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“The mayor says you’re more interested in protecting blacks than you are in protecting whites and their property.”

“The mayor’s sick,” Necessary said.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Ask his psychiatrist.”

“Has he got one?”

“If he doesn’t, he should.”

“He says he’s going to call the National Guard in.”

Necessary smiled and circled his ear with a finger. I watched the cameras zoom in on that for a close-up and then I rose and said, “That’s it, gentlemen. The press conference is over.”

“Hey, Dye,” a wire-service man called to me, “You think the mayor’s nutty?”

“As peanut brittle.”

“Can I use that?”

“I hope you do,” I said.

It was nearly 5 P.M. before the call came from our man who was watching the Lee-Davis Hotel. “They’re coming out now,” he said, his voice tinny over Necessary’s desk telephone speaker.

“How many?” Necessary asked.

“I counted thirteen.”

“Schoemeister with them?” Necessary said.

“He’s in the first car. They got three cars.”

“Okay,” Necessary said.

“You want me to follow them?”

“No,” Necessary said. “We know where they’re going.”

He switched off the speaker and looked at me. “How long’s it take to get from the Lee-Davis to that old house of Lynch’s?”

“Fifteen minutes,” I said. “Maybe sixteen.”

He nodded. “You’d better tell Ferkaire that I want every ambulance in town there in forty-five minutes.”

“When’ll we get there?” I said.

“When do you think?”

“In about forty-five minutes,” I said.

Carol Thackerty came in a quarter of an hour later and told me: “I didn’t know any place else to go.” She looked at Necessary. “I saw you on television, Homer. You came over well.”

“I know,” Necessary said. “Sincere.”

“Extremely,” she said.

“I wonder if it’ll go network?” he asked.

“Why?” I said.

“Well, I’d just sort of like the wife to see it.”

The second call came from a plainclothes detective that we’d stationed in a house across the street from the Victorian one that Ramsey Lynch had once occupied. It was now home for Giuseppe Luccarella and nearly two dozen assorted friends.

Necessary turned on his desk telephone speaker again. “Okay, Matthews,” he said. “We just want you to tell us what you see — not what you guess. I’m not going to interrupt with any questions except this one: You know what Schoemeister looks like?”

“He’s the one with the mustache and the funny looking lips.”

“That’s right. It’s all yours now.”

“Well, there’s not a hell of a lot to see. Sometimes one of them will come out on the porch and look around and then go back inside. I figure that there’re maybe a couple of dozen of them in there — at least that’s what I counted since I’ve been here and that’s been since ten this morning. Luccarella got here about noon, I guess. I haven’t seen him since. Wait a minute. There’re some cars coming down the street now — three of them. They’ve stopped in front of the house now. About four guys in each car — maybe five in the back one.

“It looks like Schoemeister in the front car getting out on my side. Two guys are getting out with him. One of them’s got what looks like a pillowcase. He’s waving it around and he seems to be yelling something at the house. Let me get the window open and maybe I can hear what he’s yelling.”

We could hear Matthews’ grunts over the phone speaker as he tried to open what must have been a stubborn window.

“I got it,” he said. “He’s yelling for Luccarella to come out. That they want to talk. The pillowcase must be some kind of a truce flag or something. Anyway, they’re still waving it. Now somebody’s coming out of the house — a baldheaded guy. He’s carrying some kind of white handkerchief or something. He’s yelling something about halfway — that they’ll meet halfway.

“I guess that’s okay with everybody. The door to the house is opening and it looks like Luccarella — let me get the glasses on him. Yeah, it’s Luccarella. Schoemeister’s moving around his car now — the two guys with him. One of them’s carrying the pillowcase. They’re on the sidewalk now and Luccarella’s at the porch’s screen door.”

We heard it then. It was the long crack of a submachine gun. “Oh Jesus Christ Goddamn sonofabitch!” Matthews moaned over the speaker. “Jesus Christ! Oh, God!”

“Quit praying and tell it!” Necessary snapped.

“They shot ‘em. They shot all three of them. Luccarella dove back through the door and they used a submachine gun and they got all three of them. I mean Schoemeister and the guy with the pillowcase and the other one. Schoemeister’s guys are firing at the house now and a couple of them are dragging Schoemeister back to the car. The one with the pillowcase is crawling back. They shot the baldheaded one on the steps. He was one of Luccarella’s. I think he’s dead. I know goddamned well Schoemeister is. They’re dragging him into the car and still firing at the house. Aw, Christ.”

Necessary didn’t seem to be listening anymore. He was busy strapping on an open holster that held a .38 caliber revolver. When he was through with that, he reached into his desk drawer, brought something out and offered it to me. I just looked at it. “It’s a gun,” he said. “A Chief’s Special.”

“I know what it is,” I said.

“You may need it.” He gazed at me curiously. “You know how to use it.”

“I know.”

“Then take it, for Christ sake, and let’s go.”

My hand moved toward the gun and an hour or so later I was holding it and when I looked at it, that was all that it was, a gun. I dropped it into my coat pocket.

“Just you and me?” I said.

“That’s right, Dye, just you and me.”

Chapter 43

By the time we got to the old Victorian house eleven ambulances jammed the street and their white-coated attendants were wandering around looking for someone to cart off to a hospital — or the morgue. A crowd of around two hundred or two hundred and fifty persons had formed and they were all telling each other what had happened. One of the ambulance attendants spotted Necessary and pushed through the crowd toward him.

“I can’t find anything or anybody, Chief,” he complained in a whining, nasal tone. “Everybody says they heard a lot of shots and there’s sure as hell a lot of blood on the sidewalk, but there’s nobody dead. There’s not even anybody sick.”

“Must have been a false alarm,” Necessary said.

“With all that blood?”

“That’s right,” Necessary said, “with all that blood. Now tell the rest of those ambulances to get on out of here.”

The attendant shrugged and disappeared into the crowd. We pushed through it and made our way up the walk, skirting the bloody spot where Schoemeister must have died. I wondered if the man with the white pillowcase had been his oldest sister’s kid, Marvin.

I let Necessary do the pounding on the door. It was opened cautiously by the man called Shorty. He grinned when he saw who it was and opened the door wide. “Worked out real nice, didn’t it?”

“What worked out nice, friend?” Necessary asked.

“Yeah. Well, come on in — he’s expecting you.”

We followed him into the stiff parlor where the man from New Orleans with the squeezed-together face wore the broadest smile he could manage. There was a magnum of champagne on the coffee table. Samuels, the lawyer, was fiddling with its cork.