He dropped the packages. They tumbled about his feet on the sidewalk and two of them split open. A toy racing car was in one of them. It must have been still slightly wound up because when it broke out of the package, the little motor whirred and the tiny toy car spurted across the sidewalk two or three feet. From the other package, a small doll fell and lay on its back on the sidewalk, its big, painted eyes staring upward. It was what they call a picture doll, I think; anyhow, it was dressed like a bride. From one of the other packages a liquid began to trickle out onto the sidewalk and I figured that had been a bottle of Christmas wine for Bogen and his wife.
But when Bogen dropped the packages, he didn't raise his hands. He spun around and the sound of his elbow hitting Thrasher's face was a sickening one. Then I heard Thrasher's gun go off as he squeezed the trigger in a reflex action, but the flash from his gun was pointed at the sky.
I raised my own gun just as Bogen reached inside his jacket but I never got to use it. McKee used his. Bogen's head went back as though somebody had jolted him under the chin with the heel of a hand. He staggered backward, twisted and fell.
I went up to Bogen with my flash. The bullet from McKee's gun had entered Bogen's right eye and there was nothing there now but a horrible hole. I moved the flash beam just for a moment, I couldn't resist it, to McKee's face. The kid looked very white but his eyes were bright with excitement and he didn't look sick at all. He kept licking his lips, nervously. He kept saying: "He's dead. You don't have to be worrying about him, now. He's dead."
Front door lights began to go on then in nearby houses and people began coming out of them. Mortell shouted to them: "Go on back inside. There's nothing to see. Police business. Go on back inside."
Of course, most of them didn't do that. They came and looked, although we didn't let them get near the body. Thrasher radioed back to Headquarters. Mortell told me: "Tim, go tell his wife. And tell her she'll have to come down and make final identification for us."
"Me?" I said. "Why don't you send McKee? He's not the sensitive type. Or why don't you go? This whole cute little bit was your idea, anyhow, Lieutenant, remember?"
"Are you disobeying an order?"
Then I thought of something. "No," I told him. "It's all right. I'll go."
I left them and went to the house where Bogen's wife and kids lived. When she opened the door, I could see past her into the cheaply, plainly-furnished living room that somehow didn't look that way now, in the glow from the decorated tree. I could see the presents placed neatly around the tree. And peering around a corner of a bedroom, I saw the eyes, big with awe, of a little girl about six and a boy about two years older.
Mrs. Bogen saw me standing there and looked a little frightened. "Yes?" she said. "What is it?"
I thought about the newspapers, then. I thought: "What's the use? It'll be in the newspapers tomorrow, anyhow." Then I remembered that it would be Christmas day; there wouldn't be any newspapers published tomorrow, and few people would bother about turning on radios or television sets.
"Don't be alarmed," I told her, then. "I'm just letting the people in the neighborhood know what happened. We surprised a burglar at work, ma'am, and he ran down this street. We caught up with him here and had to shoot him. But it's all over now. We don't want anyone coming out, creating any more disturbance, so just go back to bed, will you please?"
Her mouth and eyes opened very wide. "Who — who was it?" she said in a small, hollow voice.
"Nobody important," I said. "Some young hood."
"Oh," she said then and I could see the relief come over her face and I knew then that my hunch had been right and Bogen hadn't let her know he was coming; he'd wanted to surprise her. Otherwise she would have put two and two together.
I told her goodnight and turned away and heard her shut the door softly behind me.
When I went back to Mortell I said: "Poor Bogen. He walked into the trap for nothing. His folks aren't even home. I asked one of the neighbors and she said they'd gone to Mrs. Bogen's mother's and wouldn't be back until day after Christmas."
"Well, I'll be damned," Mortell said, watching the men from the morgue wagon loading Bogen onto a basket.
"Yes," I said. I wondered what Mortell would do to me when he learned what I'd done and he undoubtedly would, eventually. Right then I didn't much care. The big thing was that Mrs. Bogen and those kids were going to have their Christmas as scheduled. Even when I came back and told her what had happened, the day after tomorrow, it wouldn't take away the other.
Maybe it wasn't very much that I'd given them but it was something and I felt a little better. Not much, but a little.
The Man At The Table
by C. B. GILFORD
He who keeps his head may also keep his seat, at the poker table. Which only goes to prove that win, lose or draw, the prime requisite in the cutthroat game of poker is cool courage.
Byron Duquay sat alone at the octagonal, green-topped table. At his right side was a small stand on which were stacked poker chips, red and white and blue. At his left side was a tea cart loaded with Scotch, Bourbon, a siphon bottle, a dozen clean glasses, and a large container full of ice cubes.
As he sat there alone, Byron Duquay toyed with a deck of cards. His slim, well-manicured fingers riffled the deck, cut it, then played through a little game that seemed to be a weird combination of solitaire and fortune-telling. Duquay's handsome, lean, ascetic face did not change expression as the cards turned up. There was no other sound in the room, or for that matter in the whole vast apartment, except the flick-flick of the cards as they passed through Duquay's hands.
No sound, that is, until the small metallic one of the door's opening. The door was around the corner, out of Duquay's vision, so he called out in a friendly voice, "Come on in, whoever it is."
He was expecting a fellow cardplayer. But the man who came into Duquay's view in half a minute had obviously not come there to play cards. He was a small man, several inches under six feet, and extremely thin. He wore stained gray trousers, a rumpled white shirt with rolled up sleeves and open at the neck, and his hair, rather long and sand-colored, was tangled and awry. His small, narrow face was twisted, and there was desperation in his pale eyes. In his right hand was a sizeable knife.
Byron Duquay didn't try to get up from the table. But he stopped his little card game. "What do you want?" he asked.
The stranger didn't answer the question. Instead, after glancing suspiciously about the room, he asked one of his own. "Are we alone here?"
Perhaps unwisely, Duquay nodded.
"Okay," the strange young man said. "Don't give me any trouble, and you won't get hurt."
"What do you want?" Duquay asked again. But this time his voice was slightly steadier, calmer, and the question less automatic.
But still the young man didn't answer. He looked around the room again, perhaps trying to decide if there was anything here that he did want. On this inspection of the room he saw the bottles at Duquay's elbow, and his eyes lighted.
"I could use a drink," he said.
"Sit down," Duquay said, "and I'll pour you one."
But he waited till his visitor was seated. The young man, possibly for caution's sake, chose the place exactly opposite Duquay and thus also the farthest away from him. He kept his right hand on top of the table. The blade, perhaps six inches long, gleamed against the green baize surface like a diamond against a background of black velvet.
"What do you drink, Bourbon or Scotch?"