I couldn't fake an answer. My knees started to go.
Again, "Johnny, damn it!"
Lou cursed and a tongue of flame lashed out of a doorway.
There was no faking about the way I hit the floor. Lou had heard too many men fall like that before. It was real, but only because my legs wouldn't hold me any longer. I still had the .45 in my mitt and I let the feet come my way just so far before I squeezed the trigger.
The blasting roar of the gun echoed and shattered on the walls. I rolled until I hit something and stopped, my free hand clawing my one good eye to keep it open. The remnants of a scream were still in the air and the pin points of light were two guns punching holes in the woodwork searching for me. I got my hand around the leg of an end table and let it go. The thing bounced on the floor and split under the impact of the bullets. They were shouting at each other now, calling each other fools for wasting shots. So they stopped wasting shots. They thought I was hit and waited me out.
Somebody was breathing awfully funny. It made a peculiar racket when you took time to listen to it. I could hear them changing position, getting set. I went as quietly as I could and changed position myself.
It had to come soon. A few more minutes and the light would come through the curtains and they could see better than I could. It went on like a kid's game, that incessant crawling, the fear that you'd be caught, the deliberate motions of stealth that were so hard to make.
The funny breathing was real close. I could reach out and touch it. It was there on the other side of the chair. It heard me too, but it didn't change its tone. From across the room came the slightest sound and a whisper from only five feet away. "He's over there."
Orange flame streaked across the room and the sound jolted my ears even before the scream and the hoarse curse. The answer was two shots that pounded into the floor and a heavy thud as a body toppled over.
Lou's voice said, "I got the son of a bitch." He still lisped.
He moved out past the chair and I saw him framed in the window.
I said, "You got your own man, Lou."
Lou did too many things at once. He tried to drop, shoot and curse me at the same time. He got two of them done. He dropped because I shot him. His gun went off because a dead hand pulled the trigger. He didn't curse because my bullet went up through his mouth into his brain taking the big answer with it.
There was nothing left there for me at all.
Outside the gray haze had brightened into morning, very early morning. It took me a long time to get back to the car, and much, much longer to get to the highway.
Fate allowed me a little bit of luck. It gave me a hitchhiker stranded between towns. I picked him up and told him I'd been in a fight and that he could drive.
The hiker was glad to. He felt sorry for me.
I felt sorry for myself too.
Chapter Nine
We were on a side street just off Ninth Avenue and the guy beside me was pulling my arm to wake me up. He tugged and twisted until I thought the damn thing would come off. I got the one eye open and looked at him.
"You sure were dead to the world, brother. Took me a half-hour to get you out of it."
"What time is it?"
"Eight-thirty. Feel pretty rotten?"
"Lousy."
"Want me to call somebody?"
"No."
"Well, look, I have to catch a bus. You think you're going to be all right? If you're not I'll stick around awhile."
"Thanks. I'll make out."
"Okay, it's up to you. Sure appreciate the ride. Wish I could do something for you."
"You can. Go get me a pack of butts. Luckies."
He waved away the quarter I handed him and walked down to the corner to the newsstand. He came back with the pack opened, stuck one in my mouth and lit it. "You take care now. Better go home and sleep it off."
I said I would and sat there smoking the butt until a cop came along slapping tickets on car windows. I edged over behind the wheel, kicked the starter in and got out of there.
Traffic wasn't a problem like it usually was. I was glad to get behind a slow-paced truck and stay there. Every bone and muscle in my body ached and I couldn't have given the wheel a hard wrench if I wanted to. I got around the corner somehow and the truck crossed over to get in the lane going through the Holland Tunnel. I dropped out of position, squeezed through the intersection as the light changed and got on the street that led up to police headquarters.
Both sides of the street were lined with people going to work. They all seemed so happy. They walked alone or in couples, thousands of feet and legs making a blur of motion. I envied them the sleep they had had. I envied their normal unswollen faces. I envied a lot of things until I took time to think about it. At least I was alive. That was something.
The street in front of the red brick building was a parade ground of uniformed patrolmen. Some were walking off to their beats and others were climbing in squad cars. The plain-clothes men went off in pairs, separating at the corner with loud so-longs. Right in front of the main entrance three black sedans with official markings were drawn up at the curb with their drivers reading tabloids behind the wheel. Directly across from them a pair of squad cars pulled out and the tan coupe in front of me nosed into the space they left. I followed in behind him, did a better job of parking than he did and was up against the bumper of the car behind me so the guy would have room to maneuver.
I guess the jerk got his license wholesale. He tried to saw his way in without looking behind him and I had to lean on the horn to warn him off. Maybe I should have planted a red flag or something. He ignored the horn completely and slammed into me so hard I wrapped my chest around the wheel.
That did it. That was as much as I could take. I opened the door with my elbow and got out to give him hell. You'd think with all the cops around one of them would have jumped him, but that's how it goes. The guy was getting out of his heap with a startled apology written all over him. He took a look at my face and forgot what he was going to say. His mouth hung open and he just looked.
I said, "You deaf or something? What the devil do you think a horn's for?"
His mouth started to say something, but he was too confused to get it out. I took another good look at him and I could see why. He was the guy who stood next to me in the bar the afternoon before with the busted headset. He was making motions at his ears and tapping the microphone or whatever it was. I was too disgusted to pay any attention to him and waved him off. He still smacked the bumper twice again before he got himself parked.
This was starting off to be a beautiful day too.
When I got in the building I started to attract a little attention. A cop I know pretty well passed right by me with no more than a cursory glance. One asked me if I was there to register a complaint and looked surprised when I shook my head no. The place was a jumble of activity with men going in and out of the line-up room, getting their orders at the desk or scrambling to get off on a case.
Too much was popping in the morning to hope Pat would be in his office, so I waited my turn at the information desk and told the cop at the switchboard that I wanted to see Captain Chambers.
He said, "Name?"
And I said, "Hammer, Michael Hammer."
Then his hand paused with the plug in it and he said, "Well, I'll be damned."
He tried about ten extensions before he got Pat, said Yes, sir a few times and yanked the plug out. "He'll be right down. Wait here for him."
By the clock I waited exactly one minute and ten seconds. Pat came out of the elevator at a half-run and when he saw me his face did tricks until it settled down in a frown.
"What happened to you?"
"I got took, pal. Took good, too."
He didn't ask me any more questions. He looked down at his shoes a second then put it to me hard and fast. "You're under arrest, Mike."
"What?"
"Come on upstairs."