Текст книги "Death Wish"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

He awoke conscious of having dreamed. Weakness in all his fibers; a pounding dull headache, a dehydrated pain in his abdomen.

“You can open the other eye now, I’ve made some coffee.”

He sat up and took the cup. His fingers were unsteady. He looked at her for the first time. She still had a red patch on her chin from his stubble.

The coffee made a good smell but it tasted terrible. He put the cup down half-full. “Thanks.”

She was already dressed—the same blouse and leather skirt as last night. A good looking woman, he thought. Small, too thin, a little leather around the eyes; but damned good looking. In the night he’d lain drowsily between sleeps, thinking what it would be like to live with a woman who could take his mind off the TV commercials and the killers in the alleys.

She said, “I’m all packed. I thought of letting you sleep it off, but it occurred to me it would be awkward if I left and the maid came in and found you here.”

An abrupt tug in his throat; an instant’s wistful panic. “You’re going?”

“Time to hit the road. It’s a long way to Houston.” She patted her lips with a tissue, set the cup down in the saucer and stood in front of the mirror smoothing down her skirt. “Thank you for last night. I needed somebody to help me make it through to this morning.”

It occurred to him as she went out the door that she probably didn’t even remember his name.

“So long, Shirley Mackenzie.”

He wasn’t sure she heard him; the door continued to close. Clicked shut and left him very alone in the room.

“Oh, Jesus,” he croaked, and began to cry.

*  *  *

It was Saturday; he spent the half day in the Jainchill conference room and had lunch at a franchise hamburger drive-in and drove toward the center of town, down Speedway to Fourth Avenue and left down Fourth toward the tracks. The sporting goods store was where he remembered it. He went inside and said, “I’d like to buy a gun.”

On the plane he dozed with his head against the Plexiglas pane. The stewardess went down the aisle looking at passengers’ seat belts; the lights of New York made a glow in the haze over the city. They circled down in the holding pattern and landed at Kennedy. In the terminal on his way to baggage-claim he stopped at a counter to pick up a present for Carol: she had always had a tooth for bitter chocolate. He bought half a dozen Dutch bars and put them in his briefcase on top of the papers which concealed the .32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver and the six fifty-round boxes of ammunition.

He collected his suitcase and went out to the curb debating whether to spend the fifteen dollars on the taxi ride; in the end he took the airport limousine-bus to the East Side Terminal in Manhattan and a taxi home from there.

The apartment was stuffy although it was a cool night outside. He threw the windows open and took his briefcase into the bathroom, where no one across the street could see inside; the pane was frosted. He lowered the lid of the toilet and sat down and took the revolver out, and held it in his fist, staring at its black oily gleam.

14

He had it in his pocket when he went to work Thursday morning. He breathed shallowly in the jammed subway car but when someone caromed against him with a lurch of the car he shoved the offender away roughly: the gun was making him arrogant, he was going to have to watch that.

He rode the Shuttle across town in the same car with a Transit Patrolman who stood in the middle of the swaying car watching everybody with stony unimpressed eyes. Paul didn’t meet them. He had spent ten minutes propping up mirrors in the apartment to look at himself from every angle and make sure the gun in his trouser pocket didn’t make too obvious a bulge; he knew the cop had no way of detecting its presence but his nerves drew up to a twanging vibration and he hurried across the platform the instant the doors opened.

It was a very small gun, a compact five-shot model with a short barrel and a metal shroud over the hammer to prevent it from snagging on clothing. He had told the store clerk he wanted a little gun for his tackle-box, something that wouldn’t crowd the reels and trout-flies and wouldn’t get tangled in testlines. The clerk had tried to sell him a .22 single-shot pistol but Paul had declined it on the grounds that he wasn’t a good enough shot to feel safe with only a single bullet. He had had to reject a .22 revolver as well and that had made the clerk smile knowingly and make an under-the-breath remark about how everybody ought to have the right to carry a gun in his glove compartment and this ought to be just the thing don’t you think?

