Ed McBain - The Last Brief

Then tonight, O’Neill and I were heading out to the liquor store, we’re riding in his old Chevy, and I said to him straight out, I said Johnny, you got to tell me what they’re saying. Is it Liz they’re talking about? Is it my wife who’s playing around with this Laguna? And first O’Neill said it was all a bunch of bullshit, Harris was probably making the whole thing up to keep the squadroom clowns amused. I told him I didn’t think Harris was making it up, and he said Well, even if it’s true, there must be ten thousand women named Liz in this city, and I said Yeah, Johnny, but not all of them are married to a cop in our precinct. So he told me it was probably some poor fucking patrolman, and I said Johnny, it’s not a patrolman, I checked. And he looked at me, he was driving the car, he just turned his head slightly to the side and looked at me, and I said Johnny, I think it’s me. He turned his head back to the road then, and he said Well, Duke, I guess that’s what they’re saying.

She was still sitting there on the bed, propped up against the pillows, but there was a smile on her face now, as if I’d said something very comical, something she was going to deny in the next minute, set the whole thing straight by simply saying Well, this is ridiculous, Duke, you know I love you and would never in a million years get involved with another man. That’s what I wanted to hear from her, and I guess I began feeling a little better the minute I saw that smile. So I said Liz, all I’m asking for now is the truth. If it’s as terrible as maybe it looks to be, we’ll work it out. And if it’s true, I don’t know what, maybe I’ll ask for a transfer, I just don’t know what. But if it’s a lie, then I’ve got to be able to go in there and face those guys down. That’s all I’m asking, Liz. I’m asking you to help me with this thing, one way or another. I love you, Liz, and whatever the truth is, it’s better we get it out in the open and deal with it. Now that’s it Liz, and I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me now.

‘You want a confession, right?’ she said. She was still smiling.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want a confession, I want to be able to talk about this, I want to be able to set things straight.’

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘you’ll get a confession, if that’s what you want. Okay?’

‘I’m listening,’ I said.

‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘All of it is true.’

She was still smiling, I thought for a minute she was putting me on, I thought she couldn’t be saying this was true, while smiling at the same time — it had to be a put — on. ‘I met him downtown six months ago,’ she said. ‘It was raining. He offered me a lift in his car, and I got in. It was as simple as that.’

‘Liz,’ I said.

‘I’ve been seeing him ever since.’

‘Liz,’ I said, ‘the man is a bum.’

‘I love him,’ she said.

I think that was what did it, her saying she loved him. I think I really would have been willing to talk it over, the way I’d promised her, if only she’d hadn’t said she loved him. Because, you see, the man was a bum, the man was everything I’d learned to despise, the man was a bum. So I went to the chair where I’d hung the shoulder holster, and I rook the .38 from it without even thinking what I was doing. I just took the gun out of the clamshell, and I turned to where she was sitting there on the bed, still smiling, and I fired four shots into her chest and then I went to the bed and feed another shot into her head.

I make this confession freely and voluntarily in the presence of Detective-Lieutenant Alfred Laber and Detective 2nd/Grade John O’Neill and Detective 1st/Grade Charles Harris, having been duly warned of my rights, and having waived my privilege to remain silent.

The boy sitting opposite him was his enemy.

The boy sitting opposite him was called Tigo, and he wore a green silk jacket with an orange stripe on each sleeve. The jacket told Dave that Tigo was his enemy. The jacket shrieked ‘Enemy, enemy!’

‘This is a good piece,’ Tigo said, indicating the gun on the table. ‘This runs you close to forty-five bucks, you try to buy it in a store.’

The gun on the table was a Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special.

It rested exactly in the centre of the table, its sawed-off two-inch barrel abruptly terminating the otherwise lethal grace of the weapon. There was a checked walnut stock on the gun, and the gun was finished in a flat blue. Alongside the gun were three .38 Special cartridges.

Dave looked at the gun disinterestedly. He was nervous and apprehensive, but he kept tight control of his face. He could not show Tigo what he was feeling. Tigo was the enemy, and so he presented a mask to the enemy, cocking one eyebrow and saying, ‘I seen pieces before. There’s nothing special about this one.’

‘Except what we got to do with it,’ Tigo said. Tigo was studying him with large brown eyes. The eyes were moist-looking. He was not a bad-looking kid, Tigo, with thick black hair and maybe a nose that was too long, but his mouth and chin were good. You could usually tell a cat by his mouth and his chin. Tigo would not turkey out of this particular rumble. Of that, Dave was sure.

‘Why don’t we start?’ Dave asked. He wet his lips and looked across at Tigo.

‘You understand,’ Tigo said. ‘I got no bad blood for you.’

‘I understand.’

‘This is what the club said. This is how the club said we should settle it. Without a big street diddlebop, you dig? But I want you to know I don’t know you from a hole in the wall — except you wear a blue and gold jacket.’

‘And you wear a green and orange one,’ Dave said, ‘and that’s enough for me.’

“Sure, but what I was trying to say...”

‘We going to sit and talk all night, or we going to get this thing rolling?’ Dave asked.

‘What I’m trying to say,’ Tigo went on, ‘is that I just happened to be picked for this, you know? Like to settle this thing that’s between the two clubs. I mean, you got to admit your boys shouldn’t have come in our territory last night.’

‘I got to admit nothing,’ Dave said flatly.

‘Well, anyway, they shot at the candy store. That wasn’t right. There’s supposed to be a truce on.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Dave said.

‘So like... like this is the way we agreed to settle it. I mean, one of us and... and one of you. Fair and square. Without any street boppin’, and without any Law trouble.’

‘Let’s get on with it,’ Dave said.

‘I’m trying to say, I never even seen you on the street before this. So this ain’t nothin’ personal with me. Whichever way it turns out, like...”

‘I never seen you neither,’ Dave said.

Tigo stared at him for a long time. ‘That’s ‘cause you’re new around here. Where you from originally?’

‘My people come down from the Bronx.’

‘You got a big family?’

‘A sister and two brothers, that’s all.’

‘Yeah, I only got a sister,’ Tigo shrugged. ‘Well.’ He sighed. ‘So.’ He sighed again. ‘Let’s make it, huh?’

‘I’m waitin’,’ Dave said.

Tigo picked up the gun, and then he took one of the cartridges from the table top. He broke open the gun, slid the cartridge into the cylinder, and then snapped the gun shut and twirled the cylinder. ‘Round and round she goes,’ he said, ‘and where she stops, nobody knows. There’s six chambers in the cylinder, and only one cartridge. That makes the odds five-to-one that the cartridge’ll be in firing position when the cylinder stops twirling. You dig?’

‘I dig.’

‘I’ll go first,’ Tigo said.

Dave looked at him suspiciously. ‘Why?’