McBain, Ed - Killer's Payoff

“Then?” Hawes said.

“On the night of June twenty-sixth we bought a .300 Savage.”

“Why that gun?”

“First, because we had some silly notion of disfiguring Kramer beyond recognition. Second, because I own a Savage,” Murphy said. “We thought if you ever got around to checking guns we owned, you’d eliminate mine and eliminate me as a suspect at the same time.”

“Who fired the gun?” Hawes asked.

The men remained silent.

“You were acting in concert,” Hawes said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“The best shot among us fired the gun,” Ruther said. “Let’s leave it that way.”

“Did Murphy drive the car?”

“Yes, of course,” Murphy said. “I’m an excellent driver.”

“What did the third man do?”

“He was at the back window with an auxiliary rifle. We didn’t want to fire from two different guns unless the first shot missed. We wanted it to appear as if one person had done the killing.”

“You damn near succeeded,” Hawes said.

“We have succeeded,” Ruther answered.

“Maybe, and maybe not. A lot of people are on this case. Adding another homicide to it isn’t going to help your chances any.”

“Will it hurt them any? First-degree murder is first-degree murder. You can only burn in the electric chair once.”

“Where’s the breakfast?” Miller asked.

“What did you do with the rifle you used?” Hawes asked back. A good twenty minutes had passed since Carella’s call. Facing the possibility that Carella would never arrive, Hawes began sizing up the men in the room.

“We did just what you thought we did,” Ruther said.

“We disassembled it and buried the parts in separate locations.”

“I see,” Hawes said. Murphy was obviously the weakest link. He was an old man who couldn’t shoot straight, and he was carrying two guns. Hawes noticed for the first time that the only gun in the room that was not carrying a silencer was his own gun, the gun tucked into Murphy’s waistband.

“Did you just buy these guns?” Hawes asked.

“They’re part of my collection,” Murphy said. “We’ll bury them, too, after we use them.”

“For a guy who’s innocent all the way down the line,” Hawes lied, “you’re sure joining a sucker’s game, Murphy.”

“You just finished saying we had acted in concert when we killed Kramer,” Murphy said. “I’m an old man, mister. Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes.”

“You must be old,” Hawes said.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You’re covering me with an automatic that has the safety on!”

“What?” Murphy said. His eyes flicked downward only momentarily, but that was all the time Hawes needed. He flung himself across the room at Murphy, his left hand crashing down onto Murphy’s right wrist.

He heard the puffing whisper of a silenced gun being triggered as he hit the old man full in the face, knocking him to the floor. He saw the chunk of wood erupt from the floor not six inches from his head. And then Murphy’s gun was in his hand, and Hawes threw himself flat on the floor and fired. The gun made hardly any sound at all. The scene was being played with deadly cold ruthlessness, but it was being played in paradoxical whispers. His first shot dropped Ruther. There were two down now, and one to go.

Miller backed off against the door, leveling his pistol.

“Drop it, Miller!” Hawes shouted. “I’m shooting to kill!”

Miller hesitated a moment, and then dropped the gun. Hawes kicked the gun to one side and then whirled on Murphy. The old man was unconscious, incapable of drawing the fourth gun from his waistband.

Frank Ruther, sitting on the floor clutching his bleeding shoulder, shouted, “Why didn’t you shoot him, you fool? Why didn’t you shoot him?”

And Miller, standing wearily and dejectedly, answered, “I’m a lousy shot. You know that, Frank. I’m a lousy shot.”

It was then that the door burst inward.

Steve Carella lowered his leg from the flat-footed kick that had sprung the lock. His service revolver was in his right hand. He looked around the room quickly. Then he shrugged.

“All over?” he asked.

“Including the shooting,” Hawes said.

“These our birds?”

“Um-huh,” Hawes said.

“The Kramer kill?”

“Um-huh.”

“Um,” Carella said.

“You sure must have broken a lot of traffic regulations getting here,” Hawes said. “Boy, what speed!”

“I thought you were nuts when I first spoke to you on the phone,” Carella said. “It took me about five minutes to realize you were in trouble. I thought my call had broken in on you and a girl.”

“You’ve got an evil mind.”

“Turns out you didn’t need me, anyway,” Carella said. Again he shrugged.

“If you’d got to the squad at eight, when you were supposed to,” Hawes said, “you could have been here in time for the party.”

“I had a stop to make first,” Carella said. “I went there from my house, and then I went to the squad.”

“Where was that?”

“Lucy Mencken’s place.”

“What for?” Hawes asked suspiciously.

“I gave her half a dozen pictures and negatives. I didn’t like the idea of somebody living in fear for the rest of her life.”

“Was she appreciative?” Hawes asked.

“We cooked hot rum toddies over the fire the stuff made. It was very cozy.”

Hawes raised one eyebrow.

“Now who has the evil mind?” Carella asked.

Hawes made a rule of never replying to accusations that were true. He walked to the phone, lifted the receiver, and waited for an operator. When the operator came on, he said, “Frederick 7-8024, please.”

Carella was busily handcuffing Miller to Murphy.

All at once, Hawes felt very sleepy. He yawned.

“Don’t go to sleep on us, Cotton,” Carella said. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”

Hawes yawned again and then watched Carella as he walked to the window and lifted the shade. Sunlight spilled into the hotel room.

“Eighty-seventh Precinct, Sergeant Murchison,” a voice said.

“Dave, this is Cotton. I’m at the Parker Hotel in Isola. I’ll need a meat wagon and some…”

Murchison listened patiently, taking notes. Across the street from the station house, he could hear the kids playing in Grover Park. He wished he were a park attendant on a day like this. When Hawes finished talking, Murchison cut the connection. He was about to order the ambulance and the uniformed cops Hawes had requested when the lights on the switchboard began blinking again.

Murchison sighed and plugged in his socket.

“Eighty-seventh Precinct,” he said, “Sergeant Murchison.”

Another day had started.

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FAT OLLIE’S BOOK

ED McBAIN

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1

RESPONSE TIME —from the moment someone at the Martin Luther King Memorial Hall dialed 911 to the moment Car 81, in the Eight-Eight’s Boy sector rolled up—was exactly four minutes and twenty-six seconds. Whoever had fired the shots was long gone by then, but a witness outside the Hall had seen someone running from the alleyway on its eastern end and he was eager to tell the police and especially the arriving TV crew all about it.

The witness was very drunk.

In this neighborhood, when you heard shots, you ran. In this neighborhood, if you saw someone running, you knew he wasn’t running to catch a bus. This guy wasn’t running. Instead, he was struggling to keep his balance, wobbling from one foot to the other. Nine, ten in the morning, whatever the hell it was already, and he could hardly stand up and he stunk like a distillery. He finally sat on one of the garbage cans in the alley. Behind him, rain water from a gutter dripped into a leader and flowed into an open sewer grate.