It was mostly aluminum, very lightweight. Paul had asked if there was a target range in town where he might practice with the gun and the clerk had directed him to a rod-and-gun club ten miles up in the foothills; he had paid two dollars for the use of the range and had spent Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday burning up several hundred rounds of ammunition. By Sunday night his ears had been half-deaf and ringing, and his right hand had been numb from the repeated recoil, but he was confident he could hit a man-size target from several yards’ distance and for self-protection that was all you needed. Sunday night he had cleaned the gun meticulously and oiled it and wrapped it in a sock and fitted it carefully into the bottom of his briefcase. There had only been one bad moment—getting on the plane they had been searching the passengers; but he didn’t look like a hijacker or a dope smuggler and he knew it. They looked down into the briefcase but didn’t remove anything from it; he was passed through, politely enough, but he hadn’t stopped sweating for an hour. After that he had filled up with outraged indignation against the twisted system of values that made it a criminal offense to carry the means of your own preservation. He was sure what he felt wasn’t guilt; it was the fear of getting caught, which was a different thing. And they had no moral right to force a man to fear that sort of thing.

At any rate it was better than having to fear for your life. Only criminals and fools ever went to prison. If he were ever caught with the gun in his pocket it would be troublesome but he knew it wouldn’t be critical; he had Jack, he knew several high-powered attorneys, and he had sufficient moral justification to insure that the worst that could possibly happen would be a token conviction on some minor charge, a suspended sentence or a reprimand. The only ones who got jailed were the ones caught red-handed committing violent felonies and even then if you had any brains you could find ways to avoid imprisonment. That was the trouble with the system. Last year Jack had defended a fifteen-year-old boy in Family Court accused of threatening a store-cashier with a knife and taking eighteen dollars from the till. The store had large signs everywhere announcing that the place was guarded by cameras but the fifteen-year-old boy couldn’t read. They had picked him up within twenty-four hours. He was convicted not because of his crime but because of his illiteracy. “I had him cop a plea, of course,” Jack had said wearily. “I hate making deals with prosecutors but that’s the way things work. But do you know what the real frustration is? They’ll teach that kid how to read but they won’t teach him the difference between right and wrong. The odds are, a week after he gets out they’ll nail him again for holding up a store that didn’t have protective devices. Or he’ll walk into a hockshop and try to rob the till and the storekeeper will blow his head off.”

At the time it had seemed sad. Now Paul was thoroughly on the side of the storekeeper.

*  *  *

Jack, he thought. When the welcome-backs and the hearty shouts were dispensed with he went to the desk and phoned Jack’s office. “I tried to get you earlier.”

“I was at the hospital.”

His fingers reached the desk and gripped its edge. “You sound terrible. What is it?”

“Not now—not through two switchboards. Look, Pop, can we meet somewhere—around lunchtime? I’ve juggled my calendar, I’ve got two court cases this morning but I’ll be free after eleven-thirty or so if things don’t back up in court.”

“Of course. But can’t you at least–”

“I’d rather not. Look, suppose I come up to your office. I ought to get there about noon. Wait for me, will you?”

He spent most of the morning in the computer room feeding figures to the programmers. It was easier than thinking. Jack had never been the kind who hinted at mysteries; he wasn’t playing a game. It had to be something to do with Carol—but that was all the more puzzling. Paul had phoned last night, he had kept in constant touch from Arizona, and nothing had occurred that hadn’t been predicted—Carol was responding to therapy, the doctors expected to release her within a few weeks.…

He was back in his office by ten minutes to twelve. When Thelma buzzed he pounced on the intercom but she said, “It’s Mr. Kreutzer.”

Sam came loping through the door with a slothful smile beneath his moustache. “Well, how was it out there in all that sunshine?”

“Fine—fine.”

“How about lunch? Bill and I thought we’d just pop downstairs and grab a liverwurst. Join us?”

“Afraid I can’t. Jack’s coming by any minute.”

“We’ll squeeze him in, what the hell. We don’t discriminate against lawyers.”

“No, it’s family business. I’ll take a raincheck. How’s Adele?”

“Just fine. Kind of worried about you. She seems to feel we owe you an apology for that night. You were pretty upset, understandably, and I guess we shouldn’t have jumped all over you that way. Forgiven?”

“Sure, Sam. Nothing to forgive.”

“Then you won’t turn down an invitation. It’s our fifteenth, two weeks from tomorrow—that’s Friday the third. We’re having a little anniversary get-together at our place. No presents, we’re adamant about that. Just bring yourself. Right?”

“Well—yes. Thanks, Sam. I’ll be there.”

“Great, great. Write it down in your calendar so you won’t forget it.” Sam glanced at his watch and shot his cuff. “Well, I’ll toddle along. See you.” And went.

