He laughed. “Been down to the cellar yet, son?”
I didn’t answer.
“Well, we’re going down there now.”
I hated him so, I didn’t even remember to be scared much any more. You’re only scared when there’s a chance of not getting hurt, anyway. When there’s no chance of not getting hurt, what’s the use of being scared? “And I’m not coming up again any more, am I?” I said defiantly while he felt his way down the stairs with me.
“No, you’re not coming up again any more. Glad you know it.”
I said, “You can kill me like you did him, but I’m not afraid of you. My pop and every cop in the city’ll get even on you, you dirty murderer, you. You stink!”
We’d gotten down to the first floor by now. It was better than the basement, anyway. I twisted my head around and got my teeth into his arm, just below the elbow. I kept it up until they darn near came together, through his sleeve and skin and muscle. I couldn’t even feel him hitting me, but I know he was, because all of a sudden I landed flat up against the wall all the way across the room, and my ears hummed like when you go through a tunnel.
I heard him say, “You copper-whelp! If you want it that quick, here it is!” The white of his shirt showed for a minute, like he’d pushed back his coat to take out something. Then a long tube of fire jumped at me, and there was a sound like thunder in the room, and some plaster off the wall got into my ear.
I’d never heard a gun go off before. It makes you kind of excited. It did me, anyway. I knew the wall was pale in back of me and that was bad because I was outlined against it. I dropped down flat on the floor, and started to shunt off sideways over it, keeping my face turned toward him. I knew another of those tubes of light was coming any second, this time pointed right, pointed low.
He heard the slithering sound my body was making across the floor. He must have thought I was hit but still able to move. He said, “You’re hard to finish, ain’t you, kid? Why ain’t you whimpering? Don’t it hurt you?” I just kept swimming sideways on the floor. I heard him say:
“Two shots don’t make any more noise than one. I’ll make sure this time.” He took a step forward and one knee dipped a little. I saw his arm come out and point down at me.
I couldn’t help shutting my eyes tight for a minute there on the floor. Then I remembered I was a detective’s son and I opened them again right away. Not for any murderer was I going to close my eyes. I just stayed still. You can’t get out of the way of a shot, anyway.
The tube of light came again, and the thunder, and a lot of splinters jumped up right in front of my face. One of them even caught in my lip and hurt like a needle. I couldn’t keep quiet even if I wanted to; the way I hated him made me say, real quiet, like I was a grown-up talking to another grown-up, not a kid who knew he was going to die in another minute:
“Gee, you’re lousy, mister, for a murderer!”
That was all there was time for. All of a sudden there was a sound like someone ploughing through that mass of wreckage outside the door, and the door swung in and hit back against the wall; he hadn’t even locked it behind him in his hurry to get his hands on me. For a minute there was complete silence — me flat on the floor, him in the shadows, an outline holding its breath at the door, waiting for the first sound.
Then a low voice that I knew by heart whispered, “Don’t shoot, fellows, he may have my kid in there with him.”
You could make him out against the lighter sky outside, but he had to have light to see by, or I knew Petersen would get him sure. He was just holding his fire because he didn’t want to give away where he was. I had one match left in my pocket from the dead man. But a match goes out if you try to throw it through the air. I got it out of my pocket, and I put its tip to the floor and held it there, ready. Then I drew* my legs up under me, reared up on them, and ticked the match off as I straightened. I held it way out across the room toward Petersen, with my arm stretched as far as it could reach, as it flamed, and it showed him up in smoky orange from head to foot. “Straight ahead of you, Pop!” I yelled. “Straight ahead of you where I’m holding this out to!”
Petersen’s gun started around toward me fast and angry, to put me and my match both out at once, but there’s only one thing that can beat a bullet, and that’s another bullet. The doorway thundered, and my pop’s bullet hit him so hard in the side of the head that he kicked over sideways like a drunk trying to dance, and went nudging his shoulder all the way down the wall to the floor, still smoky orange from my match to the last.
I stood there holding it, like the Statue of Liberty, until they had a chance to get over to him and make sure he wouldn’t still shoot from where he was lying.
But one of them came straight to me, without bothering about him, and I knew which one it was all right, dark or no dark. He said, “Frankie, are you all right? Are you all right, son?”
I said, “Sure, I’m all right, Pop.”
And the funny part of it was, I still was while I was saying it; I was sure I could’ve gone on all night yet. But all of a sudden when I felt his hands reaching out for me, I felt like I was only twelve years old again and would have to wait a long time yet before I could be a regular detective, and I flopped up against him all loose and went to sleep standing up or something...
When I woke up I was in a car with him and a couple of the others, riding back downtown again. I started to talk the minute my eyes were open, to make sure he hadn’t missed any of it, because I wanted to get him re — you know that word.
I said, “Pop, he killed an old guy named Thomas Gregory, he’s down—”
“Yeah, we found him, Frankie.”
“And, Pop, there’s a letter under the front door, which is why he killed him.”
“We found that too, Frankie.” He took it out of his pocket and showed it to me. It wasn’t anything, just an old scrap of pale blue paper.
“It’s a certified check for twelve thousand dollars, in payment for a claim he had against a construction company as a result of an industrial accident.”
My father explained, almost like I was a grown-up instead of a kid, “He was hit in the eye by a steel particle, while he was walking past one of their buildings under construction. He had to have that eye taken out. That was five years ago. The suit dragged on ever since, while he turned sour and led a hand-to-mouth existence in that shack out there. They fought him to the last ditch, but the higher court made them pay damages in the end.
“The day the decision was handed down, some of the papers ran little squibs about it, space-fillers down at the bottom of the page like they do. One of these evidently caught Petersen’s eye, and he mistakenly thought that meant the check had already come in and the old man had cashed it. He went out there, got himself admitted or forced his way in, probably tortured Gregory first, and when he couldn’t get anything out of him, ended up by killing him.
“He was too quick about it. The check didn’t come in until tonight, as you saw. He had to keep coming back, watching for it. Once the old man was gone and the check still uncashed, the only thing he could do was take a desperate chance on forging his name to it, and present it for payment, backed up by some credentials taken from Gregory. Probably with a black patch over one eye for good measure.
“He wasn’t very bright or he would have known that he didn’t have a chance in a thousand of getting away with anything like that. Banks don’t honor checks for that amount, when the payee isn’t known to them, without doing a little quiet investigating first. But he wanted something out of his murder. He’d killed the old man for nothing... But how in the blazes did you—”