"Also."
"And to healthy bosoms."
"And strong legs."
"And clean teeth."
"And Pepsodent toothpaste." They all drank.
"I know where there are Spanish girls," Sammy Horn said.
"Where?"
"Uptown."
"Where uptown?"
"A street called Mason Avenue. You know it?"
'""Jo."
"It's uptown There are Spanish girls with healthy bosoms and strong legs and clean teeth on that street." Sammy nodded.
"Gentlemen," he said, "it is time we made a decision. What time is it, Bucky old pot?"
"It is 6:25," Bucky said, glancing at his watch.
"And three-quarters. When you hear the tone, it will be 6:26." He paused.
"Bong!" he said.
"It's getting late, men," Sammy said.
"It's later than we think, men. For cris sakes men, We may be dead someday!
Then what? Away we go, men, to bleed on foreign soil."
"Christ!" Bucky said, awed.
"So ... do we wait for Miss Amaglio to take off her blouse, which I am reasonably certain she will never do, despite the healthiness of her remarkable bosom? Or shall we slither off uptown to this wonderful street called Mason Avenue, there to explore foreign soil without the attendant dangers of total warfare? What do you think, men?"
The men were silent, thinking.
"Consider well, men," Sammy said. He paused.
"This may be our finest hour."
The men considered well.
"Let's go get laid," Bucky said.
Standing at the bulletin board near the light switch, Hawes wrote into his pad aimlessly, waiting for the precise moment of attack. Ideally that moment should be when Virginia Dodge was at the other end of the room. Unfortunately, she showed no signs of moving from the desk behind which she sat in deadly earnestness, staring at the bottle of colorless fluid.
Well then, Hawes thought, the hell with the ideal. Let's just hope she turns her back for a minute, just to give me enough time to snap off the lights.
That's all I need. Just a moment while she turns away, and then the lights go off, and I reach for the gun, left-hand pocket of the coat, mustn't grab for the right-hand pocket by mistake, Jesus, suppose one of the boys thinks there's been a power failure, suppose somebody strikes a match or turns on one of those damn battery powered emergency lights, is there one in the squad room sure, under the kneehole of the junk desk, oh Jesus, don't anybody get any bright ideas, please, pun unintentional, don't anybody throw any light on the subject, pun intentional, don't foul me up by being heroes.
Just let the lights go out, and sit tight, and let me get my mitts' on that pistol. Just three seconds. Stick my hand in the pocket, close it around the butt, pull it out, and shove the gun into the side pocket of my pants. That's all I need.
Now if she'd only turn her head.
I'm six inches from the light switch. All she has to do is turn her head, and I make my move.
Come on, Virginia darling, turn that deadly little ski of yours.
Virginia darling did not move a muscle.
Virginia seemed hypnotized by the bottle of nitro.
Suppose she whacks it off the desk the minute the lights go out?
No, she won't do that.
Suppose she does?
If she does, I'll get a demerit, and never get to make Detective 1st Grade.
Come on, you bitch, turn your head. Turn it!
There must be a God, Hawes thought. He watched in fascination as Virginia Dodge slowly but surely turned to look across the room toward the grilled windows.
Hawes moved instantly. His hand darted for the light panel, shoved downwards on the protruding plastic switch.
There was blackness, instant blackness which filled the room like a negative explosion.
"What the hell ?" Virginia started, and then her voice went dead, and there was only silence in the room.
The coat, Hawes thought.
Fast!
He felt the coarse material under his fingers, slid his hands down the side of the garment, felt the heavy bulk of the weapon in the pocket, and then thrust his hand into the slit, reaching for the gun.
And then suddenly, blindingly, unimaginably-the lights went on.
CHAPTER 12
He felt like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
For a moment, he couldn't imagine what had caused the sudden blinding illumination. And then he realized the lights were on again, and here he was reaching into the pocket of Virginia's coat, his fingers not an inch from the gun. Oddly, time seemed to lose all meaning as soon as the lights went on. He knew that time was speeding by at a remarkable clip, knew that whatever he did in the next few seconds could very well mean the life or death of everyone in the room, and yet time seemed to stop.
He decided, in what seemed to take three years, to whirl on Virginia with the revolver in his hand.
He closed his fingers around the butt of the gun his the warmth of the dark pocket, and the c1o~ing of his hand took twelve years. He was ready to draw the gun when he saw Arthur Brown, a puzzled look on his face, striding rapidly up the corridor. He decided then-the decision was a century coming-to yell, "Get out, Arthur! Run!"
and then the time for yelling was gone because Arthur was pushing through the gate and entering the squad room And then, too, the time for pulling the revolver was gone, all the time in the world had suddenly dwindled down to its proper perspective, perhaps twenty seconds in all had gone by since the lights went on, and now there was no time at all, time had gone down the drain, now there was only Virginia Dodge's cold lethal voice cutting through the time rushing silence of the squad room
"Don't pull it, redhead! I'm aiming at the nitro!"
He hesitated. A thought flashed into his head: Is there really nitroglycerin in that bottle?
And then the thought blinked out as suddenly as it had come. He could not chance it. He released his grip on the pistol and turned to face her.
Thunderstruck, Arthur Brown stood just inside the gate.
"What ?" he said.
"Shut up," Virginia snapped.
"Get in here!"
"What. ?" Brown said again, and there was complete puzzlement on his face. He knew only that he'd returned to the precinct after sitting in the back room of a tailor shop all afternoon. He had climbed the metal steps leading to the second story as he'd done perhaps ten thousand times since joining the 87th Squad. He had found the upstairs corridor in darkness, and had automatically reached for the light switch at the top of the steps, turning on the lights.
The first person he'd seen was Cotton 1lawes reaching into the pocket of a coat hanging on the rack. And now a woman with a gun.
"Get over here, redhead," Virginia said.