She had seen something, something, and she was so focused on her effort to think what it might have been that she did not hear the driver’s door of the police car open and then chunk softly shut. She did not hear the faintly gritting footsteps on the sidewalk behind them, either.
‘Rosie?’
Bill’s voice, coming out of darkness. They were in the vestibule now, but she could barely see the picture of the old geezer (she thought maybe it was Calvin Coolidge) hanging on the wall to her right, or the scrawny shape of the coat-tree, with its brass feet and its bristle of brass hooks, standing by the stairs. Why was it so damned dark in here?
Because the overhead light-fixture was out, of course; that was simple. She knew a harder question, though: Why had the cop on the passenger side of the black-and-white been sleeping in such an uncomfortable position, with his chin way down on his chest and his cap pulled so low over his eyes that he looked like a thug in a gangster movie from the thirties?
Why was he sleeping at all, for that matter, when the subject he was detailed to watch was due at any moment? Hale would be angry if he knew that, she thought distractedly. He’d want to talk to that bluesuit. He’d want to talk to him right up dose.
‘Rosie? What’s wrong?’
The footsteps behind them were hurrying now.
She rolled mental footage backward like a videotape. Saw Bill raising his hand to the bluesuit behind the wheel of the cruiser, saying hi there, good to see you, without even opening his mouth. She saw the cop raise his own hand in return; saw the gleam of the streetlamp on the ring he wore. She hadn’t been close enough to read the words on it, but all at once she knew what they were. She’d seen them printed backward on her own flesh many
times, like an FDA stamp on a cut of meat.
Service, Loyalty, Community.
Footsteps hurried eagerly up the steps behind them. The door slammed violently shut.
Someone was panting low and fast in the dark, and Rosie could smell English Leather.
10
Norman’s mind took another of those big skips while he was standing at the sink in the Daughters and Sisters kitchen with his shirt off, washing fresh blood from his face and chest.
The sun had been low on the horizon, glaring orange into his eyes when he raised his head and reached for the towel. He touched it, and then, without a single break that he was aware of, not so much as an eyeblink, he was outside and it was dark. He was wearing the White Sox ballcap again. He was also wearing a London Fog topcoat. God knew where he’d picked it up, but it was very appropriate, since a rapidly thickening fog had settled over the city. He rubbed one hand over the expensive waterproofed fabric of the coat, liking the feel. An elegant item. He tried again to think of how he’d come by it and couldn’t. Had he killed someone else? Might have, friends and neighbors, might have; anything was possible when you were on vacation.
He looked up Trenton Street and saw a city police-car — what they called a Charlie-David car back in Norman’s bailiwick — parked hubcap-deep in the mist about three-quarters of the way to the next intersection. He reached into the deep left pocket of the coat — a really nice coat, somebody certainly had good taste — and touched something rubbery and crumpled.
He smiled happily, like a man shaking hands with an old friend. ‘Ze bool,’ he whispered. ‘El toro grande.’ He reached into the other pocket, not sure what he was going to find, only sure that there was something in there he would want.
He stabbed the tip of his middle finger into it, winced, and brought it carefully out. It was the chromed letter-opener from his pal Maude’s desk.
How she screamed, he thought, and smiled as he turned the letter-opener over in his hands, letting the light from the streetlamps run off its blade like white liquid. Yes, she had screamed . . . but then she had stopped. In the end the gals always stopped screaming, and what a relief that was.
Meantime, he had a formidable problem to solve. There would be two — count em, two —
motor-patrolmen in the car parked up there; they’d be armed with guns while he was armed only with a chrome -plated letter-opener. He had to take them out, and as silently as possible.
A pretty problem, and one he didn’t have the slightest idea of how to solve.
‘Norm,’ a voice whispered. It came from his left pocket.
He reached in and pulled out the mask. Its empty eyeholes gazed up at him with blank rapt attention, and the smile once more looked like a knowing sneer. In this light, the garlands of flowers decking the horns might have been clots of blood.
‘What?’ He spoke in a low, conspiratorial whisper. ‘What is it?’
‘Have a heart attack,’ ze bool whispered, so that was what he did. He plodded slowly up the sidewalk toward where the cruiser was parked, plodding slower and slower as he got closer and closer. He was careful to keep his eyes down and look at the car only with his peripheral vision. They would have seen him by now, even if they were inept — they’d have to, he was the only thing moving out here — and what he wanted them to see was a man looking at his own feet, a man who was working for every step. A man who was either drunk or in trouble.
His right hand was now inside his coat, massaging the left side of his chest. He could feel the blade of the letter-opener, which he was holding in that hand, making little digs in his
shirt. As he drew close to his objective he staggered — just one moderate-to-heavy stagger —
and then stopped. He stood perfectly still with his head down for a slow five-count, not allowing his body to sway so much as a quarter-inch to one side or the other. By now their first assumption — that this was Mr Ginhead making his slow way home after a few hours at the Dew Drop Inn — should be giving way to other possibilities. But he wanted them to come to him. He’d go to them if he absolutely had to, but if he had to do that, they would probably take him down.
He took another three steps, not toward the cruiser now but toward the nearest stoop. He grabbed the cold, fog-beaded iron railing which ran up its side and stood there panting, head still down, hoping he looked like a man who was having a heart attack and not one with a lethal instrument hidden inside his coat.
Just when he was beginning to think he had made a serious error here, the doors of the police car swung open. He heard this rather than saw it, and then he heard an even happier sound: feet hurrying toward him. Cheezit, Rocky, da cops, he thought, and then risked a small look. He had to risk it, had to know where they were in relation to each other. If they weren’t close together, he would have to stage a collapse . . . and that held its own ironic danger. In such a case one of them would very likely run back to the cruiser in order to radio for an ambulance.
They were a typical Charlie-David team, one vet and one kid still wet behind the ears. To Norman, the rookie looked weirdly familiar, like someone he might have seen on TV. That didn’t matter, though. They were close together, almost shoulder to shoulder, and that did matter. That was very nice. Cozy.
‘Sir?’ the one on the left — the older one — asked. ‘Sir, do you have a problem?’
‘Hurts like a bastard,’ Norman wheezed.
‘What hurts?’ Still the older one. This was a crucial moment, not quite crunch-time, but almost. The older cop could order his partner to radio for EMT backup at any moment and he would be hung, but he couldn’t strike just yet; they were just a tiny bit too far away.
At this moment he felt more like his old self than he had since starting on this expedition: cold and clear and totally here, aware of everything, from the droplets of fog on the iron railing to a dirty-gray pigeon feather lying in the gutter next to a crumpled potato chip bag.
He could hear the soft, steady susurrus of the cops’ breathing.
‘It’s in here,’ Norman gasped, rubbing under his coat with his right hand. The blade of the letter-opener poked through his shirt and pricked his skin, but he hardly felt it. ‘It’s like having a gallbladder attack, only in my chest.’