By twelve-fifteen Paul had started to fidget. He drew a heavily crosshatched doodle around the Kreutzers’ party in his appointment book; went down the hall and washed his hands; came back to the office expecting to find Jack waiting, and found it empty and sat behind the desk fooling with the revolver.

When the intercom buzzed he shoved the gun quickly into his pocket and looked up as the door opened and Jack came in dragging his heels, his eyes faded and his drooping pinched mouth suggesting dejection and anxiety. He kicked the door shut behind him.

“Well, what is it?”

“Let me sit down.” Jack went to the leather chair and sank into it like a fighter collapsing on a ring-corner stool after the fifteenth round. “Christ, it’s hot for this time of year.”

“What’s the matter with Carol, Jack?”

“Everything.”

“But she was getting on so well–”

“Not all that well, Pop. I didn’t see any point getting you all disturbed over it on long-distance telephones. I put a better face on it than the facts deserved.”

“I see.”

“Please don’t do the chilly number on me, Pop. I thought it was best at the time. What was the point of worrying you? You’d only have loused up your work, or quit altogether and flown back here. There wasn’t a thing you could do. They haven’t even let me see her in two weeks.”

“Then I would suggest,” Paul said through his teeth, “that we hire ourselves another psychiatrist. This man sounds as if he belongs in an institution himself.”

Jack shook his head. “No, he’s all right. We’ve had consultations with three other shrinks. They’re all pretty much agreed. One of them voted against the insulin therapy, but other than that, they’ve all subscribed to the same diagnosis and the same program of treatment. It isn’t their fault, Pop. It just hasn’t worked.”

“What are you telling me?”

“Pop, they’ve tried hypnosis, they’ve tried insulin shock twice, and it just hasn’t worked. She’s not responding. She keeps drawing farther back into that shell every day. Do you want the technical jargon? I can reel out yards of it and cut it to fit, I’ve been listening to it for weeks. Catatonia. Dementia praecox. Passive schizoid paranoia. They’ve been slinging Freudian argot around like bricks. It boils down to the fact that she had an experience she couldn’t face and she’s running away from it, inside herself.”

Jack covered his face with his hands. “God, Pop, she’s nothing but a God-damned vegetable now.”

He sat blinking across the desk at the top of Jack’s lowered head. He knew the question he had to ask; he had to force himself to ask it. “What do they want to do, then?”

Jack’s answer was a long time coming. Finally he lifted his face. His cheeks were gray; his eyes had gone opaque. “They want me to sign papers to commit her.”

It hit him in waves. His scalp shrank.

Jack said, “It’s my decision and I’ll make it, but I want your advice.”

“Is there an alternative?”

Jack spread his hands wide and waved them helplessly.

“What happens if you don’t sign the papers?”

“Nothing, I suppose. They’ll keep her in the hospital. The insurance is about to run out. When we run out of money the hospital will throw her out.” Jack’s head was swinging back and forth rhythmically—worn-out, dazed. “Pop, she can’t even feed herself.”

“And if she’s committed? What then?”

“I’ve checked. I have a policy that covers it, up to six hundred a month. Doctor Metz recommended a sanitarium out in New Jersey. They charge a little more than that but I can swing the difference. It’s not the money, Pop.”

“This commitment—is it a one-way thing?”

“Nobody can answer that. Sometimes after a few months of therapy they come out of it themselves. Sometimes they never do.”

“Then what are you asking me?”

He watched anguish change Jack’s features. “Look, I love her.”

“Yes,” very gentle.

“You don’t just throw somebody you love into an institution and turn your back. You just can’t.”

“No one seems to be asking us to turn our backs.”

“I could take her home,” Jack muttered. “I could feed her and wash her and carry her into the bathroom.”

“And how long could you last doing that?”

“I could hire a private nurse.”

“You still couldn’t live that way, Jack.”

“I know. Rosen and Metz keep saying the same thing.”

“Then we’ve got no alternative, really. Have we.”

When Jack left he took the gun out of his pocket. It was what had kept him from going to pieces. The refrain in his mind: the killers. So. Now they add this to their debts.

They’ve got no right to do this to us. To anybody. They’ve got to be stopped.

15

He took the Lexington Avenue line uptown to Sixty-eighth. Had dinner in a counter place, walked by dogleg blocks to Seventy-second and Fifth, and went into Central Park there, walking crosstown. It wasn’t fully dark yet—dusk, and a cool gray wind, leaves falling, people walking their dogs. The street lamps were lit but it was a poor light for vision.

