"Suppose I lock myself in the bathroom instead?"
"No, you won't do that, Bobby. You're going to put the knife on the floor hellip;"
"Like a good little boy, huh?"
"Bobby hellip; I'm not your mother, I'm not Elga, I'm not going to hurt you. Just drop the knife on the floor hellip;"
"Listen to the shrink," he said. "You're a fuckinghooker is what you are, who the fuck do you think you're kidding?"
"Bobby, please drop the knife."
"Say pretty please," he said, and the blade snicked open.
The gun was in her hand, she had him cold.
"Don't move," she said.
The policeman's crouch more defined now, more deliberate.
He took a step toward her.
"I'm warning you, don't move!"
"Do you know the one about the guy who goes into a bank to hold it up? He sticks the gun in the teller's face and says, 'Don't muss a moovle, this is a fuck-up!' "
Another step toward her.
"This isn't fun anymore," he said, and sliced the knife across the air between them.
"Whoosh," he said.
And came at her.
Her first bullet took him in the chest, knocking him backward toward the bed. She fired again almost at once, hitting him in the shoulder this time, spinning him around, and then she fired a third time, shooting him in the back, knocking him over onto the bed, and then mdash;she would never understand why mdash;she kept shooting into his lifeless body, watching the eruptions of blood along his spine, saying over and over again, "I gave you a chance, I gave you a chance," until the gun was empty.
Then she threw the gun across the room and began screaming.
Some people never change.
Genero didn't even seem to know she couldn't hear him.
He was there at the hospital to tell Carella what a hero he'd been, shooting four teenagers who'd firebombed a building.
He sat in the hallway talking to Teddy, who was praying her husband wouldn't die, praying her husband wasn't already dead.
" hellip; and all at once they came running out," he said, "Steve would've been proud of me. They threw the firebomb at me, but that didn't scare me, I hellip;"
A doctor in a green surgical gown was coming down the hallway.
There was blood on the gown.
She caught her breath.
"Mrs. Carella?" he said.
She read his lips.
At first she thought he said, "We shot him."
A puzzled look crossed her face.
He repeated it.
"We got it," he said.
She let out her breath.
"He'll be okay," the doctor said.
"He'll be okay," Genero repeated.
She nodded.
And then she cupped her hands to her face and began weeping.
Genero just sat there.
Annie talked to him in the hallway of the Seven-Two.
"The landlady called 911 because somebody was screaming upstairs," she said. "She caters to hookers, she wouldn't have called unless she thought it was very serious."
Kling nodded.
"She quieted down just a little while ago. She's down the hall in Interrogation. I'm not sure you ought to talk to her."
"Why not?" Kling said.
"I'm just not sure," Annie said.
He went down the hall.
He opened the door.
She was sitting at the long table in the Interrogation Room, the two-way mirror behind her. Just sitting there. Looking at her hands.
"I'm sorry if I screwed it up," he said.
"You didn't."
He sat opposite her.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"No," she said.
He looked at her.
"I'm quitting," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"The force."
"No, you're not."
"I'm quitting, Bert. I don't like what it did to me, what it keeps doing to me."
"Eileen, you hellip;"
"I'm quitting this city, too."