Killer's Wedge

"No. No, that's funny part of it. He was the super of the building. He'd heard her screams, and came running upstairs because he thought it was the burglar returning. The hallway was dark and when he saw me he jumped me. And he cut me. I didn't know he was the super, either. I got mad as hell, and I just kept hitting him until he went hip. But he'd already put the gash in my head."

"So what happened?"

"So they shaved the hair off to get at the cut.

And when it grew back, it was white. End of story."

"Did the super go to jail?"

"No. He honestly thought I was the burglar."

There was a pause.

"Will I go to jail?"

"Yes. Probably."

There was another pause. He wondered if he should leave now, but Virginia was still watching him. Angelic~ Gomez sat with her hands folded in her lap. There waj sadness on her face, mingled with a hardness that made her seem older than she actually was.

In a thrust at further conversation, Hawes said, "Wha brought you to the mainland?"

Without hesitation, she answered, Pan American Air lines."

"No, no, I meant ..

"Oh. You meant ..." and she burst out laughing, an~ suddenly there was no hardness to her face.

She threw back her head, and the bleached blond hair seemed, for a moment, as natural as her laughter. She was carefrei for an instant, all thought of spontaneous mayhem and violent gang retaliation washed from her mind. Her face relaxed, leaving only the natural beauty which was her birthright and which the city could never rob from her The laughter trailed off. The relaxation dropped from he~ face like a gossamer veil drifting to the dust. There was only the hardness again, covering the beauty with the glitter of shellac.

"I come here because I am hungry," she said.

"Ve poor in Puerto Rico." She pronounced the name of t island with Spanish grandeur, rhyming "Puer" with "prayer," discarding the harsh "Porto" of the native m& lander. And, never having been to the island, Haw listened to her pronunciation of the words and visualiz it immediately as a place of rare beauty.

Angelica shrugged.

"I get letters from my cousin Come the city, come the city. So I come.

Very easy. The plane fare is loan you, there are people who loan y dinero. Later on, you pay them back. With in'ress. So I come. I get here January. Very cold here, I don' ex thees. I knew would be winter here, but not so cold I don't expec'."

"Where'd you go, Angelica?"

"I go first what they call a hot bed place.

You know what thees minns?"

d "No. What?"

"It sounds dirtee, but hot bed is not thees.

Hot bed is where people come to sleep in shifts, comprende? Like e they renn the apartment to three diff'ren' people. You come sleep, you leave. Nex' one comes sleep, he leaves. Then nex' one comes sleep, he leaves. One apartment, three renns. Very smart, much dinero in this. For the landlord. Not for the sleeper." She smiled grimly. Hawes smiled with her.

"So," Angelica said, "I stay there awhile 'til all my money is gone, an' then I go live with my cousins for a while. An' then I figure I am become-how you say-~ burn. Burn. When is too much for someone to carry?"

"Burden," Hawes supplied.

"Si. Burd'n. So I find a man an' go live with him."

"Who?"

"Oh, jus' a man. Pretty good man, no police trouble. But I don' live with him now because he beat me once, an' thees I don' like. So I leave. An' sometimes I sleep around now, but only when I need bad the money." She paused.

"I tell you something."

"What?"

"In Puerto Rico," and again the "Puer" was a prayer, "I am pretty girl. Here, too, I am also pretty-but I am also cheap. You know? I am look at here, an' men think, "I sleep with her." In Puerto Rico, there is respect. Very diff'ren'" "How do you mean?"

"In Puerto Rico, a girl walks don the stritt, men look an' watch, it is a pretty thing to see. I minn, iss all right a girl could wiggle a little, is nice to see, appreciated. An' also a little comical. I minn, good-natured. Here ... no. here, always there is the thinking.

"Cheap. Slut.

Puta." I hate thees city."

"Well, you ..

"Iss not my fault I don' speak such good English. I learn Spanish. I know real Spanish, very high Spanish, very good school Spanish. But Spanish iss no good here. You speak Spanish here, you are a foreigner. But thees is my country, too, no?

I am American also, no? Puerto Rico is American, noes ver dad But Spanish no good. Spanish here minns puta. I hate thees city."

"Angelica ..

"You know something? I warm to go back the islan'. I warm to go back there an' never leave. Because I tell you. There I am poor, but there I am me. Angelica Gomez. Me.

An' there is nobody else the whole worl' who iss also Angelica Gomez. Only me.

An' here, I am not me, I am only dirtee Spanish Puerto Rican spic!"

"To some people," Hawes said.

Angelica shook her head.

"I am in big trouble now, no?" she said.

"Yes. You're in very big trouble."

"Si. So what happens to me now? I go to prison, hahi Maybe worse if thees Kassim dies, hah? An' why do I cul him? You want to know why I cut him? I do it becausc he forgets one thing.

He forgets what everybody else it thees city forgets. He forgets that I am me, Angelic~ Gomez, an' that what is me is private an' nobody car touch unless I say touch. Me.

Private." She paused.

"Why they cann let a person be private? Goddamn, why they cann leave you alone?"

She seemed suddenly on the verge of tears. He reache~ out to touch her hand, and she shook her head instantly and violently.

He pulled back his fingers.

"I am sorree," she said.

"I will not cry.

One learns fas in thees city that it does no good to cry, no good at all." She shook her head.

"I am sorree. Leave me alone. Pa favor. Leave me alone. Please. Please."

He rose. Virginia Dodge had turned her attention bad to the desk. She sat quite silently, staring at the bottle in front of her.

Casually, Hawes walked to the bulletin board near the light switch. Casually, he took a pad from his back pocket and began writing into it.

The boys had got an early start.

It was only 6:25, but the boys had been at it since 3:30 when their last class-a boring lecture in Anthropology- had let out. This was Friday afternoon and after a hard week of listening to lectures and scribbling down notes, the boys owed it to themselves to throw down a few college-manly drinks.

They had started with beer at the fraternity house across the street from the college. But some stupid frosh pledge had stocked the refrigerator the week before and then forgotten to replenish the dwindling supplies. There were only two dozen cans of beer on ice, and that was barely enough to get the boys under way. And so they'd been forced to leave the intimacy of their private diggings in search of liquid refreshment elsewhere.

They had left the frat house, wearing the uniforms which identified them as true scholars. The uniforms consisted of trousers belted in the back and pleat less in the front and cuff less at the bottom. White button down shirts topped the trousers. Silk-rep ties curled beneath the collars of the shirts, knotted in the front, fell in slender splendor to the simple punctuation of gold clasps.

Dark sports jackets, vented in the rear, with unpadded shoulders, three buttons and sleeves and lapels pressed to roll, man, roll, completed the costume. The boys were hatless and coat less They all wore crew cuts

By the time they reached the third bar, they were hopelessly crocked.

"One day," Sammy Horn said, "I am going to walk into that rotten Anthropology course and rip off Miss Amaglio's blouse.

Then I'm gonna deliver a lecture on the mating habits of the Homo sapiens."

"Who in the world," Bucky Reynolds said, "would ever want to rip off Miss Amaglio's blouse?"

"Me, that's who," Sammy said.

"And deliver a lecture on the mating ..

"All the time, he's got sex on the brain," Jim McQuade said.

"Zing, zing, zing, sex, sex, sex."

"Right!" Sammy said emphatically.

"Damn right."

"Miss Amaglio," Bucky said, pronouncing the name with great care but nonetheless having a little difficulty with it, "strikes me as being a dried-up old septic tank, and I am surprised-to tell you the truth, Samuel, I am profoundly surprised that you are harboring dark thoughts of planking her. I am truthfully and profoundly surprised by your lecherous thoughts. Yes."

"Screw you," Sammy said.

"All the time sex on the brain," Jim said.

"I will tell you something," Sammy said, his blue eyes very serious behind his black rimmed bop spectacles.

"Still water runs deep. That is the God's honest truth, I swear to God."

"Miss Amaglio," Bucky said, still having trouble with the name, "is not still water, she is stagnant water. And I am greatly astounded-astonished, I say-to discover that you, Samuel Horn, could even entertain notions of .

"I am," Sanuny admitted.

"That's indecent," Bucky said, ducking his blond crewcut head, and then shaking it mournfully, and then sighing.

"Obscene."

He sighed again.

"But, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't mind a little piece of that myself, you know? She has a very foreign sexy-type look, that wench, even though she is about four thousand years old."

"She isn't a day over thirty," Sammy said.

"I am willing to bet my Phi Beta Kappa key on that."

"You haven't got a Phi Beta Kappa key."

"I know, but I will have one someday, and every red-blooded American boy knows that a Phi Beta Kappa key is truly the key to the pearly gates. And I'm willing to bet it. And I'll even give away the secret of the secret hand, shake if Miss Amaglio is a day over thirty."

"She's Italian," Jim said from out of nowhere. When Jim got drunk, his face simply fell apart. It seemed to hang without support from somewhere in outer space~ His eyes swam socket less His lips moved without muscular volition.

"She is indeed," Bucky said.

"Her first name is Serafina."

"How do you know?"

"It's stamped on my program card.

Serafina Amaglio. Beautiful."

"But what a deadly bore, Jesus," Jim said.

"She has a very healthy bosom," Sammy observed.

"Very. Healthy," Bucky agreed.

"Spanish girls have healthy bosoms," Jim said from left field.

"Also."

"Here's to Serafina Amaglio," Bucky said, lifting his glass.

"And to Spanish girls," Jim said.

"Also."

"And to healthy bosoms."

"And strong legs."

"And clean teeth."

"And Pepsodent toothpaste." They all drank.

"I know where there are Spanish girls," Sammy Horn said.

"Where?"

"Uptown."

"Where uptown?"

"A street called Mason Avenue. You know it?"

'""Jo."

"It's uptown There are Spanish girls with healthy bosoms and strong legs and clean teeth on that street." Sammy nodded.

"Gentlemen," he said, "it is time we made a decision. What time is it, Bucky old pot?"

"It is 6:25," Bucky said, glancing at his watch.

"And three-quarters. When you hear the tone, it will be 6:26." He paused.

"Bong!" he said.

"It's getting late, men," Sammy said.

"It's later than we think, men. For cris sakes men, We may be dead someday!

Then what? Away we go, men, to bleed on foreign soil."

"Christ!" Bucky said, awed.

"So ... do we wait for Miss Amaglio to take off her blouse, which I am reasonably certain she will never do, despite the healthiness of her remarkable bosom? Or shall we slither off uptown to this wonderful street called Mason Avenue, there to explore foreign soil without the attendant dangers of total warfare? What do you think, men?"

The men were silent, thinking.

"Consider well, men," Sammy said. He paused.

"This may be our finest hour."

The men considered well.

"Let's go get laid," Bucky said.

Standing at the bulletin board near the light switch, Hawes wrote into his pad aimlessly, waiting for the precise moment of attack. Ideally that moment should be when Virginia Dodge was at the other end of the room. Unfortunately, she showed no signs of moving from the desk behind which she sat in deadly earnestness, staring at the bottle of colorless fluid.

Well then, Hawes thought, the hell with the ideal. Let's just hope she turns her back for a minute, just to give me enough time to snap off the lights.

That's all I need. Just a moment while she turns away, and then the lights go off, and I reach for the gun, left-hand pocket of the coat, mustn't grab for the right-hand pocket by mistake, Jesus, suppose one of the boys thinks there's been a power failure, suppose somebody strikes a match or turns on one of those damn battery powered emergency lights, is there one in the squad room sure, under the kneehole of the junk desk, oh Jesus, don't anybody get any bright ideas, please, pun unintentional, don't anybody throw any light on the subject, pun intentional, don't foul me up by being heroes.

Just let the lights go out, and sit tight, and let me get my mitts' on that pistol. Just three seconds. Stick my hand in the pocket, close it around the butt, pull it out, and shove the gun into the side pocket of my pants. That's all I need.

