Уильям Макгиверн - The Darkest Hour

But there were moments when he could think of Marcia apart from himself, without bitterness, without any feeling at all, as if she were some beautiful lifeless object he had known in a strange dream. It proved something to him that he could think of her at times without any sense of pain or loss. But what it proved he was never quite sure.

He always thought of her in motion; smiling or talking, looking up quickly to laugh at something in the paper, attacking the housework in brief shorts and sandals, her legs slim and brown and quick, and fussing in the kitchen over dinner, making enough for six people because she was proud of his appetite. Her world was gay. And she had thought him too serious. “Don’t worry so much,” she used to say, laughing at him. But it wasn’t worry that made him thoughtful, it was caution. Caution was in his background; it was part of the lower East Side, part of working your way through school, part of being a cop. He wasn’t afraid of life, but he had been taught to respect it. She could be careless and casual because she had never been hurt. This was a touching thing about her, the conviction that life was sunny and gay, that anyone you met could be your friend. He never quite understood this unreasoned optimism; it amused and puzzled him at the same time. But his attempt to fit her into any of the categories he knew had always failed; she was too direct in some ways, too subtle in others, and when he tried to hold her fast she went through his fingers like quicksilver.

He could think of her this way, dispassionately and calmly. It was the thought of her with someone else that brought up the cold lifeless anger, made his memories of her unendurable.

To his left the gleaming yellow light of a cab turned into the block. Retnick moved closer to the trunk of the tree as the cab slowed down and stopped a few doors from Marcia’s apartment. A man climbed out, paid off the driver, and the cab started up again, picking up speed as it went by Retnick. The silence settled heavily as the noise of the motor faded away in the night. For a few seconds the street was quiet, and then Retnick heard the flat ring of the man’s heels on the sidewalk. He came out of the darkness directly across from Retnick, and stopped to look casually at the doorway of Marcia’s apartment. Then he strolled on, hands deep in his overcoat pockets, his hat brim pulled down low over his swarthy features. Retnick recognized him as he passed through the cone of light falling from the street lamp. Davey Cardinal, Amato’s enforcer. Not a mad dog like Joe Lye, but a dangerous show-off, a man in love with his role as tough guy. Perfect for the job of terrorizing a girl.

Cardinal stopped two doors beyond Marcia’s building, and glanced casually up and down the sidewalk. Then he stepped quickly into the shadows near the curb and merged with the darkness.

Retnick checked the gun he had taken from Joe Lye, made sure the safety was off and that there was a round in the chamber. Then he crossed the street and walked down the sidewalk toward Cardinal, alert for any sudden movement in the shadows. When he saw the pale shine of his face, and the blur of his body beside a car, he stopped and said, “Hello, Davey.”

Cardinal came out of the shadows slowly, a stocky man with a tight little grin on his dark features. He crossed a stretch of lawn to the sidewalk and looked up into Retnick’s face. “You keep funny hours, Steve,” he said.

“I thought you’d stopped siphoning gas out of parked cars,” Retnick said. “I thought you’d turned into a big shot.”

“I was obeying nature, that’s all,” Cardinal said. Still smiling, he touched Retnick’s chest lightly with the back of his hand. “But what I do ain’t any of your business. And where and how I do it falls in the same class. Nothing about me concerns you, big boy. Keep that in mind. Keep that in mind while you turn your big tail and clear out of here.”

“My wife lives just two doors from here,” Retnick said gently. “She’ll be coming home in a few minutes. Did you know that?”

Cardinal raised his eyebrows. “Maybe I’ll run into her.”

“No you won’t,” Retnick said, still speaking gently. Then he took the lapels of the little man’s coat in one hand, and when Cardinal’s arm dropped swiftly, Retnick drove the muzzle of his gun into his stomach with cruel force. A cry of pain broke past Cardinal’s lips, and his hands came up from his pockets and tugged impotently at Retnick’s wrist.

“Steve!” he cried out softly, as Retnick shoved him roughly against a tree. “You hurt me inside.”

“Listen to me,” Retnick said, staring into the pain and fear in his eyes. Their faces were inches apart and he could see the sweat on Cardinal’s lip and forehead, the pinched lines of terror at the corners of his mouth.

“Steve—”

“Listen, I said. You beat it now. If anything happens to her, I’ll come after you first. Understand that? I won’t ask who did it, remember. I’ll get you.”

“Steve, I swear you got me wrong.”

Retnick stared at him for another second or two in silence.

Cardinal wet his lips. “Don’t kill me,” he whispered. “God, don’t kill me, Steve.”

“I want to kill you,” Retnick said. “I’d like an excuse. Remember that. Now get out of here.”

Cardinal straightened his tie and without meeting Retnick’s eyes slipped away from the tree and started up the sidewalk, walking like a man who is controlling a desperate impulse to break into a run.

Retnick watched the short dark figure until it disappeared in the shadows of the next block. He didn’t think Cardinal would be back; the little hoodlum knew he wanted to kill him. Retnick drew a deep breath. It was stamped on him like a brand then, this need to hurt and destroy. Cardinal had seen it clearly.

A car door slammed behind him and Retnick turned quickly, irritated at himself for having failed to notice the sound of the motor. His wife said good night to the cab driver and started for the entrance of her building, pulling the collar of her coat up against the cold wind. Retnick stood perfectly still in the shadows, hoping she wouldn’t see him. But she hesitated at the sidewalk and then turned uncertainly, seeming to sense his presence in the darkness.

“Steve?” she said softly. “Is that you, Steve?”

Retnick walked toward her, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, and the cab driver, who had waited, said, “Everything okay, Miss Kelly?”

“Yes, Johnny, it’s all right,” she said, glancing at him with a quick little smile.

“Just checking,” he said. “Good night now.”

Retnick looked down at his wife and rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. They were silent then in the cold darkness until the sound of the cab’s motor had droned away in the next block.

Then she said, “The bartender told me you were at the club last night. Why didn’t you wait?”

“I wanted a drink,” he said. “Nothing else.”

She shrugged lightly; her gray eyes were puzzled and hurt, but she managed a little smile. “That’s direct enough,” she said. “And do you want a drink now? I have one upstairs.”

“Never mind.” It was hard to look at her, to see the tentative, hesitant appeal in her face. She had changed more than he had realized. Not physically; her skin and eyes, the clean grace of her forehead, these would never change. She would always be beautiful but she would never again be unafraid. The careless, unreasoned belief that everything would turn out for the best — that was gone.

“Why were you waiting here?” she said.

“It’s too involved to go into,” he said. “Look, could you manage to get out of town for a week or two?”

“It’s curious you should mention it. I’m planning to leave. Did you know that?”