There was the sudden wiping of the gunsight against the burly neck. The gunsight had either been given a poor tumbling job at the factory, or had been sharpened by its sadistic owner to serve as a weapon on its own. Holland felt the chilling pain, the sudden automatic cold tightening of the scrotum at the thought of flesh being parted by edged steel, and then the dampness of blood, warm blood, his blood, running down his collar. His first thought was that his nice new white shirt, bought especially for the occasion of the evening, would be ruined; but then he knew it really didn’t matter. It didn’t look as if he were going to get to any dinner tonight, anyway.
“Hands,” the little man repeated for the third time in that oddly inconsistent rasping voice. His tone was not remonstrating, merely reminding. Mike Holland took a deep breath and brought his big hands forward slowly, fighting down the impulse to take the scrawny neck before him and wring it like a dishrag, but he had no doubt that the bearded bastard with the cigar behind him wouldn’t hesitate to use the gun. Mike brought his hands together and felt the cold steel snap around his thick wrists.
“Over,” the small man said in that same impersonal tone, and made a move to enter the car. Mike stared at the familiar dashboard as if seeing it for the first time, and then slowly edged his large body toward the other side of the car. He knew he should be making mental notes on the two hoods, burning details into his trained memory beyond the mere fact that one was skinny and had poor taste in hats, and the other was bearded, smoked cigars, and was nasty, but at the moment his anger blotted out the ability to act properly. Besides, his neck hurt, although not half as much as his pride. Taken like a child! The fact that he had climbed into his car quite naturally and suddenly found a gun put on him had nothing to do with the matter; somehow he should never have allowed himself to be suckered like that!
The skinny little man slid into the driver’s seat, pushed down on the adjusting button and slid the seat closer to the steering wheel to accommodate his reduced size, reached up a skeletal hand to adjust the rear-view mirror to his satisfaction, reached out to do the same for the side-view mirror, and then squirmed into a more comfortable position. The skin-tight gloves he wore made him appear to have brown hands attached to pale thin wrists. The bearded man took his cigar from his mouth and leaned over, bringing his lips close to Mike Holland’s ear.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said softly. “I can lay this gun barrel alongside your ear and put you to sleep, and then we’ll just be two pals taking a drunken friend home. And you’ll wake up with the large, economy-sized hangover. Or we can go along just the way we are without any big disturbance from you, and you may even live to see the grandchildren from that Medal of Honor son you don’t have.” The gun snaked forward, pressing cruelly against the cut, and then was partially withdrawn. Mike winced involuntarily. The quiet voice went on. “It’s that simple. Take your choice.”
Mike remained silent. The bearded man seemed to take it as acceptance.
“Good,” he said pleasantly, and tucked his cigar back in place. He looked toward the small driver. “Let’s get going. We’re behind schedule, listening to Sergeant Holland, here, tell us how he’s a policeman.”
“Yeah,” the little man said with a grin. “I thought he was a streetcar conductor without his uniform, myself.” He turned on the ignition, listening to the steady purring of the old motor in appreciation for the obvious attention it had received, and then put on the lights, put the car into gear, and backed from the driveway. “Not bad for an old clunker,” he said to no one in particular, and swung the wheel. He changed gears and started down the street, driving with obvious skill, but with equally obvious care.
The man in the back seat spoke, a small edge to his voice. “A little faster, Harry, if you don’t mind?”
“What’s the difference we’re a couple minutes late?” Harry asked, but nevertheless he pressed the accelerator a trifle. The car responded, moving a bit faster.
“We made a schedule, let’s stick to it,” the bearded man said, and lapsed into silence, sucking silently on his cigar.
In the front seat, Mike Holland tried to remember, in recent months — or even years, for that matter — whom he might have so enraged as to account for being picked up and treated in this manner. From his personal life? But he had never been a mixer, had never had trouble of any kind with his neighbors, and had spent nineteen out of twenty evenings watching television, with an occasional night out for the movies to break the monotony. And it certainly could be nothing connected with women. Before Katie’s death Mike had felt no need even to look at another woman, and since her death, he had felt no desire to.
From his professional life? Well, in Communications one scarcely played any role in an important case serious enough to warrant revenge; and his days in Homicide were so far back that Mike doubted these two were more than kids in those days. Besides, even when he was in Homicide, as Mike Holland himself would have been the first to admit, he had never done anything startling; it was one of the reasons he was still a sergeant when he had been retired that afternoon after over forty years of service. The sad fact was that nobody whom the other men called “Pop” — some damn near as old as he was — had ever done anything he could recall that could possibly result in such demonstrated enmity. So what in the name of sweet Mary and Jesus could be the reason for picking him up?
The bearded man rolled down the window on his side of the car, tossed out his cigar, and rolled the window back in place. He leaned his wrist against the glass, trying to read the time by the light of a passing lamppost. He finally managed to see the watch hands and looked up at the driver with a frown.
“Let’s get a little more speed out of this wagon, shall we, Harry?”
“Let’s not get picked up for speeding,” the little man said, and then added hastily, “That’s what you told me, remember?”
The bearded man accepted this recognition of his leadership.
“I know what I told you,” he said with a touch of impatience. “Now I’m suggesting we don’t get stopped for loitering, or for obstructing traffic. Move it!”
“Right.” The thin man speeded the car up again. He glanced over at their prisoner. “He’s bleeding all over the car,” he said conversationally.
“So let him bleed,” the bearded man said indifferently. “It’s his blood. And his car.” He leaned back, the revolver dangling indolently from one finger, his other hand stroking his full beard thoughtfully. His eyes were fixed on the blood welling from the cut on Mike Holland’s neck, but his thoughts were already on step two of his daring scheme.
Chapter 2
Friday — 9:20 P.M.
Lieutenant James Reardon, nursing a brand of cognac he normally would never have considered ordering, primarily for economic reasons, sat back in his chair at the head table and thought that if noise made an affair a success, then the party being thrown for the retirement of Sergeant Michael Patrick Holland had to be the achievement of the year. Some clown on the entertainment committee — as Reardon recalled, that had been the responsibility of Burglary — had managed to locate a jukebox, and the lieutenant only hoped they hadn’t swiped it. In fact, he wished they hadn’t found it at all; but they had, and they had dragged it into the sacrosanct precincts of the back room of Marty’s Oyster House, and some other clown had fed the monster a fistful of quarters, and if the thing had a volume control, nobody had located it. Or, more likely, nobody had even bothered to look for it. At the moment, fortunately, the machine was delivering itself of a Hawaiian love song, so the racket was less deafening, although the difference in decibels was easily made up for by the loud guffawing of a group from Traffic who were over at the temporary bar probably telling Polish traffic jokes, if there were such things.