Erwin left by the front way, and walked back up toward Broadway. That had unnerved him. It was bound to happen, of course. But this was the first time anyone had come close to discovering him laying one. The old woman was just a street peddler, and probably stupid to boot, but just the same …
When he stopped at the light, he looked behind him.
She was there.
Following him.
With the basket, with the drawn face, with the gray hair pulled back severely in a bun, like a disapproving school teacher.
The old woman.
Oh, my God!
Erwin hurried around the corner, feeling in his pockets for all the change he carried. He had slightly more than a dollar and a half … not nearly enough to get him uptown to his place, quickly.
He took a quick look behind him; she was rounding the corner. A checker cab was coming down the block, beside the stanchions of the overhead highway that led over Grand Central, and onto Park Avenue.
He flagged the cab, and it pulled into the curb.
“Q-quick, uptown,” Erwin stammered, shoving into the cab, thrusting the bomb in its brown paper bag against the cab’s upholstery.
The cabbie shoved down the flag, and then turned around. “ Where uptown, Mister?” Erwin was very conscious of the driver’s big red face, the soft clicking of the meter, and the hurrying gray shape of the old woman with her basket.
“J-just any, anywhere uptown, but go on, sir, go on, please! ” He urged the man with his hand, and the cabbie shrugged, turned around, rolled away.
As the cab passed the woman, she stopped and carefully watched it. She would get his number, Erwin was sure. Oh, goodness … this was the worst thing that could ever happen. He saw every line of her drawn, old, gray face as they whipped past. He saw her, and knew she saw him.
She was still standing there as the cab turned right, down 42nd. Erwin wasn’t certain, but as the cab turned left again, out of the traffic onto Lexington uptown, he thought he saw another taxi following.
With the flower lady in it.
But he wasn’t sure.
Erwin was frightened; he had seen her eight times since that terrible day at the Chanin Building. She obviously knew who he was and where he lived … had followed him that day. On eight separate mornings, when he had left the building to walk Jefferson, and pick up a morning paper, she had been somewhere nearby in plain sight, as if trying to torment and frighten him.
The first morning, the day after the Chanin affair, he saw her in the doorway of the building across the street, her wicker basket held close to her body, her dull green, grubby coat wrapped tightly around her round little form, and he very nearly tripped over Jefferson’s leash. He hurried away, dragging the chow till it had whimpered alarmingly; he bought his paper in a panic; and he crept back to the building by the next street.
Next day she had been there again.
And a third day.
So it had gone for eight days, till now Erwin was so frightened, and so bewildered that he only peered out through the mildewed drapes covering the lobby doors, till he caught sight of her. Then he would go back to the still, solid room where he lived alone with Jefferson in the too-silent, too-solid loneliness of his old age, and wish she had never seen him.
By the eighth day he had reconciled his problem.
She had not called the police … therefore, she was out to blackmail him. Erwin looked at the empty social security check envelope, recalled what the sum had been when it had come in, and knew instantly that blackmail was not only out of the question — it was ridiculous.
He decided to kill the old flower lady.
It was easy enough, really. All be had to do was prepare a tinier model of the others, all the many others. A smaller pipe, a lot less black powder, a percussion cap, and it was all ready. Just throw it, hit something solid like a face, or a wicker flower basket, or even the sidewalk at her feet, and she would trouble him no more.
He knew she would be out there when he left, so he waited till the late evening. At precisely eight o’clock Erwin emerged from the front of the old brownstone apartment building, and walked briskly up toward Broadway, humming “Silver Threads Among The Gold,” which his mother had sung to him when he had been ever so small back home in Minnesota.
She came out of the shadows and followed him at a respectful distance. Erwin made sure she saw him, and he went down into the subway. She came down after him, trying to keep behind the stanchions, but he saw her.
When the local came, he boarded it and rode downtown to 4th Street in the Village, and got off, making certain she was in sight before he went up the stairs onto the street.
Then past the little park with the old people — not like him, they were really old, and not making something of themselves as he was — and down the dark street, past the shops where the Villagers made inexpensive earrings and belts.
As he passed the winding darkness that was Gay Street, he hurried his steps, and came abreast of the alley he knew was there beyond Gay. He sidestepped into it quickly, knowing she would see him, hoping she would think be was going to plant the brown paper bag there.
He flattened against the wall, like one of the spies in a movie at the Orpheum; and hoping his slight belly bulge would not give him away, he waited quietly, trembling.
It did not. She came to the mouth of the alley, and hardly without a glance, stepped in. He grabbed for her, and shoved her deeper into the alley. His voice came not at all the way he had planned it; Erwin had planned it to be rough and hard, the way the man in the movie’s bad been …
But it was a bit squeaky, instead.
“So! You thought you’d blackmail me, eh? You must think I’m mad like they say, eh? Thought I’d be a sucker, eh?” (He wasn’t at all certain this was the way they talked in situations like this, but it was a bit of a thrill.)
She tried to say something, dropped her wicker basket, and rumbled with the pockets of her dull, grubby, green coat. Her mouth made a squishy sound, and Erwin dragged the bomb from its bag.
“This is the first one I’ve ever made that would kill just one person, but anything to get rid of a nasty snoop like you …”
But the policeman stepped into the alley before he could continue. And the raw light of the flash beam stopped his words dustily in his mouth. The policeman saw the bomb in Erwin’s hand.
“Hey! You! Old man, whaddaya think ya got there! Hey! That’s a pipe bomb … you must be …”
He didn’t finish, nor did he wait to utter those two words of inaccurate description Erwin so despised. He was dragging his big pistol from its holster, and Erwin saw the muzzle rising.
Then from the corner of his eye he saw the old flower lady’s hand come free of her pocket, and there was a snicking sound, and something bright and slim and shining went slashing with a hiss down the alley, passing Erwin, and entered the policeman’s throat.
The blue-coated figure sank to the cement, and Erwin almost gagged at the bubbling sound the officer made as he died. Then the old woman was beside him, saying, “Quickly, drag him back here behind these empty crates!” And then Erwin was straining mightily with the old woman, and in a few moments the policeman was concealed behind the crates.