‘Call it in, call it in. . . you goddamn moron. He’s headed south on Spring towards Harris.’
Tully struggled to his feet, his face chagrined and confused as Sharky ran to the corner. Sharky stopped for a second and peered around. Mary, halfway to the next corner, slowed, aimed the .25, then realized it wouldn’t carry that far, and cut diagonally across the street. A car slammed to a stop as he raced· in front of it. Sharky went after him, cutting through the traffic. Cars screeched to a stop all around him.
Jesus, Sharky thought, five-thirty. The middle of rush hour. Neat. Real neat.
The pusher reached the corner and turned towards Peachtree Street. He fired an off-hand shot across his chest as be ran. The bullet smacked a telephone pole eight feet from Sharky. Sharky kept going, closing the distance on the pusher, who was hampered by his cumbersome shoes.
Half a block away five-thirty traffic choked the main thoroughfare. Pedestrians crowded the street corners, waiting for buses. Mary was panicky. He had to get lost in the crowd or get some transportation fast. He ran into the thick of it with Sharky closing in. As he started across Peachtree a black Cadillac drove in front of him, so close it brushed him. He jogged in place for a moment, then ran around the rear of the Caddy and dived headlong across the hood of the Buick behind it, sliding up against the windshield and falling on his hands and knees on the other side.
The astonished driver slammed on his brakes as Sharky ran up, jumped up on the hood in a sitting position, and swung his legs around, dropping to the other side.
The light had changed. Traffic was moving out. On the opposite side of the street a city bus began to pull out into the free lane in front of it. High Ball threaded through traffic, ran in front of the bus, slammed his hand against the grille, and reached the door. He aimed his gun through the glass at the driver.
‘Open up, motherfucker,’ he demanded and the driver opened the door.
Through the window on the driver’s side, Sharky saw the wild-eyed pusher waving his Saturday night special in the terrified driver’s face. Then Mary saw Sharky and fired a shot past the driver’s nose. It smacked through the window and hit the Street between Sharky’s feet, ricocheting into the fender of a nearby car.
Sharky aimed his automatic at the dealer and Mary dove out of sight towards the rear of the bus. Sharky pulled out his wallet and holding it towards the driver, flashed his shield. He ran to the door. The driver pushed the handle and the door hissed open.
‘On the floor,’ Sharky yelled and dove aboard. The driver rolled out of the seat as Mary fired another shot. It screamed off the chromium rod near the driver’s seat and went through the windshield with a splat.
Inside the bus, pandemonium. Women and children screamed, dropped behind seats, spilled packages. An elderly woman sat speechless in her seat, clutching a shopping bag to her bosom, staring straight ahead.
Sharky leaned against the wall between the front stairwell and the first seat as Mary fired another shot. He was gasping for breath. It had all happened too fast. Now he was in a box. A Mexican standoff in a crowded bus with a madman loose in the back. High Ball hunched behind the wall separating the seats from the stairwell at the rear exit. He shoved on the door but it was activated by stepping on the bottom step while the driver pressed a release button in front. Mary kicked frantically at the door, then turned and fired another shot towards the front of the bus. More screaming.
‘You goddamn pig motherfucker,’ Mary screamed, ‘I’m taking me some hostages! I’m killing me some fuckin’ kids back here, you don’t open the goddamn door.’
Sharky took a fast peek over the divider in the front of the bus and ducked back quickly as Mary’s gun roared and the bullet sighed overhead and cracked through the windshield. Everyone behind Mary was on the floor. There was no time to negotiate. Mary was in a killing mood and had to be stopped fast. Sharky bad soft-nosed loads in his pistol. There was little chance they would go through the pusher and hit someone behind him. He had to take the risk.
Sharky reached over to the bus driver’s coin changer and clicked a dozen tokens out of it. He knelt and threw them across the bus behind the driver’s seat. Mary took the bait. He stood and fired two more shots into the driver’s seat. As be did Sharky rose up, throwing both arms over the retainer, and squeezing off a single shot. It hit Mary in the cheek. The right side of his face burst open. Blood gushed down his face and onto his chest. The shot slammed him back against the wall at the rear of the stairwell.
The elderly lady, less than two feet away, continued to clutch her shopping bag and stare straight ahead.
Mary looked surprised. He shuddered as blood poured out of his face. He started to raise his gun hand again.
Sharky lowered his aim an inch or so and fired twice more. The automatic jumped in his hands. Two more holes appeared in Mary’s chest, less than half an inch apart. He moaned, turned sideways, and fell on his knees on the bottom step, his hands between his legs and his forehead resting against the door. Sharky stepped over the driver, who was huddled on the floor with his hands over his ears, and pushed the release button. The door opened and Mary pitched out head-first.
Sharky opened the front door and jumped out.
Two uniformed cops were eight feet away, leaning across the hood of a Chevrolet, their service revolvers trained on Sharky.
‘Hold it right there.’
Sharky held his ID. high over his head and strode towards the rear of the bus.
‘Sharky, Central Narcotics,’ he yelled. ‘Get an ambulance.’
‘I said, “Hold it right there,” ‘ the cop yelled again.
Sharky threw the wallet at him. It bounced off the hood of the car and spun around, opened at his shield.
‘I said, “Call a goddamn ambulance,”’ Sharky said and kept walking. He reached Mary’s still form lying face down in the street and stood over him, his gun aimed at the back of the dope dealer’s head. He slid the .25 away from the body with his foot, then slipped it under High Ball, and rolled him slowly over.
The dealer looked straight up at the dark sky. Blood rattled in his throat. The eyes turned to glass and rolled up in his head. Sharky stuck his gun in his belt and reached down, pressing his fingers into Mary’s throat. Nothing.
One of the two cops was shouting into his radio mike. The other joined Sharky and handed him his wallet. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked.
‘I just retired a junkman. Better have your partner call the ME too.’
People pressed in from all sides. Horns blared as the traffic built up. Inside the bus, passengers crowded to the windows, pressing their faces against the cold glass. The elderly woman suddenly opened her mouth and screamed over and over at the top of her lungs. A flashgun went off, blinding Sharky.
‘What the hell was that?’ he yelled.
‘Somebody took a picture.’
‘No pictures, goddammit! No pictures!’ Sharky barked.
‘Too late,’ the cop said.
More noise. More confusion. A siren was shrieking nearby.
Sharky leaned against the bus. He felt suddenly tired, disgusted, used up, sick to his stomach. ‘Ah, shit,’ he said, half aloud.
He leaned over 1-ugh Ball Mary’s body, his fingers feeling the coat lining. He felt the bags, then a zipper, and pulled it open. Inside, in small pockets sewn into the lining of the coat, were fifteen one-gram bags of cocaine.
Chapter Two
He arrived at the station at 9:45, fifteen minutes before his appointment. Jaspers’s secretary was a hard-faced, sour- tempered policewoman named Helen Hill, a competent officer turned mean after eight years tied to a desk. She was less than affectionately known in the House as the Dragon Lady.
‘Sit over there,’ she snapped, pointing to a hard oak chair without arms. She glared at his scruffy exterior for a moment, then ignored him.