The sniper turned from the window at the same moment.
The girl was all flesh and a yard wide. She was also all teeth and all nails. She clamped two rows of teeth into Hawes’s hand as he struggled for a grip, and then her nails flashed out wildly, raking the uninjured half of his face. The sniper circled closer, shouting, “Get away from him, Oona! I can’t do anything with you—”
Hawes did not want to hit the girl. He especially did not want to hit her with the hammer. But the hammer was the only weapon he possessed and he reasoned correctly that if this girl got away from him, Neanderthal would either club him into the floorboards with the stock of the rifle or, worse, plunk a few slugs into his chest. Neither prospect seemed particularly entertaining. The blonde herself was not entertaining in the slightest. Wiggling in his arms, she delivered a roundhouse punch that almost knocked out his right eye. He winced in pain and swung at her with the hammer, but she ducked inside the blow and brought her knee to his groin in an old trick she’d probably learned in grammar school, so expertly did she execute it. Hawes had been kicked before. He’d also been kicked in the groin before. His reactions, he discovered, were always the same. He always doubled over in pain. But this time, as he doubled, he clutched at the blonde because the blonde was insurance. As long as her hot little body remained close to his, the sniper was helpless. He clutched at her, and he caught the front of her dress and it gave under his hand, tearing in a long rip that exposed the blonde’s white brassiere and three-quarters of her left breast.
The material kept ripping, with the blonde at the end of it like an unraveling ball of wool in the paws of a playful kitten. He swung the hammer again, catching her on the shoulder, stopping her movement, clutching again, catching flesh this time, his fingers closing tightly as he pulled her toward him. The blonde’s dress was torn to the waist now, but Hawes wasn’t interested in anatomy. Hawes was interested in clubbing her with the hammer. He swung her around, and her backside came up hard against him, a solid muscular backside. He swung one arm around her neck, his elbow cushioned between the fleshy mounds of the girl’s breasts, and he brought back the hand with the hammer again, and the girl pulled another old grammar school trick.
She bent suddenly from the knees, and then shot upward with the force of a piston, the top of her skull slamming into Hawes’s jaw. His arm dropped. The girl swung around and leaped at him, a nearly bare-breasted fury, clawing at his eyes. He swung the hammer. It struck her right arm, and she clutched at it in pain, her face distorted. “You son of a bitch!” she said, and she reached down, her knee coming up, her skirt pulling back over legs that would have been magnificent on the French Riviera stemming from a bikini, and then she pulled off one high-heeled pump and came at Hawes with the shoe clutched like a mace.
“Get the hell away from him!” the sniper yelled, but the girl would not give up the fight. Circling like wrestlers, the girl’s chest heaving in the barely restraining brassiere, Hawes panting breathlessly, one holding a hammer, the other a spiked-heeled shoe, they searched for an opening. The girl’s lips were skinned back over teeth that looked as if they could bite Hawes in two.
She feinted with the shoe, and he brought up his left arm to ward off the blow, and then she moved swiftly to one side, and he saw only the blur of the red shoe coming at his face, felt only the crashing pain as the stiletto-like spike hit his temple. He felt his fingers loosen from the handle of the hammer. He felt himself pitching forward. He held out his arms to stop his fall, and the girl caught him as he came toward her and his head bounced against her shoulder, slid, and he felt the warm cushion of her breast for an instant before she viciously pushed him away from her.
He struck the floor and the last shamed thought he had was A girl. Jesus, a girl...
A boy or a girl, the baby was kicking up a storm.
Sitting with her father-in-law who had surely had too much to drink, Teddy Carella could not remember the heir apparent ever having raised such a fuss.
It was difficult for her to appreciate the oncoming dusk with her son- or daughter-to-be doing early-evening calisthenics. Every now and then the baby would kick her sharply, and she’d start from the sudden blow, certain that everyone at the reception was witnessing her wriggling fidgets. The baby seemed to have a thousand feet, God forbid! He kicked her high in the belly, close under her breasts, and then he kicked her again, lower in the pelvic region, and she was sure he’d turned a somersault, so widely diverse had the kicks been.
It’ll be over next week, she thought, and she sighed. No more backaches. No more children pointing fingers at me in the street. Hey, lady, what time does the balloon go up? Ha-ha, very funny. She glanced across the dance floor. The redhead from Teaneck or Gowanus or wherever had latched onto a new male, but it hadn’t helped Teddy very much. Steve hadn’t been anywhere near for the past few hours, and she wondered now what it was that could possibly be keeping him so occupied. Of course, it was his sister’s wedding, and she supposed he was duty bound to play the semihost. But why had Tommy called him so early this morning? And what where Bert and Cotton doing here? With the instincts of a cop’s wife, she knew that something was in the wind — but she didn’t know quite what.
The baby kicked her again.
Damn, she thought, I do wish you’d stop that.
Tony Carella had drunk a lot of whiskey and a lot of wine and a lot of champagne. He had not drunk so much since the time Steve got married and that was years ago.
In the glow of his stupor, he began to like the Weddings-Fetes, Incorporateds. They were really nice fellows. It was worth all the money he was giving them. Oh, madonna, how much money he was giving them! But it was worth it. Every penny. They were nice boys, all of them. Look at the nice dance floor they had made, bringing in that big flat platform and laying it right down in the center of his lawn, Santa Maria, my lawn! But they were nice boys. Look at the nice thing they had built for the fireworks at the end of the property. They would be nice, the fireworks. He loved the Weddings-Fetes, Incorporateds. He loved his wife. He loved his son and his daughter-in-law, and his daughter and his son-in-law. He loved everybody.
He loved Birnbaum.
Where was Birnbaum, anyway?
Why wasn’t Birnbaum sitting next to him on this day of his joy, drinking wine and champagne? If he knew Birnbaum, the old man was probably off in a corner someplace weeping.
My old friend, Tony thought, weeping.
I will find him. I will find him and give him a cigar.
He was starting out of his chair when he heard the scream from the edge of his property.
Carella had dispatched the boys from the 112th, the photographer, the assistant medical examiner, and the laboratory assistants, wondering all the while where Cotton Hawes had gone. He’d asked Cotton to stay with the body. Well, the body was now gone — and nearly everyone concerned with the body was also gone. And so was Cotton.
But where?
He had not been working with Hawes for too long a time, but he felt certain the man would not have pulled a stunt so childish as walking out on his date. Still, he’d been pretty angry back there a little while ago. And Christine, as cute as she was, had certainly been asking for trouble. She’d wanted Cotton to do a burn, and he had, but she’d stumbled onto a corpse in the bargain, which proves you shouldn’t play with fire, girls.