Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 40, No. 4, April 1977

Sixty Seconds Delay by Mike Mahoney

When Eddie tightens his finger on the trigger, he had no idea he was exactly one minute out of synch.

O’Hagan snapped the small automatic pistol from his belt and laid it on the counter beside a jar of mustard. He rolled the flip top off of a can of beer with a sharp click, took a long swallow, then proceeded to pile slices of ham on a thick slab of rye bread. He carried the plate of beans, sandwich, pickles and potato chips over to the kitchen table. It was a hot night. He went back for his beer, switched on the radio and sat down to eat. His wife, Joyce, had gone to Boston for her niece’s wedding. O’Hagan enjoyed the solitude.

“...continued warm and humid tonight and tomorrow. Daytime highs around ninety; lows in the high seventies. And we’ve got a ten-percent chance of precipitation through Thursday,” the radio was saying. “Repeating the top stories of the hour...”

O’Hagan went back to the refrigerator to get some of the corn relish he liked.

“...and the Dow-Jones industrials took another plunge today, closing at...”

Joyce kept the kitchen spotless. O’Hagan liked it that way. He looked at his reflection in the black picture window.

“...stay tuned now for Listeners’ Line, the program that allows you, the listener, to talk back to your radio. But first a word...”

O’Hagan was a big-boned man, solid and muscular. His thin sandy hair was laid straight back across his scalp. He had wide red cheeks, a small but riot weak jaw, and deep set, unexpressive eyes.

“...remember that Federal Home Finance could be the answer. We hate to say no.” A catchy organ melody came on and O’Hagan turned up the volume. He liked Listeners’ Line. Sometimes they got real crackpots on.

“...to Listeners’ Line. I’m your host, Lou Snead. And I have with me in the studio our guest for this evening, Mr. Ray Walther. Mr. Walther is a probation officer and the author of the controversial book, ‘A Third Chance’, and is one of our leading experts on prisons and penal reform. I’d like to welcome Mr. Walther here tonight. I’m sure we’ll have a lively and informative session. Mr. Walther, welcome aboard.”

“Thank you, Lou. I’m glad to...”

O’Hagan got up and took another beer from the refrigerator.

“...later part of the program. Before we start taking calls, though, I’d like to remind everyone that we are oh a sixty seconds taped delay. So where you call up and get on the air you must turn your radio down. Otherwise, you’ll be listening for yourself to come on and you’re likely to get very confused. So keep that in mind. It’s something we have to remind folks of every night. Also try to make your remarks as concise as possible, so we can get as many listeners on the air as possible. Now that number to call again is...”

O’Hagan finished his sandwich, took his plate to the sink and rinsed it. He sat down again in front of his beer leaned back and lit a cigarette.

“...to take, our first caller. Hello, you’re on Listeners’ Line.”

“Hello? Lou?”

“That’s right. You’re on the air.”

“Yeah, well, I just wanted to ask Mr. Walther there if he doesn’t think we’ve been doing a little too much to take care of the criminal and not enough for, you know, the average guy that’s getting mugged and all that you hear about all the time?”

“Mr. Walther, would you like to comment on that?”

“Yes, Lou. The caller has certainly raised one of the fundamental questions at issue these days. But as I say in my book, most of the decisions of the courts having to do with privacy and a fair trial have been designed to protect the ordinary citizen who might be falsely accused. They do not prevent an actual criminal from being brought to justice. They have been necessary to protect the individual from the powers of government. Now under the system I have proposed...”

O’Hagan swore softly to himself. Writing a book is easy enough, he thought. That guy ought to be out in the streets and seeing what was really going on. He began to leaf through a magazine, ignoring the radio.

“...what the caller must keep in mind,” Walther was saying some minutes later, “is that the convict is a very complicated individual. He exists outside the regular framework of society and is therefore...”

O’Hagan lit another cigaret and began to look up the television listings in the paper. He was about to switch the radio off when a coarse voice, louder than the others, came on.

“Ray? That you? You told me you were going to be on this talk show, remember? This is Eddie. I’m in real...” The voice was replaced by the organ music that was substituted when someone swore or mentioned a product by name on the air. O’Hagan decided to wait and see what was up. Two minutes later the voice came back on.

“...telling you I want everybody to hear this. I’m on the top floor of the Grant building, and they’re going to kill me. I want this on the air now. Come on. Sammy’s in the next room, dead. He killed a guard. It wasn’t me. But I’ve got a woman here and I’ll blast her if you don’t put me back on.”

“Okay, Eddie,” Lou said. “You’re on now. Just wait for the delay to come around. You’ve got a radio there?”

“Yeah... yeah, okay, I hear it. Now listen, Ray, I don’t want to hurt anyone. You know that. But they want to kill me.”

“Who’s trying to kill you, Eddie?”

“The cops, man. They’re all around here. So don’t cut me off again or this lady here has had it. I want the whole world to hear this. I don’t care about... I mean Sammy took one in the gut. He’s right out there...”

O’Hagan turned up his radio and listened with interest, stroking his chin and smoking. After a few minutes it became apparent what was going on. One of the cons that Walther handled as a probation officer had gotten pinned down in a stickup and was holding a woman hostage. He probably figured he could use a grandstand play like this to get some kind of sympathy, O’Hagan thought, have everybody in the city listening to him.

O’Hagan’s phone rang.

“Yeah... Yeah, I got it on now... Sure, I’ll go straight from here... Boy, I guess so... You ain’t kidding.”