Now if she'd only turn her head.

I'm six inches from the light switch. All she has to do is turn her head, and I make my move.

Come on, Virginia darling, turn that deadly little ski of yours.

Virginia darling did not move a muscle.

Virginia seemed hypnotized by the bottle of nitro.

Suppose she whacks it off the desk the minute the lights go out?

No, she won't do that.

Suppose she does?

If she does, I'll get a demerit, and never get to make Detective 1st Grade.

Come on, you bitch, turn your head. Turn it!

There must be a God, Hawes thought. He watched in fascination as Virginia Dodge slowly but surely turned to look across the room toward the grilled windows.

Hawes moved instantly. His hand darted for the light panel, shoved downwards on the protruding plastic switch.

There was blackness, instant blackness which filled the room like a negative explosion.

"What the hell ?" Virginia started, and then her voice went dead, and there was only silence in the room.

The coat, Hawes thought.

Fast!

He felt the coarse material under his fingers, slid his hands down the side of the garment, felt the heavy bulk of the weapon in the pocket, and then thrust his hand into the slit, reaching for the gun.

And then suddenly, blindingly, unimaginably-the lights went on.

CHAPTER 12

He felt like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

For a moment, he couldn't imagine what had caused the sudden blinding illumination. And then he realized the lights were on again, and here he was reaching into the pocket of Virginia's coat, his fingers not an inch from the gun. Oddly, time seemed to lose all meaning as soon as the lights went on. He knew that time was speeding by at a remarkable clip, knew that whatever he did in the next few seconds could very well mean the life or death of everyone in the room, and yet time seemed to stop.

He decided, in what seemed to take three years, to whirl on Virginia with the revolver in his hand.

He closed his fingers around the butt of the gun his the warmth of the dark pocket, and the c1o~ing of his hand took twelve years. He was ready to draw the gun when he saw Arthur Brown, a puzzled look on his face, striding rapidly up the corridor. He decided then-the decision was a century coming-to yell, "Get out, Arthur! Run!"

and then the time for yelling was gone because Arthur was pushing through the gate and entering the squad room And then, too, the time for pulling the revolver was gone, all the time in the world had suddenly dwindled down to its proper perspective, perhaps twenty seconds in all had gone by since the lights went on, and now there was no time at all, time had gone down the drain, now there was only Virginia Dodge's cold lethal voice cutting through the time rushing silence of the squad room

"Don't pull it, redhead! I'm aiming at the nitro!"

He hesitated. A thought flashed into his head: Is there really nitroglycerin in that bottle?

And then the thought blinked out as suddenly as it had come. He could not chance it. He released his grip on the pistol and turned to face her.

Thunderstruck, Arthur Brown stood just inside the gate.

"What ?" he said.

"Shut up," Virginia snapped.

"Get in here!"

"What. ?" Brown said again, and there was complete puzzlement on his face. He knew only that he'd returned to the precinct after sitting in the back room of a tailor shop all afternoon. He had climbed the metal steps leading to the second story as he'd done perhaps ten thousand times since joining the 87th Squad. He had found the upstairs corridor in darkness, and had automatically reached for the light switch at the top of the steps, turning on the lights.

The first person he'd seen was Cotton 1lawes reaching into the pocket of a coat hanging on the rack. And now a woman with a gun.

"Get over here, redhead," Virginia said.

Silently, Hawes walked to her.

"You're a pretty smart bastard, aren't you?" she said.

"I

The gun in her hand moved upwards blurringly, came down again in a violent sweeping motion of wrist and arm. He felt the fixed sight at the barrel's end ripping into his cheek. He covered his face with his hands because he expected more. But more did not come. He looked at his fingers.

They were covered with fresh blood.

"No more stunts, redhead," she said coldly.

"Understand?"

"I understand."

"Now get out of my way. Over there on the other side of the room. You!" She turned to Brown.

"Inside. Hurry up!"

Brown moved deeper into the room. The puzzlement on his face was slowly giving way to awareness. And fast on the heels of this came a look of shrewd calculation.

Virginia picked up the bottle of nitroglycerin, and then began walking toward the coat rack, the bottle in one hand, the gun in the other. Her walk was a jerky nervous movement of shoulders, hips, and legs, devoid of all fernirlinity, a sharp, quick perambulation that propelled her across the room. And watching her erratic walk, Hawes was certain that the liquid in her hand was not the high explosive she claimed it was. And yet, nitro was funny.

Sometimes it went if you breathed on it.

And other times He wondered.

Nitro? Or water?

Step into the isolation booth, sir, and answer the question.

Quickly, Virginia removed Byrnes' pistol from her coat. She walked back to the desk, put the bottle of nitro down on its top, unlocked the desk drawer, and tossed the revolver in with the others.

"All right, you," she said to Brown.

"Give me your gun.

Brown hesitated.

"The bottle here is full of nitroglycerin," Virginia said calmly.

"Give me your gun."

Brown looked to Byrnes.

"Give it to her, Artie," Byrnes said.

"She's calling all the shots."

"What's her game?" Brown wanted to know.

"Never mind my game," Virginia said heatedly.

"Just shut your mouth and bring me your gun."

"You sure are a tough lady," Brown said.

He walked to the desk, watching her. He watched her while he unclipped his gun and holster. He was trying, in his own mind, to determine whether or not Virginia Dodge was a hater. He could usually spot hatred at a thousand paces, could know with instant certainty that the person he was looking at or talking to would allow the color of Brown's skin to determine the course of their relationship. Arthur Brown was a Negro. He was also a very impatient man.

He had learned early in the game that the chance similarity of his pigmentation and his name-was it chance, or had some long-ago slave owner chosen the name for simplicity?-only added to his black man's burden. Patiently, he waited for the inevitable slur, the thoughtless, comment.

Usually, it came-though not always. Now, as he put his gun and holster on the desk, his impatience reached unprecedented heights. He could read nothing on the face of Virginia Dodge. And, too, though he had newly entered the situation in the squad room he was impatiently itchy to have it done and over with.

Virginia pushed Brown's gun into the top drawer.

"Now get over there," she said.

"The other side of the room.~~ "Is it okay to report to the lieutenant first?" he asked.

"Lieutenant!" she called. Come here."

Byrnes walked over.

"He's got a report for you. Give it here, mister, where I can hear it all."

"How'd it go?" Byrnes said.

"No dice. And it isn't going to work either, Pete."

"Why not?"

"I stopped off in a candy store when I left the tailor shop. To get a pack of cigarettes."

"Yeah?"

"I got to talking with the owner. He told me there's been a lot of holdups in the neighborhood. Tailor shops mostly."

"Yeah?"

"But he told me the holdups would be stopping soon. You know why?"

"Why?"

"Because-and this is just what he told me-there's a bull sitting in the back room of the tailor shop right up the street, just waiting for the crook to show up. That's what the guy in the candy store told me."

"I see."

"So if he knows, every other merchant on the street knows. And if they know, their customers know. And you can bet your ass the thief knows, too. So it won't work, Pete.

We'll have to dope out something else."

"Mmm," Byrnes said.

"You finished?"

Virginia asked.

"I'm finished."

"All right, get over on the other side of the room."

Byrnes walked away from the desk.

Brown hesitated.

"Did you hear me?"

"I heard you."

"Then move!"

"I mean, what do you want here? What's your purpose?"

"I'm here to kill Steve Carella."

"With a bottle of soup?"

"With a gun. The nitro is my insurance."

Brown nodded.

"Is it real?"

"It's real."

"How do I know?"

"You don't. Would you like to try belling the cat?" Virginia smiled.

Brown returned the smile.

"No, thank you, lady. I was just asking. Gonna kill Steve, huh?

Why, what'd he do to you? Give you a traffic ticket?"

"This isn't funny," Virginia said, the smile leaving her mouth.

"I didn't think it was, Who's the floozy?

Your partner?"

"I have no partner," Virginia said, and Brown thought her eyes clouded for a moment.

"She's a prisoner."

"Aren't we all?" Brown said, and again he smiled, and Virginia did not return the smile.

Hal Willis walked over to the desk.

"Listen," he said, "Miscolo's in a bad way. Will you let us get a doctor in here?"

"No," Virginia said.

"For Christ's sake, he may be dying! Look, you want Carella, don't you?

What's the sense in letting an innocent guy .

"No doctor," Virginia said.

"Why not?" Byrnes asked, walking over.

"You can keep him here after he treats Miscolo. Same as all of us. What the hell difference will it make?"

"No doctor," she said again.

Hawes drifted over to the desk.

Unconsciously, the four men assumed the position they would ordinarily use in interrogating a suspect. Hawes, Byrnes, and Brown were in front of the desk. Willis was standing to the right of it. Virginia sat in her chair, the bottle of nitro within easy reach of her left hand, the38 in her right hand.

"Suppose I picked up a phone and called a doctor?" Hawes asked.

"I'd shoot you."

"Aren't you afraid of another explosion?"

Willis said.

"You got a little nervous when Murchison came up here last time, didn't you?" Hawes said.

"Shut up, redhead. I've had enough from you."

"Enough to shoot me?" Hawes said.

"Yes."

"And chance the explosion?" Brown put in.

"And another visit from downstairs?"

"You can't chance that, Virginia, can you?"

"I can! Because if anyone else comes up, the nitro goes, goddammit!"

"But what about Carella? You blow us up, and you don't get Carella. You want Carella, don't you?"

"Yes, but ..

"Then how can you explode that nitro?"

"How can you chance another gunshot?"

"You can't shoot any of us, can you? It's too risky."

"Get back," she said.

"All of you."

"What are you afraid of, Virginia?"

"You've got the gun, not us."

"Can't you fire it?"

"Are you afraid of firing it?"

Hawes came around to the left side of the desk, moving closer to her.

"Get back!" she said.

Willis moved closer on the right, and Virginia whirled, thrusting the gun at him.

In that instant, Hawes stepped between her and the bottle of nitroglycerin. She was out of the chair in the space of a heartbeat, pushing the chair out from beneath her, and starting to rise. And as she started the rise, Willis-seeing that her hand was away from the bottle, knowing she was off balance as she rose -kicked out with his left foot, swinging it in a backward arc that caught her at the ankles. Hawes shoved at her simultaneously, completing the imbalance, sending Virginia sprawling to the right, toppling toward the floor. She hit the floor with resounding force, and her right hand opened as Hawes scuttled around the desk.

The gun fell from her fingers, slid across the floor,

whirled in a series of dizzying circles and then came to a sudden stop.

Willis dove for it.

He extended his hand, and Hawes held his breath because they were getting rid of the crazy bitch at last.

And then Willis shrieked in pain as a three-inch dagger of leather and metal stamped his hand into the floor.

CHAPTER I3

The black skirt was taut over the extended leg of Angelica Gomez. It tightened around a fleshy thigh, pulled back over the knee, ended there in sudden revelation of shapely calf and slender anlde. A black strap circled the anlde and beneath that was a red leather pump with a heel like a stiletto. That heel was buried in the back of Willis' hand.

And then Angelica pulled back her leg and stooped immediately to pick up the gun. From the floor, her skirt pulled back over both knees, her eyes flashing, she whirled on Lieutenant Byrnes, who was reaching for the bottle of nitro on the desk top.

"Don' touch it!" she shouted.

Byrnes stopped cold.

"Away from the desk," she said.

"Ever'body! Back! Back!"

They moved from the desk, fanning away from it, backing away from a new menace which seemed more deadly than the first.

Angelica Gomez had stabbed a man and, for all they knew, that man might now be dead. She had the law to face, and she also had the street gang to face, and so the look on her face was one of desperate resignation. Angelica Gomez was making her pitch for better or worse, and Christ help whoever stepped into her path.

