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

"Miss," Byrnes said, "that's a bottle of nitroglycerin on the desk there." He paused. "What I mean is, any sudden movement might set it off. And hurt a lot of people."

Their eyes met. Teddy nodded.

She turned away from Virginia and Byrnes, crossing to sit in the chair facing the slatted railing, hoping the lieutenant had not seen the sudden tears in her eyes.

The clock read 7:10.

Teddy thought only, I must warn him.

Methodically, mechanically, the clock chewed time, swallowed it, spat digested seconds into the room. The clock was an old one, and its mechanism was audible to everyone but Teddy, whirrr, whirrr, and the old clock digested second after second until they piled into minutes and the hands moved with a sudden click in the stillness of the room.

7:11…

7:12…

I must warn him, she thought. She had given up the thought of jumping Virginia and thought only of warning Steve now. I can see the length of the corridor from here, she thought, can see the top step of the metal stairway leading from below. If I could hear I would recognize his tread even before he came into view because I know his walk, I have imagined the sound of his walk a thousand times. A masculine sound, but light-footed, he moves with animal grace, I would recognize the sound of his walk the moment he entered the building — if only I could hear.

But I cannot hear, and I cannot speak. I cannot shout a warning to him when he enters this second floor corridor. I can only run to him. She will not use the nitro, not if she knows Steve is in the building where she can shoot him. She needs the nitro for her escape. So I'll run to him and be his shield, he must not die.

And the baby?

The baby, she thought. Hardly a baby yet, a life just begun, but Steve must not die. Myself, yes. The baby, yes. But not Steve. I will run to him. The moment I see him, I will run to him, and then let her shoot. But not Steve.

She had almost lost him once, she could remember that Christmas as if it were yesterday, the painfully white hospital room, and her man gasping for breath. She had hated his occupation then, detested police work and criminals, abhorred the chance circumstances that had allowed her husband to be shot by a narcotics peddler in a city park. And then she had allowed her hatred to dissolve, and she had prayed, simply and sincerely, and all the while she knew that he would die and that her silent world would truly become silent. With Steve, there was no silence. With Steve, she was surrounded by the noise of life.

This was not a time for prayer.

All the prayers in the world would not save Steve now.

When he comes, she thought, I will run to him and I will take the bullet.

When he comes…

The clock read 7:13.

That isn't nitroglycerin, Hawes thought.

Maybe it is.

That isn't nitroglycerin.

It can't be. She handles it like water, she treats it with all the disdain she'd give to water, she wouldn't be so damn careless with it if it were capable of exploding.

It isn't nitroglycerin.

Now wait a minute, he told himself, let's just wait a minute, let's not rationalize a desire into a fact.

I want desperately for the liquid in that bottle to be water. I want it because for the second time in my life I am ready to knock a woman silly. I am ready to cross this room and, gun be damned, knock her flat on her ass and keep hitting her until she is senseless. That is the way I feel right now, and chivalry can go to Hell because that is the way I feel. I know it's not particularly nice to go around slugging women, but Virginia Dodge has become something less than woman, or perhaps something more than woman, she has become something inhuman and I no more consider her a woman than I would apply gender to a telephone or a pair of shoes.

She is Virginia Dodge.

And I hate her.

And I'm ashamed because I hate so goddamn deeply. I did not think myself capable of such hatred, but she has brought it out in me, she has enabled me to hate deeply and viciously. I hate her, and I hate myself for hating, and this causes me to hate deeper. Virginia Dodge has reduced me to an animal, a blind animal responding to a pain that is being inflicted. And the curious thing is that the pain is not my own. Oh, the cheek, I've been hit harder before, the cheek doesn't matter. But what she did to Miscolo, and what she did to that Puerto Rican girl, and what she did to Meyer, these are things I cannot excuse, rationally or emotionally. These are pains inflicted on humans who have never done a blessed solitary thing to the non-human called Virginia Dodge. They were simply here and, being here, she used them, she somehow reduced them to meaningless ciphers.

And this is why I hate.

I hate because I… I and every other man in this room… have allowed her to reduce humans to ciphers. She has robbed them of humanity, and by allowing her to rob one man of humanity, by allowing her to strip a single human being of all his godly dignity, I have allowed her to reduce all men to a pile of rubbish.

So here I am, Virginia Dodge.

Cotton Hawes is my name, and I am a one-hundred-percent white Protestant American raised by God-fearing parents who instilled in me a sense of right and wrong, and who taught me that women are to be treated with courtesy and chivalry — and you have turned me into a jungle animal ready to kill you, hating you for what you've done, ready to kill you.

The liquid in that bottle is not nitroglycerin.

This is what I believe, Virginia Dodge.

Or at least, this is what I am on the road to believing. I do not yet fully believe it. I'm working on it, Virginia. I'm working on it damn hard.

I don't have to work on the hatred. The hatred is there, and it's building all the time and God help you, Virginia Dodge, when I'm convinced, when I've convinced myself that your bottle of nitroglycerin is a big phony.

God help you, Virginia, because I'll kill you.

"Where is he?" she said, and looked up at the clock. "It's almost seven-thirty. Isn't he supposed to report back here?"

"Yes," Byrnes said.

"Then where the hell is he?" She slammed her left fist down on the desk top. Hawes watched. The bottle of nitro, jarred, did not explode.

It's water, Hawes thought. Goddamnit, it's water !

"Have you ever had to wait for anything, Marcia?" Virginia said to Teddy. "I feel as if I've been in this squadroom all my life."

Teddy watched the woman, expressionless.

"You ro'n bitch," Angelica Gomez said. "You should wait in Hell , you dirtee bitch."

"She's angry," Virginia said, smiling. "The Spanish onion is angry. Take it easy, Chiquita. Just think, your name'll be in the newspapers tomorrow."

"An' your name, too," Angelica said. "An' maybe it be in the dead columns."

"I doubt that," Virginia said, and all humor left her face and her eyes. "The newspapers will…" She stopped. "The newspapers," she said, and this time she said the words with the tone of discovery. Hawes watched the discovery claim her face, watched as she stirred her memory. Her eyes were beginning to narrow.

"I remember reading a story about Carella," she said. "In one of the newspapers. The time he got shot. It mentioned that his wife…" She paused. "His wife was a deaf mute!" she said, and she turned glaring eyes on Teddy. "What about it, Marcia Franklin? What about it?"

Teddy did not move.

"What are you doing here?" Virginia said. She had begun rising. "Are you Marcia Franklin, come to report a burglary? Or are you Mrs. Steve Carella? Which? Answer me!"

Again Teddy shook her head.

Virginia was standing now, her attention riveted to Teddy. Slowly, she came around the desk, sliding along its edge, ignoring the bottle on its top completely. It was as if, having found someone she believed to be related to Carella, her wait was nearing an end. It was as if — should this woman be Carella's wife — she could now truly begin to vent her spleen. Her decision showed on her face. The hours of waiting, the impatience of the ordeal, the necessity for having to deal with other people while her real quarry delayed his entrance showed in the gleam of her eyes and the hard set of her mouth. As she approached Teddy Carella, Hawes knew instinctively that she would inflict upon her the same — if not worse — punishment that Meyer Meyer had suffered.