The first man swept the gun in an are round the foyer. "Don't nobody move-I'm comin' through-"
Mendoza recovered his balance, shoved Alison hard to sprawl full length on the floor, and in one leap covered the ten feet to the gun as it swung back in his direction. He got a good left-handed grip on the gunhand as they collided, his momentum lending force to the considerable impact, and as they went down landed one right that connected satisfactorily.
Neddy went over backward and Mendoza went with him; the gun emptied itself into the ceiling as they hit the floor with Mendoza's knee in the paunch under him; Neddy uttered a strangled whoof and lost an interest in the proceedings.
Mr. Tomes-Domingo yelped, fired once more and hit the plate-glass door, turned and ran into the embrace of an enormous red-haired man in the vanguard of the pursuit, which had just erupted down the corridor. The red-haired man adjusted him to a convenient position and hit him once in the jaw, and he flew backward six feet and collapsed on top of Mendoza, who was just sitting up. One of the three men behind the red-haired man dropped his gun and sank onto the divan beside the checkroom, clutching his shoulder.
There was a very short silence before several women in the crowd collecting at the dining-room door went off like air-raid sirens.
Mendoza heaved off Mr. Tomes-Domingo, sat up and began to swear in Spanish. The red-haired man bellowed the crowd to quiet, and turned to the man nearest him: "Find a phone and call the wagon and an ambulance-and-" flinging round to the man on the divan-"just what in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did you think you were doing, you almighty bastard? You-"
"?Hijo de perra! -Take your hands off that man, you son of a Dublin whore!" Mendoza shoved him away and bent over Higgins, who was fumbling a handkerchief under his coat. "Easy, boy "It's not bad, Lieutenant-I just-"
"Before God!-Luis Mendoza!-does this belong to you? Just what the holy hell are you doing in this?-you tellin' me you put this blundering bastard out back there-to bitch up two months' work and the first chance I've had to lay hands on-I ought to bust you right in the-I ought to-"
Mendoza twitched the handkerchief from the red-haired man's breast pocket, wadded it up with his own, shoved Higgins flat on the divan and pulled aside the coat to slap on the temporary bandage. "Temper, Patrick, temper! We're in public-you'll be giving people the idea there's no loyalty, no unity in the police force. And listen, you red bastard, next time you have to knock a man out to arrest him, for the love of God don't aim him at me-you've damn near fractured my spine! There's the squad car. For God's sake, let's clear this crowd back-Who's this?"
The little round man who had popped out like a cork from the dining-room crowd was sounding off in falsetto. "I am the manager-I am the owner-what do you do here in my place, shooting and yelling? I call the police!-what is all this about?-shootings-gangsters-I will not have gangsters in my nice quiet place-"
"Then you shouldn't hire one as a headwaiter," said Mendoza. "And you should also change your butcher, your steaks are tough." He pushed past him and went over to Alison, who was just somewhat shakily regaining her feet. "I don't usually knock them down the first date, mi vida -apologies! Are you all right? Here, sit down."
" I'm all right," said Alison, "but you owe me a pair of stockings."
Morgan had read somewhere that marijuana did this to you, played tricks with time, so first it seemed to slow down, almost grind to a full stop, and then sent everything past you at the speed of light. His watch told him he'd been standing here on this corner just an hour and twelve minutes, no more and no less; for a while it had felt like half eternity, and then, a while after that, time began to go too fast. Where he'd been tense with impatience, wound up tight for action- God, make him come -suddenly, now, he could have prayed for time to stop. Not now, he said to Smith frantically in his mind, you can't come now, until I've thought about this, figured it out, got hold of another plan.
Oh, Christ damn Luis Mendoza and his little slum-street mugging!-what the hell did that matter, some damn-fool chippy knocked off, probably she'd asked for it, and that crazy idea about those Lindstroms who couldn't by any fantastic stretch of the imagination have had anything to do… Because, yes, this upright citizen Morgan had a good innocent reason to visit that apartment house, he wouldn't care if the whole L.A. police force stood by in squads to watch him go in-but after he was clocked in by men watching, he couldn't lie in wait maybe an hour, and do what he'd come to do, and then say Just as I got to the top of the stairs – Nor could he call at the Lindstroms' first, thinking to say, Just as I was leaving – That woman might not be very smart but she could tell time, and suppose he'd left her half an hour before, as might well happen? Also, of course, there was no telling about the cops: where and how and how many. It might be a desultory thing, one man outside up to midnight, something like that; it might be a couple of men round the clock; it could be a couple of men inside somewhere.
So he hadn't dared go near Graham Court at all. It had had to be the street corner; and on his way here, and up to a while ago, he'd been telling himself that after all the street was safer. Once you were off Main, off Second, along here, the streets were underhghted and there weren't many people; in all this while he'd stood and strolled up and down outside the corner drugstore here, only four people had come by, at long intervals. Safer, and also more plausible that Smith would try a holdup on a darkish side street, instead of in the very building where he lived.
Morgan had been feeling pretty good then: ready for it, coldly wound up (the way it had been before action, when you knew action was coming) but-in control. He'd known just how it would go, Smith coming along (he'd been wary before, sent the boy to check that Morgan had come alone, but this time he wouldn't bother, he thought he had Morgan and-the ransom-tied up); and Morgan pretending nervousness, saying he had the money locked in the glove compartment, his car was just round the corner. Round the corner, an even narrower, darker street. Sure to God Smith would walk a dozen steps with him…
Safe and easy. Sure. Before a while ago, when the scraggly bald old fellow had peered out the drugstore door at him.
Morgan knew this window by heart now. Everything in it a little dusty, a little second-hand-looking: out-of-date ad placards, the platinm blonde with a toothy smile, INSTANT PROTECTION, the giant tube of shaving cream, the giant bottle of antiseptic, the cigarette ad, GET SATISFACTION, the face-cream ad, YOU CAN LOOK YOUNGER. In a vague way he'd known the drugstore was open, but the door was shut on this coolish evening, he hadn't glanced inside. When people came by, he'd strolled away the opposite direction: nobody had seemed to take much notice of him-why should they? And then that old fellow came to the door, peered out: Morgan met his glance through the dirty glass panel, by chance, and that was when time began to race.
God, don't let Smith come now, not until I've had time to think.
The druggist, alone there, pottering around his store in the hopeful expectation of a few customers before nine o'clock, or maybe just because he hadn't anything to go home to. Time on his hands. Looking out the window, the door, every so often, for customers at first-and then to see, only out of idle curiosity, if that fellow was still there on the corner, waiting… All that clutter in the window, Morgan hadn't noticed him; not much light, no, but enough-and without thought, when he was standing still he'd hugged the building for shelter from the chill wind. Most of the time he'd have been in the perimeter of light from the window, from the door. God alone knew how often the old man had looked out, spotted him.
The expression in the rheumy eyes meeting his briefly through the dirty pane-focused, curious, a little defensive-told Morgan the man had marked him individually.