She rose, the pistol unwavering in her fist.

"I'm ge'n out of here," she said.

"Don' nobody try to Stop me."

Virginia Dodge was on her feet now. She turned to Angelica, and there was a smile on her face.

"Good girl," she said.

"Give me the gun."

For a moment, Angelica did not understand. She looked at Virginia curiously and then said, "You crazy? I'm leavin'. Now!"

"I know. Give me the gun. I'll cover them for you. While you go."

"Why I should give you the gun?"

Angelica said.

"For Christ's sake, are you on their side?

The ones who want to send you to jail?

Give me the gun!"

"I don' have to do you no favors. I ask before you let me go, an' you say no. Now you want the gun. You crazy."

"All right, I'll put it in black and white. If you take that gun with you, I'm jumped the minute you leave this room. And that means they'll be on the phone in four seconds and the whole damn police force will be after you. If you give me the gun, I hold them. I keep them here. No phone calls. No radio cars looking for you. You're free."

Angelica thought about this for a moment.

"Give me the gun!" Virginia said, and she took a step closer to Angelica. The Puerto Rican girl stood poised like a tigress, her back arched over into a C, her legs widespread, the gun trembling in her hand.

Virginia came closer.

"Give it to me," she said.

"You hol' them back?~' Angelica asked.

"You keep them here?"

"Yes."

"Come then. Come close."

Virginia moved to her side.

"Your hand," Angelica said.

Virginia held out her hand, and Angelica put the gun into it.

"I go now," she said.

"You keep them here. I get away. Free," she said, "free."

She started to move. She took one step away from Virginia, her back to the woman. Quickly, Virginia raised the gun.

Brutally, she brought it crashing down on the skull of Angelica Gomez. The girl collapsed to the floor, and Virginia stepped over her and moved rapidly to the desk.

Does anybody still think I'm kidding?"

she asked quietly.

Roger, the servant who had been with Jefferson Scott for more than twenty years, was sweeping out the hallway when Carella went upstairs again. Hunched over a tall thin man with white wisps of hair circling a balding head, he swept up the wooden rectangles, squares, triangles, and splinters of the crowbar's destruction. The foxtail brush worked methodically in thin, precise fingers, sweeping the debris into the dustpan.

"Cleaning up the mess?" Carella asked pleasantly.

"Yes," Roger said.

"Yes, sir. Mr.

Scott liked things neat."

"How well did you know the old man?"

Carella asked.

"I've worked for him a long time, sir," Roger said, rising.

"A long time."

"Did you like him?"

"He was a fine man. I liked him very much."

"Did he ever have trouble with any of his sons?"

"Trouble, sir?"

"You know. Arguments. Real quarrels.

Any of them ever threaten him?"

"They argued from time to time, sir, but never violently. And never any threats. No, sir."

"Mmm. How about the daughter-in~ law

Any trouble when David brought her home?"

"No, sir. Mr. Scott liked her very much.

He often said he wished his other sons would do as well when they married."

"I see." Carella paused.

"Well, thanks a lot." He paused again.

"I want to look over the room another time, see if anything else turns up."

"Yes, sir." Roger seemed reluctant to leave. He stood with the dustpan in one hand and the foxtail in the other, seemingly waiting for something.

"Yes?" Carella said.

"Sir, we generally dine at seven. It's past six-thirty now, and I was wondering ... sir, did you plan to stay for dimner?"

Carella looked at his watch. It was 6:37.

"No," he said.

"In fact, I'm supposed to be back at the squad by seven. My wife's meeting me there. No, thanks. No dinner." He paused and then, for no earthly reason, said, "We're going to have a baby. My wife is.

"Yes, sir," Roger said. He smiled.

"Yeah," Carella said, and he smiled, too.

In the dimness of the corridor, the two men stood smiling at each other.

"Well," Carella said, "back to work."

"Yes, sir."

Carella went into the room. Outside, he could hear Roger's footsteps padding down the corridor.

So here we are again, folks, he thought.

This is Steve Carella coming to you from the intimacy of The Den, where gay night lifers are dancing to the strains of the Suicide Scott Trio. Vot's dot tune dey're playing, Ludwig? Ah, yes, the "Hangman's Waltz," an old Vieunese favorite.

Get a grip' Steve-o, he told himself. You are beginning to lose your marbles. Leave us study this room, and then leave us ask a few more questions and wrap this thing up, yes?

Yes.

The room.

No windows. Assuredly no goddamn windows.

No trapdoors or hidden panels.

Jefferson Scott found hanging thereabout ten feet from the entrance doorway, overturned stool at his feet.

Rope thrown over that beam in the ceiling and fastened to the doorknob.

Door opens outward into the corridor.

Scott's weight alone could not have held the door closed.

Hence, door was locked; nor could it be forced open by three heavy men-Christ, these Scotts grow big!

Door could not have been locked from the outside. Required pressure to hold door closed and force to ram bolt across. Hence, no tricky string stuff like they havo in detective magazines all the time.

Crowbar action snapped lock from doorjamb, enabled men to force door open, cut down Scott from where he was hanging.

Those are the facts, ma'm.

Now if Joe Friday were here But he ain't.

There is only me. Steve Carella. And I am good and confused.

Let me see, let me see.

He walked over to the door and studied the bolt hanging loose from one screw. The doorjamb was badly marked; that crowbar had certainly done an excellent job. Old Roger had swept up enough splinters to start a toothpick factory. Carella closed the door. Sure enough, the door was weatherstripped, and, sure enough, you had to slam the damn thing and then pull on it hard in order to close it properly. He opened the door out into the corridor again, stepped outside, and closed it behind him.

Then he stooped down.

There was a half-inch of space between the bottom of the door and the sill of the room. Carella stuck his fingers under the door. He could feel the metal runner of the weatherstripping, starting about a quarter inch back from the corridor side of the door. He opened the door again. The weatherstripping lip was set into the door sill, slightly farther back, to catch the runner securely when the door was closed.

Again, he closed the door. And again he ran his fingers under the bottom edge, between door and sill. The metal seemed to be dented in one spot, but of course he couldn't be certain. Still, there seemed to be-to the touch at least-a sharp narrow valley at one point. He slid his fingers along the metal, smootp, smooth, smooth, and there! There it was. The sudden small dip.

"Lose something?" the voice behind him said.

Carella turned. Mark Scott was a tall man even if you were standing beside him.

When you were crouched on the floor as Carella was, Mark looked enormous. He was as blond as his brother David, broader in the shoulders, with the same huge bone structure. His face, in fact, despite three covering layers of skin, seemed to have been chiseled from raw bone. He -had a flat, hard fore head, and a flat, hard nose. His cheekbones sloped sharply downward to break the otherwise flat regularity of his features. His mouth was full, the lips thick. His eyes were gray, but in the dimness of the corridor, they were almost no-color, almost a colorless opaqueness beneath the bushy blond brows.

Carella got to his feet and dusted off his trouser knees.

"No," he said pleasantly.

"I didn't lose anything. But in a sense, I'm trying to find something."

"And what might that be?" Mark said, smiling.

"Oh, I don't know. A way into this room, I suppose."

"Under the door?" Mark asked, the smile still on his mouth.

"Have to be awfully thin, don't you think?"

"Sure, sure," Carella said. He opened the door again and stepped into the den. Mark followed behind him Carella tapped the hanging slip bolt with his finger setting it swinging.

"I understand this bolt was pretty hard ~ to close," he said.

"That right?"

"Yes. One generally had to pull in on the door and ~ then ram the bolt across with all one's strength. I spoke to Father about changing it, but he said it suited him fine.

Provided the exercise which was lacking in his life." Mark smiled again. His smile was a charming one, a sudden parting of the thick lips over dazzlingly white teeth.

"Just how hard did you have to pull on the door?" Carella asked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"When slipping the bolt."

"Oh. Very hard."

"Do you imagine your father's weight pulling against the doorknob whould have provided the pressure necessary to slip the bolt?"

"To hold the door shut, perhaps yes. But it took quite a bit of pressure to push the bolt across. You are thinking, are you not, of someone having managed it from the outside? With string or something?"

Carella sighed.

"Yeah, I was sort of thinking along those lines, yeah."

"Impossible. Ask any of my brothers.

Ask Christine. Ask Roger. That lock was impossible. Father should have had it changed, really. We discussed it many times."

"Ever argue about it?"

"With Father? Gracious, no. I made a point of never arguing with him. At least, not after I reached the age of fourteen. I remember making my decision at that time.

I made it, as I recall, with a good deal of horror."

"The dread Scott decision," Carella said.

"What? Oh. Oh, yes," Mark said, and he smiled.

"I decided when I was fourteen that there was no percentage in arguing with Father. Ever since that time, we got along very well."

"Mmm. Right up to now, huh?"

"Who discovered this door was locked, Mr. Scott?"

"Alan did."

"And who went for the crowbar?"

"I did."

"Why?"

"To force the door open. We'd been calling for Father, and he didn't answer."

"And did the crowbar work?"

"Yes. Of course it did."

"Who tried the door after you'd used the crowbar on it?"

"I did."

"And this time it opened?"

"No. There was still Father's weight banging against it. But we managed to open it a crack-using the crowbar again-and Alan stuck his arm in and cut the rope."

"Did any of you use the crowbar on the bottom of the door?" Carella asked.

"The bottom?"

"Yes. Down there. Near the sill."

"Why no. Why would we want to do that?"

"I can't imagine. Are you gainfully employed. Mr. Scott?"

"What?"

"Do you have a job?"

"Well, I .

"Yes or no?"

"I've been training at one of the factories.

Preparing for an executive position. Father always felt that executives should learn from the bottom up."

"Did you agree with him?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Where were you ... ah ... training?"

"The New Jersey plant."

"For how long?"

"I'd been there for six months."

"How old are you, Mr. Scott?"

"Twenty-seven."

"And what did you do before you went into the New Jersey plant?"

"I was in Italy for several years."

"Doing what?"

"Enjoying myself," Mark said.

"When Mother died, she left me a little money. I decided to use it when I got out of college."

"When was that?"

"I was twenty-two when I graduated."

"And you've been in Italy since then?"

"No. The Government interfered with my graduation plans. I was in the Army for two years."

"And then you went to Italy, is that right?"

"Yes."

"You were twenty-four years old at the time?"

"Yes."

"How much money did you have?"

"Mother left me thirty thousand."

"Why'd you come back from Italy?"

"I ran out of money."

"You spent thirty thousand dollars in three years? In Italy?"

"Yes, I did."

"That's an awful lot of money to spend in Italy, isn't it?"

"Is it?"

"What I mean is, you must have lived rather grandly."

"I've always lived rather grandly, Mr.

Carella," Mark said, and he grinned.

"Mmm. This executive position you were training for.; What was it?"

"A sales executive."

"No title?"

"Just a sales executive."

"And what was the salary for the job?"

"Father didn't believe in spoiling his children," Mark said.

"He realized that the business would go to pieces if he simply put his sons in at ridiculously high salaries when they didn't know anything about running the business.

"So what was the starting salary?"

"For that particular job? Fifteen thousand."

"I see. And you live rather grandly. Ran through ten grand a year in Italy. I see."

"That was a starting salary, Mr. Carella.

Father fully intended Scott Industries to belong to his sons eventually."

"Yes, his will would seem to substantiate that. Did you know about his will, Mr.

Scott?"

"All of us did. Father talked of it freely."

"I see."

"Tell me, Mr. Carella," Mark said.

"Do you think I killed my own father?"

"Did you, Mr. Scott?"

"He committed suicide, isn't that right, Mr. Scott?"

"Yes, that's right." Mark Scott paused.

"Or do you think I crawled into the room under that crack in the door?"

