Epitaph For A Tramp (14 page)

“The Perry Street apartment’s in the block between Fourth and Bleecker,” I told him.

He’d had the car idling. He grinned at me, shifted and swung out. He went across to Second Avenue and straight down. He drove like most cops, treating the general run of working men’s cars like moving targets. Once or twice he gave me a nudge and I opened the siren for him. If I’d been in a better mood I would have watched the street corners for familiar faces to wave to.

“You were going to tell me about Coffey,” I said after a while. “What the hell, he walks around as if he knows where the department hides the bodies.”

He stopped the shenanigans with the car when I asked him that, punching his tongue into the side of his cheek for a minute before he answered. “Coffey’s all right,” he said then. “His wife and kid were killed in an auto smash up near Poughkeepsie about two months ago. Son of a bitch driving the other car was drunk as a calf and walked away without a bruise. They booked
him on vehicular manslaughter but I don’t suppose that helps Coffey much.”

“He’s going to work it off, you think?”

“Either that or he’ll walk in on some trigger-happy junkie one afternoon and not get his own gun out in time, and who’s going to know whether he was really trying or not? I talked it over with the day chief. At least he still gets things done. He’s thorough.”

“He would be,” I said meaninglessly. I sat there remembering how I’d needled him.

We cruised through the Village slowly. Brannigan cut west on Charles Street, so that we could come back along Perry with the one-way traffic. “I want to roll by once,” he told me. “Perry’s left-side parking only, so the stake-out will be on my side. I’ll tell him to give us a horn signal if anything comes up while we’re inside.” He glanced at his watch. “Not that anything will, though. Sabatini’s had more than three hours since he slugged you. He was probably down here long before I had a chance to put anybody on it.”

“He’ll be back,” I said.

“You got reasons?”

“Two. He still doesn’t know she’s dead. Also he won’t be expecting badges. He thinks I’m in it alone. I’m the same kind of grafter he is.”

We had made the turn from Hudson Street and I could see Sally’s building up ahead. I pointed it out but Brannigan was more interested in locating his stake-out. He was moving on little more than half a horsepower. “Ought to be along in here. Yeah, the Ford. Joe Turner. Now what the silly hell’s he got his motor running for?”

We stopped next to the Ford. The detective named Turner was being busy with a day-old
Journal
but he had spotted us before we came alongside. He gave Brannigan a nod instead of
a salute, showed me a sallow, pock-marked face I had seen in a squad room once or twice and was talking before Brannigan could say anything.

“You’re just on it, Capt’n. Green Chevy sedan, ‘56. The guy driving checks out perfect with the Sabatini make. He’s cruised by twice, circling the block and looking at the house. I was going to wait until I catch him in the mirror again and then pull out easy—let it look as if I’m giving up the parking space but then block him when he gets in close. The street’s narrow enough.”

“How long’s it take him to make it around?”

“Four, five minutes. He’s about due. You want to pull up the block so I can have room to—”

“Too late,” I said.

Turner and Brannigan looked. “That’s it,” Turner said. The green car had just made the turn a block and a half away.

“I’ll fake a stall up ahead,” Brannigan said quickly. “Pull out behind him, Joe. We’ll box him.”

Brannigan accelerated slowly, watching the rear-view mirror. Sabatini was coming on in a crawl. We crept past five or six parked cars, then came to a hydrant area. Brannigan swung left and into it, then backed out again. Sabatini wouldn’t see the hydrant. Nate was being just another incompetent driver, misjudging the size of a parking slot.

Sabatini kept on coming. One more ridiculous maneuver and we were angled across the middle of the road like beginners flunking the test. Brannigan cut the ignition then. “Wait for Turner,” he muttered. He bent forward and began to aggravate the starter noisily.

I was slumped low and out of Duke’s line of vision. He had held up about fifteen yards behind us, probably ready to start leaning on his horn. And then Turner pulled out to barricade the street behind him.

