"It's agreeable."
That's what did us in. Me and the old English doll making small talk on our way out of Number Nine. I can't apologize for not being on my toes. I simply didn't expect to get cornered in that two-by-four foyer while she was playing with the lock. The atmosphere was cordial.
But that's exactly how it happened.
One second, she was just about to waddle on through the exit with me at her clodhopper heels, and the very next, she was hurtling back against me, propelled by something or someone beyond the door, standing in that darkened courtyard on the front stoop. Dame Paul was no featherweight. Her pear body slammed against me, driving me back to the end of the short corridor. She had spilled like a bag of groceries all over the floor and I was coming off the wall like a ricochet, clawing for my shoulder holster. I got the .45 out in time, but it might as well have been a ham sandwich for all the good it would do me. Dame Paul had rebounded to her feet like a gymnast, and her oval figure was between me and the characters in the doorway.
The front door slid shut and so very suddenly that it was like a frightening magic act. Two identical men stood framed against the barrier, fanned out into two look-alike wedges of efficient manpower. Both of them were tall, thin, dressed in similar suits of dark gray wool, with snap-brim black fedoras rammed down over chiseled, lean faces. Neither of them spoke. They didn't have to. They had immediately, upon entrance, leveled their right arms out in my direction, like two Federal agents doing the "Hogan's Alley" target-practice routine. It was the approved form. Jutting from the black-gloved end of each right arm were long-nosed pistols, fitted with silencers. I'd seen too many of them in my time to be mistaken. Also, like dotting the 'i's' and crossing the 't's' the man on my left had pointed his gun directly at the Robin Hood-hatted head of Louise Warrington Paul, who was gawking back at him with fright and amazement etched all over her homely face. The clutch bag was dangling off her arm like a dead weight.
The gunner on my right was doing me a similar courtesy. His weapon was targeted in on my face.
It was a bad moment. Common sense dictated nobody shoot first, and my .45 could have made a helluva mess if it went off in my hand no matter who got the first shot in, and for awful ticks of their watches and mine it was that kind of a moment. A once in a lifetime.
The four of us were frozen in attitudes of statuesque rigidity, and something had to give. I decided it had to be me. I know myself better than anyone else. I didn't know the two strangers, and I wasn't sure enough of my little old English lady spy. I did the only thing that seemed to make sense. I lowered the .45 and let it point toward the floor, but I didn't let go of it.
"Edward," moaned Louise Warrington Paul. "You mustn't——"
"Don't be a sap," I growled, keeping my eyes on the silent twins in from the street. "I start anything, none of us will leave this hallway alive. Understood, men? Or should I explain that this .45 has a hair-trigger on it?"
It didn't, but who the hell was going to risk it?
The gunmen did not lower their weapons. I allowed my eyebrows to go up. I shook my head. They remained as they were, still aiming guns at the two of us, as immovable as granite gargoyles. Both of their faces were young. I could see that. I could also see that they were old China hands at this sort of thing. Obviously good at taking orders and carrying them out. But it would have been easy to believe they were also mute. Nobody should have stayed quiet for so long, given this situation. Still, neither of them spoke. Neither of them gave any indication that they were going to, either. It was as if they were wound-up, life-sized dolls who could only speak or move on command.
"Shy guys, huh? Okay, I'll break the ice. What can we do for you? We are not taking any subscriptions this week, and we definitely do not give lessons on the piano—"
Louise Warrington Paul straightened her back against the wall where she had slumped in fright. Her prune face had taken on added wrinkles. Also, she was breathing hard.
It was an impasse, a Mexican standoff, but something or someone had to give. It and the twin assassins did.
"Go back into the living room," the left-hand invader said in a curiously flat, uninfected voice. He lowered his own arm, but the silencer-pistol never left my chest.
"Then you can speak," I said. "Good. Come on, Dame Paul. Do like the nice young man says."
