Richard Deming - Gallows in My Garden

Assuming that Dude Garrity and Harry the Horse had occupied only one of the four flats before converting the whole building into a fortress, the thought flashed through my mind that perhaps a number of innocent persons might be caught in the other flats. But I had enough to think about without worrying about the safety of innocent bystanders.

On tiptoe I slipped out into the hallway. Why on tiptoe, I don’t know, for no one could have heard me above the racket even had I danced out wearing cymbals and castanets. I sidled along the hall with the .45 thrust searchingly in front of me.

The muzzle flashes I had seen placed the Tommy gun in the front room of the apartment I was in now. The hallway ran clear from the front room to a glass-paned door beyond the kitchen, and through the glass I could see this door led to a communal inside hallway, with stairs going both up to the second floor and down to the basement. Aside from the front room and kitchen, the flat seemed to contain only two more rooms and a bath, all situated on the right side of the hallway.

I slipped past the open dining-room door after a quick glance within, past the bath and bedroom, then flattened myself against the wall outside the front-room door, which was shut.

I was not waiting for anything in particular — certainly not for a noise of some kind in the front room, for I couldn’t have heard the Philharmonic playing the Anvil Chorus. I think I must have been waiting for my mind to crack and leave me crazy enough to push open the door and face a spitting machine gun.

A rhyme I had used as a kid when screwing up courage to dive into cold water popped into my mind. Aloud I said, “One-two-three, the bumblebee. The rooster crows, and away she goes!”

As I hit the last word, there was an instantaneous pause in the firing, and before it resumed at full blast, I boomed out, “—goes!” into dead silence.

At the same instant I twisted the doorknob and slammed open the door.

If it had not been for my little courage-gaining rhyme, I would have caught my quarry with his back turned to me. He was just starting to spin away from facing the front door as I swung my gun up.

My intention had been to use my gun as a club, or else place a bullet in a non-vital spot in order to take my quarry alive, but when his weapon began to chatter, I forgot everything but self-defense.

The Tommy gun was cradled against his left hip, and apparently he had been firing it with one hand, for his right was in a sling.

It seemed to take me forever to center my pistol and press the trigger, for I remember thinking the process through step by step, as though practicing on a pistol range: Wait till your gun steadies — A miss is worse than no shot — Inhale — Hold it — Squeeze, don’t pull!

Actually it must have been one of the fastest snap shots I ever got off, for Harry the Horse began to trigger his Tommy gun the same moment he began to spin. At eight-foot range, you don’t have to bother much about aiming a Tommy gun.

I fired after his burst started, and the burst continued for an instant or two after I fired. But the slugs he got off while I was squeezing (not pulling) the trigger, hit the wall three feet to one side. The remainder climbed the wall and squirted across the ceiling as he toppled over on his back with a hole in his forehead.

I didn’t see the hole. I didn’t have to. I was so sure of that shot, I started racing for the rear stairs as soon as the gun kicked in my hand.

At the second floor I reduced my speed to a cautious wriggling on my stomach, since lead was screaming through every window at this level. The stairhead brought me into another communal hall, except this one was shared by the two second-floor flats. At its far end I could see another set of stairs for the use of the second upstairs flat.

Directly in front of me was another glass-windowed door, but only slivers of glass remained in the shattered French panes. I wondered fleetingly if this had been the apartment rented by the two gunmen, and hoped that if it had not been, the tenants had been smart enough to run for the basement before the shooting started.

Halfway down the communal hall was a steep stairway leading to an open trap door in the roof. It was little more than a permanently fixed stepladder.

Slowly I began to wriggle toward it, but just as I reached it, something smashed a hole in the third rung over my head, splashing splinters in my face. I spread flat again and tried to dig a dent in the floor with my chin.

All at once the firing began to diminish, then trickled off to a few scattered final shots. The silence became so complete, I was conscious of the noise made by my breathing.

Jumping erect, I scurried up the ladderlike stairs to the roof without bothering to recite rhymes first. I shot through the trap door like a jack-in-the-box, landed spraddle-legged on graveled tar paper and made two complete spins before I would believe I had the roof all to myself.

In the center of the roof stood the portable short-wave radio whose aerial I had seen from the street. It was on, but emitting only static. Brick chimneys thrust upward about five feet in from the edge of the roof on either side of the house. I circled these warily, but Dude Garrity was nowhere in evidence.

Just as I started back toward the trap door, I heard someone climbing the ladder and I faded behind one of the chimneys.

My gun centered on the section of atmosphere where I judged the climber’s head would appear, but I let the muzzle droop when a little girl about ten years old stumbled out on the roof. She was a cute little blonde in a sunsuit and bare feet, and tears of fright were streaming from her eyes. One side of her face was the flaming red that only comes from a solid slap, and both her upper arms showed finger bruises.

Pushing her from behind came Dude Garrity, a rifle at trail position in his right hand. His straw hat was missing, but he still wore his white suit and it was filthy with tar from the roof.

The girl blocked my aim until Garrity got clear of the stairs, and then he immediately grabbed her by the upper arm and jerked her spine against his stomach. At ten-foot range I undoubtedly could have placed a slug through Dude’s shoulder without endangering his companion. But I would have hated to make a mistake and add a ten-year-old kid to the small list of corpses St. Peter is some day going to make me explain, and I was afraid to take the chance. Instead I drew back my head and tried to make myself look like part of the chimney.

Garrity’s rifle butt scraped the other side of the chimney as he went by. I shifted around to the side nearest the trap door and watched as he forced the little girl toward the roof edge overlooking the street. As he neared it, he went into a crouch, and six feet away he dropped to his knees, forcing the girl to hers also.

“The gravel is hot,” the kid said in a shaky voice, and began to sob.

“Shut up!” he snarled.

His arm was across her back, and his fingers dug savagely into her shoulder, holding her rigidly against his side.

“Hey, cops!” he yelled.

After a few moments a loud-speaker boomed, “Who is speaking?”

“Garrity!” shouted the gunman. “You got my pal with a stray shot.”

Apparently he had found Harry and assumed the bullet in his head had come through the window. I was just beginning to crawl toward his back, with the intention of bringing my gun down on his head, when he spoke again.

“I got a ten-year-old kid with me! You hear me, cops?”

“We hear you,” boomed the loud-speaker. “Better give up, Garrity.”

The gunman laid down his rifle, rose to a crouch, and pushed the girl ahead of him to the roof edge. Her head just showed above it.