“Got it?” I said. “Good for you.”
“What’s going on?” Mooney said.
“She got real clumsy on the way to the pay phone,” JoAnn said. “Practically fell on the floor. Got up with her right hand clenched tight. When we got to the phone, I offered to drop her dime for her. She wanted to do it herself. I insisted and she got clumsy again. Somehow this coin got kicked clear across the floor.”
She held it up. The coin could have been a dime, except the color was off: warm, rosy gold instead of dead silver. How I missed it the first time around I’ll never know.
“What the hell is that?” Mooney said.
“What kind of coins were in Justin Thayler’s collection?” I asked. “Roman?”
Marcia jumped out of the chair, snapped her bag open, and drew out her little .22. I kid you not. She was closest to Mooney and she just stepped up to him and rested it above his left ear. He swallowed, didn’t say a word. I never realized how prominent his Adam’s apple was. JoAnn froze, hand on her holster.
Good old reliable, methodical Marcia. Why, I said to myself, why pick today of all days to trot your gun out of the freezer? Did you read bad luck in your tarot cards? Then I had a truly rotten thought. What if she had two guns? What if the disarmed .22 was still staring down the mint chocolate-chip ice cream?
“Give it back,” Marcia said. She held out one hand, made an impatient waving motion.
“Hey, you don’t need it, Marcia,” I said. “You’ve got plenty more. In all those safe deposit boxes.”
“I’m going to count to five—” she began.
“Were you in on the murder from day one? You know, from the planning stages?” I asked. I kept my voice low, but it echoed off the walls of Mooney’s tiny office. The hum of everyday activity kept going in the main room. Nobody noticed the little gun in the well-dressed lady’s hand. “Or did you just do your beau a favor and hide the loot after he iced his wife? In order to back up his burglary tale? I mean, if Justin Thayler really wanted to marry you, there is such a thing as divorce. Or was old Jennifer the one with the bucks?”
“I want that coin,” she said softly. “Then I want the two of you” — she motioned to JoAnn and me — “to sit down facing that wall. If you yell, or do anything before I’m out of the building, I’ll shoot this gentleman. He’s coming with me.”
“Come on, Marcia,” I said, “put it down. I mean, look at you. A week ago you just wanted Thayler’s coin back. You didn’t want to rob my cab, right? You just didn’t know how else to get your good luck charm back with no questions asked. You didn’t do it for money, right? You did it for love. You were so straight you threw away the cash. Now here you are with a gun pointed at a cop—”
“Shut up!”
I took a deep breath and said, “You haven’t got the style, Marcia. Your gun’s not even loaded.”
Mooney didn’t relax a hair. Sometimes I think the guy hasn’t ever believed a word I’ve said to him. But Marcia got shook. She pulled the barrel away from Mooney’s skull and peered at it with a puzzled frown. JoAnn and I both tackled her before she got a chance to pull the trigger. I twisted the gun out of her hand. I was almost afraid to look inside. Mooney stared at me and I felt my mouth go dry and a trickle of sweat worm its way down my back.
I looked.
No bullets. My heart stopped fibrillating, and Mooney actually cracked a smile in my direction.
So that’s all. I sure hope Mooney will spread the word around that I helped him nail Thayler. And I think he will; he’s a fair kind of guy. Maybe it’ll get me a case or two. Driving a cab is hard on the backside, you know?
Isak Romun
The Grabber
Isak Romun is former infantryman, paratrooper, airdrop specialist, and program officer in the U.S. Army. He retired in 1965 and joined the Federal Civil Service, first as a public affairs miter and then as a supervisory education specialist. He presently oversees a publication group at the U.S. Army Quartermaster School, Fort Lee, Virginia, and teaches fiction writing at Christopher Newport College and John Tyler Community College. His first story was published in 1975, and five of his stories have made the Honor Role of the Yearbook of the Mystery and Suspense Story.
Police bullets put an end to the Grabber. But not before he scratched the number six three times across the wall of the room he holed up in. A plainclothesman, viewing the sixes, pronounced them one number: 666.
I don’t know why I got up at three o’clock on that miserably cold morning and went out there. The Grabber and the kids he left half dead or wanting to die were news beat, I was features. Mine was a nine-to-five kind of existence. The Grabber, a ski-masked, leather-jacketed brute specializing in assaults on lone, teenage girls, didn’t interest me particularly.
I had, of course, gotten myself involved in news stories before; after all, I was a newspaperman. But I was only interested if I could view a news story as the seed source for the kind of in-depth writing I was paid to do. I made the mistake of casually mentioning that the Grabber story might meet my specifications. One of the news people overheard me. Accordingly, the three o’clock call.
“Monahan, interested in the Grabber?” he asked, then didn’t wait for an answer. “He got number six tonight. And her boyfriend. Better move it if you want to beat the ambulance here.”
He told me where “here” was and I pulled myself to a sitting position in bed. For about a minute I fought between getting up and remaining in the warmth of the bed. Then I thought, even if I didn’t want this one, not showing up might cut off future leads from the news lads. So, I got up, dressed, and went out there.
Recollecting now, from the perspective of the present, I wish I had fallen back upon my pillow.
I did beat the ambulance, which didn’t surprise me. The Paulsburg ambulance service wasn’t noted for speed, but that night I think the driver was going in reverse.
What I saw was a nightmare scene. Cops and reporters were falling over each other. A bank of black-and-whites was drawn up, batteries slowly draining as high beams threw light on the area, pure white light striped blood red every second or so by the still-revolving lamps on the car tops.
The lights illumined the scene with a kind of staggering intensity. Everything was thrown into high, two-dimensional relief. You had the impression of looking at a very old movie, a movie of stiff figures in swift, articulated movement. Order was demolished. I looked on everything at once as if, as Chesterton wrote, a hundred windows opened on all sides of my head.
Later, I couldn’t recall the sequence of the things I saw: the dazed boy saying he knew nothing, he was hit from behind (“No, nothing hard”) by a blow delivered with numbing force and perhaps chance accuracy (“He must have hit a nerve”); the girl, alive but unconscious, bruised about the face, oddly passionless, lying on her back as the police found her, woolen cap down around her ears, winter coat buttoned up, collar drawn about her neck, gloved hands joined suggesting an attitude of prayer, like the effigy of a medieval queen surmounting her crypt; a cop running to his car, belatedly thinking of a blanket; the father coming upon the scene, looking once at his daughter, then turning to a nearby tree and pounding the tree as if he had the Grabber in front of him, pounding the tree until his fists were bloody knots of torn flesh; a cop trying to coax him away from the tree; and, finally, another cop attempting to explain that it looked like she was only beat up good and not the other — the Grabber must have been scared off — and pretty soon the ambulance would arrive.