down the inner hall, turning off lights, opened the fusebox, and cut the master switch. The apartment was pitch- dark now. Loren found the hall closet, put on rubbers, and his heaviest overcoat. Then he tugged the couch away from the front door, undid the deadbolt and chain, and ran across the room.
He slipped on the couch cushions in the middle of the floor and pain shot through his ankle. He bit down on his lower lip, hobbled the rest of the way across the room, threw open the door leading to his balcony. Sudden cold stunned him, made him shake uncontrollably as he stood outside, behind the curtained balcony door, and watched through the thin elongated crack.
The front door was flung back and Weak Eyes leaped in, using a combat crouch like Wilt at the airport. In his hand there was a gun. His eyes focused on the patch of light across the dark room, the light coming from the balcony. He stalked across the room like a wolf. Loren tensed, waiting. Yes, he was close enough to the balcony now, time for Val to make her move.
There she went, crawling across the wall-to-wall carpet in the dark, all but invisible in her jumpsuit, making the front door and then for the firestairs.
Weak Eyes heard nothing, didn’t turn. He kicked the balcony door all the way open, looked down the long balcony. There was nothing to see but a white-painted cast-iron outdoor table and three matching chairs. He took a cautious step out onto the balcony, his eyes trying to pierce the deeper shadows at the far end.
Loren brought the fourth iron chair down hard on the back of the killer’s neck. Weak Eyes howled, flung his arms up for balance. The gun flew out of his hand into the slush. He skidded halfway down the balcony, his belly slammed into the outdoor table.
Loren kept hitting him with the chair until Weak Eyes wasn’t moving. It was all Loren could do to keep from hurling him over the balcony rail and down twenty stories to the street.
Loren was still standing there, his teeth chattering in the cold, his ankle throbbing, sweat pouring down him, when a few minutes later Val and two uniformed patrolmen rushed out to the balcony.
“What a world,” Lieutenant Krauzer grunted eight hours later. “Her own brother.”
Weak Eyes was in a cell, Donna had been taken to the hospital under sedation, and they were gathered in Loren’s apartment. He sat on the blue couch with his right leg raised on a kitchen chair and the ankle bandaged tightly. Val sat on a hassock at his side, refilling his coffee cup, handing him tissues when he sneezed. Outside. Christmas morning dawned in shades of smoky gray.
“It had to be her brother,” Loren said. “Once Val described the fake Gene Holt it all clicked, because I remembered seeing a man of that exact description in the airport auditorium after the Graham murder. And then I remembered three things Donna had mentioned in passing: that she and her late husband had had mutual wills, that she hadn’t gotten around to making a new will yet, and that her wrongful-death suit against the driver of the car that killed her family was going to net her a lot of money.
“Now suppose she’d been killed by that burglar, or at the airport? Who would have wound up with that money? Obviously if she died intestate it would go to her next of kin. Who’s her next of kin? Her parents are dead, her only child is dead—
“Now the picture clears up,” he went on. “Charles and Cindy Greene die in a tragic accident that gets heavy coverage in the media. Wherever he was at the time. Donna’s brother hears of it, sees huge financial possibilities, comes to the city quietly, and begins shadowing her. He satisfied himself that the wrongful-death action is going to produce big money and that his sister hasn’t made out a new will. He had to get rid of her before she does. He looks around—the forged ID and bugging equipment and plastique show he has underworld connections—and hires Frank Wilt for the hit.
“Wilt breaks into her house a week ago Monday night and bungles the job. Brother gives him another chance. Wilt follows her to the airport, makes his move—and by blind chance a man with a name similar to Donna’s is next to her in line, turns faster than she does, and dies instead of her.
“Brother has gone to the airport too, as a backup in case Wilt blew it again. He and Donna are both rounded up as witnesses and taken to the auditorium but either she doesn’t see him in the crowd or just doesn’t recognize him after fifteen years. When she’s let go he follows her to my place and works out a plan to kill her here, doing the job himself this time. He reads the newspaper stories about the airport murder, picks up the name of Sergeant Gene Holt, and uses it as his cover identity but makes the big mistake of assuming from the name that the sergeant is a man.”
“And that bit of chauvinism’s going to cost him twenty years in the slam.” Krauzer yawned and lumbered wearily to his feet. “Well, if you’ll excuse me it’s Christmas morning and I’ve got grandkids to play Santy for.” He winked broadly at Val. “Remember he’s a sick man and needs his rest.”
When he had let himself out Val slid off the hassock to sit on the floor. “Funny,” Loren said as he ran his hand through her hair. “The way Christmas turned out isn’t anything like what I either was afraid of or hoping for. I can’t walk, I haven’t slept in two nights, I’ve got the chills, but all in all I feel good. The crazy way this world goes. I’ll be damned if I know if it’s all chance or if it’s meant.”
“I’ll take the world either way if you’re part of it,” Val told him softly.
CHRISTMAS GIFT – Robert Turner
There was no snow and the temperature was a mild sixty-eight degrees and in some of the yards nearby the shrubbery was green, along with the palm trees, but still you knew it was Christmas Eve. Doors on the houses along the street held wreaths, some of them lighted. A lot of windows were lighted with red, green, and blue lights. Through some of them you could see the lighted glitter of Christmas trees. Then, of course, there was the music, which you could hear coming from some of the houses, the old familiar songs, “White Christmas,” “Ave Maria,” “Silent Night.”
All of that should have been fine because Christmas in a Florida city is like Christmas anyplace else, a good time, a tender time. Even if you’re a cop. Even if you pulled duty Christmas Eve and can’t be home with your own wife and kid. But not necessarily if you’re a cop on duty with four others and you’re going to have to grab an escaped con and send him back, or more probably have to kill him because he was a lifer and just won’t
In the car with me was McKee, a Third-Grade, only away from a beat a few months. Young, clear-eyed, rosy-cheeked All-American-boy type, and very, very serious about his work. Which was fine; which was the way you should be. We were parked about four houses down from the rented house where Mrs. Bogen and her three children were living.
At the same distance the other side of the house was a sedan in which sat Lieutenant Mortell and Detective First-Grade Thrasher. Mortell was a bitter-mouthed, needle-thin man, middle-aged and with very little human expression left in his eyes. He was in charge. Thrasher was a plumpish, ordinary guy, an ordinary cop.
On the street behind the Bogen house was another precinct car with two other Firsts in it, a couple of guys named Dodey and Fischman. They were back there in case Earl Bogen got away from us and took off through some yards to that other block. I didn’t much think he’d get to do that.
After a while McKee said: “I wonder if it’s snowing up north. I’ll bet the hell it is.” He shifted his position. “It don’t really seem like Christmas, no snow. Christmas with palm trees, what a deal!”
“That’s the way it was with the first one,” I reminded him.
He thought about that. Then he said: “Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. But I still don’t like it.”
I started to ask him why he stayed down here, then I remembered about his mother. She needed the climate; it was all that kept her alive.
“Y’know,” McKee said then, “sarge, I been thinking; this guy Bogen must be nuts.”
“You mean because he’s human? Because he wants to see his wife and kids on Christmas?”
“Well, he must know there’s a
“You’re not married, are you, McKee?”
“No.”
“And you don’t have kids of your own. So I can’t answer that question for you.”