CHAPTER I4

There she was – the city. All decked out for the pleasures of night, wearing her sleek black satin with a bright red sash. Clusters of jewels hung in her hair, the rectangles of all night offices blinking at the darkness in defiance of the stars, the shimmering haze in the air over the incredible skyline. A necklace of dazzling light hung from her slender throat, the reds and greens of traffic, the ambers of the street globes, the harsh bright overhead fluorescents of Detavoner Avenue. Her rounded fleshy shoulders rolled to the music of the night, her full breasts heaved ecstatically to the music of the night, mournful music that oozed from the cellar dives of Isola, pounded with the beat of a glittering G-string, music that came with mathematical precision from the cool bop bistros, music that bounced with the cornball rhythms of the supper clubs.

The highways glowed with reflected river light that molded the valleys of her waist, swept North and South over her wide hips, dropped over shapely legs to capture her ankles in neon slave bracelets, terminated in the re~ flection of pinpoint light glowing from high-heeled slippers on slick wet asphalt.

There she was-the city.

Rushing with the night and the sound of the night, sucking in wild air through parted lips, her eyes glowing bright, bright with the fever of the tempo, Friday night, and the city clasped the weekend to her breasts, held the weekend close in a desperate embrace.

A woman was the city, a beautiful woman with life in her loins and treachery '~ in her heart, an exciting woman with a dagger behind her back in long white fingers, a gentle woman who sang for4 - ~U~1LIIJLt. ~.~jiyuns, a woman if love and a woman of hate, a woman fondled by eight million people who had tasted the pleasures of her body and knew her well and hated her with a deep abiding love.

Fight million people.

Geoffrey Tamblin was a publisher.

He published textbooks. He had been in the racket for thirty-two years, and now-at the age of fifty-seven-he considered himself a knowledgeable guy who knew all the ins and outs of the racket.

Geoffrey Tamblin never called it "the publishing game." To Tamblin, it was "the racket," and he hated it passionately. The thing he particularly despised about the racket was the publishing of books about mathematics. These he detested. His rancor probably went back to a high-school course in Geometry conducted by an old poop named Dr. Fanensel. He was unable to decide, at the age of seventeen, whether he hated Geometry more than Dr. Fanensel, or vice versa. Now, forty years later, his hatred had grown admirably to include all mathematics and all teachers and students of mathematics. Plane Geometry, Analytic Geometry, Algebra, Differential Calculus, and even Long and Short Division fell into the sphere of Tamblin's hatred.

And the terrible part of it all was that his firm published a great many mathematics texts. In fact, the largest percentage of his list was devoted to books about mathematics. Which was why Geoffrey Tamblin had three ulcers.

One day, Tamblin thought, I will stop publishing textbooks, and especially mathematics texts. I'll bring out slim volumes of poetry or criticism. Tamblin Books will begin to mean beautiful books.

No more "Given X equals 10, and Y equals 12, what then does / A equal?" No more "Log C equals Log D, therefore ..." No more ulcers.

He felt a twinge even thinking about his ulcers.

Poetry, he thought. Slim beautiful volumes of poetry. Ah, that would be wonderful. I'll move to the suburbs and run the firm from there. No more subways. No more rushing. No more schedules. No more crumby editors fresh from Harvard with Phi Beta Kappa keys hanging on their weskits.

No more disgruntled artists drawing triangles when they want to be drawing mines. I no more doddering professors bringing their creaky goddamn texts into my office. Only beautiful slim volumes of poetry written by young slim girls with golden hair. Ahhhhhh.

Geoffrey Tamblin lived on Silvermine Road at the outer fringes of the 87th Precinct. Every evening, he walked from his office on Hall Avenue in midtown Isola to the subway a block north. He rode the subway up to, Sixteenth, disembarked, and then walked toward his apartment house through a neighborhood which had once been beautiful and quite elite. Now, the neighborhood was going, everything was going, it was the fault of mathematics. The world was reducing everything to simple formulas, there was no reality any more except the reality of mathematics. X times infinity equals a hydrogen explosion. The world would not end in fire-it would end in mathematical symbols.

The neighborhood even smelled bad now.

Empty lots strewn with rubble, garbage thrown from windows, street gangs wearing bright silk jackets and committing murder while the policemen slept, gangsters, all gangsters who were more interested in the mathematics of a crossword puzzle than in human decency. I've got to get out of this, ~ poetry, where is all the poetry in the world?

I'll walk past the park tonight, he thought.

The thought excited him. There was a time, before he'd become involved with a world of X's and Y's, when Geoffrey Tamblin could walk the paths of Grover Park and stare up at an orange ball of moon and know with certainty that the city was a place of romance and mystery. Now-with three ulcers-he thought only that he could not walk through the park because of potential muggers, he would have to walk past it-on Grover, Avenue. And still, the thought excited him.

He walked rapidly, thinking of poetry, noticing the ~ mathematical precision of the green globes hanging outside the police station across the street. 87. Figures. ~ Always figures.

There were three boys walking ahead of him. Juvenile delinquents, gangsters? No, they looked like college boys, potential nuclear physicists, mathematicians. What were' they doing up her'~, all the way uptown?

Listen to them sing, Tamblin thought. Did I ever sing? Wait until they come face to face with the unbending reality of plus and minus. Let's hear them sing then, let's hear them.

Geoffrey Tamblin broke his stride.

His shoe was sticking to the pavement.

Disgustedly, he pulled it loose and examined the sole. Chewing gum! Damnit, when would people learn to be clean, throwing gum all over the sidewalk where a man could step on it.

Swearing under his breath, he looked around for a scrap of paper, wishing he had one of Dr. Fanensel's texts to tear up.

He spotted the blue rectangle of paper lying next to the curb, hobbled over to it, and picked it up. He did not even glance at it. It was probably a throwaway from one of the supermarkets, full of this week's specials, prices, prices, figures, figures, where was all the poetry in the world?

Wadding the blue sheet, he rubbed viciously at the gum on his shoe. Then, pure again, he crumpled the paper into a mathematical ball and threw it down the sewer.

It was probably just as well.

Meyer Meyer's message would have made an exceedingly slim volume of poetry.

""The sun is a-shining to welcome the day,"" sang Sammy, "'and it's hi-ho, come to the fair!"" ""To the fair, to the fair, to the fair,"" Bucky sang.

"How does the rest go?" Sammy asked.

""To the fair, to the fair, to the fair,"" Bucky sang.

"Let's sing a college song," Jim said.

"Screw college songs," Sammy said.

"Lets sing "Minnie the Mermaid."" "I don't know the words."

"Who needs words? It's emotion that counts, not words."

"Hear, hear," Bucky said.

"Words are only words," Sammy said philosophically, "if they don't come from here. Right here." He tapped his heart.

"Where's this Mason Avenue?" Jim wanted to know.

"Where's all these Spanish chicks?"

"Up the street," Sammy said.

"North.

Don't talk so loud. That's a police station over there."

"I hate cops," Jim said.

"Me, too," Bucky said.

"I never met a cop," Jim said, "who wasn't an out-and-out son-of-a-bitch."

"Me, too," Bucky said.

"I hate aviators," Sammy said.

"I hate aviators, too," Bucky said.

"But I hate cops, too."

"I hate, especially," Sammy said, "jet aviators."

"Oh, especially," Bucky said.

"But cops, too."

"Are you still crocked?" Jim asked.

"I'm still crocked and it's magnificent. Where are all the Spanish girls?"

"Up the street, up the street, don't get impatient."

"What's that?" Bucky said.

"What's what?"

"That blue piece of paper. Over there."

"What?" Sammy turned to look.

"It's a blue piece of paper. What do you think it is?"

"I don't know," Bucky said.

"What do you think it is?" They began waliting again, past the second carbon copy of Meyer's message.

"I think it's a letter from a very sad old fart. She uses blue stationery whenever she writes to her imaginary lover."

"Very good," Bucky said. They continued walking.

"What do you think it is?"

"I think it's a birth announcement from a guy who always wanted a boy. Only he got a girl by accident, but all the announcements were already printed on blue."

"Very good," Sammy said.

"What do you think it is, Jim?"

"I'm crocked," Jim said.

"Yes, but what do you think it is?"

They continued walking, half a block away from the message now.

"I think it's a blue piece of toilet paper," Jim said.

Bucky stopped walking.

"Let's check."

"Huh?"

"Let's see."

"Come on, come on," Jim said, "let's not waste time. The tamales are waiting."

"Only take a minute," Bucky said, and he turned to go back for the sheet of paper.

Jim caught his arm.

"Listen, don't be a nut," Jim said.

"Come on."

"He's right," Sammy said.

"Who care what the damn thing is?"

"I do," Bucky said, and he pulled his arm free, whirled, and ran up the street.

The other boys watched him as he picked up the sheet of paper.

"Crazy nut," Jim said.

"Wasting our time."

"Yeah," Sammy said.

Up the street, Bucky was reading the sheet. Suddenly, he broke into a trot.

"Hey!" he shouted.

"Hey!"

Teddy Carella looked at her wrist watch.

It was 6:45.

She walked to the curb, signaled for a cab, and climbed in the moment it stopped.

"Where to, lady?" the cabbie asked.

Teddy took a slip of paper and a pencil from her purse. Rapidly, she wrote "87th Precinct, Grover Avenue" and handed the slip to the driver.

"Right," he said, and put the taxi in gear.

CHAPTER I5

Alf Miscolo lay in delirium, and in his tortured he cried out, "Mary! Mary!"

His wife's name was Katherine.

He was not a handsome man, Miscolo.

He lay on the floor now with his head propped against Willis' jacket. His forehead was drenched with sweat which rolled down the uneven planes of his face. His nose was massive, and his eyebrows were bushy, and there was a thickness about his neck which created the impression of head sitting directly on shoulders. He was not a handsome man, Mis-cob less handsome now in his pain and his delirium. Blood was seeping through the sulfanilamide bandage, and his life was leaking out of his body drop by precious drop, and he cried out again "Mary!" sharply because he once had been in love.

He had been in love a long while ago, and then only for a few short weeks before his ship left Boston. He had never again gone back to that city, never again sought out the girl who'd presented him with a memory that would last a lifetime. His destroyer had been berthed in the Charlestown yards. He was a bosun at the time, the toughest goddamn bosun in the U.S. fleet. The second World War was still a long way off, and Miscolo had only three things on his mind: how to be the toughest goddamn bosun in the U.S. fleet, how to enjoy himself to the fullest, and how to find an Italian meal whenever he left the ship.

He had possibly eaten in every Italian restaurant in Boston before he found the little dive off Scollay Square. Mary worked as a waitress in that dive. Miscolo was twenty-one years old at the time and, to his eyes, Mary was the loveliest creature that walked the face of the earth He began taking her out. He lived with her for two weeks. In those two weeks, they shared a lifetime together, and then the two weeks were over and the ship pulled out. And Miscolo swam at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. And he attended a luau on the beach at Kauai, and he ate heikaukau rock crab, and poi and kukui nuts while the hula girls danced. And later, in a Japanese town called Fukuoko-the Japanese were still our friends and no one even dreamt of Pearl Harbor then-Miscolo drank saki with a sloe-eyed girl whose name was Misasan, and he watched her pick up strips of dried fish with chopsticks and later he went to bed with her and learned that Oriental girls do not like to kiss. And on the way back, he hit San Francisco and had a ball there looking down from the hills at the magnificent city spr&ad out in a dazzling array of lights, flushed with his overseas pay, the toughest goddamn bosun in the U.S. fleet.

He never went back to Boston. He met Katherine instead when he was discharged, and he began going steady with her, and he got engaged, and then married, so he never went back to Boston to see the girl named Mary who worked in a sleazy Italiant restaurant in Scollay Square.

And now, with his life running red against a Sulfapak, with his body on fire and his head a throbbing black void, he screamed "Mary!"

