Epitaph For A Tramp

CHAPTER 12

I rolled. I squirmed. I even slud, like in “He slud into third base,” from the collected writings of Jerome Herman (Dizzy) Dean.

There was a barred window at ground level in the building nearest me. I was over there and hugging the bars like a frenzied chimpanzee who can’t reach the peanuts when the car screamed in my ear and jerked around at a lopsided angle back into the street.

Turner sprinted after it. He stopped, fired five more times. The fifth one was the click of his hammer striking an empty shell.

“Son of a—”

I got back on my feet fast. The rear window of Duke’s car was shattered and half torn away, which stopped him as much as water stops a trout. He was a hundred yards off before Brannigan heaved himself into our car. I grabbed up my gun from where it had slithered away and threw myself into the back just as Nate ground gears and started up.

I yanked myself to my knees, clutching the top of the front seat. Brannigan was cursing like an upstaged heroine. We were still angled across the roadway and so he took the curb himself when he swung around. Turner yelled once from somewhere near us.

We were a fall block behind the Chevy before we accelerated past the first corner. Brannigan had it down to the floor, muttering between clenched teeth. “Trying to run us down like—”

He didn’t finish. Tires screeched up ahead. The signal on Seventh Avenue was red and there was a heavy stream of vehicles crossing the intersection. I saw four cars swerve at once as Duke tried to force the Chevy into the line of traffic.

The screeching stopped. A big, Winesap-colored Olds was cutting sharply away as Duke wheeled to the right. There was a fraction of a second of absolute stillness, as expectant as if Mitropoulos had just lifted his baton.

Duke slammed into the Olds. The right rear end of the larger car tilted up like an elephant raising one leg at a tree-trunk, hung there, then rocked back. There was another dull crashing sound as a panel truck marked Flowers Say It Better skidded into the back of the Olds.

We were still moving. A Mercury convertible swung hard to the right and into Perry to avoid the pile-up. It jammed the intersection and blocked us off. Brannigan braked frantically and we shrieked along the curb.

Duke had already bounded out the right-hand door of the Chevy. He was running without looking back, making a long diagonal down and across Seventh.

People shouted. I was no more than thirty yards behind him, already out into the street myself and hearing Brannigan pounding after me, when Duke reached the opposite sidewalk. There was a line of store fronts ahead of him and then a gas station on a corner where another small street cut into Seventh at an angle.

“Stop or I’ll shoot, Sabatini!”

That was Brannigan. The big Army Colt was pumping with the movement of Duke’s arm as he ran but he didn’t turn. I threw myself out of the line of fire, breaking toward a string of parked cars on my left. I was halfway there when the single sharp report of Nate’s revolver exploded behind me.

Brannigan was good. There was only one shot. Duke’s left leg was striding forward when he buckled on it like a ballet dancer with a sudden cramp. He seemed to waver for a fraction of a second, waving his arms like a stricken man on the edge of an abyss. A woman’s scream was lost in an almost gentle tinkling of glass as he finally made up his mind to spin to the left and tumble through a plate glass window.

I got over there. It was an antique shop and there was a lot of junk on display. Furniture mostly. A couple of tall, stiff-backed old chairs which looked almost as good as new because nobody for a dozen generations had been quite tired enough to sit on them. Two or three nervous-looking little tables on legs carved so delicately they would probably collapse under the weight of an empty shot glass. A set of yellowing bone china which Pocahontas had gotten as a shower gift from the girls at the wigwam. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s favorite bronze candlesticks, the ones he wrote Hiawatha by the glow of.

Duke Sabatini was on his back in the middle of it all, writhing in his own blood with his neck against the base of an enormous maroon ottoman. About eight inches to the left of his head a neatly hand-lettered sign had fallen. It said: A MINIMUM DEPOSIT WILL SECURE ANY OBJECT IN THIS WINDOW.

A plump, Slavic-looking woman had come rushing out of the store. She gasped and then stood there with her mouth open, staring at me and then at Brannigan as he puffed toward us. “What?” she said. “How—?” The woman had a kerchief around her head and for some absurd reason she made me think of Nikita Khrushchev at the housework.

People were swarming after us now that the gunplay was obviously done with. Brannigan still had his Special in his hand, however. Duke’s automatic was at rest in a scarred silver serving tray.

“—Lord, did you see that—”

“—Shooting a man just because he caused an accident—”

“—Cops—”

“—Woman in the Olds isn’t even hurt—”

Brannigan said nothing. He jammed the revolver back into his shoulder holster and stepped past me purposefully. Turner was just getting there, red-faced as if he had run all the way, as Nate grabbed Duke by the lapels and hoisted him up effortlessly from the broken glass and the debris. I didn’t offer to help him. It would have been like asking Bronco Nagurski if he was sure he could lift a football with all that heavy air in it. Turner and I followed as he eased into the shop and then set Duke down gently on a low overstuffed chair just inside the door.

Duke was in a semi-conscious daze. His jaw hung loose and his eyes were blank. He was bleeding badly.

There was the sound of a siren, evidently headed for the smash-up from nearby, probably from the Charles Street station. The run had started my head throbbing again where Duke had skulled me a few hours before.

“Turner, get back up to the corner and grab the first team that shows up,” Brannigan snapped. “Radio for another car on the accident. And get an ambulance.”

Turner went off. I shut the door after him. Mrs. People’s Chairman was still gaping. “My window. What happened? Is he—?”

“Law,” Brannigan told her. “Get some wet cloth, cotton, anything. Hurry up about it.”

