There was a sigh from the bedroom door—a ragged exhalation that might have been relief. The man’s shoes shuffled on the linoleum of the bedroom floor, and his heel struck the metal sill. He moved out into the hall, thin, his hollowed eyes dark against his pale face.
Garvin pointed the Glock at his chest and fired twice. The man held his hands against himself and fell into the living room.
Garvin sprang forward and looked down at him. He was dead.
“Matt!” The door of the hall closet rebounded against the wall, and Margaret clasped her arms around Garvin. She buried her teeth in his shoulder for a moment. “I heard him fumbling with the key. I knew it wasn’t you, and it was too far to the bedroom.”
Garvin slipped his gun into its holster and held her, feeling the spasmodic shake of her body as she cried. The hall closet was almost directly opposite the door to the small bedroom. She hadn’t even dared warn him as he came in.
He looked down at the man again, over Margaret’s shoulder. One of the man’s hands were tightly clasped around a Colt that must have been looted from a policeman’s body.
“You poor bastard,” Garvin said to the corpse. “You trusted me too far.”
Margaret looked up, as pale as the man had been when he stepped out to meet Garvin’s fire. “Matt! Hush! There wasn’t anything else you could do.”
“He was a man—a man like me. He was scared, and he was begging for his life,” Garvin said. “He wanted me to trust him, but I was too scared to believe him.” He shook himself sharply. “I still can’t believe him.”
“There wasn’t anything else to do, Matt,” Margaret repeated insistently. “You didn’t have any way of knowing whether I was all right or not. You’ve said it yourself. We live the way we have to—by rules we had to make up. He was in another man’s house. He broke the rules.”
Garvin’s mouth shaped itself into a twisted slash He couldn’t take his eyes off the dead man. “We’re good with rules,” he said. “The poor guy heard somebody—so he took a shot at me.
“And what could I do? Somebody tried to kill me in my own home. It didn’t really matter, after that, what he said or did, or what I thought. I had to kill him. Any way at all.”
He pulled away from Margaret and stood beside the corpse for a moment, his arms swinging impatiently as he tried to decide what to do. Then he moved forward, as though abruptly breaking out of an invisible shell. His footsteps echoed loudly in the hall, and then he was back from the bedroom, a sheet dangling out of his clenched hand.
“Matt, what’re you going to do?” Margaret asked, her voice almost a whisper as her puzzled eyes tried to read his face.
He bent and caught the dead man under the arms. “I’m putting up a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.” He dragged the corpse to the living room window, knotted one end of the sheet to the metal centerpost, and slung the remainder of the sheet around the dead man’s chest, leaving just enough slack so his lolling head would hang out of sight. Then he lowered the corpse through the open window.
Garvin turned. Suddenly, all his muscles seemed to twist. “I hope this keeps them away! I hope I never have to do this again.” Even with the distance between them, Margaret could easily see him trembling.
“I’ll do it again, if I have to,” he went on. “If they keep coming, I’ll have to kill them. After a while, I’ll be used to it. I’ll shoot them down with children in their arms. I’ll use their own white flags to hang them up beside this one. I’ll ignore the sound of their voices. Because they can’t be trusted. I know they can’t be trusted, because I know I can’t be trusted.”
He stopped, turned, and looked at Margaret. “You realize what that poor guy wanted? You know who he sounded like? Like me, that’s who—like me, Matt Garvin, the guy who just wanted a place to live in peace.”
“Matt, I know what he said he—”
“Hey! Hey, you, in there!” The muffled voice came blurredly into the apartment, followed by a series of sharp knocks on the other side of the wall that separated this apartment from the next.
Margaret stopped, but Garvin slid forward, his boots making no sound on the floor as he moved quietly over to the wall. The knocking started again. “You! Next door. What’s all that racket?”
Garvin heard Margaret start to say something. His hand flashed out in a silencing gesture, and he put his ear to the wall. His right hand came down and touched the Glock’s holster.
“I’m warning you.” He could hear the voice more clearly. “Speak up, or you’ll never come out of there alive. I’m mighty particular about my neighbors, and if you’ve knocked off the ones I had, I’ll make damn sure you don’t enjoy their place very long.”
Garvin’s mouth opened. He’d known there was someone in there, of course, but, up to now, there had never been any break in the silence.
“Well?” The voice was impatient. “I’ve got the drop on you. My wife’s in the hall right now, with a gun on your door. And I can get some dynamite in a big hurry.”
Garvin hesitated. It meant giving the other man an advantage.
“Hurry up!”
But there-was nothing else he could do. “It’s all right,” he finally said, speaking loudly enough for the other man to hear. “There was somebody in here, but we took care of it.”
“That’s better,” the other man said, but his voice was still suspicious. “Now let’s hear your wife say something.”
Margaret moved up to the wall. She looked at Garvin questioningly, and he reluctantly nodded. “Go ahead,” he said.
“This is Margaret Garvin. We’re—we’re all right.” She stopped, then seemed to reach a decision and went on with a rush. “My husband’s name is Matt. Who are you?”
That wasn’t right. Garvin frowned. She was getting too close to an infringement on the silent privacy that had existed for so long, now. Men were no longer brothers. They were distant nodding acquaintances.
Surprisingly, the other man did not hesitate a perceptible length of time before answering. “My name’s Gustav Berendtsen. My wife’s name is Carol.” The tone of his voice had changed, and now Garvin thought he could make out the indistinct trace of a pleased chuckle in Berendtsen’s voice. “Took care of it, did you? Good. Damn good! Nice to have neighbors you can depend on.” The voice lost some of its clarity as Berendtsen obviously turned his head away from his side of the wall. “Hey, Toots, you can put that cannon down now. They straightened it out themselves.”
Out in the hall, a safety-catch clicked, and no-longer-careful footsteps moved back from the Garvins’ door. Then Berendtsen’s door opened and shut, and, after a moment, there was a shy voice from beside Berendtsen on the other side of the wall.
“Hello. I’m Carol Berendtsen. Is—” She stopped, as though she too was as unsure of herself as Margaret and Garvin were, here in this strange situation that had suddenly materialized from beyond the rules. But she stopped only for a moment, “Is everything all right?”
“Sure, everything’s all right, Toots!” Berendtsen’s voice cut in from behind the wall. “I’ve been telling you those were damn sensible people living in there. Know how to mind their own business. People who know that, know how to make sure nobody else tries minding it, either.”
“All right, Gus, all right,” Garvin and Margaret heard her say, her low voice still carrying well enough to be heard through the masonry. “I just wanted to hear them say it.” And then she added something in an even lower voice. “It’s been a long time since I heard people just talking,” and Garvin’s hand tightened on Margaret’s as they heard her.
“Sure. Toots, sure. But I kept telling you it wasn’t always going to be that way. I—” His voice rose up to a louder pitch. “Hey, Garvins! I gotta idea. Also got a bottle of Haig and Haig in here. Care for some? We’ll come over,” he added hurriedly.
Garvin looked at Margaret’s strained face and trembling lips. He could feel his own face tightening.
