Ed McBain - McBain's Ladies Too - More Women of the 87th Precinct

Bert Kling put a wet cloth on Miscolo's forehead.

He was used to death and dying. He was a young man, but he had been through a war in which death and dying had been a matter of course, an everyday occurrence like waking up to brush your teeth. And he had held the heads of closer friends on his lap, men he knew far better than Miscolo. And yet, hearing the word Mary erupt from Miscolo's lips in a hoarse scream, he felt a chill start at the base of his spine, rocketing into his brain where it exploded in cold fury. In that moment, he wanted to rush across the room and strangle Virginia Dodge.

In that moment, he wondered whether the liquid in that bottle was really nitroglycerin.

Angelica Gomez sat up and shook her head.

Her skirt was pulled back over her knees, and she propped her elbows on both knees and shook her head again, and then looked around the room with a puzzled expression on her face, like a person waking in a hotel.

And then, of course, she remembered.

She touched the back of her head. A huge knob had risen where Virginia had hit her with the gun. She felt the knob and the area around it, all sensitive to her probing fingers. And as the tentacles of pain spread out from the bruise, she felt with each stab a new rush of outraged anger. She rose from the floor and dusted off her black skirt, and the look she threw at Virginia Dodge could have slain the entire Russian Army.

And in that moment, she wondered whether the liquid in that bottle was really nitroglycerin.

Cotton Hawes touched his cheek where the gun sight had ripped open a flap of flesh. The cheek was raw to the touch. He dabbed at it with a cold wet handkerchief, a cloth no colder than his fury.

And he wondered for the tenth time whether the liquid in that bottle was really nitroglycerin.

Steve Carella, she thought.

I will kill Steve Carella. I will shoot the rotten bastard and watch him die, and they won't touch me because they're afraid of what's in this bottle.

I am doing the right thing.

This is the only thing to do.

There is a simple equation here, she thought: A life for a life.

Carella's life for my Frank's life. And that is justice.

The concept of justice had never truly entered the thoughts of Virginia Dodge before. She had been born Virginia MacCauley, of an Irish mother and a Scotch father. The family had lived in Calm's Point at the foot of the famous bridge that joined that part of the city with Isola. Even now, she looked upon the bridge with fond remembrance. She had played in its shadow as a little girl, and the bridge to her had been a wondrous structure leading to all the far corners of the earth. One day, she had dreamt, she would cross that bridge and it would take her to lands brimming with spices and rubies. One day, she would cross that bridge into the sky, and there would be men in turbans, and camels in caravans, and temples glowing with gold leaf.

She had crossed the bridge into the arms of Frank Dodge.

Frank Dodge, to the police, was a punk. He'd been arrested at the age of fourteen for mugging an old man in Grover Park. He'd been considered a juvenile offender by the law, and got off with nothing more serious than a reprimand and a J.D. card. Between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, he'd been pulled in on a series of minor offenses — and always his age, his lawyer, and his innocent baby-blue-eyed looks had saved him from incarceration. At nineteen, he committed his first holdup.

This time he was beyond the maximum age limit for a juvenile offender. This time, his innocent baby-blue-eyed looks had lengthened into the severity of near-manhood. This time, they dumped him into the clink on Bailey's Island. Virginia met him shortly after his release.

To Virginia, Frank Dodge was not a punk.

He was the man with the turban astride the long-legged camel, he was the gateway to enchanted lands, rubies trickled from his fingertips, he was her man.

His B-card listed a series of offenses as long as Virginia's right arm — but Frank Dodge was her man, and you can't argue with love.

When he held up that gas station, the attendant yelled for help and it happened that a detective named Steve Carella, who was off-duty and driving toward his apartment in River-head, heard the calls and drove into the station — but not before Dodge had shot the attendant and blinded him. Carella made the collar. Frank Dodge went to prison — Castleview this time, where nobody played games with thieves. It was discovered during his first week of imprisonment that Frank Dodge was anything but an ideal prisoner. He caused trouble with keepers and fellow-prisoners alike. He constantly flouted the rules — as archaic as they were. He tried to obtain his release, but each attempt failed. His letters to his wife, read by prison authorities before they left the prison, grew more and more bitter.

In the second year of his term, it was discovered that Frank Dodge was suffering from tuberculosis. He was transferred to the prison hospital. It was in the prison hospital that he had died yesterday.

Today, Virginia Dodge sat with a pistol and a bottle, and she waited for the man who had killed him. In her mind, there was no doubt that Steve Carella was the man responsible for her husband's death. If she had not believed this with all her heart, she'd never have had the courage to come up here with such an audacious plan.

The amazing part of it was that the plan was working so far. They were all afraid of her, actually afraid of her. Their fear gave her great satisfaction. She could not have explained the satisfaction if she'd wanted to, could not have explained her retaliation against all society in the person of Steve Carella, her flouting of the law in such a flamboyant manner. Could she not, in all truth, in all fairness simply have waited for Carella downstairs and put a bullet in his back when he arrived?

Yes.

In all fairness, she could have. There was no need for a melodramatic declaration of what she was about to do, no need to sit in judgment over the law enforcers as they had sat in judgment over her husband, no need to hold life or death in the palms of her hands, no need to play God to the men who had robbed her of everything she loved.

Or was there a very deep need?

She sat now with her private thoughts. The gun in her hand was steady. The bottle on the table before her caught the slanting rays of the overhead light.

She smiled grimly.

They're wondering, she thought, whether the liquid in this bottle is really nitroglycerin.

The telephone in the squadroom rang at 6:55.

Hal Willis waited for Virginia's signal, and then picked up the receiver.

"Eighty-seventh Squad," he said. "Detective Willis speaking."

"Just a second," a voice on the other end said. The voice retreated from the phone, obviously talking to someone else in the room. "How the hell do I know?" it said. "Turn it over to the Bunco Squad. No, for Christ's sake, what would we be doing with a pickpocket file? Oh, Riley, you're the stupidest sonofa-bitch I've ever had to work with. I'm on the phone, can you wait just one goddamn minute?" The voice came back onto the line. "Hello?"

"Hello?" Willis said. At the desk opposite him, Virginia Dodge watched and listened.

"Who'm I speaking to?" the voice asked.

"Hal Willis."

"You're a detective, did you say?"

"Yes."

"This the 87th Squad?"

"Yes."

"Yeah. Well then I guess it's a crank."

"Huh?"

"This is Mike Sullivan down Headquarters. We got a call a little while ago, clocked in at… ah… just a second…" Sullivan rattled some papers on the other end of the line. "… six forty-nine. Yeah."

"What kind of a call?" Willis said.

"Some college kid. Said he picked up a D.D. report in the street. Had a message typed on it. Something about a broad with a bottle of nitro. Know anything about it?"