“Wet — Oh, yes, right away.” She stood there another minute, staring at the widening stain of blood soaking into the upholstery along Duke’s shoulder. Her eyes went hopelessly toward the smashed window. I supposed you couldn’t blame her for being somewhat concerned. Finally she went off.

Brannigan was picking splinters of glass out of Duke’s clothing. Duke was slumped low in the chair and his mouth was working now. “Mother,” I thought he said. He looked like something the Mau-Mau had left behind as a warning. I reached over, found my Luger in his jacket, smelled it. He hadn’t been experimenting on anybody with it. I put it away.

“Damn it,” Brannigan said then. “Oh, damn it. What the hell did he think I’d do, let him try a stunt like that and then romp off like it was a high-school picnic or something?”

“He’ll live.”

“I caught him in the thigh. You saw that.”

“Sure.”

“I thought the silly son of a bitch would just go down.”

“It was just a freak.”

“These punk kids. These damned punk kids.”

There was another siren. We were standing in the middle of enough lamps to illuminate Minneapolis. The woman came back from the rear, hesitated, then bent forward and began to bathe Duke’s forehead with a damp handkerchief. She smelled remotely like a wet spaniel.

Turner got back. Two uniformed cops were with him. “Second car’s there now,” he reported. “There was a woman driving the Olds. Got banged up a little but she looks okay. We called for two wagons just in case.”

“You tell them to get the first one down here?”

“Yes.”

Brannigan gestured toward Duke. “Keep a man on him at the hospital and report in as soon as you’re squared away. All of it goes on the Hawes sheet. Resist of arrest will be enough for now.”

“Right,” Turner said.

Brannigan stared at Duke for another minute, then turned and walked past us. Thirty or forty people were milling around out front, gawking, and one of the patrolmen was trying to force them back. Brannigan shouldered through them.

I started to follow him. “That’s the one who shot him,” a thin-faced busybody was saying after Brannigan. “That big guy—”

“What’d it do, make you stain your bloomers, Mac?” Turner snarled behind me. “Go the hell home and change, huh?”

I walked up. Brannigan was talking to a sergeant behind the Olds. There was a hospital one short block up the street and I could see two ambulances camped outside. Angels of mercy in a bureaucracy. They could have had one of those things parked on the slope at Golgotha and they wouldn’t have used it without official authorization. Brannigan gestured and after a second the sergeant ran over. There was another dick directing traffic around the tie-up.

There wasn’t much damage. The right rear fender of the Olds was crushed back like the lecherous grin of a toothless old man, and the wheel was badly out of line. Duke’s front fender was crumpled also, but then he’d wanted to smash it against my head anyhow. There were three neat punctures in the metal just below his back window from Turner’s shooting. I didn’t see the woman who’d been driving the Olds.

Flowers Say It Better had backed off into Perry. A lanky young Negro unfolded himself from the curb near it, tossed away a smoke and came over to me.

“Can you take my name and tag and let me cruise out of here?” he wanted to know. I’ve got a mess of orchids in there for a party who’s going to be right upset if he gets buried without them.”

I nodded toward Brannigan. “Better see the boss.”

“Don’t you gotta always?” he said wearily. He sauntered over that way.

I went over and leaned against Brannigan’s car, waiting. It was getting hot. The ambulances finally started up, swinging through a stoplight and letting their sirens growl halfheartedly as they came. My suit was filthy where I’d rolled in it keeping out of the way of the Chevy.

I dragged on a Camel, watching a Village fag come by. Not just another amateur, this one was a classic, a prototype. He was wearing purple pants about four sizes too small, desert boots with tiny bells on the ends of the laces, a tailored blouse. He had a single gold earring in his left ear, none in the right. He was leading an expensive Siamese cat on a pink ribbon that matched his blouse. The cat had the same tiny bells on its collar. I supposed the cat was that way, too.

Brannigan came over after another two or three minutes. “You got a cigarette?” he asked me.

I gave him one. He was looking across at the antique shop and his face was flushed slightly. Two young boys in dungarees were staring at him.

“There’s blood on your shirt, mister.”

Brannigan grunted. He had a stain along his tie. He closed his jacket but there was another one along his lapel, shaped like a Dali watch.

“You all cleared?”

“That son of a bitch,” he said. “That crummy punk. I should have put one into the middle of his spinal column, trying to cut us down that way. And instead I feel my guts flop over when I see him go through that window. Twenty-three years on this job and I still… Damn it, Fannin, did that slut of an ex-wife of yours have running hot water up the street here or is it another one of those half-assed Greenwich Village bohemian joints where I’ll have to wash off this mess in the toilet? You got a match for this thing?”

I gave him a folder, ignoring all that. “Listen,” I told him, “I haven’t eaten since about Mother’s Day. You want to sit with a cup of coffee while I grab a bite before we run through the apartment?”

“Hell, what time is it?”

“Twenty to ten.”

“And it was three-thirty when she got knifed.”

“Close enough.”

“Six hours and ten minutes. And what have we got?” He handed me back the matches. I’ll tell you what we’ve got. We haven’t got a pot.”

“Let’s eat, huh?”

“What the hell,” Brannigan said. “What the hell.”

We walked down Seventh. After about two blocks we found a place that looked all right. It was grand. They had imitation Aztec carvings on the orange-and-green-striped walls and they gave us underdone eggs and yesterday’s coffee. We might have stayed all day, but a sign over the register said that occupancy by more than thirty-eight people was dangerous and unlawful and we would have hated for them to get into trouble on our account. Thirty-seven other customers might have dropped in at any moment.