She spluttered at that, pulled herself erect, and then nodded resignedly. I backed down the hall, turned at the short flight of steps, and mounted them. Behind us, the two gunmen padded slowly, coming on like bad dreams come true. I paused in the center of the dimly lit living room and turned. Louise Warrington Paul paused at my side, still holding the clutch bag. Still staring at our newfound intruders.
They were the odd couple, all right.
Advancing up the stairs, they fanned out once more, keeping us in range of their weapons. I measured them very, very carefully. To say that they were trained killers who would drop us like meaningless mosquitoes was the understatement of the year. But I knew they wouldn't kill, couldn't kill, because they were robots. Hired guns who did no thinking on their own. If we had been intended to be corpses, it would have happened as soon as they burst into the foyer. It hadn't, so I knew something else was on the menu. The ball, probably.
"Well," I challenged softly. "Who are you?"
Lefty didn't smile, but I saw his teeth.
"If you have to know, call us the Brothers Karamazov. I am Dmitri, and he is Aloyesha." He indicated Righty with a toss of his head, but it didn't affect his aim in any way.
I managed a tight grin.
"I wouldn't call him saintly, and I don't think you are exactly the irresponsible type, Dmitri. But if that's the way you want to play it, I'm Simple Simon and she's Mother Goose."
Dmitri's thin mouth hooked at the corners.
"We know who you are, Mr. Noon. And the lady. It doesn't matter who we are."
"Agreed. But what do we do now? There's four of us. We could manage a rubber of bridge."
Aloyesha grunted, and Dmitri nodded.
"We have come for the baseball. If you hand it over, we will not harm you. That is a promise."
I frowned. "Baseball? What baseball?"
My .45 was still pointed toward the floor.
Dmitri let me hear the hammer on his pistol cock in the quiet of the room. Louis Warrington Paul gasped audibly and shrank against me. I stood my ground, riveting my attention on the two so oddly alike gunmen. They might have been turned out by a Xerox machine.
"Mr. Noon," Dmitri said coldly and clearly. "You have time to count to three. Before you reach the last number, you will give us the ball. It's useless to play games, my friend. We could rifle your dead bodies or search these premises, but we would find the ball inevitably. Dame Paul, as you facetiously choose to call her, is a dangerous operative whose fame precedes her by a thousand cases. We know why she came to America. It is why we are here. We have the same goals, though the points of origin and interest are widely diversified. Now—please. Your deaths are not necessary. Let me repeat that. There is no need to kill. So—please cooperate and let us all go our separate ways."
"Dmitri," Aloyesha murmured.
"Yes?" Dmitri did not take his eyes off my face or gun hand.
"Would Mr. Noon resist so much, do you think, if he knew why we wanted the ball? Tell him what it means and perhaps he will not be so willing to die for it."
"Yes." Dmitri nodded. "Perhaps you are right." He almost smiled, Dmitri did. Then he obviously thought better of it and assumed a more patient air. Even the cocked silencer-pistol went down a scant inch.
"What has she told you, Mr. Noon?"
"She who?"
"Your Mother Goose. Did she tell you all about how the ball contains a roll of microfilm useful to both your country and hers? Did she insist that our country—the big bad Communist menace—wishes to get its greedy fingers on some nebulous missile information? If she told you that then she lies. The ball does contain a valuable piece of material
. But it has nothing to do with world peace and security. Her country has stolen from us something that belongs only to the U.S.S.R. and is of no concern to America—"
"You lie!" Suddenly, Louise Warrington Paul was apoplectic, going from abject fright to withering scorn. She flung away from me, swinging the clutch bag aloft almost as if she had lost her reason. "Don't you listen to them, Edward! Rank thieves and cheats that they are—why, by their lights, black is white and the moon is made of very green cheese—" She went on like that, raging, and Dmitri and Aloyesha almost looked amused. The portrait of a pear-shaped grande dame, in tweed and clodhopper shoes, was a silly one at that. But in five seconds flat, the whole comedy took another three-hundred-and-sixty-degree swing into fantasy, wonder and—horror.