Bert KIng put the wet cloth on Miscolo's forehead.

He was used to death and dying. He was a young man, but he had been through the Korean "police action," when death and dying had been a matter of course, an everyday occurrence like waking up to brush your teeth. And he had held the heads of closer friends on his lap, men he knew far better than Miscolo. And yet, hearing the word Mary erupt from Miscolo's lips in a hoarse scream, he felt a chill start at the base of his spine, rocketing into his brain where it exploded in cold fury. In that moment, he wanted to rush across the room and strangle Virginia Dodge.

In that moment, he wondered whether the liquld in that bottle was really nitroglycerin.

Angelica (.iomez sat up and snooK her now.

Her skirt was pulled back and over her knees, and she propped her elbows on both knees and shook her head again, and then looked around the room with a puzzled expression on her face, like a person waking in a hoteL And then, of course, she remembered.

She touched the back of her head. A huge knob had risen where Virginia had hit her with the gun. She felt the knob and the area around it, all sensitive to her probing fingers. And as the tentacles of pain spread out from the bruise, she felt with each stab a new rush of outraged anger. She rose from the floor and dusted oft her black skirt, and the look she threw at Virginia Dodge could have slain the entire Russian Army.

And in that moment, she wondered whether the liquid in that bottle was really nitroglycerin.

Cotton Hawes touched his cheek where the gun sight had ripped open a flap of flesh. The cheek was raw to the touch. He dabbed at it with a cold wet handkerchief, a cloth no colder than his fury.

And he wondered for the tenth time whether the liquid in that bottle was really nitroglycerin.

Steve Carella, she thought.

I will kill Steve Carella. I will shoot the rotten bastard and watch him die, and they won't touch me because they're afraid of what's in this bottle.

I am doing the right thing.

This is the only thing to do.

There is a simple equation here, she thought: a life for a life.

Carella's life for my Frank's life. And that is justice. The concept of justice had never truly entered the thoughts of Virginia Dodge before. She had been born Virginia MacCauley, of an Irish mother and a Scotch father. The family had lived in Calm's Point at the foot of the famous bridge which joined that part of the city with Isola. Even now, she looked upon the bridge with fond remembrance. She had played in its shadow as a little girl, and the bridge to her had been a wondrous day, she had dreamt, she would cross that bridge and it would take her to lands brimming with spices and rubies. One day, she would cross that bridge into the sky, and there would be men in turbans, and camels in caravans, and temples glowing with gold leaf.

She had crossed the bridge into the arms of Frank Dodge.

Frank Dodge, to the police, was a punk.

He'd been arrested at the age of fourteen for mugging an old man in Grover Park.

He'd been considered a juvenile offender by the law, and got off with nothing more serious than a reprimand and a j.d. card.

Between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, he'd been pulled in on a series of minor offenses-and always his age, his lawyer, and his innocent baby-blue-eyed looks had saved him from incarceration. At nineteen, he committed his first holdup.

This time he was beyond the maximum age limit for a juvenile offender. This time, his innocent baby-blue-eyed looks had lengthened into the severity of near manhood This time, they dumped him into the clink on Bailey's Island. Virginia met him shortly after his release.

To Virginia, Frank Dodge was not a punk.

He was the man with the turban astride the long-legged camel, he was the gateway to enchanted lands, rubies trickled from his fingertips, he was her man.

His B-card listed a series of offenses as long as Virginia's right arm-but Frank Dodge was her man, and you can't argue with love.

In September of 1953, Frank Dodge held up a gas station. The attendant yelled for help and it happened that a detective named Steve Carella, who was off-duty and driving toward his apartment in Riverhead, heard the calls and drove into the station but not before Dodge had shot the attendant and blinded him. Carella made the collar.

Frank Dodge went to prison-Castle-eview this time, where nobody played games with thieves. It was discovered during his first week of imprisonment that Frank Dodge was anything but an ideal prisoner. He caused trouble with keepers and fellow prisoners alike. He conStantly flouted the rules-as archaic as they were. His letters to his wife, read by prison authorities before they left the prison, grew more and more bitter.

In the second year of his term, it was discovered that Frank Dodge was suffering from tuberculosis. He was transferred to the prison hospital. It was in the prison hospital that he had died yesterday.

Today, Virginia Dodge sat with a pistol and a bottle, and she waited for the man who had killed him. In her mind, there was no doubt that Steve Carella was the man responsible for her husband's death. If she had not believed this with all her heart, she'd never have had the courage to come up here with such an audacious plan.

The amazing part of it was that the plan was working so far. They were all afraid of her, actually afraid of her. Their fear gave her great satisfaction. She could not have explained the satisfaction if she'd wanted to, could not have explained her retaliation against all society in the person of Steve Carella, her flouting of the law in such a flamboyant manner. Could she not, in all truth, in all fairness, simply have waited for Carella downstairs and put a bullet in his back when he arrived?

Yes.

In all fairness, she could have. There was no need for a melodramatic declaration of what she was about to do, no need to sit in judgment over the law enforcers as they had sat in judgment over her husband, no need to hold life or death in the palms of her hands, no need to play God to the men who had robbed her of everything she loved.

Or was there a very deep need?

She sat now with her private thoughts.

The gun in her hand was steady. The bottle on the table before her caught the slanting rays of the overhead light.

She smiled grimly.

They're wondering, she thought, whether the liquid in this bottle is really nitroglycerin.

"What do you think?" Bucky said.

"I think it's a bunch of crap," Jim said.

"Let's go get the Spanish girls."

"Now, wait a minute," Bucky said.

"Don't just brush this off. Now just wait a minute."

"Look," Jim said, "you want to play cops and robbers, fine. Go ahead. I don't. I want to go find the Spanish girls. I want to find Mason Avenue. I want to curl up on somebody's big fat bosom. For God's sake, I wanna get laid, for God's sake."

"All right, that can wait. Now suppose this is legit?"

"It isn't," Sammy said flatly.

"Damn right," Jim said.

"How do you know?" Bucky asked.

"In the first place," Sammy said, his eyes bright behind his spectacles, "anybody looking at the thing can see it's a phony right off.

"Detective Division Report'! Now what kind of crap is that?"

"Huh?" Bucky said.

"I mean, Bucky, for cris sakes be sensible.

"Detective Division Report'! Now, you know what this is, men?"

"What?" Bucky said.

"This is a thing, you send away the top of a carton of Chesterfields to Jack Webb, and he sends you back a bunch of blue sheets together with a Dragnet gun and a whistle so you can keep everybody in the neighborhood up nights."

"It looks legitimate to me," Bucky said.

"It does, huh? Do you see the name of the city anywhere on it? Huh? Tell me that."

"Well, no, but ..

"When are you going to grow up, Bucky?" Jim said.

"This is the same kind of stuff you get from Buck Rogers. Only his say "Space Division Report," and he sends you a disintegrator and a secret decoder."

"What about the message?" Bucky said.

"What about it?" Sammy wanted to know.

"Look~ at it. A woman with a gun and a bottle of nitroglycerin. Boy!"

"What's the matter with that?" Bucky said.

"Completely implausible," Sammy said.

"And tell me something. If this crazy dame is sitting there with a gun and a bottle of TNT." how in the hell did this Detective Whatever-His-Name-Is manage to type up this note and put it out on the street, nuw."

Implausible, Bucky. Completely implausible."

"Well, it looks legitimate to me," Bucky said doggedly.

"Look..." Jim started. And Sammy interrupted with, "Let me handle this, Jimbo."

"Well, it looks legitimate to me," Bucky said doggedly.

"Is it signed?" Sammy said.

"Do you see a signature?"

"Sure," Bucky said.

"Detective 2nd/Gr ..

"It's typed. But is it signed?"

"So?"

"So what?"

"So, look. You want to stew about this thing all night?"

"No, but ..

"What'd we come up here for?"

"Well ..

"To play space patrol with Buck Rogers?"

"No, but ..

"To waste our time with phony cops and robbers messages typed up by some kid on his brother's typewriter?"

"No, but ..

"I'm gonna ask you a simple question, man," Sammy said.

"Plain and simple. And I want a plain and simple answer, man.

Okay?"

"Sure," Bucky said.

"But it looks legit ..

"Did you come up here to get laid or didn't you?"

"I did."

"Well?"

"V,/ell ..

"Come on. Throw that away. Let's get started. The night is young. Huh?" Sammy grinned.

"Huh? Come on, man. Come on, huh? What do you say? How about it? Huh?

Okay?"

Bucky thought it over for a moment.

Then he said, "You go ahead without me.

I want to call this number."

"Oh, for the love of holy Buddha!"

Sammy said.

The telephone in the squad room rang at 6:55. Hal Willis waited for Virginia's signal, and then picked up the receiver.

"Eighty-seventh Squad," he said.

"Detective Willis speaking."

"Just a second," the voice on the other end said. The voice retreated from the phone, obviously talking to someone else in the room.

"How the hell do I know?" it said.

"Turn it over to the Bunco Squad. No, for Christ's sake, what would we be doing with a pickpocket file? Oh, Riley, you're the stupidest sonofabitch I've ever had to work with. I'm on the phone, can yo~i wait just one goddamn minute?" The voice came back onto the line.

"Hello?"

"Hello?" Willis said. At the desk opposite him, Virginia Dodge watched and listened.

"Who'm I speaking to?" the voice asked.

"Hal Willis."

"You're a detective, did you say?"

"Yes."

"This the 87th Squad?"

"Yes."

"Yeah. Well then I guess it's a crank."

"Huh?"

"This is Mike Sullivan down Headquarters. We got a call a little while ago, clocked in at ... ah ... just a second..."

Sullivan rattled some papers on the other end of the line ..... six forty-nine. Yeah."

"What kind of a call?" Willis said.

"Some college kid. Said he picked up a D.D. report in the street. Had a message typed on it. Something about a broad with a bottle of nitro. Know anything about it?"

At her desk, Virginia Dodge stiffened visibly. The revolver came up close to the neck of the bottle. From where Willis stood, he could see her trembling.

"Nitro?" he said into the phone, and he watched her hand, and he was certain the barrel of the gun would collide with the bottle at any moment.

"Yeah. Nitroglycerin. How about that?"

"No," Willis said.

"There's... there's nothing like that up here."

"Yeah, that's what I figured. But the kid gave his name and all, so it sounded like it might be a real squeal. Well, that's the way it goes. Thought I'd check anyway, though.

No harm in checking, huh?" Sullivan laughed heartily.

"No," Willis said, desperately trying to think of some way to tell Sullivan that the message was real; whoever had sent it, the damn thing was real.

"There's certainly no harm checking." He watched Virginia, watched the trembling gun in her hand.

Sullivan continued laughing.

"Never know when there'll really be some nut up there with a bomb, huh, Willis?" Sullivan said, and he burst into louder laughter.

"No, you.." you never know," Willis said.

"Sure." Sullivan's laughter trailed off.

"Incidentally, is there a cop up there by the name of Meyer?"

Willis hesitated. Had Meyer sent the message? Was it signed? If he said "Yes," would that be the end of it, and would Sullivan make the connection? If he said "No," would Sullivan investigate further, check to see which cops manned the 87th.

And would Meyer .

"You with me?" Sullivan asked.

"What? Oh, yes."

"Answer him!" Virginia whispered.

"We sometimes get a lousy counection," Sullivan said, "I thought maybe we'd got cut off."

"No, I'm still here," Willis said.

"Yeah. Well, how about it Any Meyer there?"

"Yes. We have a Meyer."

"Second grade?"

"Yes."

"That's funny," Sullivan said.

"This kid said the note was signed by a second grade named Meyer. That's funny, all right."

"Yes," Willis said.

"And you got a Meyer up there, huh?"

"Yes."

