Эд Макбейн - ’Til Death

The 112th Squad had sent one detective over because the murder had been committed within its boundaries and because the case would officially be theirs from here on in. Homicide, informed that four bona fide detectives were at the scene, decided not to send anyone over. But a police photographer was taking pictures of the corpse fastidiously, if without the energetic grasshopperiness of a Jody Lewis. The assistant medical examiner was officially pronouncing Birnbaum dead and instructing the stretcher bearers on how to carry him out to the meat wagon waiting next to the curb in front of Birnbaum’s house. Some boys from the lab had put in an appearance, too, and they were attempting now to find foot imprints from which they could make a cast. All in all, everyone was pretty busy compiling the statistics of sudden and violent death. Unfortunately, none of the investigators felt the need to make a telephone call. Had the need presented itself, one or another of the men might have wandered into the Birnbaum house that stood forty feet from the shielding line of shrubbery behind which they worked.

In the attic of the Birnbaum house, Cotton Hawes felt his strength returning. For the past ten minutes, he had lain silently, his eyes flicking from one corner of the attic to another, and then back to the patiently waiting powerhouse squatting on the floor near the window. The attic was filled with the discarded paraphernalia of living: bundles of old magazines, a green trunk marked “CAMP IDLEMERE” in white paint, a dressmaker’s dummy, a lawn mower without blades, a hammer, an Army duffel bag, a radio with a smashed face, three albums marked “Photographs” and numerous other items that had undoubtedly cluttered the busy life of a family.

The only item that interested Hawes was the hammer.

It rested on top of the trunk some four feet from where he lay.

If he could get the hammer without being heard or seen, he would promptly use it on the sniper’s skull. Provided the sniper didn’t turn first and shoot him. It would not be too pleasant to get shot at close range with a rifle.

Well, when? Hawes asked himself.

Not now. I’m not strong enough yet.

You’re never going to get any stronger, Hawes thought. Are you afraid of that big bastard crouched by the window?

Yes.

What?

Yes, I’m afraid of him. He can break me in half even without using his rifle. And he may use it. So I’m afraid of him, and the hell with you.

Let’s go, coward, Hawes thought. Let’s make our play for the hammer. There’s no time like the present, the man said.

The man didn’t have to face Neanderthal.

Look, are we...?

All right, all right, let’s go.

Silently, he rolled over onto his side. The sniper did not turn. He rolled again, completing a full turn this time, coming to rest a foot away from the trunk. Swallowing hard, he reached out for the hammer. Soundlessly, he slid it off the trunk and gripped it tightly in his right hand.

He swallowed again and got to his knees.

Okay, he thought, we rush him now, hammer raised. We crease his skull before he knows what hit him.

Ready?

He got to a crouching position.

Set?

He stood up and raised the hammer high.

Go!

He took a step forward.

The door behind him opened suddenly.

“Hold it, mister!” a voice said, and he whirled to face a big blonde in a red silk dress. She was reaching into her purse as he leaped at her.

It cannot be said of Cotton Hawes that he did not ordinarily enjoy wrestling with blondes whose proportions matched this one’s. For here was truly a blonde. Here was a handful, and an armful, and an eyeful; here was the image that automatically came to mind whenever anyone muttered the magic words “big blonde.”

Standing on a runway in Union City, this girl would have caused heart stoppage. Third-row bald heads would have turned pale with trembling.

On the legitimate Broadway stage, this girl would have set the theater on fire, set the customers on their ears, and set the critics rushing back to their typewriters to pound out ecstatic notices.

In a bedroom — Hawes’s imagination reeled with the thought.

But unfortunately, this girl was not on a runway or a stage or a bed. This girl was standing in the doorway to a room no bigger than an upper berth in a Pullman. This girl was obviously not planning to set anyone but Hawes on his ear. She reached into her purse with all the determination of a desert rat digging for water, and then her hand stopped, and a surprised look came over her lovely features. In clear, crystal-pure, ladylike tones, she yelled, “Where’s my goddamn gun?” and Hawes leaped on her.

The sniper turned from the window at the same moment.

The girl was all flesh and a yard wide. She was also all teeth and all nails. She clamped two rows of teeth into Hawes’s hand as he struggled for a grip, and then her nails flashed out wildly, raking the uninjured half of his face. The sniper circled closer, shouting, “Get away from him, Oona! I can’t do anything with you—”

Hawes did not want to hit the girl. He especially did not want to hit her with the hammer. But the hammer was the only weapon he possessed and he reasoned correctly that if this girl got away from him, Neanderthal would either club him into the floorboards with the stock of the rifle or, worse, plunk a few slugs into his chest. Neither prospect seemed particularly entertaining. The blonde herself was not entertaining in the slightest. Wiggling in his arms, she delivered a roundhouse punch that almost knocked out his right eye. He winced in pain and swung at her with the hammer, but she ducked inside the blow and brought her knee to his groin in an old trick she’d probably learned in grammar school, so expertly did she execute it. Hawes had been kicked before. He’d also been kicked in the groin before. His reactions, he discovered, were always the same. He always doubled over in pain. But this time, as he doubled, he clutched at the blonde because the blonde was insurance. As long as her hot little body remained close to his, the sniper was helpless. He clutched at her, and he caught the front of her dress and it gave under his hand, tearing in a long rip that exposed the blonde’s white brassiere and three-quarters of her left breast.

The material kept ripping, with the blonde at the end of it like an unraveling ball of wool in the paws of a playful kitten. He swung the hammer again, catching her on the shoulder, stopping her movement, clutching again, catching flesh this time, his fingers closing tightly as he pulled her toward him. The blonde’s dress was torn to the waist now, but Hawes wasn’t interested in anatomy. Hawes was interested in clubbing her with the hammer. He swung her around, and her backside came up hard against him, a solid muscular backside. He swung one arm around her neck, his elbow cushioned between the fleshy mounds of the girl’s breasts, and he brought back the hand with the hammer again, and the girl pulled another old grammar school trick.

She bent suddenly from the knees, and then shot upward with the force of a piston, the top of her skull slamming into Hawes’s jaw. His arm dropped. The girl swung around and leaped at him, a nearly bare-breasted fury, clawing at his eyes. He swung the hammer. It struck her right arm, and she clutched at it in pain, her face distorted. “You son of a bitch!” she said, and she reached down, her knee coming up, her skirt pulling back over legs that would have been magnificent on the French Riviera stemming from a bikini, and then she pulled off one high-heeled pump and came at Hawes with the shoe clutched like a mace.

“Get the hell away from him!” the sniper yelled, but the girl would not give up the fight. Circling like wrestlers, the girl’s chest heaving in the barely restraining brassiere, Hawes panting breathlessly, one holding a hammer, the other a spiked-heeled shoe, they searched for an opening. The girl’s lips were skinned back over teeth that looked as if they could bite Hawes in two.