He walked slowly as if exhausted by a long day’s hard work. This was the time of night when they came out from under their rocks to prey on tired home-bound pedestrians. All right, he thought, prey on me.

The anger in him was beyond containment. It was a chilly night and he wasn’t the only solitary pedestrian in the park with his hands rammed into his pockets. He didn’t look like an armed man. Come on. Come and get it.

Two youths: Levi’s, scraggy hair down to their shoulders, acned faces. Coming toward him with their thumbs hooked in their belts. Looking for trouble. Come get some, then.

They went right past without even glancing at him; he caught a waft of conversation: “… a bummer, man, a real down. Worst fucking movie ever made.…”

Two kids on their way home from a movie. Well, they shouldn’t dress like hoodlums; it was asking for trouble.

The twilight had gone completely, behind the high monoliths of Central Park West; the light was failing quickly. He walked along the path with a light traffic of theater-bound taxis sliding through the crosstown loop beside him. A blatant homosexual with two huge hairy dogs on leashes went past him with an arch petulant expression. Two elderly couples strolling, guarded by a leashed Doberman. Three young couples, smartly dressed, hurrying past him, obviously late for a curtain at Lincoln Center.

A cop on a scooter, his white helmet turning to indicate his interest in Paul: every solitary pedestrian was suspect. Paul gave the cop a straight look. The scooter buzzed away.

He stopped midway across the park and sat down on a bench and watched people walk by until it got to be wholly night-dark. In his pocket, sweat lubricated the handle of the gun in his fist. He got up and continued his walk.

Central Park West. He turned north a block and cut across on Seventy-third because you weren’t too likely to get mugged on Seventy-second, it was too crowded. Columbus Avenue. Now the dark long block to the Amsterdam-Broadway triangle.

Nothing. He crossed the square and glanced up Broadway. That was the bar where he’d listened to the beer-drinker complain about welfare-niggers. Seventy-fourth, a block from here—that was where the kid with the knife had come at him from behind. Try it again now.

Carol.… It was too much to bear.

*  *  *

Seventy-third and West End Avenue. He stood under the street light looking downtown toward his apartment building two blocks south. Nothing sinister between here and there. Damn. Where the hell are you?

Getting chilly.

But he turned uptown instead. Went up to Seventy-fourth and crossed back to Amsterdam Avenue. Midway along the block—he even recognized the flight of stone stairs where he’d half-collapsed after the kid had run away. He had the block to himself again tonight but no one came at him.

Amsterdam: he walked around the corner and uptown with longer strides. Up into the West Eighties. Mixed neighborhoods now, stately co-ops shouldering against tenements. He had never walked here at night before. The sense of urban ferment was too strong: dark kids on front steps, old people at windows.

Feet getting tired now. Colder too. He reached an intersection and checked the sign: Eighty-ninth and Columbus. He turned west.

Two youths on the curb—Puerto Ricans in thin windbreakers. Okay, come on. But they only watched him go past. Do I look too tough? What’s the matter with you, don’t I look like an easy mark? You only pick on women?

Now that’s unfair. Get hold of yourself. They’re probably as honest as you are.

Riverside Drive. A party was going on in one of the apartments overhead: the wind blew gusts of rock music to him; a paper cup came fluttering down from the open window—the excretum of civilized pleasures. Half a block farther down, three young men were loading suitcases into a Volkswagen—the standard stagger system: one carrying bags out, another going in for another load, the third guarding the car. It’s insane. No one should have to. He crossed the Drive and went along to the stairs.

Down into Riverside Park.

The trees were flimsy against the lights. Traffic rushed along the Henry Hudson. He moved through the paths, past the playground, along the slopes. A copse of ragged smog-stunted trees; here the darkness had the viscosity of syrup and he suddenly felt an atavistic twinge: You’re in here, I can feel you. Watching me, waiting for me. Come on then. But he penetrated the trees and no one was there. On along the path: the end of the park up ahead, the steps up to the Drive, Seventy-second Street not far beyond. He thought with savage sarcasm, All right, it’s a poor night for hunting. But you’ll come after me again, won’t you.

He was cold clear through; his feet were sore. He went straight for the steps. It was only a few blocks to the apartment.

Approaching the steps he caught a tail-of-the-eye movement imperfectly and then the soft insinuating voice:

“Hey, wait a minute.”

