Ed McBain - Lullaby

He waited.

Five minutes later, Herrera came out of the building.

* * * *

'No trubber?' Zing asked.

'None,' Herrera said.

'You have it?' Zang asked.

'I've got it.'

'Where?' Zing asked.

'Here in the bag,' Herrera said. 'Where the fuck you think?'

His eyes were sparkling. Just holding the dispatch case with all that good dope in it made him feel higher than he'd ever felt in his life. Five kilos of very very good stuff. All his. Take the Chinks back to the place on Vandermeer, kiss them off, leave them there for the cops to find when somebody complained about the stink in apartment 3A. Take his time disposing of the coke, so long as he got rid of it by the fifteenth of February. Catch the TWA plane to Spain on the fifteenth. The plane to Spain is mainly in the rain, he sang inside his head. Christ he was happy!

The twins were on either side of him now.

Like bodyguards.

Zing smiled at him.

'Henny Shoe say tell you hello,' he said.

* * * *

From where Kling stood across the street, he heard the shots first and only then saw the gun. In the hand of the Chinese guy standing on Herrera's right. There were three shots in rapid succession. Herrera was falling. The guy who'd shot him backed away a little, giving him room to drop. The other Chinese guy picked up the dispatch case from the sidewalk where it had fallen. They both began running. So did Kling.

'Police!' he shouted.

His gun was in his hand.

'Police!' he shouted again and watched them turn the corner.

He pounded hard along the sidewalk. Reached the corner. Went around it following his gun hand.

The street was empty.

His eyes flicked doorways. Hit doorways. Snapped away from them. Nothing. Where the hell had they . . . ?

There.

Partially open door up ahead.

He ran to it, kicked it fully open, fanned the dark entrance alcove with his gun. Open door beyond. Went to that. Through the doorway. Syeps ahead. Not a sound anywhere in the hallway. An abandoned building. If he went up those steps he'd be walking into sudden death. Water dripped from somewhere overhead. A shot came down the stairwell. He fired back blindly. The sound of footfalls pounding up above. He came up the steps, gun out ahead of him. Another shot. Wood splinters erupted like shrapnel on the floor ahead of him. He kept climbing. The door to the roof was open. He came out into sudden cold and darkness. Flattened himself against the brick wall. Waited. Nothing. They were gone. Otherwise they'd still be firing. Waited, anyway, until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and then covered the roof, paced it out, checking behind every turret and vent, his gun leading him. They were gone for sure. He holstered his gun and went down to the street again.

As he approached Herrera lying on his back on the sidewalk, he saw blood bubbling up out of his mouth. He knelt beside him.

'José?' he said, 'Joey?'

Herrera looked up at him.

'Who were they?'

They won't let you live in this city, Herrera thought, but they won't let you out of it, either.

His eyes rolled back into his head.

* * * *

Sitting in the automobile, Hamilton and Isaac watched the two Chinese men from the Tsu gang entering the building.

Hamilton smiled.

The thing about the Chinese, he thought, is that they know business but they have no passion. They are cool lemon yellow. And tonight, they were going to get squeezed.

The two men from Miami were waiting upstairs in apartment 5C.

This according to what Carlos Ortega had told him.

For ten percent, the ungrateful bastard.

The two men from the Tsu gang were now on their way upstairs to make payment and take delivery. The earlier testing and tasting, wherever the hell that had taken place, had apparently gone off without a hitch. Hamilton had no interest whatever in those shitty five keys that had vanished in the night. Upstairs in apartment 5C, there were ninety-five keys of cocaine and only four people to look after all that dope.

He nodded to Isaac.

Isaac nodded back and then flashed his headlights at the car up the street. He still didn't understand all the details of the deal. He only knew that tonight they were making a move that would catapult them into the big time where posses like Spangler and Shower roamed at ease. He was confident that Hamilton knew what he was doing. You either trusted someone completely or you didn't trust him at all.

Together, they got out of the automobile.

Up the street, the doors on the other car opened. Black men in overcoats got out. The doors closed silently on the night. The men assembled swiftly, breaths pluming on the frosty air, and then walked swiftly to the front steps of the building. Eight of them altogether. Hamilton, Isaac and six others. Hamilton knew the odds would be two to one in his favor.

Together they climbed to the fifth floor of the building.

Hamilton listened outside the door to apartment 5C.

Voices inside there.

Three separate and distinct voices.

There now.

A fourth voice.

He kept listening.

He smiled. Held up his right hand. Showed four fingers. Isaac nodded. Four of them inside there. As promised by Ortega. Isaac nodded to the man on his right.

A single burst from the man's AR-15 blew off the lock on the door

The Jamaicans went in.

Hamilton was still smiling.

There were not four people in that apartment.

There were a dozen Colombians from Miami and a dozen Chinese from right here in the city.

Henry Tsu was one of those Chinese.

In the first ten seconds, Isaac - who still did not completely understand all the details of this deal - took seventeen slugs in his chest and his head. Hamilton turned to run. His way was blocked by the Jamaicans behind him. They, too, had realized all at once that they had walked into an ambush, and they were now scrambling in panic to get out of the trap. They were all too late. A second wave of fire cut them down before they reached the door. It was all over in thirty seconds. The only shot the Jamaicans had fired was the one that took off the lock.

Hamilton, still alive, started crawling over the bodies toward the doorway.

One of the Chinese said, 'Henny Shoe say tell you hello.'

Then he and another Chinese who looked remarkably like him fired twelve shots into Hamilton's back.

Hamilton stopped crawling.

Henry Tsu looked down at him.

He was thinking it was all a matter of which was the oldest culture.

* * * *

17

Carella signed for the Federal Express envelope at ten minutes past nine the following morning. It was from the Seattle Police Department and it contained a sheaf of photocopied pages and a handwritten memo. The memo read: Thought you might like to see this. It was signed: Bonnem. The pages had been copied from Paul Chapman's will. They read:

My daughters are Melissa Chapman Hammond and Joyce Chapman.

I give and bequeath to my trustee hereinafter named the sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000) to hold same in trust for the benefit of the first child born of my said daughters, and to manage, invest and reinvest the same and pay all costs, taxes . . .

'He was making sure the family line would continue after he was gone,' Carella said.

'If his daughters were still childless at his death, he was giving them a good reason to change the situation,' Meyer said.

'To get on with it.'

'To get going.'

'Melissa's words.'

'Here's the motive,' Carella said, tapping the page of the will that spelled out the firstborn provision.

'He was signing little Susan's death warrant,' Meyer said.

'Because if she'd never been born . . .'

'Melissa's baby would be the firstborn child . . .'