from her at all.
He had never played Little League ball, he had never joined 4-H or a club at high school, he had never prowled the town with a gang on Halloween, he had never gone dragging on The Pike with other teenagers when the car bug hit. Instead, when he had been able to slip off into the woods with his.22, a hand-me-down from his father which he had kept fiercely cleaned and oiled, he pretended to be a Marine-wriggling through the brush on his belly, drawing a bead on the snapping turtles that infested Balsam Lake (and never shooting except at the empty gin and whisky bottles with which the Lake woods abounded)-always by himself. Somewhere along the road he had lost or strangled the need for group enjoyment. By the time he was free and on his own, the boys he had grown up with avoided him and the girls laughed at him as a square. That was when he had spent so much time at Rosie’s.
One of his recurring regrets was that he had been too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. He had enlisted in the Marines instead of waiting to be drafted and spent two of his four years on sea duty in the Med, all drill and mock-landings and spit-and-polish and the whorehouses of Barcelona, Marseilles, Kavala, Istanbul; the rest of his hitch he sulked at Parris Island handing out fatigues and skivvies to frightened recruits. He was not, his C.O. told him, a good Marine, too much rugged individualism and not enough esprit de corps. He was a lance corporal twice and a corporal once; he wound up a Pfc. His only achievement of record was the Expert Medal he earned on the firing range. He formed no lasting friendships in the Corps, either.
It was John Secco who had talked him into joining the New Bradford force. He had always looked up to Chief Secco as a fair man, his standard of goodness. Secco had an understanding of boys. His policies had kept the juvenile delinquency rate in New Bradford among the lowest in the state.
“I won’t kid you, Wes,” Secco had said. “You’ll never get fat being a town cop. You’ll have to learn how to handle selectmen, sorehead taxpayers, bitching storekeepers, Saturday night drunks, husband-and-wife fights, kids out to raise Cain, and all the rest. A good smalltown policeman has to be a politician, a squareshooter, a hardnose, and a father confessor rolled into one. It’s almost as tough as being a good bartender. And all for a starting pay of eighty-some bucks. I’ve had my eye on you for a long time, Wes. You’re just the kind of man I want in my department. There’s only thing that bothers me.”
“What’s that?”
“Can you follow orders? Can you work with others? Can you discipline yourself? Your Marine record says you can’t.”
And he had said, “I don’t know, Chief. I’ve done some growing up. I think so.”
“All right, let’s give it a try. Take your training at the state police school, and let’s see how you make out on your six months’ probation.”
He had chalked up the best record of any recruit in the New Bradford department’s history. But he thought that John Secco still had questions in his eye. John and Ellen. They sure hold a tight rein on me. And it’s not so bad.
^ The porch light was on, which meant that Ellen was waiting up for him. Leave it to Irish. The Saab was in the driveway, too, not put away. She had probably left it handy in case he failed to show in what she considered a reasonable time and she decided to drive back down into town to haul him home by the ear.
As he turned into his gate Malone paused. There was a strange car across the street, a black dusty late-model Chrysler New Yorker sedan. No one on Old Bradford Road could afford a car like that. It was parked at the Tyrell house, but the house was dark, so the people couldn’t be visiting. The Tyrells rarely had visitors, and never so late at night, they were an old couple who went to bed with their chickens. The people from the Chrysler might have been visiting the young Cunninghams next door, but the Cunningham house showed no lights, either. Maybe I ought to check it out. But then he remembered Ellen’s look at the stationhouse and decided that discretion was the better part of whatever it was.
Malone trudged up the walk and onto his porch, reaching for his keys. He felt suddenly like dropping where he was, curling up on the mat and giving himself totally to sleep. He could not recall when he had felt so tired, even on maneuvers. I wonder what kind of hell I’d catch from that little old Irisher of mine if she opened the front door and fell over me.
He was still grinning when he unlocked the door and stepped into the dark hall and felt a cold something press into the skin behind his ear and heard a spinning sort of voice behind him say, “Freeze, cop.”
It’s got to be I’m dreaming. I did fall asleep out there. This can’t be for real. Not my house, Ellen, Bibby.
“Don’t do it,” the spinning voice said. “I just as soon shoot the top of your head off.” It turned in another direction. “See if he’s heeled.”
Malone heard someone say, “Where’s my wife and daughter?”
“Just stand still, fuzz.” The muzzle dug in.
Rough hands ran up his body. Another man, a strong one. The hand scraped his left nipple and found the butt of the revolver sticking out of his shoulder holster, the one he used off duty. The hand came out and he felt lighter, lost.
“I got it,” a second voice said. This one was as rough as the hands, but muted, a gargly purr like a cougar’s.
“Put the lights on,” the first voice said. It sounded happy. “Let me have it, Hinch.”
Hinch.
“Just a minute, Fure.”
Fure?
The lights went up. The first thing Malone saw through the archway was Ellen in the parlor perched like a Sunday school kid on the edge of her mother’s New England rocker. She still had her coat on. Her face was the color of milk with the butterfat skimmed off.
“Can I move my head?” Malone asked.
“Like a good little cop.” The spinny one.
Malone moved his head and came to life. The two men were wearing masks. If they had meant to kill they would not have cared if he and Ellen saw their faces. He let his breath out.
The masks were ridiculous. They were fullface and skintight, brown bear faces. The bear face on the little man was too big for him; it was wrinkled up like something unwrapped after a thousand years. The big man’s fitted. The little one was a fashion plate. The big one was strictly motorcycle mugg, a hard case.
They go to the trouble of wearing masks and then they say each other’s names out loud. Don’t ever take chances with the dumb ones, John said, they either panic like animals or they like it.
The man called Fure liked it. He was now holding two guns, his own and Malone’s. His was a seven-inch automatic, a foreign handgun. At first Malone thought it was a Mauser. But then he saw that it was a Walther PPK, a gun popular with continental law officers. Must be stolen. There had been nothing European in either voice.
That’s the gun they killed Tom Howland with. The gun the little guy killed Howland with. It would have to be the little guy. He digs guns.
Fure was digging Malone’s gun. The eyes behind the bear mask were crazy with joy. He had the Walther in his left armpit now and he was turning Malone’s revolver over and over in his gloved hands.
“A Colt Trooper, Hinch. Six-shot,.357 Magnum. You ought to feel the balance of this baby. You’re a pal, fuzz. Here.” He handed the Walther to the big man. “Where’s the ammo belt goes with this?”
“I don’t keep it in the house-” Malone stopped. Fure was laughing. He reached into the hall closet and straightened up dangling the ammunition belt. The holster was empty, the bullet holders were full. “Naughty, naughty. Okay, fuzz. Inside with wifie.”
Malone went into the parlor, his own gun digging into his head.
“Not near her. On that sofa over there.”
Ellen’s eyes followed him each inch of the way, saying do something, don’t do anything.
He’s a shrewd bugger for all his dumbness. He figures that together we’re strong, apart we’re helpless. Malone felt the rage rising. He sat down on the sofa.
“Ellen. Where’s Bibby?”
“Upstairs with the woman.”
“Is she all right?”
