Killing Time

Thirty-Three

There were maybe a dozen cars scattered around the parking lot, plus the two Casale Brothers trucks. On this side, light shone from windows on the fourth and fifth floors, and I caught occasional glimpses of people moving around inside. There was no one in the parking lot at all.

Art and I were crouched behind the hedge, next to the parking-lot entrance. I whispered, “We’ll make a run for that first car, the Dodge. We’ll work our way from car to car till we reach the building.”

“Lead on, Mr. Smith,” he said scornfully. “I’m right in front of you.”

I moved out from the hedge and started running, crouched over, weaving as I ran, a stocky idiot who’d lost the reins. Halfway to the Dodge, the ground suddenly shook beneath my feet, and I lost my balance and fell headlong, my pistol flying out of my hand. I landed hard, on the right shoulder, and rolled up against a rear wheel of the Dodge. I sat up fast, spied the revolver lying on the blacktop a few feet off, and lunged for it as the ground trembled again, and this time I heard the sound of the explosion.

Art cried out, and I looked up. The Reed & King building seemed to be framed by a yellow-white halo, and the roar of the explosion tumbled down around me. The halo suddenly expanded, flashing red-white, the ground shivered again, and the thunder of the third explosion drowned out the noises from inside the building. There were two more explosions, and then sudden silence, and at last I managed to scrabble across the blacktop and get the revolver back into my hand.

The silence lasted only a few seconds, and then ragged shooting began again. I struggled to my feet and was about to move forward when someone clutched at my arm, crying, “Tim! Tim! Please, for the love of God!”

I spun around, pulling away from the hand, and stared into the frightened eyes of Marvin Reed. “My father’s in there!” he screamed at me. “What’s happening? For the love of God, what’s happening?”

“What the hell do you care?” I shouted. “He doesn’t give a damn about you.”

Art was beside me, still unexcited, still giving me his: harsh and bitter grin. “Come on, Mr. Smith,” he said.

“We’ve got to help him!” Marvin was crying. “Tim, help me, we’ve got to get him out of there!”

“Go away, Marvin, go away.” He was pawing at me, and I pushed him away, shouting, “I’m not going to help your father, you damn fool! I’m on the other side!”

He stared at me, white-faced, and suddenly his hand was: reaching into his coat pocket and coming out again with a gun, and he was screaming something at me. I gaped at him, the gun came up, and the sound of the shot was the loudest thing in the world.

Marvin slammed backwards onto the blacktop, and Art said, “You’re going to have to do better than that, Mr. Smith.”

My mind just wouldn’t work. I stared down at Marvin, and I said, “What? What?”

“He didn’t shoot you, Mr. Smith,” said Art dryly. “I shot him.”

A sudden, louder burst of gunfire tore me back to reality. I looked around, and saw that a door in the side of the building was open, and four men were racing across the parking lot. Other men appeared in the doorway, firing after them, and one of the four staggered and dropped. The other three reached a car, scrambled into it, and the car leaped forward, turning sharply to come about and head for the street. The men in the doorway kept firing, and the car tore out of the parking lot, straight across the street, and crashed into the plate-glass window of the luncheonette.

I ducked behind the Dodge and watched. The second group ran across the parking lot. I recognized them as Casales, and then I saw Danile clamber drunkenly from the wrecked car and stand weaving, his hands out in supplication as he mouthed words that were drowned by all the rest of the noise in the world. Suddenly he fell to his knees, his hands still out and his mouth still moving, and toppled forward onto his face.

The Casales reached the car and dragged out the other two. One was a Wycza, and the other was our District Attorney, George Watkins, his round face white with shock.

Art nudged my arm. “What now, Mr. Smith?”

“Through that door,” I said. “That leads up to Reed’s suite.”

“Okay,” he said. “Come on.”

He ran for the doorway and I chugged after him, expecting any second a bullet from one of the windows to tear into me. But we reached the doorway, dashed into the building, and found ourselves in a stairwell by Jordan Reed’s private elevator. A distorted figure lay sprawled face-down on the stairs.

We moved up the stairs, quickly and cautiously. A fire door was closed on the second floor, and we could hear shooting from the other side of it. We kept on going, and ran into a barricade on the third floor. Office furniture was piled across the doorway from the stairwell to the hall. Four Wyczas were behind this barrier, firing spasmodically at someone we couldn’t see.

Art and I stood on the landing below, just out of sight of the defenders. Art whispered, “Are you going to use that gun, Mr. Smith?”

“Reed surprised me,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll use it.”

“You’d better. I won’t be able to get all four of them myself.”

“I’ll shoot, God damn it!”

“All right. I’ll take the two on the left.” He hesitated, said, “Now!” and jumped out on the landing.

It only took a second. We leaped out where we could see them, and we each fired twice, and they slumped down over their barricade.