O’Hagan took the automatic from the counter and snapped it onto his belt. From a closet, he took a vinyl case the length of a rifle, a pair of binoculars, also cased, and a brown canvas bag full of sand. He clipped his badge over the pocket of his shortsleeve shirt and started out. He came back to pick up the transistor radio Joyce listened to when she was sunbathing. Then he got into his car.

Half an hour later, O’Hagan was squatting behind a low wall on the roof of a factory building. The sandbag lay on top of the wall, a smooth hollow in its center. Across the hollow rested a sleek semi-automatic rifle, mounted with a large scope. O’Hagan cradled the stock casually in his right arm and held binoculars to his eyes with his left. The transistor radio, a walkie-talkie and a box of cartridges rested on the still warm tar beside him.

Through the binoculars, O’Hagan could peer across a small parking lot into the Grant building. The office he was watching was lit by flourescent lights, the parking lot by police floodlights. Inside the office, a swarthy, dark haired man stood with his back to a filing cabinet, facing the window.

He held a telephone receiver in one hand, a large black revolver in the other. A fat woman in a green dress stood directly in front of him, moving her eyes back and forth and licking her lips repeatedly. On either side of the window, police officers wearing flak jackets and carrying shotguns crouched.

O’Hagan normally worked the Burglary and Loft Section of the detective bureau. But since he’d been the top marksman of his unit in Korea and had kept in practice as a regular deer hunter, he was also assigned to a special hostage task force.

This squad was assembled whenever a situation arose, whether a family quarrel, political hijacking or botched robbery such as this one, where a hostage was involved. Some of the officers specialized in psychology, trying to negotiate with the criminal, calm him down, talk him into giving up.

O’Hagan’s skills were called for only as a last resort. He was glad of that. No matter how good a shot you are, no matter how sophisticated your weapon, there was always a chance of hitting the hostage or letting the criminal get off a few rounds before finally killing him. Whenever there was shooting, there was a big risk.

Down in the street, to his right, O’Hagan could see a large crowd pushing against police barricades, swept alternately by red and white lights that revolved on the tops of the mass of patrol cars. They had heard on the radio about the payroll robbery that had been thwarted by two guards, the shootout that had left a guard and one of the robbers dead. They had listened to the pleading, the ranting, the shouting, the swearing that had gone on for nearly an hour. They had heard the terrified secretary whimper into the phone, the cornered convict demand that his parole officer fix up a deal, claiming he was afraid of dying, afraid of prison. They had heard and they had come downtown to see the action. All very dramatic, O’Hagan thought, and very deadly.

So far, the situation remained stable. O’Hagan was relaxed and alert, slowly chewing gum, breathing deeply, stalking. He had to use his judgment. The picture could change instantly. He watched the man talking, wild eyed, into the phone. A familiar voice came on the radio.

“Eddie, this is Lieutenant Thornton. I just want to tell you a little bit about...”

“No!” the voice cackled. “No cops. I don’t want to talk to no cops. Ray, do you hear me? I’ll kill this woman, and I’ll kill myself. You better play straight with me...”

“Okay, Eddie,” Walther came back on. “Calm down. Lieutenant Thornton wants to help you get out of that mess you’re in. You know you’ll have to talk to...”

“No cops, I said. I’m warning...”

O’Hagan had put the binoculars down and was now sitting, one knee supporting his elbow, gazing through the scope, through the window, placing the crossed hair lines on the man’s temple, resting his finger delicately on the trigger.

In the office, the dark-haired man now wrapped his left arm around the woman’s neck, held the receiver with his left hand and pointed the gun toward her head with his right. He was shouting. A wave of static swept over O’Hagan’s radio. Without taking his eye from the scope he reached over to adjust the tuning. The voice came back clearly.

“...trusted you, Ray. And you let me down. You people hear that? You trust somebody, and they let you down.”

“No, Eddie, I haven’t let you down. I won’t now. You have to give us a chance to help you out of this...”

“Shut up! I don’t want any more of your lies. Do you hear me? Do all of you hear me? Are you all listening? I’ve had enough lies, enough tricks. Now you’re all going to pay because I’m goings to kill this woman and you’re all responsible. You’re all making me pull the trigger. I’m going to kill her!”

Through the scope, O’Hagan watched the man, still with the phone to his head, push the fat woman away and lower his revolver toward her in an arc. Two shots, less than a second apart, made two small holes in the glass.

One bullet pierced Eddie’s forehead, the other pounded him in the chest as he fell back out of sight. The scene burst into a riot of activity. The fat woman screamed hysterically, and policemen swarmed into the office. O’Hagan reached into his pocket for a cigaret.

Then he froze, listening. “Don’t be a sucker, Eddie,” Walther’s voice continued on the radio. “There’s no point. You’ve got a sister. How would you like it if somebody was holding your sister with a gun to her head? What the hell kind of trick is that? You’re not going to kill anyone, Eddie. You’re not that stupid. You’ll get a fair shake, I promise you. Trust me, Eddie.”

“I... I don’t know,” said the voice of the dead man. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, Ray. It’s just that I’m scared as hell. And...”

“First, let that woman go, Eddie. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Put down the gun and let her go. You won’t get hurt.”

“Okay. What the hell. Yeah, you go on. Get out of here. Okay, Ray, I’m going to put the rod down. I’ve—”

The radio went dead with a crack. Then the organ music came on, and O’Hagan remembered the taped delay. He lit his cigaret and took a long drag.