We tried to subdue him, which was a mistake. My partner got cut on the face and the left shoulder, I got nicked along the forearm — I still have the scar, though very faint — and when I tried to whack the fellow with my nightstick, he grabbed it out of my hand, snapping the leather thong around my wrist, astonishing me. Still astonished, I backpedaled, using both hands to unsnap my holster as he pursued me, my partner now on his knees, holding his face. From the bars around, the street was filling up with people who weren’t going to be any help. I took the .45 out of its holster, said not a word, and shot him three times. Later, they told me any one of the three would have done, but I’d wanted to be sure. Also, later, I claimed to have yelled, “Stop in the name of the law!” and no one came forward to contradict me.
The other time was on the Meadowbrook Parkway in Mineola, when I was a cop there. I’d stopped a speeder at about four in the morning. Afterward, we found out the car contained a shipment of cocaine, from a smugglers’ landing place out near the Hamptons, on its way to Manhattan, which was why, as I approached the car, people in it started shooting at me, and all at once the car leaped forward. (I’ll never know why they stopped in the first place, since they were going to shoot and run anyway. Belated panic, maybe.) None of the shots hit me. I drew out my own .38 and shot at the tires, but I was shooting in haste, recoil drew the barrel up, and one of my shots hit the front seat passenger in the back of the head, killing him instantly. The driver went off the road, the car rolled onto its side, and I radioed for help, keeping my distance from those people until a lot of help arrived.
Neither of those experiences could exactly be called training in dealing with violence. And both of those times I’d been at least as well-armed as the other guy.
Well, I could wish I knew more things by now, and had more equipment, but this was it. This man and this room. Knowing I would have only a few seconds warning before someone came in — the scratch of the key in the lock would tell me — I went to work.
Two screws held the phone jack to the paneling and the furring strip behind it. I had no idea what harm I could do, if any, but it seemed worth the effort, so I worked the jack loose, then turned it over and rewired it so all four wires came together. With any luck I was now causing some sort of short-circuit somewhere in the telephone company’s system, and they would have to send a repair crew to fix it.
Next I turned to one of the framed posters. The frame was held together with loosely set screws, which I removed, reducing the thing to its components. The poster I rolled up and slid inside one of the other rolled-up posters on top of the filing cabinet. The glass and mounting board and all but one of the frame pieces I put back in the space between filing cabinet and wall, to be used after lunch, when I’d probably have more time.
There were six rolled-up posters, each held with two red rubber bands. I removed the rubber bands from two of them, and put the posters inside the others. The rubber bands went into my pocket.
I searched under the sofa cushions, and under the sofa itself, but found nothing.
I was slowly and with great difficulty using the metal edge of the poster frame to pry open the filing cabinet, when I heard that scratch sound at the door. By the time the door opened, announced by that twangy music, I was on the sofa, reading an unproduced movie script of Ross’s called Half a League.
That was lunch; a turkey and cheese and mayonnaise sandwich on rye bread, another pear, another cup of lukewarm black unsweetened coffee. The same two men maintained the same routine, except that one of them looked briefly into the bathroom. I hadn’t spoken to them at breakfast, nor did I speak to them at lunch. I acted — I tried to act — as though I were merely resigned and patient.
After lunch I finished breaking into the filing cabinet, which was a disappointment. Notebooks about story ideas. Old checks, year by year, in shoeboxes. Income-tax supporting documents. More videotapes, these marked only with a woman’s name. Nothing sharp, nothing heavy, nothing useful.
The next work had to be done in the bathroom, where I began by removing the mirror from its hook on the wall, tapping the wall with a piece of poster frame until I knew exactly where the vertical stud was — right behind the hook, unfortunately — then beating with my elbow a small hole into the Sheetrock next to the stud. The piece of frame helped me enlarge the hole to about three inches square, and then I moved the hook to a spot just above the hole, so that when I put the mirror back on — it was a bit shakier here, without the stud support for the hook, but no matter — the mirror covered both the hole I’d made and the hole from which I’d removed the hook.
My problem was, I was going to make something of a mess in my preparations, and I didn’t want trash left around to alert my guards. What couldn’t be flushed down the toilet would be pushed into the narrow space inside the wall.
I brought in my equipment and made my preparations. I was very absorbed in my work. Time seemed to fly.
44
I almost ate the dinner.
I’d planned to go through with part of the meal, behaving exactly as I had the first two times, so they’d be at their most relaxed when I made my move, and I was actually reaching for one of the cups when it occurred to me why I shouldn’t.
Hours and hours had gone by according to my stomach, but these were the same two silent waiters who brought me my meal. There was no twangy music to be heard this time when the door was open, but another guard was still visible outside before the door was shut. I hoped he’d turn out to be alone, or at least not with a crowd, when the time came.
The meal this time was in three cups, containing pea soup, and milk, and very weak-looking coffee, plus the usual pear, and I was actually reaching for the pea soup when the word drug came into my mind.
Why wouldn’t they? If it were up to me to keep somebody quiet and imprisoned for a day or two, I would be very likely to put a lot of sleeping pills or some such into his evening meal, and hold off the evening meal until late, so he’d scoff it down. I’d give him milk, to relax his stomach, and the weakest coffee I could get away with. I’d give him thick liquids in which he’d be unaware of the extra ingredient. Then, knowing that he was safely asleep, I could take some time off as well.
“What is this?” I asked, changing my movement from a reach for the cup to a pointing at it.
“Eat,” the talkative one said.
I hadn’t known the performance would start this early. You have to psych yourself up to perform, and I’d thought I would have a few minutes to get used to the stage and the other players while I ate, but now the red light was on before I was ready, and my question had been simply a stall, a chance to reorganize my mind, to get ready for my entrance.
“I don’t like pea soup,” I said, gesturing with my left hand while my right hand went under the sofa cushion. Improvisation; the scariest part of acting.
The talker took a step forward, glowering at me. Good; take another step. “You eat,” he said, padding his line.
I picked up the cup of soup with my left hand, as though to smell it, leaning forward over the coffee table, my right hand dragging behind me under the cushion, holding on. Shaking my head, I looked up at the talker and flung the soup and then the cup into his face. At the same time, just as I had been rehearsing it over and over for the last few hours, I pushed up with the back of my closed right hand, shoving the sofa cushion out of the way, so that when I stood, right hand swinging forward, the spear came with it. The spear: two long triangles of broken glass that had been part of the pane mounted in the dismantled poster’s frame, their wide ends wrapped in a couple of Ross’s old checks and attached by four red rubber bands to the end of one of the long lengths of metal poster frame.