It wasn’t real. I pointed, and made a noise, and they slumped, not breathing. It wasn’t real.

And then it was.

We ran up the stairs, past the barricade, and up the next two flights to the fifth floor. The door here led to Reed’s outer office. Art reached for the doorknob and I pulled him away. “Don’t be stupid.”

He looked at me, studying my face, and suddenly grinned. “You’re back, huh?”

“I’m back.” And I was. From the minute the three Casales had been gunned down, I’d been out of it, fuzzy and bewildered and afraid. Shooting the two at the barricade had to the back. I’d had to make a decision there, fast. If I wanted Harcum, I had to get by the men at the barricade. If I wanted him badly enough, all of this was justified and necessary.

I wanted him that badly.

“Get against the wall beside the door,” I told Art. “I’ll be on the other side. I’ll push the door open, but we don’t go in until I say so.”

“Right you are, Mr. Smith.”

We took our positions, and I reached out, turned the knob, and shoved the door open wide.

Shots rattled from inside, and four holes appeared in the wall opposite the doorway. The shots stopped, and I spun around into the doorway, firing before I saw what I was firing at. Pete and Gar Wycza, both still in their police uniforms, crumpled behind the secretary’s desk. Art rushed past me, around the desk, and fired once.

I moved across to the next door, glancing at the men on the floor. Gar Wycza’s mouth and eyes were open, and he looked as though he were grinning. I remembered passing him, day after day, up at the corner of State and DeWitt. I remembered him saying, “Good day for drinkin.”

The next door led to Reed’s office. We worked the same routine again, and this time Art moved first. There were no shots when I pushed the door open. Art hesitated, and then jumped into the doorway, snapping off one shot as he moved. He stopped, looking into the room, and cautiously crossed the threshold. Then he looked back at me, grinning in embarrassment. “Nobody here.”

We crossed Reed’s office to the next door. Art said, “Where does this one lead?”

“Conference room. We’ll change tactics this time. You keep to the side again, but this time you open the door.”

“Where you going to be?”

“Right here,” I said. I lay down on my stomach, facing the door, the.32 held up in front of me, my elbows on the floor.

Art got into position. “Say when.”

“Now.”

He pushed the door open, and a Wycza fired two shots over my head. The conference table was tipped on its side, and he was crouched behind it, only his head and one arm showing. He got the two shots off, both high, and then I fired, and he fell backward out of sight.

Art dashed into the room, vaulted over the table, and another defender appeared, scrabbling to his feet, unarmed, backing away, his face a study in pure terror. He managed to say, “Don’t,” before Art shot him.

I got up from the floor and ran into the room. There were two more doors here, one leading to the dining room and one to Reed’s living quarters. They would be in the living quarters. I turned that way just as the door opened and Jack Wycza started in. He stopped short, gaping at me, and then he saw Art. “You dirty louse!” he cried, and his hand came up with a pistol in it.

The three of us all fired at the same time. Jack crashed backward out of the doorway, landing heavily. He half-rolled over, trying to sit up, then fell back and lay still.

“Come on!” I shouted, and ran forward. At the doorway, I paused and looked back. Art was sprawled on the floor, behind the conference table, lying on his left side. Wycza’s shot had caught him in the face.

I turned away, stepped over Wycza’s body, and suddenly realized I only had two rounds left in my gun. I went back and scooped up Wycza’s, a.45 automatic, and checked the clip. The shot he’d fired at Art had been his first. There were seven bullets left. I pushed the clip back into the butt and went on.

I moved cautiously into the next room beyond, which was Jordan Reed’s smaller, private dining room. It was empty, and there was only one room beyond it, Reed’s bedroom. I started across the dining room, and then I noticed a door open to my right. It led to another flight of stairs. I turned that way, and a slight noise behind me made me spin around, to see Reed in the doorway of the room I’d just come from, a pistol in his hand.

We just stared at each other for a second, and then I said, “Hiya, governor.”

I saw his face tighten, the way Tarker’s had at the diner. He fired twice as I threw myself to the side and tried to bring Wycza’s.45 to bear on him. I hit the floor rolling, came to a stop on my back, and pulled the trigger three times before Reed was flung off his feet and slammed to the floor. A.45 has a lot more power than a.32.

I started to get to my feet, but my left arm wouldn’t take any weight. It crumpled under me, and I looked at it and saw the hole in my shirt where a bullet had gone through. The arm didn’t hurt at all, but it just wouldn’t work right.

I crawled to the wall, climbed up it until I was standing, and turned again to the stairway. Far below me, I could hear the sound of someone clattering down the stairs. I followed, three steps at a time.

This was Reed’s personal stairway, with exits only on the fifth floor and at street-level, where it led to the spot where he kept his Lincoln Continental.

I was at the third-floor landing when another explosion rocked the building, and I almost lost my balance and fell down the next flight. I crashed into the wall instead, driving my weight against the left arm. That hurt it.

