Killing Time

Thirty-One

The Reed & King plant, like Casale Brothers, took up a square block of Front Street. Unlike Casale Brothers, three blocks away, this square was neat and pretty as an architect’s model. The building was shaped like a plus sign, a long main building with wings jutting out on each side. It was five stories tall, sand-blasted a near-white, and surrounded by black-top parking lots and neatly mowed bits of lawn. The whole block was encircled by hedges four feet tall, except for the broad sidewalk leading up to the main entrance, and the entrances to the two parking lots.

Across the street from the plant was a row of old tenement buildings, most of them empty, a couple used as warehouses, one down at the corner containing a luncheonette, closed at this time of night. Art and I were waiting in the ground-floor living room of one of the empty ones, sitting by the broken-glassed front windows and watching the street and the plant building across the way.

We’d been waiting fifteen minutes when Art whispered, “Here they come!”

I shifted position, and looked out the paneless window. Three people were coming down this side of the street. Mike Casale and his brother Sal and his son Bill. They were the only ones in sight.

I knew what Mike had in mind. They planned to go in there themselves, just the three of them, to give Jack Wycza no fears about their trying to force entry. Then they would try to convince Reed and the others that it would be safer and easier to turn Harcum over, without causing any trouble or any war.

A fine idea, but it wouldn’t work. I’d made sure of that.

The three of them passed the building I was hiding in and walked on. They were going to die. I held the splintery window sill and watched, and waited.

They walked on a ways, until they were directly opposite the main entrance of the sprawling unlit plant building. Then Mike led the way across the street, Bill to his right and Sal to his left.

All at once, my head was halfway out the window, and I was shouting, “Don’t!” I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t gun them down that way.

I got the one word out, and Art was dragging me back inside, one hand clamped over my mouth. And the shots cracked from a ground-floor window in the plant.

They had just reached the opposite curb. Mike toppled backwards off the curb, Sal doubled over and collapsed face-first on the sidewalk, and Bill spun around like a toy pulled by a string. He took two steps along the sidewalk, faltering, and another shot rang out. He fell like a tree.

There was absolute silence on the street.

Beside me, I could hear a slight rustling as Art shifted position. Then his whisper sounded, harsh in my ear, “What the hell were you trying to do?”

I couldn’t have explained it to him. Not in a million years.