“Yes.”
“Did the man say anything?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘You lousy son of a bitch, I’m going to kill every one of you.’”
“What kind of a voice did he have?”
“Deep. Husky. He sounded like a big man.”
“How big?”
“Very big. His arm was strong.”
“How tall are you, Ben?”
“An even six feet.”
“Would you say he was very much bigger than you? From what you could tell?”
“No, not that big. I mean, maybe six-two, six-four, something like that.”
“And he said, ‘You lousy son of a bitch, I’m going to kill every one of you.’ Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“And then he hit you?”
“Yes.”
“On the head?”
“Yes.”
“Is that the only place he hit you?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t knock you to the ground and kick you or anything?”
“No.”
“He simply put his arm around your neck, pulled you backwards, and then hit you on the top of the head, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A tuxedo, I think. I only saw his arm, but I think it was the sleeve of a tuxedo.”
“You saw this?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t too dark to see?”
“No. No.”
“What color was the tuxedo?”
“Black.”
“Not blue?”
“No. Black.”
“You could tell that? In the darkness here? Under the shade of the tree here?”
“Yes. It was black. I think it was black.”
“And the man spoke and then hit you? Or did you yell for help first? Which?”
“First he spoke, then I... no, wait. I yelled for help first, and then he cursed at me, and then he hit me.
“Only once, right?”
“Yes. He hit me on the head. That’s the last thing I remember.”
“And you fell down unconscious, right?”
“Yes.”
“One last question, Ben?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you lying to me?”
The pinwheels had sputtered out, and the Roman candles had filled the night with red. And now, standing behind the platform, the caterers from Weddings-Fetes, Incorporated, stood at the ready, anxious to light the fuses for the grand finale. Tommy Giordano stood alongside his father-in-law and his bride, bathed in the light from the bandstand, waiting for the medley of explosion and light that would come in the next few moments. He did not know that the crosshairs of a telescopic sight were fixed at a point just above his left eye. He smiled pleasantly as the caterers rushed around behind the platform, squeezed Angela’s hand when he saw the first fuse being touched.
The fuse burned shorter, shorter, and then touched the powder. The first of the rockets sailed skyward, exploding in a shower of blue and green stars, followed by the second rocket almost instantly afterward, silver fishes darting against the velvet night. Explosions rocked the peaceful suburb of Riverhead, shockingly loud explosions that threatened to rip the night to shreds.
In the attic room, Oona Blake dug her fingers into Sokolin’s shoulder.
“Now,” she said. “Now, Marty.”
Chapter 15
The men worked together as a highly efficient team, and perhaps everything would have gone smoothly, bloodlessly, had not Bob O’Brien been a part of the team. It was certain that once the men returned to the squadroom, legend and superstition would prevail to single out O’Brien as the culprit.
They had drawn their service revolvers on the front porch of the Birnbaum house. O’Brien stood to one side of the door, and Meyer turned the knob and eased the door open. The living room on the ground floor of the house was dark and silent. Cautiously, both men entered the room.
“If he’s here and plans to use a rifle,” Meyer whispered, “he must be upstairs.”
They waited until their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. They found the staircase then and began climbing it, hesitating when their weight caused the treads to creak. On the second floor, they checked the two bedrooms and found them empty.
“An attic?” O’Brien whispered, and they continued climbing.
They were in the hallway outside the attic room when the fireworks started in the Carella back yard. At first, they thought it was gunfire, and then they recognized it for what it was, and both instantly formed the conclusion that their sniper — if he were indeed in the house — had undoubtedly been waiting for the fireworks before opening up with his rifle. They did not speak to each other. There was no need to speak. The operation they were about to perform had been acted out by them hundreds of times before, either together, or as part of other teams. The fireworks in the yard across the way simply added urgency to the operation but they moved swiftly and without panic, Meyer flattening himself against the wall to the right of the door, O’Brien bracing himself against the corridor wall opposite the door. O’Brien glanced at Meyer, and Meyer nodded soundlessly.
From inside the room, they heard a woman’s voice say, “Now. Now, Marty.”
O’Brien shoved himself off the wall, his left leg coming up, the left foot colliding with the door in a powerful, flat-footed kick that splintered the lock and shot the door inward. Like a fullback following a line plunge, O’Brien followed the door into the room, Meyer crossing in behind him like a quarterback ready to take a lateral pass.
O’Brien was not anxious to fire.
His gun was in his hand as he entered the room, following the jet-catapult of the door, his eyes sweeping first to the window where the man crouched over the rifle, then to the floor where Cotton Hawes lay tied in a neat bundle, and then back to the window again as the blonde in the red silk dress whirled to face him.
“Drop the piece!” he shouted, and the man at the window swung around with the rifle in his hands, the rockets exploding behind him in the back yard illuminating his eyes, pinpointing his eyes with fiery light; and O’Brien’s eyes locked with his, and in that moment he weighed the necessity for firing.
“Drop it!” he shouted, his eyes locked with the other man’s, and he studied those eyes for the space of three seconds that seemed like three thousands years, studied the fright in them, and then the sudden awakening to the situation, and the rapid calculation. And then the eyes began to narrow and O’Brien had seen the instantaneous narrowing of the eyes of a man with a gun before, and he knew the eyes were telegraphing the action of the trigger finger, and he knew that if he did not fire instantly, he would drop to the floor bleeding in the next split second.
Meyer Meyer had seen the eyes tightening, too, and he shouted, “Watch it, Bob!” and O’Brien fired.
He fired only once, from the hip, fired with a calmness that gave the lie to the lurching beat of his heart and the trembling of his legs. His slug took Sokolin in the shoulder at close range, spinning him around and slamming him up against the wall, the rifle dropping from his hands. And all O’Brien could think was Don’t let him die, Dear God don’t let him die!
The blonde hesitated for a fraction of an instant. With Sokolin slowly crumpling from the wall to the floor, with Meyer rushing into the room, with the world outside disintegrating in a shower of sparks and a cacophonous welter of explosions, she made her decision and acted upon it, dropping instantly to her knees, pulling the skirt back in a completely feminine gesture as she stooped with masculine purposefulness to pick up the rifle.
Meyer kicked her twice. He kicked her once to knock the rifle upward before her finger found the trigger, and then he kicked out at her legs, knocking her backward to the floor in a jumble of white flesh and sliding red silk. She came off the floor like a banshee out of hell, lips skinned back, fingers curled to rake. She wasn’t looking for conversation, and Meyer didn’t give her any. He swung his.38 up so that the barrel was nested in his curled fingers, the butt protruding below. Then he brought the gun around in a side-swinging arc that clipped the girl on the side of the jaw. She threw her arms and her head back, and she let out a slight whimper, and then she came down slowly, slowly, like the Queen Mary sinking in the River Harb, dropping to the floor in a curious mixture of titanic collapse and fragile gracefulness.