I bit my lip to make the fuzziness go away, and kept moving. Ahead of me, there was gunfire, a lot of it. I came to the last landing before street-level, and saw three men in police uniform firing out at somebody in the parking lot. There was a fourth guy there, too, behind the cops. He turned to look up at me as I reached the landing. Harcum.

I fired at him, but missed, and he shoved one of the cops ahead of him through the doorway. I saw the cop fall, and Harcum leap over him and out of sight. The other two cops ran out after him.

I went down the last flight like a mountain goat, twisted my ankle at the bottom, and brought up hard against the wall. I looked through the doorway and saw the Lincoln moving jerkily across the parking lot, four Casales running after it and shooting. I ran out, limping, and saw a Casale Brothers truck off to my left. I hobbled to it and climbed into the cab. As I’d hoped, the driver had been in too much of a hurry to take the keys with him. I started the engine, swung the truck around, and took off after the Lincoln. The windshield spattered in front of my face and I crouched down behind the wheel, just barely looking out over the hood.

The Lincoln reached the street, wobbling badly from two flat tires, and swung right. But the driver couldn’t control it any more, and it veered back to the left again. I pulled up on the right, swung the wheel hard, and drove the Lincoln up over the curb and into the stoop of one of the empty buildings.

I clambered down from the cab, my bad ankle not wanting to support my weight, and fell against the trunk of the Lincoln. They were piling out, and I fired through the back window, hitting one of the cops. The other one was apparently already dead. And Harcum was out and running, fat but agile, diving through a shattered basement window and out of sight.

To have followed him that way, I would have had to silhouette myself in the window, the streetlight behind me. Instead, I climbed up onto the Lincoln, the.45 tucked under my belt because I only had my right arm to work with, and crawled through a first-floor window into the living room. I got the.45 into my hand again and limped cautiously across the room, the floor scattered with brittle lengths of ancient wallpaper. I moved slowly, trying not to make any noise, and finally got out to the hall. I found the door leading to the basement and waited, leaning against the wall.

A couple of minutes went by. Outside, I could hear the muffled sounds of the battle still raging. In the distance, coming steadily closer, the wail of fire engines. Looking up, I saw through the doorless front entrance an angry red glow. The plant was burning.

My mind kept wanting to think about tomorrow, but it couldn’t. Harcum was in this building, and my arm was beginning to throb. There wasn’t any such thing as a tomorrow anyway.

Another explosion bellowed out from the plant, drowning out the roar of the fighting.

I waited, thinking, Get it over with, Harcum, come up here and get it over with. You and the others, you’ve ripped everything to pieces, and I’ve helped, and now let’s finish it.

The basement door slowly opened, and a darker shadow came out to the shadowy hallway, silhouetting itself against the red glow in the entrance. Round, plain Harcum, who had tried four times to kill me and not shown himself to me once.

He crept slowly down the hallway toward the front of the building, and I could make out the gun he was holding tensely in his right hand. I stood away from the wall, the.45 trained on his round figure, and I said, “Face me, Harcum. For once in your life, face me.”

But he wouldn’t. The second I started to talk, he ran. I cried, “Harcum!” but he kept running, through the doorless entrance and outside, above the crushed stoop and the wrecked Lincoln. He was framed there for a second, against a double-glow of yellow streetlight and angry red from the flaming plant, and then a ragged volley of shots tore and jerked him like a marionette, till the strings were suddenly clipped and he plummeted off the broken stoop and out of sight.

I hadn’t killed him. I had come to kill him, I had emptied two guns, I had caused all this waste, and it had taken someone else to kill Harcum. He wouldn’t face me.

I limped forward, and was almost to the door when the big explosion came, shaking the building like a gambler shaking a dice cup, and I staggered, putting my weight on the bad leg. I fell, losing the gun, and lay on my face, waiting for the trembling of the building to lessen and stop. It did, finally, and I struggled back to my feet.

Outside, the fire engines were arriving, their sirens screaming down through the octaves to a dying-away guttural groan. There were no more shots, only the shouting of the survivors and the incredibly loud crackling of flames.

I moved along the wall to the front entrance and peered out. The plant was wrapped in flames, fantastically tall and loud and bright, and in their glare I could see the firemen hurrying about their business, and the police cars arriving, bearing the neutral cops, the Hal Ganz kind of cop.

It was difficult to climb down the pile of lumber that had once been the front stoop. I had to crawl down backwards, and when I reached the bottom I heard Cathy calling my name, over and over again, from far, far away.

I turned around, and Cathy was way down the street, running toward me. But between us was a Casale, standing directly in front of me, cradling a shotgun.

He looked at me, icy cold. “You set this up, you son of a bitch,” he said. “You set this up.”

I whispered, “I had to.”

He raised the shotgun.

The sound I heard was Cathy screaming.