Dmitri and Aloyesha had backed off the few paces necessary to stay clear of Dame Paul and her swinging handbag.
Neither they nor I could have dreamed of what was going to happen next.
The swinging clutch bag suddenly settled in the old woman's hands. Dmitri and Aloyesha were directly in front of the thing.
Their duplicate faces were registering similar contempt and cold anger even as Louise Warrington Paul's laughable handbag, the one that contained the baseball in question, went off two quick times in succession. Exploding like an automatic pistol.
Exploding and thundering with all the sudden blasting violence of the secret weapon it actually had to be.
I flipped to one side, stunned and amazed, but sympathetically responding to the fact that I was still the immediate target in front of two silencer-pistols. I needn't have bothered.
Whatever she might turn out to be in the end, Dame Paul had the blood of the Annie Oakleys and Sergeant Yorks running in her veins. Dmitri and Aloyesha, the Brothers Murderered, were dead before they could squeeze a trigger in reflex action. They had been caught with their flaps down.
Dmitri slammed back against the staircase railing, his face disappearing in a spout of blood. Aloyesha tried to find the sudden hole in his chest, and went down to his knees, clawing at his heart, before he closed his eyes and crumpled in a limp dead heap on the floor. Neither of the brothers so much as twitched once they were down. Not so much as a moan or a whimper had escaped either of them.
I stared at Louise Warrington Paul above the carnage of the two fresh corpses. The acrid smell of cordite and gunpowder lingered in the air of the room. It is never a very nice smell at any time.
The silly clutch bag was now leveled at me, and the slitted eyes in the prunish face of the old woman across the room from my crouched position next to a wing chair were not quite as friendly as they should have been. Wisps of grayish smoke still curled and eddied from the top corner of the deadly bag.
Louise Warrington Paul's unforgettably homely face was somehow oddly contrite. Or maybe it was the damn low lights of the room again.
"Sorry, my boy," she murmured in a faint, faraway voice. "I do believe I have to hand you the dirty end of the stick—do forgive me, if you can . . ."
She was still saying how sorry she was and generally confusing me completely when she pointed the enormous bag in her hands in my direction, and I saw her shoulders, the round ones under the tweed cape, shift upward as if she were pressing down on the handles of a bicycle.
I never did hear the third shot.
I only saw the puff of smoke.
After that, there was nothing but darkness and bursting, burning meteors of agony, and distorted upheavals of what is charitably called the human mind.
In the twinkling of an eye, the lady vanished.
6
The Dead Ball
I had a dream, Mets fans.
It was the apotheosis of all small boys' dreams. All small boys everywhere. Including Presidents, kings, and king-makers.
I saw myself at Shea Stadium. It was a night game, and the enormous architectural horseshoe of grandstands, mezzanine, and bleachers was packed to the limit of capacity. A gigantic haze of electric lighting hung over the playing field and the surrounding stands. There was a mammoth buzz of noise, something like fifty-five-thousand patrons screaming their heads off. Waving banners and homemade flags, all of which had contributed to Metsomania. I didn't know what I was doing at Shea until I saw myself march up to home plate, swinging a big white bat, taking my place in the batter's box. Somehow I had come full cycle to a moment of truth, a split second of adolescent fantasy in which I was the center of attraction. The cynosure, as it were, of all eyes. A Met among Mets.
What a moment.
What a dream.