"Boy, that sure is funny," Sullivan said.

"Well, no harm in checking, huh? What?

For God sake's, Riley, can't you see I'm on the phone? I gotta go, Willis. Take it easy, huh? Nice talking to you."

And he hung up.

Willis put the phone back into the cradle.

Virginia Dodge put down her receiver, picked up the bottle of nitro and slowly walked to where Meyer Meyer was sitting at the desk near the window.

She did not say a word.

She put the bottle down on the desk before him and then she brought her arm across her body and swung the gun in a backhanded swipe which ripped open Meyer's lip. Meyer put up his hands to cover his face, and again the gun came across, again, again, numbing his wrists, forcing his hands down until there was only the vicious metal swiping at his eyes and his bald head and his nose and his mouth.

Virginia's eyes were bright and hard.

Viciously, cruelly, brutally, she kept the pistol going like a whipsaw until, bleeding and dazed, Meyer Meyer collapsed, on the desk top, almost overturning the bottle of nitroglycerin.

She picked up the bottle and looked at Meyer coldly.

Then she walked back to her own desk.

CHAPTER I6

"I hated the old bastard, and I’m glad he’s dead"

Alan Scott said.

He seemed to have lost all the shocked timidity with which he'd greeted Carella yesterday. They stood in the gun room of the old house, on the main floor, a room lined with heads and horns. A particularly vicious looking tiger head hung on the wall behind Alan, and the expression on his face now-as contrasted to his paleness yesterday-seemed to match that of the tiger.

"That's a pretty strong admission to make, Mr. Scott," Carella said.

"Is it? He was a vicious mean bastard.

He's ruined more men with his Scott Industries, Inc." than I can count on both hands. Was I supposed to have loved him?

Did you ever grow up with a tycoon?"

"No," Carella said.

"I grew up with an Italian immigrant who was a baker."

"You haven't missed anything, believe me. The old bastard's power wasn't quite absolute, but he had enough to make him almost absolutely corrupt. As far as I'm concerned, he was a big chancre dripping corruption. My father. Dear old dad. A murdering son of a bitch."

"You seemed pretty upset by his death yesterday."

"Only by the facts of death. Death is always shocking. But there was no love for him, believe me."

"Did you hate him enough to kill him, Mr. Scott?"

"Yes. Enough to kill him. But I didn't.

Not that I probably wouldn't have sooner or later. But I didn't do this job. And that's why I'm willing to level with you. I'll be damned if I'm going to get involved in something I had nothing to do with. You do suspect murder, don't you?

That's why you're hanging around so long, isn't it?"

"Well ..

"Come on, Mr. Carella, let's play it straight with each other. You know the old bastard was killed."

"I know nothing for sure," Carella said.

"He was found in a locked room, Mr. Scott.

In all truth, it looks pretty much like suicide."

"Sure. But we know it isn't, don't we?

There are a lot of clever people in this rotten family who can do tricks that'd make Houdini look sick. Don't let the locked room throw you. If somebody wanted him dead badly enough, that person would find a way of doing it. And making it look like suicide."

"Who, for example?"

"Me, for example," Alan said.

"If I'd ever decided to really kill him, I'd work it out, don't worry. Somebody just beat me to it, that's all" "Who?" Carella said.

"You want suspects? We've got a whole family full of them."

"Mark?"

"Sure. Why not Mark? He's been pushed around by the old bastard all his life. He hasn't said a word against him since the time he was fourteen. All that hatred building up inside while he smiled on the outside. And the latest slap in the face, sending Mark to that New Jersey rattrap where-when he finishes his cheap on-the job-training- he goes into the firm at the magnificent salary of fifteen thousand dollars a year. For the boss's son! Why, the old bastard pays his file clerks more."

"You're exaggerating," Carella said.

"All right, I'm exaggerating. But don't think Mark liked what the old bastard was doing to him. He didn't like it one damn bit. And David had his own reasons for killing dear father."

"Like what?"

"Like lovely Christine."

"What are you saying, Mr. Scott?"

"What does it sound like I'm saying?"

"You mean..

"Sure. Look, I'm playing this straight with you, Carella.

My hate is big enough to share, believe me.

And I don't want to see my neck stretched for something somebody else did, even if he deserved it."

"Then your father..

"My father was a lecherous old toad who kept Christine in this house by threatening to cut David off penniless if they left.

Period. Not nice, but there it is."

"Not nice at all. And Christine?"

"Try talking to her. An iceberg. Maybe she liked the setup, how do I know? At any rate, she knew who buttered her bread. And it was well-buttered, believe me."

"Maybe you all got together, Mr. Scott, to do the job. Is that a possibility?"

"This family couldn't get together to start a bridge game," Alan said.

"It's a wonder we managed to open that door in concert.

You've heard of togetherness? This family motto is 'apartheid."~ Maybe it'll be different now that he's dead-but I doubt it."

"Then you believe that someone in this house-one of your brothers, or Christinekilled your father?"

"Yeah. That's what I believe."

"Through a locked door?"

"Through a locked bank vault, if you will, with six inches of lead on every damn wall.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

"And there was a fat will here," Carella said.

Alan Scot did not smile.

"I'll tell you something, Detective Carella. If you work this from the motive angle, you'll go nuts.

We've got enough motive in this run-down mansion to blow up the entire city."

"How then, Mr. Scott, would you suggest that I work it?"

"I'd find out how somebody managed to hang the bastard through a locked door.

Figure out how it was done, and you'll also figure out who did it. That's my guess, Mr.

Carella."

"And, of course," Carella said, "that's the easiest part of detective work. Everyone knows that."

Alan Scott did not smile.

"I'm leaving," Carella said.

"There isn't much more I can do here tonight."

"Will you be back tomorrow?"

"Maybe. If I think of anything."

"Otherwise?"

"Otherwise it's a suicide. We've got motive, as you say, plenty of it. And we've got means. But, man, we sure are lacking in the opportunity department. I'm no genius, Mr. Scott. I'm just a working stiff. If we still suspect a homicide, we'll dump the case in the Open File." Carella shrugged.

"You didn't strike me as being that kind of a man, Mr. Carella," Alan said.

"Which kind of a man?"

"The kind who gives up easily."

Carella stared at him for a long moment.

"Don't confuse the Open File with the Dead Letter department of the Post Office," he said at last.

"Good night, Mr. Scott."

When Teddy Carella walked into the squad room at two minutes past seven, Peter Byrnes thought he would have a heart attack. He saw her coming down the corridor and at first he couldn't believe he was seeing correctly and then he recognized the trim figure and proud wafic of Steve's wife, and he walked quickly to the railing.

"What are you doing?" Virginia said.

"Somebody coming," Byrnes answered, and he waited. He did not want Virginia to know this was Carella's wife. He had watched the woman grow increasingly more tense and jumpy since the pistol whipping of Meyer, and he did not know what action she might conceivably take against Teddy were she to realize her identity. In the corner of the room, he could see Hawes administering to Meyer. Badly cut, Meyer tried to peer out of his swollen eyes. His lip hung loose, split down the center by the unyielding steel of the revolver. Hawes, working patiently with iodine, kept mumbling over and over again, "Easy, Meyer, easy," and there was a deadly control to his voice as if he-as much as the nitro-were ready to explode into the squad room

"Yes, Miss?" Byrnes said.

Teddy stopped dead outside the railing, a surprised look on her face. If she had read the lieutenant's lips correctly "Can I help you, Miss?" he said.

Teddy blinked.

"Get in here, you," Virginia barked from her desk. Teddy could not see the woman from where she stood. And, not seeing her, she could not "hear" her. She waited now for Byrnes to spring the punch line of whatever gag he was playing, but his face remained set and serious, and then he said, "Won't you come in, Miss?" and-puzzled even more now-Teddy entered the squad room

She saw Virginia Dodge immediately and knew intuitively that Byrnes was trying to protect her.

"Sit down," Virginia said.

"Do as I tell you and you won't get hurt. What do you want here?"

Teddy did not, could not answer.

"Did you hear me? What are you doing here?"

Teddy shook her head helplessly.

"What's the matter with her?" Virginia asked ini patiently

"Damnit, answer me."

"Don't be frightened, Miss," Byrnes said.

"Nothing will happen to you if..." He stopped dead, feigning discovery, and then turned to Virginia.

"I t~... I think she's a deaf mute," he said.

"Come here," Virginia said, and Teddy walked to her. Their eyes locked over the desk.

"Can you hear?"

Teddy touched her lips.

"You can read my lips?"

Teddy nodded.

"But you can't speak?"

Teddy shook her head.

Virginia shoved a sheet of paper across the desk. She took a pencil from the tray and tossed it to Teddy.

"There's paper and pencil. Write down what you want here."

In a quick hand, Teddy wrote "Burglary" on the sheet and handed it to Virginia.

"Mmm," Virginia said.

"Well, you're getting a lot more than you're bargaining for, honey. Sit down." She turned to Byrnes and, in the first kind words she'd uttered since coming into the squad room she said, "She's a pretty little thing, isn't she?"

Teddy sat.

"What's your name?" Virginia asked.

"Come over here and write down your name.

Byrnes almost leaped forward to intercept Teddy as she walked to the desk again.

Teddy picked up the pencil and rapidly wrote "Marcia..." She hesitated. A last name would not come. In desperation, she finally wrote her maiden name-"Franldin."

"Marcia Franklin," Virginia said.

"Pretty name. You're a pretty girl, Marcia, do you know that? Can you read my lips?"

Teddy nodded.

"Do you know what I'm saying?"

Again, Teddy nodded.

"You're very pretty. Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I'm only after one person, and I won't hurt anybody unless they try to stop me. Have you ever loved anyone, Marcia?"

Yes, Teddy said with her head.

"Then you know what it's like. Being in love. Well, someone killed the man I loved, Marcia. And now I'm going to kill him.

Wouldn't you do that, too?"

Teddy stood motionless.

"You would. I know you would. You're very pretty, Marcia. I was pretty once until they took my man away from me. A woman needs a man. Life's no good without a man. And mine is dead. And I'm going to kill the man who's responsible.

I'm going to kill a rotten bastard named Steve Carella."

The words hit Teddy with the force of a pitched baseball. She flinched visibly, and then she caught her lips between her teeth, and Virginia watched her in puzzlement and then said, "I'm sorry, honey, I didn't mean to swear. But I... this has been..." She shook her head.

Teddy had gone pale. She stood with her lip caught between her teeth, and she bit it hard, and she looked at the revolver in the hand of the woman at the desk, and her first impulse was to fling herself at the gun. She looked at the wall clock. It was 7:08. She turned toward Virginia and took a step forward.

"Miss," Byrnes said, "that's a bottle of nitroglycerin on the desk there." He paused.

"What I mean is, any sudden movement might set it off. And hurt a lot of people."

Their eyes met. Teddy nodded.

She turned away from Virginia and Byrnes, crossing to sit in the chair facing the slatted railing, hoping the lieutenant had not seen the sudden tears in her eyes.

CHAPTER I7

The clock read 7:10.

Teddy thought only, I must warn him.

Methodically, mechanically, the clock chewed time, swallowed it, spat digested seconds into the room. The clock was an old one, and its mechanism was audible to everyone but Teddy, whirr, whirr, and the old clock digested second after second until they piled into minutes and the hands moved with a sudden click in the stillness of the room.

7:11... 7:12 I must warn him, she thought. She had given up the thought of jumping Virginia and thought only of warning Steve now. I can see the length of the corridor from here, she thought, can see the top step of the metal stairway leading from below. If I could hear I would recognize his tread even before he came into view because I know his walk, I have imagined the sound of his walk a thousand times. A masculine sound, but lightfooted, he moves with animal grace, I would recognize the sound of his walk the moment he entered the building if only I could hear.