Paul stopped. Turned.

A tall man, very tall. Thin to the point of emaciation, stooped. Clad in a thin jacket too short at the wrists. A hollow death’s-head, shoulders that twitched nervously. The hair was either pale red or blond. The knife was a fixed-blade hunting-knife, wicked in the dimness. “You got any money on you, buddy?”

“I might.”

“Hand—hand it over.” The knife came up two inches; the empty left hand beckoned. The junkie licked his upper lip like a cat washing itself, and ventured toward Paul.

“This is it, then,” he breathed.

“What? Hey, gimme the money, man.”

“You’re going to get in a lot of trouble.”

A quick pace forward. The junkie loomed, hardly beyond arm’s length. “Hey, I don’t want to cut you. Now hand it over and beat it, huh?” The voice was a nervous whine but maybe that was the dope in him, or the lack of it; the knife was steady enough, blade-up, the fist locked around it in a way that showed he knew how to use it.

Don’t talk to him. Just do it.

“Man, the money!”

He took it out of his pocket and pulled the trigger three times and the junkie stumbled back: his hands clutched the wounds, trying to hold the blood in, and the skull-face took on an expression of pained indignation rather than anger. He caromed off the iron railing and fell on his side without using his arms to break his fall. Paul was ready to fire again but the junkie didn’t move.

Drunk with it he stumbled into the apartment and stood sweating, quivering in every rigid limb, needles in his legs; soaked in his own juices.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

16

There was no mention in the Times. The Daily News had two brief paragraphs on page ten: PAROLEE SLAIN IN R’SIDE PARK. “Thomas Leroy Marston, 24, was found shot to death last night in Riverside Park. Marston had been released from Attica State Penitentiary two weeks ago on parole after serving forty-two months of a five-year sentence for grand larceny.

“At his sentencing three years ago Marston admitted he had been a heroin addict. Police refused to guess whether his death was connected with drugs. Marston was shot three times by a small-caliber revolver. The assailant, or assailants, have not been apprehended.”

The police were looking for him. It was only to be expected. They weren’t likely to find him. It was easy to read between the lines in the News. The police were theorizing that Marston had tried to double-cross a dope pusher and the pusher had shot him. Fine; let them drag some of the pushers off the streets for questioning.

But he was going to have to be more careful in the future. He had made several mistakes; half the night he had sat in the living room with the gun on the table in front of him, coolly assessing the events. There were several mistakes, mainly of omission. He had not stopped to make sure Marston was dead. He had not disguised himself in any way; if there had been an eyewitness he would have been too easily identified. He had come straight home and it was possible the doorman, if ever questioned, might remember the time of Paul’s arrival.

In the future. What is it that I’m planning to do?

The hell with it. He wasn’t going to lie to himself. The streets and parks were public places. He had a right to use them whenever he chose. And anyone who tried to attack him or rob him would have to take his chances.

Friday evening he met Jack at a Steak & Brew and they talked about the technicalities of the commitment. Paul contained his grief by channeling it into anger; he was resigned to Carol’s pain and his own loss; beginning to think less of his own agonies and more of those who hadn’t been victimized yet. By stopping Marston he had prevented God knew how many future crimes from happening.

He took a cab straight home and stared at the television until he fell asleep in front of the set.

Saturday he awoke with a throbbing headache. He’d had nothing to drink the night before; he couldn’t understand it. Possibly the air pollution. He swallowed aspirins and went across the street to the Shopwell to get groceries for the week. He had to stand in a slow line at the checkout counter; the headache was maddening and he wanted to elbow his way straight to the cash register. The headache dissipated during the morning but by midafternoon it had returned; he tossed the crossword puzzle on the floor and decided to take a nap, sleep it off.

It was dark when he came to. The darkness unnerved him; he went around the place switching on lights. When he looked at his watch he found it was nearly nine o’clock. Christ I can’t spend another night in this place. Maybe a movie. He examined the newspaper listings; the only thing worth trying was the double-bill rerun of James Bond films—he didn’t have the patience for an intellectual artsy picture and everything else was pornographic dreck.

The features ran at even-numbered hours but it didn’t matter. He took the subway local to Fiftieth Street and walked down Broadway to the theater. Entered the auditorium in the midst of a Technicolor car-chase and found his way to a seat and let the choreographed wide-screen violence absorb him.

