Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“You mean you went in for it yourself?” the man asked, widening his eyes in surprise.

“Too risky that way, they might identify me later. I waited outside the door, and when I saw a Western Union messenger go by, I handed him the money for it, told him what name to give, and had him bring it out to me. Then I slipped him a buck. They probably figured he was sent down after it special. A lot safer all around.”

The man looked at the ticket like you do the key to a jail-cell when it’s put into your hand. Then he laid it down on the table, outside its envelope.

“Is your passport in shape?” Terry asked, businesslike.

“I had it renewed a year and a half ago, before the net closed up as tight as it is now. It’s good for another six months yet.”

“You just have to turn it in at any American consulate wherever you are, when you want it renewed,” Terry reminded him. “It won’t be held out on you, there’s no Federal rap against you.” He gave him a look sharp as a gimlet, that brought the conversation up short. “Now let’s forget all that and get down to the main thing. What about the money? Didj’ do what I told you about that?”

“I did just what you told me.”

“Keep on,” Terry prodded.

“I told them I couldn’t come up there for it. I had them send a teller down with it. He came accompanied by an armed guard.”

“I watched them come and I watched them go,” Terry said contemptuously. “That guard couldn’t have shot his way out of a plastic garment-bag.”

“The minute I’d closed the door behind them, I split it two ways. There’s twenty thousand in my inside coat-pocket, in an unmarked sealed folder. The rest is in this locked attach£-case; I have the key to it around my neck on a metal chain.”

“But you only signed one withdrawal-slip for the whole amount, right?” Terry prodded, narrowing his eyes. “The twenty thousand isn’t set apart from the rest, separated in any way?”

“Only one, that’s right.”

“That leaves a hole there the twenty thousand can drop into nicely. The bank on this side doesn’t know how much you put into the bank on the other. The bank on the other side doesn’t know how much you took out of this one. The two can’t even be linked, because under Swiss banking law, the names of depositors are never given, only the numbers on the accounts. That covers up the hole again, see?” He reached out suddenly.

“What are you doing that for?” the man asked tautly. “I’m not ready yet.”

“I only want to see if the coast is clear out in the hall.”

He did just that and nothing more. Partly opened the door, stuck his head and one shoulder out at a lean, and scanned the hall.

The hall was clear. Good and clear.

He rechained the door. Then, still facing it, so that his own body hid the act from view, he took out his gun, looked down at it in reflex sight-identification, and turned around with it. Unexpectedly, but without the slightest sign of excitement. Just about like you’d turn when you want to say something to someone behind you.

The man was starting a diagonal trip from bureau-drawer across to valise, a tier of shirts stacked in his arms. Terry stepped out into his path so that he cut him off. Then he sighted at him, fired without the twitch of a muscle showing on his face, and hit him straight between the eyes.

The shirts slid forward one after the other, like they do coming down off a shelf, but the punch of the bullet knocked the man back the other way. He hit the bureau first, and then went coasting down that, and hit the floor and lay there, already dead since up above when he was still on his feet. But the outthrust bottom bureau-drawer caught one of his wrists, and his hand stayed hooked up over that instead of going all the way down with the rest of him.

He didn’t even have a death-expression on his face, it had been so quick. He just looked like he was asleep and breathing through his mouth.

He’d found peace at last. He’d found rest at last. He’d found where no cop could go after him any more at last.

Terry moved quickly, with the smooth suppleness of the young animal he was. The young human animal that kills. Not a move wasted, not a move left out. Not a move too many, but not a move too few. What the auto-advertisers used to refer to as fluid drive, no comic inference intended. Like the rhythm of a metronome, the rhythm of the macabre.

He put down his gun, and he shrugged off his coat.

He pulled the hanger out of one of the garments slung over a chair, and he draped his own coat over it.

He suspended the hanger from the edge of a framed picture that hung on the wall, at about shoulder-height. The coat overlapped the picture a good deal, but that didn’t matter.

He stepped in and pulled and tugged at one shoulder of the coat, so that it stood up above the hanger in a little bulge or puff instead of clinging to it snugly.

He picked up the other gun, the one he’d brought in, and he sighted at the bulge and fired at it and hit it. It was a tough target but not an impossible one. He’d been to police training-school. The coat jerked wildly, and there was a chalky crunch as the bullet went into the wall in back of it.

He threw the gun, still salivating smoke, over at the dead man; it didn’t matter where it fell.

He picked up a nail-file from the bureau, and dug it once across his own shoulder. It slit his shirt and maybe unraveled the top layer of his skin a little.

He flicked off the five little flesh-colored rubber finger-caps he’d worn topping each finger, and crammed them into his pocket. Doctors use them to carry out certain probing operations, but they usually only wear one, on the index-finger; he’d had them on all five. They’re easy enough to obtain.

By now the phone was already ringing in frightened inquiry, and voices were starting to bubble up in the hall outside.

He took down his coat, chucked the hanger aside, and then writhed into it.

Then he went over and unchained the door and threw it open, with the same hand he was holding the gun in.

They were all back at a safe distance, afraid to come any closer, not knowing what it was or who was in there. When they saw him come out and stand there, the protector, the upholder of law, a great sigh of undisguised relief went up. You could sense it rather than hear it. You could see it in all their faces. You could see the confidence come back and chase the fear away.

Then he spotted his partner, his relief, just come on-shift, muscling his way through them from the very rear, and he shouted out to him for all he was worth, in the ringing tones of a long-overdue reckoning, the crow of the battle-cock flapping his wings atop his fallen foe:

“I got him! Call Mike at the hospital, and tell him I got him! Tell him it was me, Cleary! Tell him I got him for him!”

And long after his partner was on the phone breaking the news, and long after his partner was off the phone again and all the wheels of procedure had started to turn, he kept walking back and forth in there shouting “I got him! I got him!” High on victory, souped-up with the lovely, the lovable end to a bitter and deadly hate.

Until they had to sit him down in a chair and slip him a nip of the dead man’s Courvoisier to help him to unwind. And even then—

“I got him!..

“I got him for him!..

“I got him!”

Every Saturday night he and Warren used to get together after supper and go downtown. Downtown was a special sort of place, a grown-up sort of place. Just like Saturday night was a special sort of night. Downtown was a Saturday night sort of place.