She moved toward him. “Maybe it’s good-bye.”
“If it is,” he said, “there’s only one way to say it.”
His eyes told her to come closer. He put his arms around her and held her with a tenderness and a feeling of not wanting to let her go. He kissed her. He knew she felt the meaning of the kiss, she was returning it and as her breath went into him it was sweet and pure and somehow like nectar.
Then, very gently, she pulled away from him. She said, “Go now. It’s still dark outside. It’ll be another hour before the sun comes up.”
He grinned. It was a soft grin that wasn’t forced. “This job won’t take more than an hour,” he said. “Whichever way it goes, it’ll be a matter of minutes. Either I’ll get them or they’ll get me.”
He turned away and walked across the cellar toward the splintered door. Tillie stood there watching him as he opened the door and went out.
It was less than three minutes later and they had him. He was walking south on Ninth, between Race Street and Arch, and the black Olds 88 was cruising on Arch and he didn’t see them but they saw him, with Oscar grinning at Coley and saying, “There’s our boy.”
Oscar drove the car past the intersection and parked it on the north side of Arch about twenty feet away from the corner. They got out and walked toward the corner and stayed close to the brick wall of the corner building. They listened to the approaching footsteps and grinned at each other and a few moments later he arrived on the corner and they grabbed him.
He felt Coley’s thick arm wrapped tight around his throat, pulling his head back. He saw the glimmer of the five-inch blade in Oscar’s hand. He told himself to think fast and he thought very fast and managed to say, “You’ll be the losers. I made a connection.”
Oscar hesitated. He blinked puzzledly. “What connection?”
He smiled at Oscar. Then he waited for Coley to loosen the arm-hold on his throat. Coley loosened it, then lowered it to his chest, using both arms to clamp him and prevent him from moving.
He made no attempt to move. He went on smiling at Oscar, and saying, “An important connection. It’s important enough to louse you up.”
“Prove it,” Oscar said.
“You’re traced.” He narrowed the smile just a little. “If anything happens to me, they know where to get you.”
“He’s faking,” Coley said. Then urgently, “Go on, Oscar, give him the knife.”
“Not yet,” Oscar murmured. He was studying Ken’s eyes and his own eyes were somewhat worried. He said to Ken, “Who did the tracing?”
“I’ll tell that to Riker.”
Oscar laughed without sound. “Riker’s in Los Angeles.”
“No he isn’t,” Ken said. “He’s here in Philly.”
Oscar stopped laughing. The worry deepened in his eyes. He stared past Ken, focusing on Coley.
“He’s here with Hilda,” Ken said.
“It’s just a guess,” Coley said. “It’s gotta be a guess.” He tightened his bear-hug on Ken. “Do it, Oscar. Don’t let him stall you. Put the knife in him.”
Oscar looked at Ken and said, “You making this a quiz game?”
Ken shrugged. “It’s more like stud poker.”
“Maybe,” Oscar admitted. “But you’re not the dealer.”
Ken shrugged again. He didn’t say anything.
Oscar said, “You’re not the dealer and all you can do is hope for the right card.”
“I got it already,” Ken said. “It fills an inside straight.”
Oscar bit the edge of his lip. “All right, I’ll take a look.” He had the knife aiming at Ken’s chest, and then he lowered it and moved in closer and the tip of the blade was touching Ken’s belly. “Let’s see your hole-card, sonny. All you gotta do is name the street and the house.”
“Spruce Street,” Ken said. “Near Eleventh.”
Oscar’s face became pale. Again he was staring at Coley.
Ken said, “It’s an old house, detached. On one side there’s a vacant lot and on the other side there’s an alley.”
It was quiet for some moments and then Oscar was talking aloud to himself, saying, “He knows, he really knows.”
“What’s the move?” Coley asked. He sounded somewhat unhappy.
“We gotta think,” Oscar said. “This makes it complicated and we gotta think it through very careful.”
Coley muttered a four-letter word. He said, “We ain’t getting paid to do our own thinking. Riker gave us orders to find him and bump him.”
“We can’t bump him now,” Oscar said. “Not under these conditions. The way it stacks up, it’s Riker’s play. We’ll have to take him to Riker.”
“Riker won’t like that,” Coley said.
Oscar didn’t reply. Again he was biting his lip and it went on that way for some moments and then he made a gesture toward the parked car. He told Coley to take the wheel and said he’d sit in the back with Rockland. As he opened the rear door he had the blade touching Ken’s side, gently urging Ken to get in first. Coley was up front behind the wheel and then Oscar and Ken occupied the rear seat and the knife in Oscar’s hand was aimed at Ken’s abdomen.
The engine started and the Olds 88 moved east on Arch and went past Eighth and turned south on Seventh. There was no talk in the car as they passed Market and Chestnut and Walnut. They had a red light on Locust but Coley ignored it and went through at forty-five.
“Slow down,” Oscar said.
Coley was hunched low over the wheel and the speedometer went up to fifty and Oscar yelled, “For Christ’s sake, slow down. You wanna be stopped by a red car?”
“There’s one now,” Ken said, and he pointed toward the side window that showed only the front of a grocery store. But Oscar thought it might really be a side-street with a police car approaching, and the thought was in his brain for a tiny fraction of a second. In that segment of time he turned his head to have a look. Ken’s hand moved automatically to grab Oscar’s wrist and twist hard. The knife fell away from Oscar’s fingers and Ken’s other hand caught it. Oscar let out a screech and Ken put the knife in Oscar’s throat and had it in there deep just under the ear, pulled it out and put it in again. The car was skidding to a stop as Ken stabbed Oscar a third time to finish him. Coley was screaming curses and trying to hurl himself sideways and backward toward the rear seat and Ken showed him the knife and it didn’t stop him. Ken ducked as Coley came vaulting over the top of the front seat, the knife slashing upward to catch Coley in the belly, slashing sideways to rip from navel to kidney, then across again to the other kidney, then up to the ribs to hit bone with Coley gurgling and trying to sob, doubled over with his knees on the floor and his chin on the edge of the back seat, his arms flung over the sprawled corpse of Oscar.
“I’m dying,” Coley gurgled. “I’m—” That was his final sound. His eyes opened very wide and his head snapped sideways and he was through for this night and all nights.
Ken opened the rear door and got out. He had the knife in his pocket as he walked with medium-fast stride going south on Seventh to Spruce. Then he turned west on Spruce and walked just a bit faster. Every now and then he glanced backward to see if there were any red cars but all he saw was the empty street and some alley cats mooching around under the street lamps.
In the blackness above the rooftops the bright yellow face of the City Hall clock showed ten minutes past six. He estimated the sky would be dark for another half-hour. It wasn’t much time, but it was time enough for what he intended to do. He told himself he wouldn’t enjoy the action, and yet somehow his mouth was watering, almost like anticipating a tasty dish. Something on the order of pudding, and the color of it was black.
He quickened his pace just a little, crossed Eighth Street and Ninth, and walked faster as he passed Tenth. There were no lit windows on Spruce Street but as he neared Eleventh the moonlight blended with the glow of a street lamp and showed him the vacant lot. He gazed across the empty space to the wall of the old-fashioned house.