Ed Mcbain - The Heckler

Byrnes waited.

“Sir?” the woman said.

“Yes?”

“He seems to have come through the crisis. His temperature’s gone down radically, and he’s resting quietly. Sir, I’m sorry, the switchboard is—”

“Go ahead, take your calls,” Byrnes said, and he hung up.

“How is he?” Hernandez asked.

“He’ll be all right,” Byrnes said. He nodded. “He’ll be all right.”

“I could feel the shadow,” Hernandez said suddenly, but he did not explain his words.

* * *

“ONE OF THEM SPECIALSyou got advertised on the side of the truck,” the patrolman said. “With the chopped walnuts.”

“We’re all out of the walnut crunch,” the deaf man said quickly. He was not frightened, only annoyed. He could see the ferry boat approaching the slip, could see the captain on the bridge leaning out over the windshield, peering into the rain as he maneuvered the boat.

“No walnut?” the patrolman said. “That’s too bad. I had my face fixed for one.”

“Yes, that’s too bad,” the deaf man said. The ferry nudged the dock pilings and moved in tight, wedging toward the dock. A deck hand leaped ashore and turned on the mechanism to lower the dock to meet the boat’s deck.

“Okay, let me have a plain chocolate pop,” the patrolman said.

“We’re all out of those, too,” the deaf man said.

“Well, what have you got?”

“We’re empty. We were heading back for the plant.”

“In Majesta?”

“Yes,” the deaf man said.

“Oh.” The patrolman shook his head again. “Well, okay,” he said, and he started away from the truck. They were raising the gates on the ferry now, and the cars were beginning to unload. As the patrolman passed the rear of the truck, he glanced at the license plate and noticed that the plate read IS 6341, and he knew that “IS” plates were issued to drivers in Isola and that all Majesta plates began with the letters MA. And he wondered what the probability—the word “probability” never once entered his head because he was not a mathematician or a statistician or a logician, he was only a lousy patrolman—he wondered what the probability was of a company with its plant on Majesta having a truck bearing plates which were issued in Isola, and he continued walking because he figured What the hell, it’s possible.

And then he thought of a second probability, and he wondered when he had ever seen an ice-cream truck carrying two men in uniform. And he thought, Well, that’s possible, they’re both going back to the plant, maybe one is giving the other a lift. In which case, where had the second guy left his truck?

And, knowing nothing at all about the theory of probability, he knew only that it looked wrong, it felt wrong, and so he began thinking about ice-cream trucks in general, and he seemed to recall a teletype he’d read back at the precinct before coming on duty this afternoon, something about an ice-cream truck having been—

He turned and walked back to the cab of the truck. Rafe had just started the engine again and was ready to drive the truck onto the ferry.

“Hey,” the patrolman said.

A hurried glance passed between Rafe and the deaf man.

“Mind showing me the registration for this vehicle, Mac?” the patrolman said.

“It’s in the glove compartment,” the deaf man said calmly. There was two and a half million dollars in the ice box of the truck, and he was not going to panic now. He could see fear all over Rafe’s face. One of them had to be calm. He thumbed open the glove compartment and began riffling through the junk there. The patrolman waited, his hand hovering near the holstered .38 at his side.

“Now where the devil is it?” the deaf man asked. “What’s the trouble anyway, officer? We’re trying to catch that ferry.”

“Yeah, well the ferry can wait, Mac,” the patrolman said. He turned to Rafe. “Let me see your license.”

Rafe hesitated, and the deaf man knew exactly what Rafe was thinking—he was thinking his normal operator’s license was not valid for the driving of a commercial vehicle, he was thinking that and knowing that if he showed the patrolman his operator’s license, the patrolman would ask further questions. And yet, there was no sense in not producing the license. If Rafe balked at this point, that holstered .38 would be in the policeman’s hand in an instant. There was nothing to do but play the percentages and hope they could talk their way out of this before the ferry pulled out because the next ferry was not until 8:45, and they sure as hell couldn’t sit around here until then, there was nothing to do but bluff the hand; the stakes were certainly high enough.

“Show him your license, Rafe,” the deaf man said.

Rafe hesitated.

“Show it to him.”

Nervously, Rafe reached into his back pocket for his wallet. The deaf man glanced toward the ferry. Two sedans had boarded the boat and a few passengers had ambled aboard after them. On the bridge, the captain looked at his watch, and then reached up for the pull cord. The bellow of the foghorn split the evening air. First warning.

“Hurry up!” the deaf man said.

Rafe handed the patrolman his license. The patrolman ran his flashlight over it.

“This is an operator’s license,” he said. “You’re driving a truck, Mac.”

“Officer, we’re trying to catch that ferry,” the deaf man said.

“Yeah, well ain’t that too bad?” the patrolman said, reverting to type, becoming an authoritative son of a bitch because he had them dead to rights and now he was going to play Mr. District Attorney. “Maybe I ought to take a look in your ice box, huh? How come you ain’t got no ice cre—”

And the deaf man said, “Move her, Rafe!”

Rafe stepped on the gas pedal, and the foghorn erupted from the bridge of the boat at the same moment, and the deaf man saw the gates go down on the ferry, and suddenly the boat was moving away from the dock, and the patrolman shouted “Hey!” behind them, and then a shot echoed on the rain-streaked air, and the deaf man knew that the percentages had run out, and suddenly the patrolman fired again and Rafe screamed sharply and fell forward over the wheel and the truck swerved wildly out of control as the deaf man leaped from the cab.

His mind was churning with probabilities. Jump for the ferry? No, because I’m unarmed and the captain will take me into custody. Run for the street? No, because the patrolman will gun me down before I’m halfway across the dock, all that money, all that sweet money, predicted error, I did predict the error, dammit, I did take into account that fact that some policemen would undoubtedly be somewhere on our escape route, but an ice-cream pop, God, an ice-cream pop! the river is the only way, and he ran for the fence.

“Halt!” the patrolman shouted. “Halt, or I’ll fire!”

The deaf man kept running. How long can I hold my breath under water? he wondered. How far can I swim?

The patrolman fired over his head, and then he aimed at the deaf man’s legs as the deaf man scrambled over the cyclone fence separating the dock from the water.

He stood poised on the top of the fence for just a moment, as if undecided, as if uncertain that the percentages were truly with him, and then suddenly he leaped into the air and away from the fence and the dock, just as the patrolman triggered off another shot. He hung silhouetted against the gray sky, and then dropped like a stone to the water below. The patrolman rushed to the fence.

Five shots, the deaf man thought. He’ll have to reload. Quickly, he surfaced, took a deep, lung-filling breath, and then ducked below the surface again.

All that money, he thought. Well—next time.