“Now,” Brannigan said.

Duke’s car was facing us like the stem on a letter “T.” Brannigan was on the side closest to him. He threw open his door and swung out fast. I had to go out the opposite side and chase around the rear of our car. Brannigan’s hand was in his jacket before I was moving.

“Police, Sabatinil Get out of there with your hands high!”

But Duke wasn’t buying. His eyes shot to the rear and he saw Tinner running toward him. His gears clattered and the Chevy leaped forward with a roar like something being abused in a wind tunnel.

It lurched wildly. There was no room in the street for it to get by. So Duke decided to take the sidewalk. Brannigan let out a yell and heaved himself aside and I saw him go sprawling into the gutter.

I was coming around from behind our car on the dead run, between it and the curb—just where Duke was aiming the Chevy. I snatched at the post of a no-parking sign to stop myself. My .38 was in my right hand so I snatched with my left. I swung up and around like a kid on a maypole. And then the streamer broke and the playground came up and whacked me in the shoulder.

I heard Turner’s Special fire twice, still from behind Duke somewhere, but somehow I didn’t seem to care. Not really. All I cared about were the four thousand dollars in the First National City Bank it had taken me thirty-one years to accumulate. I lay on the sidewalk, feeling very sad and wishing I’d had the sense to blow some of the money on a little fan in my youth, while the Chevy rocked along the concrete directly at me.

CHAPTER 12

I rolled. I squirmed. I even slud, like in “He slud into third base,” from the collected writings of Jerome Herman (Dizzy) Dean.

There was a barred window at ground level in the building nearest me. I was over there and hugging the bars like a frenzied chimpanzee who can’t reach the peanuts when the car screamed in my ear and jerked around at a lopsided angle back into the street.

Turner sprinted after it. He stopped, fired five more times. The fifth one was the click of his hammer striking an empty shell.

“Son of a—”

I got back on my feet fast. The rear window of Duke’s car was shattered and half torn away, which stopped him as much as water stops a trout. He was a hundred yards off before Brannigan heaved himself into our car. I grabbed up my gun from where it had slithered away and threw myself into the back just as Nate ground gears and started up.

I yanked myself to my knees, clutching the top of the front seat. Brannigan was cursing like an upstaged heroine. We were still angled across the roadway and so he took the curb himself
when he swung around. Turner yelled once from somewhere near us.

We were a fall block behind the Chevy before we accelerated past the first corner. Brannigan had it down to the floor, muttering between clenched teeth. “Trying to run us down like—”

He didn’t finish. Tires screeched up ahead. The signal on Seventh Avenue was red and there was a heavy stream of vehicles crossing the intersection. I saw four cars swerve at once as Duke tried to force the Chevy into the line of traffic.

The screeching stopped. A big, Winesap-colored Olds was cutting sharply away as Duke wheeled to the right. There was a fraction of a second of absolute stillness, as expectant as if Mitropoulos had just lifted his baton.

Duke slammed into the Olds. The right rear end of the larger car tilted up like an elephant raising one leg at a tree-trunk, hung there, then rocked back. There was another dull crashing sound as a panel truck marked
Flowers Say It Better
skidded into the back of the Olds.

We were still moving. A Mercury convertible swung hard to the right and into Perry to avoid the pile-up. It jammed the intersection and blocked us off. Brannigan braked frantically and we shrieked along the curb.

Duke had already bounded out the right-hand door of the Chevy. He was running without looking back, making a long diagonal down and across Seventh.

People shouted. I was no more than thirty yards behind him, already out into the street myself and hearing Brannigan pounding after me, when Duke reached the opposite sidewalk. There was a line of store fronts ahead of him and then a gas station on a corner where another small street cut into Seventh at an angle.

“Stop or I’ll shoot, Sabatini!”

That was Brannigan. The big Army Colt was pumping with the movement of Duke’s arm as he ran but he didn’t turn. I threw myself out of the line of fire, breaking toward a string of parked cars on my left. I was halfway there when the single sharp report of Nate’s revolver exploded behind me.

