This idea was simple and I wasn’t exactly proud of it, but it was practical. Some nine months ago, before Danny Meade was picked up for his fourth breaking-and-entering, he was living with an Agnes Borst. Later we learned that when Meade was convicted, she’d gone back to her family in the midwest. Meade didn’t know this, though. Nobody in the underworld knew what happened to her. We found out by accident.
Anyhow, when I heard Danny escaped and was believed holed-up in the city, I got this idea to root him out. A snow-bird stoolie did the job for us. He circulated it around that Agnes Borst was in Polyclinic, registered as a Mrs. Nizlek, having a baby, Danny Meade’s baby. It figured that when Meade heard that, he’d want to see his kid. What man wouldn’t?
We had some trouble getting the hospital to cooperate but after we assured them there’d be no shooting in the building under any circumstances, they agreed.
It was nine o’clock and visiting hours were about over and I somehow couldn’t get Hollenbeck’s attitude out of my mind and was wondering if maybe he was right and maybe there weren’t any game laws for hunting criminals but maybe there were some other kind, when a little red light flicked over the door of our room, inside.
I looked toward the mirror and saw a slightly built man with his hat pulled low over his face, talking to the receptionist. Huskily, I said to Hollenbeck: “Yea-boy, let’s go.”
We were wearing white intern coats. Meade didn’t know any of us so we figured to get right up to him and grab him before he knew what was happening. None of us were to speak until the first one reached him and collared him.
Hollenbeck and I walked out of the room and toward the man at the desk, who was looking nervously toward Smitty and Weigand, approaching from the other side. But the white coats threw him off. He swung his eyes back to the receptionist. I heard him say: “I wasn’t listening. What ward did you say she’s in?”
It was obvious we were going to pin him easily. I was in front of Hollenbeck and only a step away from Meade and he still wasn’t tipped. Then I looked past him and saw Weigand’s moon face. He was flushed and his fat-embedded eyes shone terribly and I knew this was going to go wrong. This wasn’t going to be good enough for him.
I wish I could describe Weigand better. He isn’t really so awful fat. He’s more solid, chunky, yet he gives this impression of terrible grossness. And not because he’s dirty. He’s neat and clean enough. I don’t know what it is. But Weigand’s eyes I can tell you about. They usually look dull and stupid but they didn’t look that way now. They were as near to what you’d call laughing as that kind of eyes would ever get.
Weigand’s voice, a little reedy for a man his bulk, called out: “Watch it, Meade! Don’t try to make any break!”
Meade hadn’t even known we were alive but now he almost came out of his skin. His head swiveled and he ducked under my too quick, desperate lunge. The woman behind the desk screamed. When I looked around again, Meade’s spindly legs were scissoring toward the hospital’s front door.
Weigand wasn’t hardly hurrying, it seemed. Hollenbeck and Smitty were running and yet Weigand still got to the door before them. His gun was in his hand at his side. I’ll give him this: he kept our promise and there was no shooting inside the building. But as he went outside his gun slammed twice.
When I got out there Weigand was standing on the hospital steps, blowing smoke from the barrel of his Special. He turned to the rest of us. Once I’d had a golf partner make a hole in one. I’d never seen anyone so tickled with himself, so proud and the whole big world was his own little old oyster that moment. Not until now. Weigand’s moon face held that same expression.
He gestured with the gun. “There he is.” He was so happy and excited spittle sprayed when he spoke. “How’s that for shooting, huh?”
About thirty yards away on the lawn in front of the hospital there was a crumpled heap in the tree-and-shrubbery-dappled moonglow. Neither Hollenbeck nor I, nor Smitty spoke.
“Fifty, maybe sixty feet, by God,” Weigand blurted. “And he was running, dodging, don’t forget. You shouldn’ve seen him, almost doubled-over and spinning, twisting like a damn broken field runner. For a moment, all those highlights and shadows from the moon and shrubbery out there, I thought I was going to miss. But they don’t just hand me those target shooting medals every year for nothing, by God.”
Nobody said anything. But very deliberately, Hollenbeck hawked and spat, his eyes on Weigand while he did it. You couldn’t mistake what he had in mind. I guess maybe instinctively I had to show Hollenbeck I agreed with him on this, no matter what. I said:
“Oh, goody, goody. You can carve another notch on your gun, now, Sarge. And maybe we can call you Wild Bill Weigand — The Only Law West Of The Polyclinic?”
Ordinarily Weigand doesn’t take stuff like that. He knew nobody liked him and at times he almost gloried in that but you weren’t supposed to come right out and say it. You were supposed to be too afraid, to have too much respect for his rank. But neither Hollenbeck nor I seemed to get through to him, now.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s take a look. Five’ll get you ten if I didn’t hit with both slugs and he’s ready for the meat wagon.”
He started down the steps and across the grass toward that huddled dark heap, moving fast. We followed more slowly, like men on their feet for the first time after a long illness.
Danny Meade had no gun in his long, thin, dirty-nailed hand. Smitty searched him and there was no weapon on him at all, not even a pocket knife. He was still alive. If you’d call it that. His thin, once good looking face was so gray you could see the veins in it. His cheeks were all sucked in and his lips were two pale welts against his teeth. Sweat was globed on his face and his stringy hair was soaked with it.
I’d seen death in men’s eyes before and I knew Meade didn’t have long. He was still able to talk, though, in a hoarse whisper. He lay there, spilling curses at all of us while Hollenbeck ran to Emergency for help.
Weigand stood over Meade and after awhile he said, chuckling: “Ah-ah-ah! Better save those last few breaths, Danny. Sticks and stones, you know...” Weigand was a great one for worn out sayings.
I turned away. I felt sick at even being part of the same race as Weigand, let alone being on the same job. I heard Hollenbeck, back again, say: “Why did you do it, Sarge?” He asked that as though he’d been knocking himself out trying to figure the answer ever since it had happened but now he had to give up; the riddle was too much for him. “If you hadn’t hollered—”
“Why, he reached toward his pocket, didn’t he?” Weigand cut Hollenbeck off. “What you so upset about? He killed a prison guard, didn’t he? Well, a life for a life.”
“I didn’t see him reach for anything.” Hollenbeck’s voice sounded gritty.
“That’s funny. I did.” I could almost see Weigand looking straight and hard at Hollenbeck and grinning.
We all knew, then, that’s the way it would be. No charges against Weigand for this. Nobody could prove he hadn’t seen Meade make a threatening gesture. I wondered how many more times this would happen. Weigand had at least ten years before retirement.
At the same time I could feel young Hollenbeck’s eyes boring into my back and they felt a little like Weigand’s bullets must have felt to Meade. I walked away.
The doc said Meade might go in fifteen minutes or he might last the night. He lapsed into unconsciousness after they took him to Emergency. He might or might not come out of it again, the doc said.