The second film ended with someone being crushed to death in an enormous machine that reduced an automobile to a chair-sized cube of metal. He left the theater shortly before midnight, too restless to sit through the first half of the other film.

After the spectacular sound-volume of the theater’s speakers, the racket of Times Square seemed muted and unreal. He stopped to get his bearings, feeling strange and oddly guilty: he had never gone to movies by himself and he felt as if someone had just caught him masturbating. Once a long time ago he had been briefly in San Francisco over a weekend, waiting for his Army discharge; he had spent most of Saturday and all day Sunday going from one triple-feature to another. He had seen eleven movies—seven of them Westerns—in those two days. It was the nearest thing to a Lost Weekend he had ever experienced. After six months behind a typewriter on Okinawa and nearly two seasick weeks on a troopship he had owned no strength to take in the sights of San Francisco or enjoy its notorious night pleasures; he had lost himself in the never-never land of Tex Ritter and John Wayne and Richard Dix and Bela Lugosi.

Times Square was a running sore, jostling with the chalky bodies of hookers, open-mouthed tourists, swaggering male prostitutes, men slipping furtively into peep-show theaters and porno bookstores. Cops in pairs every few yards: they were all on the take because if they weren’t, half the people in sight would be under arrest. These were the dregs, this was their cesspool. Their dreary faces slid by in the overpowering neon daylight and Paul turned quickly uptown, full of angry disgust.

Out of the tinsel, up toward Fifty-seventh. The new car showrooms, the groups in good clothes on the corners looking for taxis to take them home from their after-theater dinners.

A cop on the corner, the steady watchfulness of his eyes: Paul walked past and felt his face twitch. Before he had done it, he had been convinced there was no danger: they could never get him. But now it had happened and he was beginning to think of a hundred ways they could find him. A witness? Fingerprints—had he touched anything? He felt his face flaming; he went on into Columbus Circle, clutching the gun in his pocket. Suppose a cop stopped him and asked him something: could he handle it? He was such a poor dissembler.

The Coliseum, now the handsome buildings of Lincoln Center looking like something miraculously spared by the bombing attacks that had reduced the surrounding neighborhood to gray rubble. The city had the look and feel of occupation: the walk up Broadway was a combat mission behind enemy lines and you never met the eyes of the hurrying head-down strangers you passed.

That was it, then, he thought; he was the first of the Resistance—the first soldier of the underground.

Monday in the lunch hour he went down into the Village and browsed the shops on Eighth Street and Greenwich Avenue and then on Fourteenth Street. At different shops he bought a dark roll-neck sweater, a reversible jacket with dark gray on one side and bright hunter’s red on the other, a cabbie’s soft cap, a pair of lemon-colored gloves.

Before ten that evening he took a bus up to Ninety-sixth Street and walked across town into Central Park. The tennis courts and the reservoir were to the right; he crossed the transverse to the left and walked along above the ball-playing fields. He was wearing the cap and the jacket gray-side-out. Come on, now.

But he walked all the way through the Park without seeing anyone except two bicyclists.

Well, everyone was afraid of the Park nowadays. The muggers knew that; they had shifted their hunting grounds elsewhere. He nodded at the discovery—now he knew; he wouldn’t make this mistake again.

At the Fifth Avenue wall he made a turn around the children’s playground and started to walk back up toward the transverse but then in a chip of light between the trees he saw a motionless figure on a park bench and something triggered all his warning systems: the short hairs prickled at the back of his neck and he moved forward through the trees, letting his breath trickle out slowly through his mouth. Something was stirring there—he had picked up movement, as insubstantial as fog, but it was there. He stopped, watched. He had to fight a cough down.

It was an old man slumped on the bench; probably a drunk. Wrapped in a ragged old coat, huddling it to him. That wasn’t what had alerted Paul; there was someone else.

Then he spotted the shadow. Slipping slowly along behind the park bench, moving up from the drunk’s blind side.

Paul waited. It might be a curious kid, harmless; it might even be a cop. But he didn’t think so. The stealthy purpose, the careful stalking silence.… Into the light now: a man in skin-tight trousers and a leather jacket and an Anzac hat cocked over one eye. Moving without sound to the back of the bench and looking down at the sleeping drunk.

The intruder’s head lifted and turned: he scanned his horizons slowly and Paul stood frozen, not breathing. Fingers curling around the gun in his pocket.