The call came over at six minutes past seven, and they were quite a way off, so even with the siren going they were the fourth car to get there. An assault, it was, by the code number, and must be a three-star business, some sort, with four cars called in. The ambulance was already there, and quite a crowd-honest to God, you'd think they grew up out of the ground, let anything happen Wilkinson and Petty, Slaney and Gomez, handling the crowd: he spotted them as he braked the car, and Gomez caught his eye and called to him as he and his partner got out. "Upstairs, Johnny-second floor, the lieutenant's up there."
"Right," said Branahan. He was puffing a little when he got to the top of the stairs; it was the apartment right there, door open, and he could see the white-coated interns inside, just lifting a stretcher.
"This one's a D.O.A. too," said one of them. "We'll come back for those- O.K., boy, let's get the show on the road." Goldstein and Costello were handling the smaller crowd up here, tenants, trying to get in to see the blood, see the corpses, honest to God you wondered what got into people "All right, folks, let the doctors through, now-"
As the interns came out with the first stretcher, the crowd parting reluctantly, he caught a glimpse of another man in there, one of the downtown men, Lieutenant Mendoza from Homicide. Quick work, he thought, and moved back himself to give room to the interns at the top of the Stairs.
That put him at the foot of the stairs to the next floor, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a man crouched halfway down those stairs, and got a flicker of movement as the man retreated a little way, farther into the dark up there.
It wasn't brains made Branahan go up after him, any conscious process of reasoning. It was just that as an experienced cop he knew there must be something funny about anybody who didn't come rushing up to join the crowd when anything like this was going on.
He started up the stairs, and above him heard sudden movement, and then the fellow began to run-light and fast-up toward the next floor; so then of course Branahun ran too, and caught up with him at a door there, and he was fumbling at, and swung him around. It was damn dark up there, and he had his flash out ready; he shot it in the man's face and said, "Hold it, brother, let's see what you look like."
The man swore and swang on him, so Branahan belted him one on the side of the head with the flash, and the man staggered back against the wall. Branahan took a second look and was pleased; he'd had reason to remember this name and face on the wanted lists again, because he'd picked this hood up once before, five-six years back.
"Well, if it isn't Ray Dalton," he said. "Up on your feet, boy. Hey, Andy, up here! I got a deal for us! It's just a damn shame, Ray, you so homesick for California you couldn't wait to head west-but New York's kind of mad at you on account you spurned their hospitality.
You oughta learn better manners, Ray- No, you don't, me bucko, just hold it now," and the bracelets clicked home as Andy came pounding up the stairs.
By nine o'clock the excitement was about all over; they were tying up loose ends there at the General Hospital. If you could say anything like this really ended, or ended satisfactorily, maybe this had. The woman was dead, and the murderer was dead; the boy wasn't badly hurt; Morgan had a slight concussion and could go home tomorrow, they said. The reporters had come and gone, after the usual backchat with the nurses about flash-shots and noise. his would make the front page tomorrow morning, just once, and not as a lead story; people would talk of it a little and then soon forget it.
"Also," said Mendoza to Hackett, lighting a fresh cigarette, "we can't claim to have done much about winding this up, can we? Just the way the deal ran-sometimes you get a hand you can't do a damn thing with."
"That's the way it goes sometimes. But I don't know, you'd linked this up, in the process of time-"
"I think so, yes. It only needed somebody with official excuse to get into that apartment for any length of time, you know-sooner or later such an outsider would have heard or seen something to rouse suspicion, and then the lid would have blown-with what we had already."
"One hell of a thing, who'd have-And danm lucky in a way it ended like this, nothing worse. I've got no sympathy for that woman, that I'll say-she got what she asked for. But when you think what it must have been like for that kid, for the husband, all these years- Seven years, the husband said, since they'd come west away from home where everybody knew.
"Mother love," said Mendoza, and laughed. They had quite a lot from the husband about that, by now: incoherent, poured out in sporadic bursts jumbled together with seer-apology. I knew it was awful wrong of me, but I got to a place where I just couldn't stand no more. An' I thought, it I warn't there, it'd be bound to come out-they'd make her put him away somewheres-account it was getting where she couldn't handle him herself, all I could do to manage him, times, he was so big, you know. They were silent awhile, thinking about it.
Mother love, maybe: also pride, shame, ignorant conviction of guilt. An obsession: if he was to be put away, questions, forms, people knowing; and also habit, also familiarity, saying the doctor back home was wrong, no danger, poor Eddy just like a little kid, he'd never- A little kid twenty years old, six-feet-four and stronger than most men.
Ashamed of him, but refusing to send him away. And quite possibly aggravating the whole mental state by the unnatural secret life she forced on him in consequence-on all of them. Moving in or out of places by night, watching, waiting, so that none would see. Keeping him in by day, close-watched: if she had to go out, the husband home from work, the boy home from school, to keep watch. Taking him out like a dog for exercise after dark, keeping to unlighted side streets. Training him like a dog, no noise inside the apartment. Building three lives around the one unproductive life, everything else subordinate to looking after Eddy and keeping Eddy a secret from everyone else.
I figured she'd have to give it up, if I wasn't there. He got into, well, like rages they was, times-any little thing'd set him off, wanted to smash things, you know, an' she couldn't handle-Same time, he knew lots o' things you wouldn't expect, an' it was like that doctor said, when he got to be fourteen, fifteen, you know, getting to be a man, like, he-It got harder, he kept wanting get out, away, by himself, an' then when you'd bring him back, say no, he got just terrible mad, couldn't see why Of course Lindstrom had argued with her. Not the kind of man to be very articulate. Not the kind of woman to listen, reason, understand clearly what she was doing and why And I never did think he'd ever turn on any of us-on his own Ma! Didn't seem possible, if I'd thought that I'd never in this world gone off like I did. I knew it was awful bad for Marty, sleeping same room and all, 'twasn't fair-but she wouldn't never listen. I just got to a place where Mendoza dug his cigarette into the tub of sand in the corridor there and repeated, "Mother love."
"People," contributed Hackett rather savagely. The pretty blonde nurse came out and said they could see the boy for just ten minutes, if they wouldn't let him get too excited, held been in shock after all and needed rest and quiet.
The boy had tight hold on his father's hand, sitting up in bed looking at them a little uncertain, a little scared still. "We don't bite," said Mendoza, smiling down at him. "There's just a few little questions we want to ask and then we'll let you go to sleep."
"Yes, sir. I-I want to tell you-how it was, it was my fault, I know that-let him get away, when I knew how he was, he'd maybe get in trouble. But I-but I- That first time, it was all account of that doll, it was awfully silly but he wanted it so bad, he saw it in the store window, there was a light left on even when it was shut, you know, and times I took him out, nights, we went past a couple times and I couldn't hardly get him away from it, he-"