Brannigan was good. There was only one shot. Duke’s left leg was striding forward when he buckled on it like a ballet dancer with a sudden cramp. He seemed to waver for a fraction of a second, waving his arms like a stricken man on the edge of an abyss. A woman’s scream was lost in an almost gentle tinkling of glass as he finally made up his mind to spin to the left and tumble through a plate glass window.

I got over there. It was an antique shop and there was a lot of junk on display. Furniture mostly. A couple of tall, stiff-backed old chairs which looked almost as good as new because nobody for a dozen generations had been quite tired enough to sit on them. Two or three nervous-looking little tables on legs carved so delicately they would probably collapse under the weight of an empty shot glass. A set of yellowing bone china which Pocahontas had gotten as a shower gift from the girls at the wigwam. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s favorite bronze candlesticks, the ones he wrote
Hiawatha
by the glow of.

Duke Sabatini was on his back in the middle of it all, writhing in his own blood with his neck against the base of an enormous maroon ottoman. About eight inches to the left of his head a neatly hand-lettered sign had fallen. It said: A MINIMUM DEPOSIT WILL SECURE ANY OBJECT IN THIS WINDOW.

A plump, Slavic-looking woman had come rushing out of the store. She gasped and then stood there with her mouth open, staring at me and then at Brannigan as he puffed toward us. “What?” she said. “How—?” The woman had a kerchief
around her head and for some absurd reason she made me think of Nikita Khrushchev at the housework.

People were swarming after us now that the gunplay was obviously done with. Brannigan still had his Special in his hand, however. Duke’s automatic was at rest in a scarred silver serving tray.

“—Lord, did you see that—”

“—Shooting a man just because he caused an accident—”

“—Cops—”

“—Woman in the Olds isn’t even hurt—”

Brannigan said nothing. He jammed the revolver back into his shoulder holster and stepped past me purposefully. Turner was just getting there, red-faced as if he had run all the way, as Nate grabbed Duke by the lapels and hoisted him up effortlessly from the broken glass and the debris. I didn’t offer to help him. It would have been like asking Bronco Nagurski if he was sure he could lift a football with all that heavy air in it. Turner and I followed as he eased into the shop and then set Duke down gently on a low overstuffed chair just inside the door.

Duke was in a semi-conscious daze. His jaw hung loose and his eyes were blank. He was bleeding badly.

There was the sound of a siren, evidently headed for the smash-up from nearby, probably from the Charles Street station. The run had started my head throbbing again where Duke had skulled me a few hours before.

“Turner, get back up to the corner and grab the first team that shows up,” Brannigan snapped. “Radio for another car on the accident. And get an ambulance.”

Turner went off. I shut the door after him. Mrs. People’s Chairman was still gaping. “My window. What happened? Is he—?”

“Law,” Brannigan told her. “Get some wet cloth, cotton, anything. Hurry up about it.”

“Wet—Oh, yes, right away.” She stood there another minute, staring at the widening stain of blood soaking into the upholstery along Duke’s shoulder. Her eyes went hopelessly toward the smashed window. I supposed you couldn’t blame her for being somewhat concerned. Finally she went off.

Brannigan was picking splinters of glass out of Duke’s clothing. Duke was slumped low in the chair and his mouth was working now. “Mother,” I thought he said. He looked like something the Mau-Mau had left behind as a warning. I reached over, found my Luger in his jacket, smelled it. He hadn’t been experimenting on anybody with it. I put it away.

“Damn it,” Brannigan said then. “Oh, damn it. What the hell did he think I’d do, let him try a stunt like that and then romp off like it was a high-school picnic or something?”

“He’ll live.”

“I caught him in the thigh. You saw that.”

“Sure.”

“I thought the silly son of a bitch would just go down.”

“It was just a freak.”

“These punk kids. These damned punk kids.”