But I cannot hear, and I cannot speak. I cannot shout a warning to him when he enters this second floor corridor. I can only run to him. She will not use the nitro, not if she knows Steve is in the building where she can shoot him. She needs the nitro for her escape. So I'll run to him and be his shield, he must not die.

And the baby?

The baby, she thought. Hardly a baby yet, a life just begun, but Steve must not die. Myself, yes. The baby, yes. But not Steve. I will run to him. The moment I see him,

I will run to him, and then let her shoot.

But not Steve. She had almost lost him once, she could remember that Christmas as if it were yesterday, the painfully white hospital room, and her man gasping for breath. She had hated his occupation then, detested police work and criminals, abhorred the chance circumstances which had allowed her husband to be shot by a narcotics peddler in a city park. And then she had allowed her hatred to dissolve, and she had prayed, simply and sincerely, and all the while she knew that he would die and that her silent world would truly become silent. With Steve, there was no silence. With Steve, she was surrounded by the noise of life.

This was not a time for prayer.

All the prayers in the world would not save Steve now.

When he comes, she thought, I will run to him and I will take the bullet.

When he comes.... The clock read 7:13.

That isn't nitroglycerin, Hawes thought.

Maybe it is.

That isn't nitroglycerin.

It can't be. She handles it like water, she treats it with all the disdain she'd give to water, she wouldn't be so damn careless with it if it were capable of exploding.

It isn't nitroglycerin.

Now wait a minute, he told himself, let's just wait a minute, let's not rationalize a desire into a fact.

I want desperately for the liquid in that bottle to be water. I want it because for the first time in my life I am ready to knock a woman silly. I am ready to cross this room and, gun be damned, knock her flat on her ass and keep hitting her until she is senseless. That is the way I feel right now, and chivalry can go to Hell because that is the way I feel. I know it's not particularly nice to go around slugging women, but Virginia Dodge has become something less than a woman, or perhaps something more than a woman, she has become something inhuman and I no more consider her a woman than I would apply gender to a telephone or a pair of shoes.

She is Virginia Dodge.

And I hate her.

And I'm ashamed because I hate so goddamn deeply. I did not think myself capable of such hatred, but she has brought it out in me, she has enabled me to hate deeply and viciously. I hate her, and I hate myself for hating, and this causes me to hate deeper. Virginia Dodge has reduced me tLi an animal, a blind animal responding to a pain that is being inflicted. And the curious thing is that the pain is not my own.

Oh, the cheek, I've been hit harder before, the cheek doesn't matter. But what she did to Miscolo, and what she did to that Puerto Rican girl, and what she did to Meyer, these are things I cannot excuse, rationally or emotionally. These are pains inflicted on humans who have never done a blessed solitary thing to the non-human called Virginia Dodge. They were simply here and, being here, she used them, she somehow reduced them to meaningless ciphers.

And this is why I hate.

I hate because I... I and every other man in this room have allowed her to reduce humans to ciphers. She has robbed them of humanity, and by allowing her to rob one man of humanity, by allowing her to strip a single human being of all his godly dignity, I have allowed her to reduce all men to a pile of rubbish.

So here I am, Virginia Dodge.

Cotton Hawes is my name, and I am a one-hundred-percent white Protestant American raised by God-fearing parents who instilled in me a sense of right and wrong, and who taught me that women are to be treated with courtesy and chivalry and you have turned me into a jungle animal ready to kill you, hating you for what you've done, ready to kill you.

The liquid in that bottle is not nitroglycerin.

This is what I believe, Virginia Dodge.

Or at least, this is what I am on the road to believing. I do not yet fully believe it.

I'm working on it, Virginia. I'm wororking on it damn hard.

I don't have to work on the hatred. The hatred is there, and it's building all the time and God help you, Virginia Dodge, when I'm convinced, when I've convinced myself that your bottle of nitroglycerin is a big phony.

God help you, Virginia, because I'll kill you.

The answer came to him all at once.

Sometimes it comes that way.

He had left Alan Scott in the old mansion, had walked through the stillness of a house gone silent with death, into the huge entry hall with its cut-glass chandelier and its ornate mirror. He had taken his hat from the marble-topped table set in front of the mirror, wondering why he'd worn the hat, he very rarely wore a hat, and then realizing that he had not worn a hat yesterday, and then further realizing that the power of the rich is an intimidating one.

We mustn't be intolerant, he thought. We mustn't blame the very rich for never having experienced the sheer ecstasy of poverty.

Smiling grimly, he had faced the mirror, set his hat on his head, and then opened the huge oak door leading outside. Darkness covered the property. A single light burned at the far end of the walk. There was the smell of wood-smoke on the air.

He had started down the path, thinking of October, and woodsmoke, and burning leaves, and musing about this bit of Exurbia in the center of the city. How nice to be exurban, how nice to burn leaves. He glanced over his shoulder, toward the garage. A figure was silhouetted there against the star-filled sky, a giant of a man, one of the brothers, no doubt, the smoke from the small fire trailing up past his huge body. One of the magnificent Scotts burning leaves, you'd think a job like that would be left to Roger, or the caretaker, no caretaker for the Scott estate? Tch, tch, no caretaker to burn the .

It came to him then.

Woodsmoke.

Wood.

And one of the brothers burning his own fire.

Wood. Wood! For Christ's sake, wood, of course, of course!

He turned suddenly and started back up the path to the garage.

How do you lock a door? he thought, and his thoughts mushroomed onto his face until he was grinning like an absolute idiot.

How do you lock it from the outside and let it seem it's been locked from the inside?

To begin with, you rip the slip bolt from the doorjamb, so that when the door is finally forced open, it looks as if the lock was snapped in the process. That's the first thing you do, and by Christ, that explains all the marks on the inside of the room, how the hell could the crowbar have got that far inside, why weren't you thinking, Carella, you moron?

So first you snap the lock.

You have already strangled the old man, and he is lying on the floor while you work on the slip bolt, carefully prying it loose so that it hangs from one screw, so that it will look very realistically snapped when the door is later forced.

Then you put a rope around the old man's neck, and you toss one end of it over the beam in the ceiling, and you pull him up so that he's several feet off the ground. He's a heavy man, but so are you, and you're working with extra adrenalin shooting through your body, and all you have to do is get him off the floor several feet. And then you back away toward the door and tie the rope around the doorknob.

The old man is dangling free at the other end of the room.

You shove on the door now. This isn't too difficult. It only has to open wide enough to permit you to slip out of the room. And now you're out, and the old man's weight pulls the door shut again. The slip bolt, on the inside, is dangling lodse from one screw.

And you are in the corridor, and the problem now is how to give the appearance of the door being locked so that you and your brothers can tug on it to no avail.

And how do you solve the problem?

By using one of the oldest mechanical devices known to mankind.

And who?

It had to be, it couldn't be anyone else but the first person to try the door after the crowbar was used on it, the first person to step close enough to "Who's there?" the voice said.

"Mark Scott?" Carella said.

"Yes? Who's that?"

"Me. Carella."

Mark stepped closer to the small fire. The smoke drifted up past his face. The flames, dwindling now, threw a flickering light onto his large features.

"I thought you'd gone long ago," he said.

He heici a rake in his hands, and he poked at the embers with it now so that the fire leaped up in renewed life, tinting his face with a yellow glow.

"No, I'm still here."

"What do you want?" Mark said.

"You," Carella said simply.

"I don't understand."

"I'm taking you with me, Mark," Carella said.

"What for?"

"For the murder of your father."

"Don't be ridiculous," Mark said.

"I'm being very sensible," Carella said.

"Did you burn it?"

"Burn what? What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the way you locked that door from the outside."

"There's no outside lock on that door," Mark said calmly.

"What you used was just as effective as a lock. And the more a person tugged against it, the more effective it became, the tighter it locked that door."

"What are you talking about?" Mark said.

"I'm talking about a wedge," Carella said, "a simple triangle of wood. A wedge..

"I don't know what you mean," Mark said.

"You know what I mean, damnit. A wedge, a simple triangular piece of wood which you kicked under the door narrow end first. Any outward pressure on the door only pulled it toward the wide end of the triangle, tightening it."

"You're crazy," Mark said.

"We had to use a crowbar on that door. It was locked from the inside. It..

"It was held closed by your wooden wedge which, incidentally, put a dent in the weatherstripping under the door. The crowbar only splintered a lot of wood which fell to the floor. Then you stepped up to the door. You, Mark. You stepped up to it and fumbled with the doorknob and-in the process-kicked out the wedge so that the door, for all intents and purposes, was now unlocked. And then, of course, you and your brothers were able to pull it open, despite your father's weight hanging against ..

"This is ridiculous," Mark said.

"Where'd you..

"I saw Roger sweeping up the debris in the hallway. The splintered wood, and your wedge. A good camouflage, that splintered wood. That's what you're burning now, isn't it? The wood? And the wedge?"

Mark Scott did not answer. He began moving even before Carella had finished his sentence. He swung the rake back over his shoulder and then let loose with it as if he were swinging a baseball bat, catching Carella completely by surprise. The blow struck him on the side of the neck, three of the rake's teeth entering the flesh and drawing blood. Mark pulled the rake back again. Carella, dizzy, stepped forward with his hands outstretched, and again the rake fell, this time on the forearm of Carella's outstretched right arm.

His arm dropped, numb. He tried to lift it, tried to reach for the Police Special in his right hip pocket, but the arm dangled foolishly, and he cursed its inability to move and then noticed that the rake was back again, ready for another swing, and he knew that this swing would do it, this swing would knock his head clear into the River Harb.

He lunged forward, inside the swing, as the rake cut the air. He grasped with his left hand, reaching for a grip on Mark's clothing, catching the tie knotted loosely around his throat. Mark, off balance from his swing, pulled back instantly, and Carella moved forward with the movement of the bigger man, shoving him backward, and then suddenly tugging forward again on the tie.

Mark fell.

He dropped the rake and spread his hands out to cushion the fall, and Carella went down with him, knowing he must not come into contact with the bigger man's hand shand which had already strangled once.

Silently, grotesquely, they rolled on the ground toward the fire, Mark struggling for a grip at Carella's throat, Carella holding to the tie as if it were a hangman's noose.

They rolled over the fire, scattering sparks onto the lawn, almost extinguishing it. And then Carella dropped the tie, and leaped to his feet and, his right hand useless, his left lacking any real power, brought his foot hack and released it in a kick that caught Mark on the left shoulder, spinning him back to the ground.

Carelia closed in.

Again he kicked, and again, using his feet with the precision of a boxer. And then, backing off, he reached behind him with his left hand in a curious inverted draw, and faced Mark Scott with the .38 in his fist.

"Okay, get up," he said.

"I hated him," Mark said.

"I've hated him ever since I was old enough to walk. I've wanted him dead ever since I was fourteen."

"You got what you wanted," Carella said.

"Get up." Mark got to his feet.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Back to the squad," Carella said.

"It'll be a little more peaceful there."

CHAPTER I8

"Where is he?" Virginia Dodge said impatiently. She looked up at the clock.

"It's almost seven thirty Isn't he supposed to report back here?"

"Yes," Byrnes said.

"Then where the hell is he?" She slammed her left fist down on the desk top.

Hawes watched. The bottle of nitro, jarred, did not explode.

It's water, Hawes thought. Goddamnit, it's water!

"Have you ever had to wait for anything, Marcia?" Virginia said to Teddy.

"I feel as if I've been in this squad room all my life."

Teddy watched the woman, expressionless.

"You ron bitch," Angelica Gomez said.

"You should wait in Hell, you dirtee bitch."

"She's angry," Virginia said, smiling.

"The Spanish onion is angry. Take it easy, Chiquita. Just think, your name'll be in the newspapers tomorrow."

"An' your name, too," Angelica said.

