Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

Malloy said, “I wasn’t making any pitch, Steve. The Sarge and me were just talking about old times. Never having been a cop, you wouldn’t understand.”

“In that case, Sergeant, there’s a little diner up the street. Maybe we could get out of this cold and have some coffee? On me, naturally.”

From the sidewalk, Evans reported, “They haven’t got no crowbar, Sarge. They said how about the back? Maybe the back door ain’t strong.”

Proudy rubbed the side of his nose. “That’s the first sensible thing I heard today. Mick, you going to be around for a while?”

“Sure. I got something I want to talk to you about.”

“I thought you did. Okay, you stay here till we open it from inside. If Williams comes with the ax, tell him we’re around back. Mr. Marshal can stay to keep you company, if he wants to. When we got this wound up, you and me will talk.”

On one side of the house, a narrow areaway choked with debris led toward the rear. Sergeant Proudy entered it and Evans followed; it was too narrow for the two to walk abreast. Abandoned trash cans waited there with engine blocks and fenders, lightless table lamps, and broken stoves bereft of heat. It was dark as midnight, and everything lay under a film of snow.

The policemen took their flashlights from their belts and used them to light their way until Sergeant Proudy slipped on the tilted side of an old Frigidaire and fell, smashing the lens and bulb of his. Evans helped him up. One hand was skinned. Proudy sucked it and wrapped it in his handkerchief.

“Let me go first now,” Evans said.

“How are you going to get past? You want me to lie down so you can walk over my back?”

“Take my flash then, Sarge.”

“With my luck, I’d break that too. Shine it around my feet. Kind of through my legs so I can see where I’m going.”

“Sarge—”

“Yeah, what?”

“You hear somethin’?”

For a second the two stood listening. “Just the traffic over on the freeway.”

“This ain’t like that.”

Sergeant Proudy wiped his nose with the handkerchief on his hand. “So what’s it like?”

“I don’t know. Like a engine turnin’ over real slow. Thub-ub, thub-ub, thub-ub, like your heart.”

“You’re hearing your own heart, that’s all. The pulse starts pounding in your ear and you hear it. Happens all the time.”

“This ain’t my heart,” Evans said.

“Oh, yeah? Turn it off and see if that noise don’t stop. Now shine that light at my legs like I told you.” Sergeant Proudy attempted to grip the wall with his good hand as he clambered across the junk. “Got to be careful here,” he said. “Bedsprings.”

“Maybe there’s a alley. We could go down to the end of the block and see.”

“What’s the matter with you, Fred? We’re halfway there.”

“It still goes back a long ways,” Evans said.

“These houses aren’t that big.”

“What’s the big black thing at the end?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Down at the end, Sarge.”

“There isn’t a damn thing.”

“It’s gone now,” Evans said.

Sergeant Proudy, seeking a toehold on a pile of frozen garbage, snorted. “Probably a car or a truck in the alley.”

There was a narrow alley, but no car. The yard into which Ben Free had swept his fragments of glass, his bent bottle caps, stood side by side with a dozen others much the same. Or perhaps instead of standing, it slept beneath its snow. Perhaps they all slept.

And it was snowing much harder now, and a cold wind had sprung up to swirl the falling snow. There is a legend that horizontal snow will drive you mad; it is believed by those who believe in aspirin in cola and the piety of politicians. If they are correct, there was much madness behind the windows of the shabby houses. Their bricks were brothers to the bricks of Belmont Hospital; their blind, staring, half-opened eyes, their quarter-open and slit eyes, luminously yellow, peered from the skulls of lunatics.

“Here it is,” Evans said, then he too slipped. His flashlight fell clattering into the corpse of a jukebox, and the red and green glowed again with the ghost of its old plastic gaiety.

Sergeant Proudy swore and shouldered him out of the way to grope for it himself.

“We’re even,” Evans said. “Anyway, mine didn’t go out.”

“Yeah, but you dropped it.”

“That’s what I said, Sarge.”

“So I’m going to borrow it for a while, okay? I’m surprised mine busted. Those things are usually built pretty good.”

“I cracked the glass in mine once. I socked this gambler with it. You got it?”

“Yeah … .No, damn it, this’s something else.”

Snow swirled about the two men.

Glasser wore blue-tinted spectacles and a large and rather hairy tweed coat. The coat was burdened now with snow; the spectacles made Glasser appear blind, though he was not. He hurried forward, hand extended, as a real blind man might who had been informed of the proximity of the Messiah. “I’m Nate Glasser,” he announced. “Pleased to meet you, Sergeant.”

“Not no sergeant,” the policeman with the ax told him.

“I’m sorry,” Glasser said. “I thought you were a certain Sergeant Proudy.”

“Huh uh.”

“You see, as I walked past the police car, that one back there, I couldn’t help but overhear the radio. They were asking for Sergeant Proudy.”

“That’s our unit,” the big policeman said, quickening his step. “I believe I better see about it.”

He swung open the squad car’s door and jerked out the microphone. “This Unit Twenty-three, Dispatcher. Citizen say you calling us.”

“You still at that demolition site, Twenty-three?”

“Parked across the street.”

“We got a call, a seventeen fifty.”

“What address?”

“Caller didn’t say. Just that it was the Baker house, and there was a cruiser out front, but she didn’t see any officers. Then she yelled and hung up. We thought it might be you.”

“I’ll have a look,” the policeman said and tossed the microphone onto the seat.

Glasser touched his arm. “What’s a seventeen fifty, officer?”

“Home invasion. You know a Baker house ’round here?”

“I’m afraid I’m a stranger. I’m with Pee, Em, Gee, and Dee.”

“Hey!” The policeman raised the red ax he carried and trotted toward a group standing chatting on the sidewalk.

Loping beside him, Glasser told him, “They’re no good. They’re agents too. I know the whole bunch. Except the little guy.”

The little guy had turned at the policeman’s shout. Unlike the rest, he was shabby. His thick glasses scarcely reached the second button of the policeman’s coat.

“Sir, you know the Baker house?”

“Sure,” the little guy said. He pointed to the house next to the one before which he had been standing. “Not condemned. If they really build the ramp, it’ll be right next to the supports.”

The policeman was not listening. Ax in hand, he mounted the stoop, taking two steps at a time.

The door opened and a second policeman looked out. He had a round, freckled face. “I thought that was you, Bill. You got it, huh?”

Williams relaxed and lowered his ax. “Yeah. What you doing in here?”

“Playin’ with a kitty.”

“What you say?”

“You asked me. Come on in.”

Williams did. Like a shadow, the little guy slipped in with him, ducking under his arm as he closed the door. Inside, an old woman sat in a rocking chair, smiling indulgently. Sergeant Proudy crouched on the worn oriental carpet before her. He held a length of string from which was suspended a crumpled ball of pink paper. A kitten with intelligent yellow eyes watched the paper with fascination, occasionally extending a tentative paw.