Ed McBain: Kiss

It had taken them half an hour to drive here from the Eight-Seven. When they left the station house, Sergeant Murchison said from his perch behind the muster desk, "Be careful out there." He'd been watching too many television reruns. Life imitating art. Though most often art imitated life, and occasionally art imitated art-all too successfully.

They did not need to be told to be careful.

They went up those steps like wayward husbands sneaking home after a night on the town. Gun hands hanging loose at their sides, no need for a state of extreme alertness yet, not until they reached the fourth floor, Denker's floor.

Denker didn't know they were coming, it wasn't likely he'd be out in the hallway in his pajamas. So the climb to the fourth floor was cautious but not timid, quiet but not altogether still.

Denker lived in apartment 4C.

For all he knew, he was home free. Tonight would be surprise time; they had him cold. If he was still here.

Apartment 4A dead ahead now, at the top of the stairwell.

A nod from Meyer.

An acknowledging nod from Carella.

They peeled off to the right. Guns up now.

Muzzles pointing toward the ceiling, butts close to their shoulders. Moving silently down the hallway, gliding past apartment 4B, Johnny Carson inside cracking jokes with Ed McMahon, 4C at the end of the hall. Both men moved up close to the door.

Meyer put his ear to the wood.

Not a sound in there.

He kept listening.

Carella raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Meyer shook his head.

From apartment 4B down the hall came the sound of The Tonight Show's orchestra. Doc Severinsen in his funny clothes playing expert trumpet. Big-band sound behind him. Meyer kept listening.

Still nothing.

He backed away from the door.

Nodded to Carella again.

Carella nodded back.

What they were about to do was called Taking the Door. It was the most dangerous thirty seconds in any policeman's life. The most frightening, too, though the men here in the hallway merely seemed serious and apprehensive. Meyer was standing to the right of the door now, the gun in his right hand tucked in against his shoulder, ready to roll himself around the doorframe and into the room behind Carella the moment he kicked the door in.

Carella was standing some three feet away from the door, arms widespread like a diver bouncing on a board, gun in his right hand, eyes on the knob and strikeplate, a nod to Meyer, knee coming back like a coiled spring, foot lashing out to hit the door flat and just to the right of the knob, a grunt when his foot made contact, and then the door splintered and the lock tore loose and metal screws and slivers of wood sprinkled the air.

Carella followed his own momentum into the room, gun fanning the midnight air, Meyer immediately behind him and to his right, a wedge of light from the hallway spilling into the darkness.

"Police!" they shouted simultaneously, and four shots came crashing out of the black.

They both threw themselves headlong onto the floor, and then rolled away in opposite directions because the guy in here was a killer who knew the tricks of the trade. Unsurprisingly, his next shots chewed wood out of the floor, where he'd guessed they'd be this time around-five, six, seven, and silence. Not exactly where he'd guessed, but close enough to cause Carella to break out in a cold sweat. Another shot, a muzzle flash deep in the blackness ahead.

Silence again. Eight slugs gone. Your typical Colt .45 carried seven in the magazine. Add another one in the chamber and that came to eight. That's all there'd been, goodbye, Charlie. And now the solid click of a new magazine being shoved into the gun butt. And silence. Carella scrambled to his knees behind what he now discerned was a stuffed easy chair.

He could not see Meyer in the darkness. He did not call out to him, nor did he shout a police warning again. Denker knew they were here and he knew they were policemen. What he didn't know was where they were. Neither of them had fired yet.

No muzzle flashes to reveal their location. The light spilling from the hallway came only so far into the room. Beyond that, blackness. And Denker waiting with seven more bullets in the gun now, all stacked up in the magazine.

Outside on the street, an ambulance siren.

Doo-wah, doo-wah, doo-wah, doo-wah.

The bridge to "Over the Rainbow," ask any musician. Carella scarcely dared breathe.

He was waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Problem was, Denker's eyes were already - adjusted to the darkness, and now he was waiting for them to make just a single move, show so much as a fingernail and he'd empty his gun in their faces.

A doorframe took shape.

Denker was in the room beyond that doorframe. A bedroom most likely.

Carella could see nothing in that room.

Pitch-black in that room, Denker waiting with the gun in his hand. Or were there two guns? Or even more. He'd reloaded, but that didn't necessarily discount the possibility of more than one gun. Count seven shots, rush the room, and discover he's also got an Uzi in his lap.

Problems, problems. Meanwhile, there wasn't anything to count. Denker wasn't firing again, not just yet. Didn't want to reveal his position.

Mexican standoff here. Two cops pinned down in the darkness, Denker afraid to fire for fear they'd locate him. The trouble was they didn't have all night here. If there was a window in that room- "Denker!" he shouted.

Silence.

Had he already split? Out the window, down the fire escape, lost to the night?

"Denker!" he yelled again.

Two shots came out of the blackness, the first one almost tearing off Carella's head, the second one knocking plaster out of the wall behind him. From somewhere across the room on Carella's left, Meyer immediately opened fire, zeroing in on the muzzle flashes, although Denker was smart enough not to be where he'd been only seconds earlier. Neither was Carella where he'd been.

In the time it took Meyer to snap off four rapid shots, Carella was on his feet and racing to the doorframe. He stood to the right of the bedroom door now, flattened against the wall, wondering if Meyer could see him there.

"Meyer!" he yelled.

"Here!”

"We go on three!" he shouted.

"Got it!”

Silence.

Denker waiting in the dark. Five cartridges left in the automatic, was there another gun in there? Waiting for them to rush the room on the count of three, not knowing that these men had worked together for years and years and that when one of them yelled "We go on three!" it meant nobody was going anywhere, everybody was sitting tight right where he was, the words we go negating the whole damn thing. They were not going to storm that door on the count of three, they were merely hoping Denker would begin firing on three and would shoot himself out of yet another magazine.

Silence.

Outside on the street, another ambulance siren. Busy night tonight. Carella was hoping they wouldn't need an ambulance here. Or a body bag. Especially not for Denker. Better to take him out of here without any leaky holes in him.

Carry him out of here on a stretcher and some shyster lawyer would start the Wheels of Technicality rolling even before the ambulance attendants got down to the second floor. As it was, the detectives would have to justify the use of deadly force, convince the people downtown that they hadn't used the gun as a means of apprehension but had opened fire only in self-defense. This city, you sometimes felt everybody was trying to make the job more difficult than it actually was. All they were trying to do here was arrest a killer.

Meanwhile, they waited in the darkness, hoping the trick that had worked for them a hundred times before would work again for them now. Knowing, too, that even if it did work, even if they managed to fool Denker into emptying his gun at an empty doorframe, he might reload before they'd moved a foot into the room, or-worse yet-he might cut them down with a second gun.