Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 6, June, 1953

I knew they wouldn’t park in front of the house they’d cased, and maybe not even on the same street, but they wouldn’t work too far from the car, and I at least knew where the Chrysler was. I could get them there if it came to that, but I wanted to catch them cold, right on the job. Right here was where I found out if I’d figured how they worked correctly; I didn’t know for sure, but it was more than a hunch. I put on the red-lensed glasses and drove slowly ahead looking at the houses on both sides of the street. Nothing. After four blocks I went right a block then and headed back. There on Dockweiler Street, less than two blocks from where their car was parked, I passed a big two-story Georgian-type mansion dark except for a faint light showing at one upstairs window. When I took the goggles off, the house was completely dark; not a glimmer of illumination came from any part of the house. But with the glasses on again, the light was there. I’d found them.

I parked around the corner and cut the headlights and motor. Even now that I’d found them, it still seemed like magic to me. I’d worked with infra-red light before; I knew that New York Harbor boats were equipped with infra-red spotlights and binoculars, and that Army snipers picked off the enemy outlined in infra-red from scopes mounted on their rifles — but it still seemed like a trick of Merlin.

I knew my gun was ready, but I took it out of the holster and checked it again anyway, then slipped it back. My heartbeat speeded up involuntarily; my throat dried; I could feel a slight, cold shiver brush over my skin. I picked up the heavy light, shoved the goggles up on my forehead and got out of the car. Fog was damp against my face.

Near the house I slipped the glasses down over my eyes again and saw the light still visible above. I was damned careful getting to the house and walking to its front, my body pressed against the wall, but I made it without trouble to the front door. I switched the light on and in its glow I could see the door was slightly cracked. Tinkle, the ex-locksmith, wouldn’t lock it again till they left; there was always a chance the boys might want to leave in a hurry. The boys were pretty positive about this job. They didn’t bother to leave a lookout. I loved them for it.

Before I went through the door I slid out the .38 and held it in my right hand, the burning flash in my left. I went inside, swung the flash around till I spotted a stairway leading above, then started walking up it. I couldn’t see as well as I’d have liked, but I wouldn’t bump into any chairs or walls — and Cannon, Artie, and Tinkle, working in infra-red above me, wouldn’t be able to see any better. For a moment I thought of the attorney these bastards had killed, wondered if he’d walked into a darkened room, unable to see a thing, while the three men above me now could watch his every movement, see to beat him, to kill him.

I followed a hall at the head of the stairs till I could see a glow from the room in which I knew they were, then I turned off my light. If I could see their light, they could also see mine. The door was ajar. I heard their soft movements, but I couldn’t yet see them. I kept moving forward, slowly, my hand sweaty and slippery on the butt of my .38.

A yard from the door I pulled the Colt’s hammer back on full cock and took the last step, spotted them inside the room, and then I moved through the doorway. For that first second none of them saw me. Cannon stood at the window, his back toward me; Artie was at a safe in the right wall, Tinkle holding a bulky light similar to mine, bathing Artie and the safe in infra-red light.

My heart had suddenly started racing and I could feel the blood tingling clear down in the tips of my fingers. It was as though the blood were hot inside me, warming my skin, my entire body. I could feel perspiration on my face and chest, in my armpits. I tightened my finger on the Colt’s trigger and snapped on the beam of my flash just as Artie glanced over his shoulder, eyes behind the goggles like round black holes in a skull’s head, and spotted me.

I saw his mouth open and I shouted, “Freeze, you sons, don’t—” but that was all I had time for because a lot of hell broke loose in that instant. Artie veiled at the top of his lungs and leaped to the side as Tinkle spun around and the light he’d held thudded to the carpet, still burning. Cannon’s huge bulk dropped to the floor. I flipped my gun over at Cannon, rolling now toward the wall, but flame jumped at me from Tinkle’s hand and the room exploded with sound. I dropped to one knee, snapped a shot at Tinkle as I saw his gun leveling at me; I pulled the trigger once more and saw him stagger, but his gun boomed again and I felt the slap of a bullet against my left hand; the impact of that heavy slug spun me halfway around, the light tumbling to the floor and going out. I went down on both knees, forcing my gun hand back toward Tinkle, twisting my body and snapping a wild shot at him, then getting the gun barrel centered on his chest and firing twice so fast the shots blurred into one sound.

He started falling as I saw Artie’s hand digging under his coat, coming out with a snub-nosed revolver, but Artie never got the gun an inch away from his chest because I shot him in the head. Dimly I saw his body go limp, but like a crazy man I fired at him again, and heard the hammer fall on an empty cartridge. It was suddenly dark, but I triggered the gun still again, not even realizing the chambers were empty, not comprehending the darkness. I was like a man in a trance, sweat drenching my body and the taste of blood on my lips where I’d bitten them, the smell of cordite in my nostrils, and the drumming of blood in my brain.

I was still on my knees, body twisted, pain obvious in my left hand now, and the quiet, the stillness seemed slowly to become like a pressure against my eardrums, and the darkness, a solid black, was like a wall around me. I got my feet under me, stood up. Cannon wouldn’t have a gun; Cannon—

My hand touched the light switch. I slid the glasses up off my eyes, looked toward the spot where the two men lay on the floor, flipped on the light. I was staring to my right as brilliant light blazed in the room and looking there was what damn near got me killed.

It was the grunt that saved me, the fact that Cannon always grunted before he swung that roundhouse cannonball of his, and when I heard the sound close by me on my left I didn’t even stop to turn my head. I just let my knees go slack, dropping my body and turning as I fell, then tensed the muscles in my legs and let them start springing me up again as an arm that looked two yards long whistled over my skull.

And I guess Cannon must have been surprised, because always before when he’d swung at me it had been so very simple to hit my head, and he was all splayed out in the air with his thick belly floating where I wanted it.

I just kept on going up, my right fist already balled and traveling in the right direction, and I let it go and felt it smash into his belly, heard the breath spurt from his mouth. I swung a little farther around, then pivoted, cocking my left fist and launching it at him. I knew I had him. He was bent over gasping, the whole side of his long bony face bare and unprotected.

My left clipped his chin, the pain almost killing me, and he spun halfway around, dropping to one knee. He was down a long way less than my size now, and I took half a step toward him, my right hand stretching for the ceiling, and when I slammed its edge down on the base of his skull it was easy for me to kick him in the face when he hit the floor and rolled over on his back. So I kicked him in the face. His jaw jerked far to the side, as if his face were made of rubber, then sagged and hung at an angle that was not normal at all.