular or auxiliary, old or
new style.
He leaned in the doorway, flexing his fingers, looking at me with evident amusement. 'So noisy,' he said.
'You're not much good at sneaking up on people, are you?
Climbing on garbage cans and running up fire escapes at your age. I was worried about you, Scudder. I was afraid you might fall and break a bone.'
I looked around, trying to track the Smith. I spotted it on the other side of the room, half-hidden under an armchair with a needlepoint back and seat. My eyes went from it to him, and his smile flashed.
'You dropped your gun,' he said. He picked up Echevarria's nightstick and slapped his palm with it. My forearm was still numb where he'd struck it with the stick. It would hurt for days once the feeling returned.
If I lived that long.
'You could try to get it,' he said, 'but I don't think your odds are very good. I'm closer to it than you are, and I'm faster. I'd have you before you got the gun. All in all, I think you'd have a better chance of getting out the door.'
He nodded toward the front door, and I obediently glanced over toward it. 'It's unlocked,' he said. 'I had the chain on but I took it off when I heard you making a racket in the backyard. I was concerned that you might see the chain and know somebody was home. But I don't think you'd have noticed.
Would you?'
'I don't know.'
'I hung the jacket on the closet doorknob for your benefit, you know. Otherwise you might have gone into the apartment next door.
You're such a buffoon, Scudder, that I've had to make things as easy for you as possible.'
'You're making it all very easy,' I said.
I looked within myself, scanning for fear, and I couldn't find any. I felt curiously calm. I wasn't afraid of him. I didn't have anything to be afraid of.
I shot a glance at the door, as if I was considering making a run for it. It was a ridiculous idea. It very likely wasn't unlocked, even if the chain was off, but even if it were he'd be on me before I could get the door open and myself through it.
Besides, I hadn't come here to run away from him. I'd come here to take him down.
'Go ahead,' he said. 'Let's see if you can get out the door.'
'We'll go through it together, Motley. I'm taking you in.'
He laughed at me. He raised the nightstick and pointed it at me and laughed again. 'I think I'll stick this up your ass,' he said. 'Do you think you'll like it? Elaine liked it.'
He was looking at me carefully, watching for a reaction. I didn't give him one.
