fiddling with the syringe.
Lindsay screamed again.
“Shut up, damn you!” He raised his hand to hit her but she scooted back, bringing her legs up. She was strong in that moment, and when her knees hit him squarely in the chest, he yelled and fell sideways.
Lindsay felt raw panic; then she smiled. She smiled as she jerked open the night table beside the bed. She smiled as she picked up the .38 and aimed it at the man. He was shaking his head, and he was pale with rage. He was up in an instant, the syringe high in his hand so she couldn’t kick it away from him.
“Now,” he said, and then he saw the gun.
“That damned bastard gave you a gun!” And he rushed at her.
Lindsay pulled the trigger. The syringe went flying. He grabbed his right wrist. Blood quickly seeped through between his fingers.
He stared at her. “No, damn you!” he screamed at her. “You damned bitch!” Lindsay fired again. This time nothing happened. “Oh, shit,” she said and threw the gun at him. She missed but it didn’t matter. She was out of bed and on him in an instant, frenzied, hitting him, a wild keening coming from her throat. He twisted out of her grasp, cursed, tried to hit her, but the pain in his wrist held him up. Lindsay smashed her fist in his throat. He gagged, jerked away, and ran out of the room, holding his wounded wrist. Lindsay stood there panting, staring at the door.
When Taylor and Barry came crashing through the door, it was to see Lindsay standing there, still panting, holding Taylor’s gun in her hand. She looked up and said, “Damn, Taylor, you can’t trust technology. The thing fired once but didn’t do anything the second time.” Taylor’s heart was careening about in his chest. Dempsey hadn’t been at his post and Taylor had been beyond fear. He stared at Lindsay, at the gun that hadn’t fired the second time.
“Jesus,” he said.
They found Officer Dempsey unconscious in one of the men’s-room stalls some five minutes later. Half the staff was in on the search.
They hadn’t seen the man who’d tried to kill Lindsay, but it didn’t matter. Taylor knew who he was.
Taylor and Barry and two other NYPD cops arrived at the brokerage house of Ashcroft, Hume, Drinkwater, and Henderson on Water Street two and one-half hours later. They’d already converged on the brownstone but found only some bloody towels and an open first-aid box. And an appointment book.
“Bastard,” Barry said now as he got out of the car.
“I know where his office is,” Taylor said.
“Let’s get to it, then.”
“My pleasure.”
As they rode to the fourteenth floor, Taylor said, “I called to confirm what we read in his appointment book. The executive secretary told me that Brandon Waymer Ashcroft was due in a board meeting in twenty minutes. Just about now, in fact.”
“Uncle Bandy,” Barry said aloud, shaking his head. “What a nickname.”
“You want the truth now or later, Barry?”
“Now, and make it snappy.”
Taylor was surprised at how calm he sounded. “Uncle Bandy had been sexually abusing his niece, Ellie, starting when she was about ten years old or so. I came along quite by accident one afternoon to see her mother running out of a very nice brownstone, screaming that her little girl was bleeding to death. She was bleeding. The bastard had just raped her and she was hemorrhaging. I wanted him strung up, and finally I got the mother to testify against him. I got Ellie on tape. Enough to break your heart, Barry. She was such a sweet little kid. So broken—”
Barry made a noise in his throat and kept looking straight ahead at the elevator panel.
“Anyway, it turned out Uncle Bandy was rich and powerful and headed up this brokerage house. He was paying the sister’s way and evidently that included having her pimp for him, namely, the little girl. You’ll recognize this all too well: we arrested him, he was out within an hour, and he got the sister to recant her testimony. He got off scot-free. I played Ellie’s tape recording for Judge Riker. I had to do something, but of course it wasn’t enough. The judge said chances were good that Uncle Bandy had paid off his sister not to testify against him and that she and Ellie would be long gone. He firmly believed that she would be safe now.
“It didn’t work out that way. Two weeks later the girl jumped out of the girls’ restroom from the third floor of her private school.”
“That’s when you quit the force, Taylor?”
“Yeah. But I had to do something to avenge Ellie. I beat the shit out of Uncle Bandy. I got him outside his three-million-dollar brownstone and I beat him to a pulp. I wanted to kill him, but I didn’t. Maybe something you taught me in the academy stopped me, maybe something that was inside me all the time. Who the hell knows? It was later he told me he would get me. I laughed, Barry, I laughed. I didn’t look at his eyes. If I had, I would have believed him.”
“We’re here.” The elevator opened onto a huge carpeted entrance area filled with eighteenth-century French antiques, fine prints, and soft recessed lighting.
A woman rose when she saw the two men. She was frowning and Taylor knew well enough that she knew they weren’t board members. They didn’t look right.
Joanna Bianco, efficient, astute, quickly stepped foward, saying in her smooth calm voice, “ Gentlemen, I’m sorry, but Mr. Ashcroft is in a board meeting at present. Perhaps if I could have your names I could—”
Barry flipped out his badge. “Sergeant Kinsley, ma’am. And this is S. C. Taylor. We’ll see Mr. Ashcroft right this minute.”
“Let me get him, then—”
“Oh, no,” Taylor said. “I want him right where he is. At the head of his big mahogany table, feeding a line of B.S. to a whole lot of gentlemen over the age of sixty, right? I want, in short, to humiliate him. He’s slime.”
Joanna Bianco looked him up and down, her expression unreadable. Then she said, “I gather he’s done something rather serious to be slime?”
“Dead serious,” Taylor said.
She stepped back and waved toward the doors. “Have at it,” she said, and there was a smile on her face.
Barry told the other two officers who had just arrived on another elevator to remain there. “Keep your eyes open, lads. You’ve seen his photo. If the guy comes bounding out, have a ball, but don’t kill him.”
Taylor very quietly opened the thick mahogany double doors. They parted soundlessly inward. The room was at least thirty feet long, carpeted in pale cream Berber, wainscoted with dark stained wood. Built-in bookshelves lined the far short wall. The long wall was all windows, covered at the moment with thick pale baize draperies. A long table stood in the center of the room. Silver water carafes sat on silver trays at intervals down the table. A crystal glass stood in front of each person. There was Uncle Bandy, Mr. Brandon Waymer Ashcroft, standing at the head of the table, holding a pointer in one hand, speaking about a chart that was on a stand behind him.
There were ten people seated in the plush chairs that surrounded the table. Only six of them were old men. There were three women, all over fifty, richly dressed, and one younger black man. All the men looked affluent, conservative, serious about what they were doing.
Taylor quickly saw that Ashcroft’s right hand was at his side. Lindsay had shot him in the right wrist.
“May I?” Taylor asked Barry.
“He’s all yours, lad.”
Taylor cleared his throat. One by one, all the board members turned to face him. Their faces held only mild interest. Ashcroft, on the other hand, stepped back and turned pale.
“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt your meeting, gentlemen, ladies. This is Sergeant Barry Kinsley. I’m S. C. Taylor. We’re here to arrest Mr. Ashcroft for attempted murder.”
There were gasps.
“. . . what the devil is this?”
“Brandon, what’s going on here?”
“Who the hell are these men, Ash?”
