Death Sentence

9

Friday evening it began to rain. Reflected neon colors melted and ran along the wet streets. Paul sat in his parked car and switched on the radio softly to have company. Under an awning a man with a square dark beard dressed in black coat and wide black hat was reading a newspaper, turning the pages left to right. Girls in shabby clothes paraded the boulevard under two-dollar umbrellas with a pretended indifference to the eyes that followed them; smudges of dirty illumination drifted across the bellies of the clouds.

Old Town: night life, drunks, tourists, night-blooming girls. Someone came out of a cocktail lounge near the car and a gust of hard rock music blew across the pavement, loud enough to reach Paul’s ears despite his closed car windows and the muttering radio. There was a busy singles’ club and next door to it a spiritual adviser (Palms Read). The bearded Jew licked his thumb and turned a page of his newspaper. Raindrops glistened, caught in his beard.

Two youths stopped to gaze at the photos under the marquee of a “Topless-Live-Girls” emporium across the street; the youths moved on into the rain, a bit marble-eyed or perhaps it was only the way the lights reflected from their eyes. At the corner they stopped under a hooded whip-lamp on a silvered stalk; their clothes were pasted against them and they must have had rain inside their shoes but they didn’t seem to mind. They talked and one of them shrugged and then they moved on.

Paul was watching the drunks emerge from the clubs because those were the obvious marks. He’d seen two couples stagger out of the singles’ club but they’d got into a car parked directly across the street. A drunk had come out of the topless joint but he’d been collected by a taxi which evidently had been summoned by phone.

There was a counter food place on the near corner and he could almost smell the vapors of the frying fat; people drifted in and out of the place but one group had taken possession of part of the counter shortly after Paul arrived and they were still there: toughs, the night crazies. He could see them through the smoke-stained plate glass. They’d have been loitering on the street but for the rain. They wore the uniforms of their kind — leather, tight trousers, boots with high heels, the hats tipped far to one side.

After a while one man separated himself from that group and moved into the doorway to look up and down at the street. His face seemed to be covered with sores or the pits of some old disease.

A couple had left the hard rock club. The man with the pitted face watched them unfurl their umbrella and hurry away. Paul watched all of them, his attention returning time after time to the man in the doorway. But the tough didn’t move, not even when a tall heavy black man approached the place and had to squeeze past him to get inside.

The old Jew turned another page. Paul wondered what he was waiting for. A friend?

The man with the pitted face stepped out of the doorway after a long time. He crossed to stand under the marquee of the topless club, his hat obscuring the “Go-Go” lettering beside the doors. He lit a cigarette. The light was very low; the cigarette described a red arc in the dimness as it came away from his lips and dimmed.

Paul felt the stir of his blood. He had become sensitive to the subtle recognition signs of the predators. He’d heard it said that in Africa a herd of game antelope might allow a lion to prowl very close by without taking alarm because somehow they could sense whether or not the lion was hungry and if it wasn’t hungry it was not to be regarded as a threat. Paul might have passed the man with the pitted face and not given him a thought at another time; but tonight the man was hungry and Paul knew it.

He’d known it the other night — the two men on the stoop near the Irish bar: he’d known they’d come after him.

He knew it the same way with this one. He turned, deciding which bar to go into: he’d follow the same drill, do the drunk act, draw the man with the pitted face after him.

He settled on the singles’ bar and got out of the car, locking it behind him, crossing the sidewalk quickly and pausing under the shelter of the awning. He glanced across the street, but the man wasn’t watching him — the man’s whole attention was fixed on a woman walking wearily past him under an umbrella: a middle-aged woman with a handbag carelessly pendulant from her crooked elbow. Reasonably expensive clothes: a businesswoman perhaps. There were enclaves of fashionable housing in the neighborhood: perhaps she was on her way home after a long day’s work keeping the shop open in the Christmas rush.

She wasn’t drunk but she dragged her feet, very tired; she turned the corner and went out of sight into a side street and that was when the man with the pitted face made his move. The cigarette dropped into a puddle and the man walked swiftly toward the corner.

Paul turned his collar up against the rain and went across the street, sprinting to dodge a passing car, jumping up on the curb fast enough to avoid being splashed by the tires of the next one.

The man with the pitted face had followed the woman around the corner. Paul approached the corner quickly, pushing both hands into his coat pockets, and made the turn as if it were his own neighborhood and he knew the way home.

The woman was a half block distant. An elderly man approached her.

Paul stopped briefly: there was no sign of the man with the pitted face.

He heard the elderly man speak to the woman with the dignified courtesy of inebriation: “Would you like a drink, madam?”

The woman shook her head and walked past him; the man smiled wistfully and continued toward Paul.

Paul went by him, moving more quickly in the woman’s wake: he was looking for the shadow which shouldn’t be there.

He overtook the woman. No sign of another presence anywhere; had the elderly drunk scared the predator away?

He went past the slow-moving woman and strode on, nearly a block. Here it was quite dark: the street light at the corner had burned out. It was an unusually narrow street and it had a bad feel.

Paul went up a six-step flight into the covered entrance of a house. He stopped there in complete darkness and turned to look back.

The woman approached with the stolid stride of weariness, umbrella-stem resting on her shoulder; the handbag dangled from her elbow, flopping against her coat.

An entranceway behind her: an apparitious shape appeared.

The man with the pitted face.

He was behind the woman and she wasn’t aware of him. Paul saw him draw a knife from his pocket. The man shot the blade silently — not a switchblade; it was a gravity-action knife. He loomed behind the woman.

Paul braced his arms against the wall, taking aim. He could hardly see the sights. It wasn’t much more than thirty feet but he didn’t want to risk hitting the woman and he withheld his fire, waiting a clear target.

The man with the pitted face reached from behind, gripped the handbag in his free hand and brought the knife up. It sliced cleanly through the strap and he carried the handbag away in his left hand.

The woman froze in alarm; she was turning, backing away in terror. Paul had his clear shot now and he steadied his aim.

The old Jew materialized from nowhere: suddenly he was right behind the man with the handbag.

Paul held his fire. The chilly sweat of fear streamed down his ribs.

The Jew had a gun.

“Turn around and hit the wall.”

The man with the handbag gaped at him.

“Move.” The Jew shoved him hard. “Police officer. You’re under arrest.” The Jew’s voice was young, strong.

Paul saw him kick the man’s feet apart and force him against the wall in the frisk position. “Ma’am, you all right?”

“I... yes, yes I’m fine...”

The Jew patted the man for weapons and Paul saw him bring out the handcuffs.

Paul pushed the Centennial back into his pocket.

The woman began to speak: a stream of words spilling over with relief and gratitude. The Jew prodded the man with the pitted face; the three of them moved away toward the lights of the intersection, the woman clutching her handbag.

Finally they were gone but Paul stood rooted above the steps, terrified by the memory of his paralysis. When the Jew had appeared it had taken him by surprise and he had been frozen by an alarm so abrupt it had prevented any thought of flight.

It wasn’t the fear that disturbed him. Fear was natural. It was the loss of control. Taken by surprise, his domination of the situation destroyed, he had been powerless for that moment despite the gun in his hand.

He went down the steps. It was something he had to sort out: he knew he was all right so long as he had control of events but he hadn’t realized how badly he could be shaken by the unexpected.

He’d have to find a way to conquer that. Either that or make sure he was never taken by surprise again.