Fifteen minutes later, while he was making coffee, the crazy man's call jumped into his head again. There were two cops outside his door, and he hadn't told them a thing. What in hell was wrong with him?
Well, he thought, my ex-wife died, and when I saw her at the morgue it looked like she'd grown an extra mouth two inches below her chin. That might have something to do with it.
Ask Thad Beaumont who I am. He knows all about it.
He had meant to call Thad, of course. But his mind was still in free fall — things had assumed new proportions which he did not, at least as yet, seem capable of grasping. Well, he would call Thad. He would do it just as soon as he told the police about the call.
He did tell them, and they were extremely interested. One of them got on his walkie-talkie to police headquarters with the information. When he finished, he told Rick that the chief of detectives wanted him to come down to One Police Plaza and talk to them about the call he had received. While he did that, a fellow would pop into his apartment and fit his telephone with a tape-recorder and traceback equipment. In case there were any more calls.
'There probably will be,' the second cop told Rick. 'These psychos are really in love with the sound of their own voices.'
'I ought to call Thad first,' Rick said. 'He may be in trouble, too. That's the way it sounded.'
'Mr Beaumont has already been placed under police protection up in Maine, Mr Cowley. Let's go, shall we?'
'Well, I really think — '
'Perhaps you can call him from the Big One. Now — do you have a coat?'
So Rick, confused and not at all sure any of this was real, allowed himself to be led away.
8
When they got back two hours later, one of Rick's escorts frowned at his apartment door and said, 'There's no one here.'
'So what?' Rick asked wanly. He felt wan, like a pane of milky glass you could almost see through. He had been asked a great many questions, and had answered them as well as he could — a difficult task, since so few of them seemed to make any sense.
'If the guys from Communications finished before we got back, they were supposed to wait.'
'They're probably inside,' Rick said.
'One of them, maybe, but the other one should be out here. It's standard procedure.'
Rick took out his keys, shuffled through them, found the right one, and slipped it into the lock. Any problems these fellows might be having with the operating procedure of their colleagues was no concern of his. Thank God; he had all the concerns he could manage this morning. 'I ought to call Thad first thing,' he said. He sighed and smiled a little. 'It isn't even noon and I already feel like the day is never going to e — '
'Don't do that!' one of the cops shouted suddenly, and sprang forward.
'Do wha — ' Rick began, turning his key, and the door exploded in a flash of light and smoke and sound. The cop whose instincts had triggered just an instant too late was recognizable to his relatives; Rick Cowley was nearly vaporized. The other cop, who had been standing a little farther back and who had instinctively shielded his face when his partner cried out, was treated for burns, concussion, and internal injuries. Mercifully — almost magically — the shrapnel from the door and the wall flew around him in a cloud but never touched him. He would never work for the N.Y.P.D. again, however; the blast struck him stone deaf in an instant.
Inside Rick's apartment, the two technicians from Communications who had come to cook the phones lay dead on the living-room rug. Tacked to the forehead of one with a push-pin was this note:
THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN.
Tacked to the forehead of the other was a second message:
MORE FOOL'S STUFFING. TELL THAD.
PART 2
STARK TAKES CHARGE
'Any fool with fast hands can take a tiger by the balls,' Machine told Jack Halstead. 'Did you know that?'
Jack began to laugh. The look Machine turned on him made him think better of it.
'Wipe that asshole grin off your face and pay attention to me,' Machine said. 'I am giving you instruction here. Are you paying attention?'
'Yes, Mr Machine.'
'Then hear this, and never forget it. Any fool with fast hands can take a tiger by the balls, but it takes a hero to keep on squeezing. I'll tell you something else, while I'm at it: only heroes and quitters walk away, Jack. No one else. And I am no quitter.'
— Machine's Way by George Stark
Fifteen
Stark Disbelief
1
Thad and Liz sat encased in shock so deep and blue it felt like ice, listening as Alan Pangborn told them how the early morning hours had gone in New York City. Mike Donaldson, slashed and beaten to death in the hallway of his apartment building; Phyllis Myers and two policemen gunned down at her West Side condo. The night doorman at Myers's building had been hit with something heavy, and had suffered a fractured skull. The doctors held out odds slightly better than even that he would wake up on the mortal side of heaven. The doorman at Donaldson's building was dead. The wet-work had been carried out gangland-style in all cases, with the hitter simply walking up to his victims and starting in.
As Alan talked, he referred to the killer repeatedly as Stark.
He's calling him by his right name without even thinking about it, Thad mused. Then he shook his head, a little impatient with himself. You had to call him something, he supposed, and Stark was maybe a little better than 'the perp' or 'Mr X.' It would be a mistake at this point to think Pangborn was using the name in any way other than as a convenient handle.
'What about Rick)' he asked when Alan had finished and he was finally able to unlock his tongue.
'Mr Cowley is alive and well and under police protection.' It was quarter of ten in the morning; the explosion which would kill Rick and one of his guardians was still almost two hours away.
'Phyllis Myers was under police protection, too,' Liz said. In the big playpen, Wendy was fast asleep and William was nodding out. His head would go down on his chest, his eyes would close . . . then he would jerk his head up again. To Alan he looked comically like a sentry trying not to fall asleep on duty. But each head—jerk was a little weaker. Watching the twins, his notebook now closed and in his lap, Alan noticed an interesting thing: every time William jerked his head up in an effort to stay awake, Wendy twitched in her sleep.
Have the parents noticed that? he wondered, and then thought, Of course they have.
'That's true, Liz. He surprised them. Police are as prone to surprise as anyone else, you know; they're just supposed to react to it better. On the floor where Phyllis Myers lived, several people along the hall opened their doors and looked out after the shots were fired, and we've got a pretty good idea of what went down from their statements and what the police found at the crime scene. Stark pretended to be a blind man. He hadn't changed his clothes following the murders of Miriam Cowley and Michael Donaldson, which were . . . forgive me, both of you, but they were messy. He comes out of the elevator, wearing dark glasses he probably bought in Times Square or from a pushcart vendor and waving a white cane covered with blood. God knows where he got the cane, but N.Y.P.D. thinks he also used it to bash the doormen.'