Ed Mcbain - Fuzz

“Outside!” Carella shouted, and leaped the counter dividing the shop, slipping in a pool of blood near the sewing machine, but regaining his footing and running coatless into the snow.

There was no one in sight.

The cold was numbing.

It hit his naked gun hand immediately, seemed to wed flesh to steel.

A trail of blood ran from the shop door across the white snow stretching endlessly into the city.

Carella began following it.

The deaf man ran as fast as he could, but the pain in his shoulder was intolerable.

He could not understand what had happened.

Was it possible they had figured it out? But no, they couldn’t have. And yet, they’d been there, waiting. How could they have known? How could they possibly have known when he himself hadn’t known until fifteen minutes ago?

There had been at least twenty-five pages of “V” listings in the Isola directory, with about 500 names to a page, for a combined total of some 12,500 names. He had not counted the number of first names beginning with the letter “J,” but there seemed to be at least twenty or thirty on every page, and he had actually gone through eleven names with the initials “JMV,” the same initials as His Honor the Mayor James Martin Vale, before coming to the one on Culver Avenue.

How could they have known? How could they have pinpointed the tailor shop of John Mario Vicenzo, the final twist of the knife, a JMV located within the very confines of the 87th? It’s impossible, he thought. I left nothing to chance, it should have worked, I should have got them both, there were no wild cards in the deck, it should have worked.

There were still some wild cards in the deck.

“Look,” Jimmy said.

The taller boy, the one carrying the gasoline can, lifted his head, squinted against the wind, and then ducked it immediately as a fiercer gust attacked his face. He had seen a tall blond man staggering off the pavement and into the center of the snowbound street.

“Drunk as a pig,” Jimmy said beside him. “Let’s get him, Baby.”

The one called Baby nodded bleakly. Swiftly, they ran toward the corner. The wind was stronger there, it struck them with gale force as they turned onto the wide avenue. The vag was nowhere in sight.

“We lost him,” Baby said. His teeth were chattering, and he wanted to go home.

“He’s got to be in one of these hallways,” Jimmy said. “Come on, Baby, it’s fire time.”

From where Genero sat in the RMP car, he could see the empty windswept avenue through a frost-free spot on the windshield, snow devils ascending with each fresh gust of wind, hanging signs clanging and flapping, an eerie graveyard sound rasping at the windows of the automobile. The avenue was deserted, the snow locked the street from sidewalk to sidewalk, lights burned behind apartment windows like warming fires in a primeval night.

“What’s that?” he said suddenly.

“What’s what?” Phillips asked.

“Up ahead. Those two guys.”

“Huh?” Phillips said.

“They’re trying doors,” Genero said. “Pull over.”

“Huh?”

“Pull over and cut your engine!”

He could hear them talking on the sidewalk outside, he could hear their voices coming closer and closer. He lay in the hallway with his shoulder oozing blood, knowing he had to climb those steps and get to the roof, get from this building to the next one, jump rooftops all night long if he had to, but first rest, just rest, just rest a little, rest before they opened the door and found him, how had they got to him so fast? Were there policemen all over this damn city?

There were too many things he did not understand.

He listened as the voices came closer, and then he saw the doorknob turning.

“Hold it right there!” Genero shouted.

The boys turned immediately.

“Fuzz!” Baby shouted, and dropped the gasoline can, and began running. Genero fired a warning shot over his head, and then belatedly yelled, “Police! Stop or I’ll shoot!” and then fired another warning shot. Up the street, where he had parked the RMP at the curb, Phillips was opening the door on the driver’s side and unholstering his revolver. Genero fired again, surprised when he saw the running boy drop to the snow. I got him! he thought, and then whirled to see the second boy running in the opposite direction, Holy Jesus, he thought, I’m busting up a robbery or something! “Halt!” he shouted. “Stop!” and fired into the air, and saw the boy rounding the corner, and immediately ran after him.

He chased Jimmy for three blocks in the snow, pushing through knee-deep drifts, slipping on icy patches, the wind a constant adversary, and finally caught up with him as he was scaling a back-alley fence.

“Hold it right there, Sonny,” Genero said, “or I’ll put one right up your ass.”

Jimmy hesitated astride the fence, debating whether to swing his legs up and over it, or to get down before this trigger-happy bastard really carried out his threat.

Sighing, he dropped to the ground at Genero’s feet.

“What seems to be the trouble, Officer?” he asked.

“ Trouble is right,” Genero said. “Get your hands up.”

Phillips came puffing into the alley just then. He walked up to Genero like the hair bag he was, shoved him aside, and then pushed Jimmy against the fence while he frisked him. Genero was smart enough to make certain his hand-cuffs were the ones they put on the kid, though there was a moment there when it seemed like a touch-and-go race with Phillips.

By the time they got the kid back to the squad car, by the time they went up the street to ascertain that the other kid was still alive, though barely, by the time they located the hallway door the kids were about to open, by the time they opened that door themselves and flashed their lights into the foyer, all they saw was a puddle of blood on the floor.

The blood continued up the steps.

They followed the spatters to the top floor, directly to the open door of the roof. Genero stepped outside and threw the beam of his flash across the snow.

Bloodstains and footprints led in an erratic trail to the edge of the roof, and from there to the roof beyond, and from there to the rest of the city, or perhaps the rest of the world.

Two blocks away, they found Steve Carella wandering coatless in the snow like Dr. Zhivago or somebody.

The cleanup in the tailor shop was a gruesome job.

La Bresca and Calucci were both dead. The big red-headed man named Buck was also dead. Ahmad was alive and breathing when they carted him off in the meat wagon, but he had taken two slugs in the chest from Calucci’s .45, and another in the stomach from La Bresca’s Walther. He was gushing blood, and spitting blood, and shivering and mumbling, and they doubted very much if he’d make it to the hospital alive.

Carella was shivering a little himself.

He stood near the radiator in the tailor shop, wrapped in his overcoat, his teeth chattering, and asked John the Tailor how much money there was in the metal box he was taking home.

“ Due cento tre dollari. ” John the Tailor said.

Two hundred and three dollars.

Ahmad knew the deaf man’s name.

“Orecchio,” he said, and the nurse wiped blood from his lips. “Mort Orecchio.”

“That’s not his real name,” Willis told him. “Do you know him by any other name?”

“Orecchio,” Ahmad repeated. “Mort Orecchio.”

“Is there anyone who might know his real name?”

“Orecchio,” Ahmad repeated.

“Was there anyone else in this with you?”

“The girl,” Ahmad said.

“What girl?”