'No one's going to do anything to you, Mr. Lindstrom. It's just that when a family is deserted, you understand, the county has to support them, and we try to find the husband to save ourselves a little money.' Gunn smiled, to put the man more at ease. 'It costs the county quite a bit, you know. Even in a case like your wife's, where there's only one child'
Lindstrom looked down at his cap; for a minute it seemed as if his big bands would tear it apart, straining and twisting. 'That's what I-you don't understand-I-' He raised desperate, suddenly teartaled eyes to Gunn. 'I-we-got two boys,' he said. 'Two. The-the other one, Eddy, our oldest one, he's-not right. Not noways. She wouldn't ever hear to-even when that doctor said- But she allus kep' him hid away from ever'body too, account of being-ashamed. Secret, like.'
FOURTEEN
Morgan stepped inside the dark, smelly front hallway of the apartment building and shut the door after him. This was it, here and now. And it was the damnedest thing, he'd expected it to feel like going into action, but instead-a little ludicrously-he felt exactly the way he had when he'd been in that senior play in high school. Walking out on the stage, all the lights, painfully conscious of every breath he drew, every slightest gesture, and yet somehow divorced from himself so that he moved with a stranger's body, spoke with a stranger's voice.
This was it, this was it. Start now. Remember-and as he went up the first half-dozen steps, sudden sharp panic stabbing at the back of his mind (the way it had been that time on the high-school auditorium stage, oh, God, suppose I forget-) that he'd forget just the one detail of his plan that would bring the whole thing down like a house of cards on top of him.
Think about what you're doing. You'll be all right, you're getting keyed up to it now, you know what you've got to do, you've decided, and now time's run out, you're on-move!
Quick, because you've been watched in, every second counts now, the timing is the important factor here. You'll be all right-you can do it.
He went fast up the stairs. There were sixteen steps, and a tiny square landing, uncarpeted, and then you turned up six more steps to the left, to the second-floor hall. The door to the Lindstroms' apartment was just across there, and the next flight right around from the top of those stairs, left again. He got to the landing, and his breath was coming too short- God, he'd never do it, out of condition, another flight and he wouldn't have strength to aim the damn gun- But he had to hurry, he had to A woman screamed ten feet away in the dark hall. And screamed.
And the third scream shut off sharp and final, cut off as with a knife. After that it was mostly reflex action for Morgan. The only conscious complete thought he remembered having was, Not destiny I should kill Smith: every time something happens to stop it. That in his mind while the screaming sounded, and then he was across the landing and plunging up the six additional steps, and in the hallway-behind that door there, no noise now, no screams, and then other sounds, and a boy's frantic voice, ' No, don't, Eddy, don't, please -'
He expected the door to be locked, he pounded on it to let them know someone was here, coming. Afterward he remembered it wasn't until then he realized it was the Lindstroms' door-and now, no voices inside but a queer grunting, thrashing-around noise that raised the hair on his neck, and he put his shoulder to the door, shouting warning.
It was not locked, it swung in under him, almost threw him head foremost. Feet on the stairs below: a voice calling something.
He didn't see the woman, not then. Only one lamp on in the dingy room, a body on the floor, a big dark figure crouched over it, with hands reaching- 'What's going on here, what-' He was halfway across the room; he stopped, seeing the woman then, twisted limp figure sprawled across the threshold of the bedroom; he looked away from her, dry-throated, saw the big figure had straightened to come at him, lumbering. In the full light then, coming with guttural mouthings, and Morgan saw what it was, saw Blind, instinctive, he clawed for the gun in his pocket. The butt caught in the pocket lining; hands took hold of him and slammed him back against the wall and he thought all the breath was knocked out of him, he couldn't- Animal gruntings, a fetid breath hot on his face. He tugged desperately at the gun and it came free, the pocket tearing loose, as he went down full length on his back, and hands lifting, holding, smashed his head down against a chair leg.
Dark exploded inside his head, he was blind, he was done, but the gun in his hand, and he jammed it into what was on top of him, just at random, and pulled the trigger.
Johnny Branahan had been riding patrol cars for nearly twenty years; he was growing a spare tire around his diaphragm and he wasn't quite as quick on his feet as he'd been when he was a rookie. He wasn't a particularly ambitious man, or the brainiest man in uniform, but he was a good cop, within certain limits: he did the job he was supposed to do the way it was supposed to be done, and he wasn't one of those did just as little as he could get away with, either. He was conscientious about studying the lists of hot cars and wanted men.
The call came over at six minutes past seven, and they were quite a way off, so even with the siren going they were the fourth car to get there. An assault, it was, by the code number, and must be a three-star business, some sort, with four cars called in. The ambulance was already there, and quite a crowd-honest to God, you'd think they grew up out of the ground, let anything happen Wilkinson and Petty, Slaney and Gomez, handling the crowd: he spotted them as he braked the car, and Gomez caught his eye and called to him as he and his partner got out. 'Upstairs, Johnny-second floor, the lieutenant's up there.'
'Right,' said Branahan. He was puffing a little when he got to the top of the stairs; it was the apartment right there, door open, and he could see the white-coated interns inside, just lifting a stretcher.
'This one's a D.O.A. too,' said one of them. 'We'll come back for those- O.K., boy, let's get the show on the road.' Goldstein and Costello were handling the smaller crowd up here, tenants, trying to get in to see the blood, see the corpses, honest to God you wondered what got into people 'All right, folks, let the doctors through, now-'
As the interns came out with the first stretcher, the crowd parting reluctantly, he caught a glimpse of another man in there, one of the downtown men, Lieutenant Mendoza from Homicide. Quick work, he thought, and moved back himself to give room to the interns at the top of the Stairs.
That put him at the foot of the stairs to the next floor, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a man crouched halfway down those stairs, and got a flicker of movement as the man retreated a little way, farther into the dark up there.
It wasn't brains made Branahan go up after him, any conscious process of reasoning. It was just that as an experienced cop he knew there must be something funny about anybody who didn't come rushing up to join the crowd when anything like this was going on.
He started up the stairs, and above him heard sudden movement, and then the fellow began to run-light and fast-up toward the next floor; so then of course Branahun ran too, and caught up with him at a door there, and he was fumbling at, and swung him around. It was damn dark up there, and he had his flash out ready; he shot it in the man's face and said, 'Hold it, brother, let's see what you look like.'
The man swore and swang on him, so Branahan belted him one on the side of the head with the flash, and the man staggered back against the wall. Branahan took a second look and was pleased; he'd had reason to remember this name and face on the wanted lists again, because he'd picked this hood up once before, five-six years back.
'Well, if it isn't Ray Dalton,' he said. 'Up on your feet, boy. Hey, Andy, up here! I got a deal for us! It's just a damn shame, Ray, you so homesick for California you couldn't wait to head west-but New York's kind of mad at you on account you spurned their hospitality.
You oughta learn better manners, Ray- No, you don't, me bucko, just hold it now,' and the bracelets clicked home as Andy came pounding up the stairs.