"An' maybe it be in the dead columns."

"I doubt that," Virginia said, and all humor left her face and her eyes.

"The newspapers will ..." She stopped.

"The newspapers," she said, and this time she said the words with the tone of discovery. Hawes watched the discovery claim her face, watched as she stirred her memory. Her eyes were beginning to narrow.

"I remember reading a story about Carella," she said.

"In one of the newspapers. The time he got shot. It mentioned that his wife ..." She paused.

"His wife was a deaf mute!" she said, and she turned glaring eyes on. Teddy.

"What about it, Marcia Franklin? What about it?"

Teddy did not move.

"What are you doing here?" Virginia said.

She had begun rising.

Teddy shook her head.

"Are you Marcia Franklin, come to report a burglary? Or are you Mrs. Steve Carella?

Which? Answer me!"

Again Teddy shook her head.

Virginia was standing now, her attention riveted to Teddy. Slowly, she came around the desk, sliding along its edge, ignoring the bottle on its top completely. It was as if, having found someone she believed to be related to Carella, her wait was nearing an end. It was as if should this woman be Carella's wife-she could now truly begin to vent her spleen. Her decision showed on her face. The hours of waiting, the impatience of the ordeal, the necessity for having to deal with other people while her real quarry delayed his entrance showed in the gleam of her eyes and the hard set of her mouth. As she approached Teddy Carella, Hawes knew instinctively that she would inflict upon her the same-if not worse punishment that Meyer Meyer had suffered.

"Answer me!" Virginia screamed, and she left the desk completely now, the bottle of nitro behind her, advanced to Teddy, and stood before her, a dark solemn judge and jury.

She snatched Teddy's purse from her arm, and snapped it open. Byrnes, Kung, Willis, stood to the right of Teddy, near the coat rack. Miscolo was unconscious on the floor behind Virginia, near the filing cabinets. Only Meyer and Hawes were to her right and slightly behind her-and Meyer was limp, his head resting on his folded arms.

Quickly, deftly, Virginia rifled through the purse. She found what she was looking for almost immediately. Immediately, she read it aloud.

"Mrs. Stephen Carella, 837 Dartmouth Road, River-head. In case of emergency, call..." She stopped.

"Mrs. Stephen Carella," she said.

"Well, well, Mrs. Stephen Carella." She took a step closer to Teddy, and Hawes watched, hatred boiling inside him, and he thought, It was nitra, it isn't nitro, it isn't nitro.... "Aren't you the pretty one, though?"

Virginia said.

"Aren't you the well-fed, well-groomed beauty? You've had your man, .. you~' you ye nan your man, ann you've still got your good looks, haven't you? Pretty, you bitch, look at me!

LOOK AT ME!"

I'll jump her, Teddy thought. Now.

While she's away from the nitro. I'll jump her now, and she'll fire, and the rest will grab her, and it will be all over. Now. Now.

But she did not jump.

Hypnotized as if by a snake, she watched the naked hatred on Virginia Dodge's face.

"I was pretty once," Virginia said, "before they sent Frank away. Do you know how old I am? I'm thirty-two. That's young. That's young, and I look like a hag, don't I, like death one of them said. Me, me, I look like death because your husband robbed me of my Frank. Your husband, you bitch. Oh, I could rip that face of yours apart! I could rip it, rip it for what he's done to me! Do you hear me, you little bitch!"

She stepped closer, and Hawes knew the gun would flash upward in the next moment.

He told himself for the last time, There's no nitro in that bottle, and then he shouted, "Hold it!"

Virginia Dodge turned to face him, moving closer to the desk and the bottle on it, blocking Byrnes and the others from it.

"Get away from her," Hawes said.

"What!" Virginia's tone was one of complete disbelief.

"You heard me. Get away from her. Don't lay a hand on her."

"Are you giving me orders?"

"Yes!" Hawes shouted.

"Yes, I am giving you orders! Now how about that, Mrs.

Dodge? How about it? I am giving you orders! One of the crawly little humans is daring to give God orders. Keep away from that girl. You touch her and..

"And what?" Virginia said. There was a sneer in her voice, supreme confidence in her stance-but the gun in her hand was trembling violently.

"I'll kill you, Mrs. Dodge," Hawes said quietly.

"That's what, Mrs. Dodge. I'll kill you."

He took a step toward her.

"Stand where you are!" Virginia yelled.

I'm not afraid of your wedge any more, your little bottle. You know why? Because there's nothing but water in it, Mrs. Dodge, and I'm not afraid of water. I drink water!

By the gallon, I drink it!"

"Cotton," Byrnes said, "don't be a ..

"Don't take another step!" Virginia said desperately, the gun shaking.

"Why not? You going to shoot me?

Okay, damnit, shoot me! But shoot me a lot because one bullet isn't going to do it!

Shoot me twice and then keep shooting me because I'm coming right at you, Mrs.

Dodge, and I'm going to take that gun away from you with any strength that's left in my hands, and I'm going to stuff it right down your throat! I'm coming, Mrs. Dodge, you hear me?"

"Stop! Stop where you are!" she screamed.

"The intro ..

"There is no nitro!" Hawes said, and he began his advance in earnest, and Virginia turned to face him fully now. To her left, Byrnes gestured to Teddy, who began moving slowly toward the men who stood just inside the gate. Virginia did not seem to notice. Her hand was shaking erratically as she watched Hawes.

"I'm coming, Mrs. Dodge," Hawes said, "so you'd better shoot now if you're going to because ..

And Virginia fired.

The shot stopped Hawes. But only momentarily, and only in the way any sudden sharp noise will stop anyone.

Because the bullet had missed him by a mile, and he began his advance again, moving across the room toward her, watching Byrnes slip Teddy past the railing and practically shove her down the corridor. The others did not move. Shut off from the bottle of nitro, they nonetheless stood rooted in the room, facing an imminent explosion.

"What's the matter" Hawes said.

"Too nervous to shoot straight? Your hand trembling too much?"

Virginia backed toward the desk. This time, he knew she was going to fire. He sidestepped an instant before she squeezed the trigger, and again the slug missed him, and he grinned and shouted, "That does it, Mrs. Dodge!

"The nitro..." she said, backing toward the desk.

"What nitro? There is no nitro!"

"I'll knock it to the..

And Hawes leaped.

The gun went off as he jumped, and this time he heard the rushing whoosh of the bullet as it tore past his head, missing him.

He caught at Virginia's right hand as the swung it toward the desk and the bottle of nitroglycerin. He clung to her wrist tightly because there was animal strength in her arm as she flailed wildly at the bottle, reaching for it.

He pulled her arm up over her head and then slammed it down on the desk top, trying to knock the gun loose, and the bottle slid towards the edge of the desk.

He slammed her hand down again, and again the bottle moved, closer to the edge as Virginia's fingers opened and the gun dropped to the floor.

And then she twisted violently in his arms and flung herself headlong across the desk .in a last desperate lunge at the bottle standing not two inches from its edge. She slipped through his grip' and he caught at her waist and then yanked her back with all the power of his shoulders and arms, pulling her upright off the desk, and then clenching his fist into the front of her dress, and drawing his free hand back for a blow that would have broken her neck.

His hand hesitated in mid-air.

And then he lowered it, unable to hit her.

He shoved her across the room and said ouly, "You bitch!" and then stooped to pick up the gun.

Meyer Meyer lifted his battered head.

"What... what happened?" he said.

"It's over," Hawes answered.

Byrnes had moved to the telephone.

"Dave," he said, "get me the Bomb Squad!

Right away!"

"The Bomb..

"You heard me."

"Yes, sir!" Murchison said.

The call from the hospital came at 7:53, after the men bottle from the room. Byrnes took the call.

"Eighty-seventh Squad," he said.

"Lieutenant Byrnes."

"This is Dr. Nelson at General. I was asked to call about the condition of this stabbing victim? Jose Dorena?"

"Yes," Byrnes said.

"He'll live. The blade missed the jugular by about a quarter of an inch. He won't be out of here for a while, but he'll be out alive." Nelson paused.

"Anything else you want to know?"

"No. Thank you."

"Not at all," Nelson said, and he hung up.

Byrnes turned to Angelica.

"You're lucky," he said.

"Kassim'll live. You're a lucky girl."

And Angelica turned sad wise eyes toward the lieutenant and said, "Am

I?"

Murchison walked over to her.

"Come on, sweetie," he said, "we've got a room for you downstairs." He pulled her out of the chair, and then went to where Virginia Dodge was handcuffed to the radiator.

"So you're the troublemaker, huh?" he said to her.

"Drop dead," Virginia told him.

"You got a key for this cuff, Pete?"

Murchison said. He shook his head.

"Jesus, Pete, why didn't you guys say something? I mean, I was sitting down there all this time.

I mean ..." He stopped as Byrnes handed him the key.

"Hey, is that what you meant by "Forthwith'?"

Byrnes nodded tiredly.

"That is what I meant by "Forthwith,"" he said.

"Yeah," Murchison said.

"I'll be damned." Roughly, he pulled Virginia Dodge from the chair.

"Come on, prize package," he said, and he led both women from the squad room passing Kung in the corridor.

"Well, we got Miscolo off okay," Kung said.

"The rest is in the lap of the gods. We sent Meyer along for the ride. The intern seemed to think that face needed treatment.

It's over, huh, Pete?"

"It's over," Byrnes said.

There was noise in the corridor outside.

Steve Carella pushed Mark Scott through the slatted-rail divider and said, "Sit down, Scott. Over there. Hello, Pete. Cotton.

here's our boy. Strangled his own ... Teddy! Honey, I forgot all about you. Have you been waiting long?" He shut his mouth because Teddy rushed into his arms with such fervor that she almost knocked him over.

"We've all been sort of waiting for you," Byrnes said.

"Yeah? Well, that's nice. Absence makes the heart grow fonder." He held Teddy at arm's length and said, "I'm sorry I'm late, baby. But all at once the thing began to jellandl..."

She touched the side of his neck where the blow from the rake had left marks crusted with blood.

"Oh, yeah," he said.

"I got hit with a rake. Listen, let me type my report and away we go. Pete, I'm taking my wife to dinner, and I dare you to say no. We're going to have a baby!"

"Congratulations," Byrnes said wearily.

"Boy, what enthusiasm. Honey, let me type up this report, and away we go. I'm so starved I could eat a horse. Pete, we book this guy for homicide. Where's a typewriter? Anything interesting happen while I was... The phone rang.

"I've got it," Carella said. He lifted the receiver.

"Eighty-seventh Squad, Carella."

"Carella, this is Levy down the Bomb Squad."

"Yeah, hi, Levy, how are you?"

"Fine. And you?"

"Fine. What's up?"

"I got a report on that bottle."

"What bottle?"

"We picked up a bottle there."

"Oh, yeah? Well, what about it?"

Carella listened, inserting a few "Ub-hubs" and "Yeses" into the conversation. Then he said, "Okay, Levy, thanks for the dope," and he hung up. He pulled up a chair, ripped three D.D. sheets from the desk drawer, inserted carbon between them, and then swung a typewriter into place.

"That was Levy," he said.

"The Bomb Squad. Somebody here give him a bottle?"

"Yeah," Hawes said.

"Well, he was calling to report on it."

Hawes rose and walked to Carella.

"What did he say?"

"He said it was."

"It was?"

"That's what the man said. They exploded it downtown. Powerful enough to have blown up City Hall."

"It was," Hawes said tonelessly.

"Yeah." Carella inserted the report forms into the typewriter.

"Was what?" he asked absently.

"Nitro," Hawes said, and he sank into a chair near the desk, and he had on his face the stunned expression of a man who's been hit by a Diesel locomotive.

"Boy," Carella said, "what a day this was!"

Furiously, he began typing.

THE END