Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

Baldwin seemed confused. He looked at them, then at P.T. and his friends fast advancing. He fell into a half-crouch.

“Stay away from me!” he shouted.

Hacker said, “We’ll have to take him.”

Before the words were completely out of his mouth, Baldwin broke for the nearest alley. P.T. and his men, who were closer, stepped up their pursuit. Everyone converged at the opening, and suddenly John lunged from P.T.’s pack and flung himself into Baldwin. Both men went down. But John stayed down, while Baldwin struggled to his feet and disappeared into the darkening alley. Hacker sprinted after him. Skovich lingered long enough to see that John was trying to sit up, blood oozing from his forehead where he had hit the cement.

“You all right?” Skovich barked.

John grinned a woozy grin. “That felt good,” he said.

“Stay here! All of you, stay here!” Skovich ordered and sped off after his partner. Immediately there were footsteps behind him. “I said, stay there!” he shouted over his shoulder, but the footsteps continued and there was no time to stop and enforce his order. Baldwin was getting away. Cursing hotly, he hissed ahead to Hacker, “Don’t shoot, Terry, don’t shoot. There’s old guys all over the place.”

“I don’t think I’ll have to,” Hacker hissed back. “He must not be armed or he’d have fired by now. Can you see him?”

The alley dead-ended into a parking area. It was half full of cars and Baldwin was crouched, zigzagging between them, headed for the high chain-link fence enclosing it. “Police!” Skovich shouted again. “Stay where you are, Baldwin. Don’t make us shoot.”

He saw a blur of movement, and Baldwin wailed, “Leave me alone! I didn’t mean to do it, it was an accident! She came home too soon, you understand? I didn’t mean to!”

They lost sight of him momentarily, then he burst from the farthest row of cars and hurled himself at the fence. The detectives plunged after him and they were on the fence together, heaving up by sheer willpower, clawing desperately for grip. Hacker caught hold of a pant leg and got kicked in the face. He slipped, clutching at Skovich for purchase. The detectives hung together for scant seconds, steadying themselves, while Baldwin continued to haul his way up the fence. They were at least eight feet off the ground, the old men below them, cheering them on.

“I didn’t mean to,” Baldwin was whimpering softly. “Give me a break, okay? It wasn’t my fault!”

He was close to the top of the fence, but he was tiring, and he was crying now, great snuffling sobs. His foot slipped and he clung for a moment only by his hands. They were on him then, one close on each side, arms locked across his back, pinning him to the fence. And Baldwin gave up. He sagged, letting the fence go, allowing his full weight to bear on them and their own precarious hold on the fence.

“Hang on, damn you!” Hacker grunted, and Skovich managed, “Don’t drop him, Terry!”

“We heard him say he did it,” P.T.’s voice floated up from below. “We heard the whole thing. We’re witnesses!”

“Get out of the way down there!” Skovich bawled down as the combined weight of the men on the fence began to droop toward gravity. “Terry? You hear me? Don’t drop him!”

They went down together, sprawling onto the concrete with a resounding thud. Hacker was up instantly, rolling Baldwin onto his face in the dirt and cuffing his hands behind him.

“You’re under arrest!” he announced as the old men crowded around to watch.

Baldwin was still sobbing. “You don’t understand. I needed the money. You don’t know how hard it is to get an education these days. I never meant to hurt her.”

“You’ll get a chance to tell us all about your hard times,” Hacker promised him. “I can’t wait to hear.”

P.T. was jigging up and down. “You boys do good work. By God, made me proud to be part of it!”

Hacker squatted beside Skovich, still sprawled half-sitting against the fence. “That was real teamwork up there, partner.” He leaned close in the dusk. “We held him and we got him.”

Skovich eyed him pleasantly. “Like to have a little talk with you, Terry. Remember up there? Remember hearing me say don’t drop him?”

Hacker looked puzzled. “I didn’t drop him. We all came down together.”

“Oh no. I distinctly felt you drop him, even after I asked you not to. Wanted to inflict pain, you said, if we caught him.”

“But he’s not hurt, Hank. Little shook up, but you saw me. I never laid a hand on him.”

“Inflict some pain. Well, you did. Forget about me getting through the toothache. You dropped him, Terry. On my foot.” Sadly, he indicated his left one. “I’m pretty sure it’s broken.”

Hacker sat down hard on the cement. “Aw, jeez.”

“Try to remember the next time,” Skovich went on patiently. “Listen when I tell you something, that’s all I ask. Just listen, okay?”

© 1996 by Donald Olson

In this age of the personal computer few authors remain who still work on a typewriter. When EQMM asked Donald Olson for a computer disk and an extra “hard copy” of his latest story, we discovered that the author works on the machine he’s been using for decades and keeps only a carbon copy of the work. It seems fitting that Mr. Olson should do so, for his stories have an old-world charm.

Lyman Fox is dead. As I read his lengthy obituary in the Times, replete with fulsome testimonials to his worthiness, I recalled with a mix of emotions our last visit together.

“You’re looking well, James,” he’d said, and might have added, as the less tactful often do, “for your age.”

I’d been an occasional patient of Lyman’s for about two years, having sought him out for some trifling ailment. I’d cultivated his friendship and shared the infrequent drink or dinner whenever I was in town and he could spare the time from his busy practice and active social life.

I’d invited Lyman to dinner at a little Italian restaurant not far from his office, and once seated I said, “There’s something I’d like to show you, but first, if it won’t bore you too much, I’d like to tell you a little story from my past.”

Lyman Fox had a confident, incisive way of speaking that went with his mature good looks and faultless grooming. “Bore me? No chance, old boy. I know hardly anything about you. Most of my patients can’t wait to tell me their life stories, often at grueling length.”

“I’ll spare you that,” I promised. It was true, Lyman knew little about me aside from my being a retired college professor who spent most of my time at my cottage upstate. I hadn’t wanted to say anything about the subject that had occupied my mind for so long until I felt certain I wasn’t riding a lame hobbyhorse; it now seemed pointless to delay any longer.

I proceeded to tell him about my family, who had been very poor indeed, with little time or inclination for anything beyond the struggle to make ends meet, especially at the tail end of the Depression, the period of which I was speaking; circumstances being as they were, I’d had no hope whatsoever of realizing my ambition to go to college. At that time scholarships were not so readily available as they are now.

“One summer day,” I said, “soon after my high school graduation, a big black car — Packard, as I recall — pulled up in front of our little house on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. The chauffeur opened the door for a tiny gray-haired lady who marched up onto the porch where I was helping my mother shell peas for our supper. I can still remember the lilac pattern of the woman’s dress and her wide-brimmed white straw hat. She introduced herself and told us why she was calling.