The score was 3–0, and the Mets were three runs down in the last half of the ninth. Yet, hope and miracles beckoned. For there was Buddy Harrelson and Tommy Agee and Wayne Garrett dancing off the bases, their nice white uniforms looking so familiar and so friendly. There was Yogi Berra, coaching on the first-base line, clapping his hands, his squat little body jumping up and down as he shouted to me to get a hold of one. The scene was a tableau of wonder. Fifty-five-thousand throats yelling and screaming and out there on the mound, some sixty feet away from me, was the tall, athletic presence of Bob Gibson, the ace right-hander of the St. Louis Cardinals. White teeth flashed in the handsome black face, and I waggled my bat, waiting for his first serve. I felt glorious, I felt marvelous, I felt like Superman. Poor Gibson. He thought he was facing Ed Noon, the private eye, who hadn't swung a baseball bat in something like twenty years. Little did he know what he was up against. In my dream, I wasn't me. I was Mel Ott. His reincarnation at least. Which meant I was one of the deadliest, timeliest hitters in the history of big-league baseball.
Gibson went into his motion, and a blazing fast-ball cut the corner of the plate. Behind me, the man in the mask bawled out "Strike One!" and the tremendous crowd got on him with boos and catcalls. I looked back toward the Mets dugout. Gil Hodges, patient and immobile in his windbreaker, hands tucked characteristically into the pockets, was regarding me with no expression at all in his eyes. I got back to Gibson, thinking of Casey at the Bat, thinking a lot of things. The Mets needed four runs to win, and I didn't know how many outs there were. I didn't really care. I had the bat. I had the chance to play Hero. Nice guys did not finish last, no matter what Durocher had said. I was going to grand-slam with the bases loaded, and there were no two ways about that. In my dream, I knew no fear. I had no misgivings. I had to do it.
Gibson blazed another pitch in. I let it go by. "Strike Two!" the umpire bellowed. The stands came alive with noise. Out on the base paths I could see Harrelson, Agee, and Garrett, taking their leads off their respective bases again, begging me, imploring me to get the bat off my shoulder and just meet the ball. Grimly I dug in at the plate. I glared out at Bob Gibson. He was laughing, shaking his head to himself, as if wondering what the hell I was doing in the uniform of the New York Mets. The poor sap. He didn't know I was Mel Ott. Nobody knew it.
He dipped, came out of his crouch, stretched his left leg, and bent forward. The ball rocketed toward the plate. It came at me like a blurred liner. Gritting my teeth, I duplicated Ott's stance, the right leg going up for leverage, coming down for anchorage of all my weight, and then I followed through, the bat flashing forward in one of the sweetest swings in all hitting history. For a full-stop second, the crowded ball park was a hush. A mammoth cathedrallike stillness. And then my bat—Mel Ott's bat, met Bob Gibson's best fast-ball. A meeting of giants.
There was a mighty cataract of sound. A rising, splitting thunder of collision. And the whole baseball world turned over on its fanny as I delivered with the bases loaded. Cooperstown reeled. Records fell.
A comet left home plate—a rising meteor of white and all sorts of brilliant colors. The ball soared, climbed over the infield, and shot up, up, up. Traveling like a missile shot until it was lost somewhere in the darkness beyond the center field fence. Nobody on the Cards even looked back or gave a second glance at the flight of the ball. It had disappeared like a rocket. I had hit the longest home run in the archives of major-le
ague baseball. Pandemonium was reigning all over Shea Stadium.
Scorecards, confetti, soda containers, and flags rained down on the field. Harrelson scored, Agee scored, and Garrett tripped in from third, laughing and clapping his hands. I raced toward first, smiled my way past Coach Berra's congratulatory pat on the rump, and went into the traditional four-base trot around the bases. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Mets dugout had emptied to a man, and a quivering, massed troop of figures were already surrounding home plate, waiting to greet the conquering hero. Even Gil Hodges had taken his hands out of his pockets. I had won the game for the Mets. Me. Mel Ott for a Day. A minute, a lifetime. I wondered if anyone had noticed that Gibson's ball had autographs all over its globular hide.
But something happened.
With Shea Stadium in an uproar, with the air filled with debris from the stands, and music pouring from the loudspeakers, I headed for second base. But instead of the bag and a disconsolate Cardinal trooping away from the sack, there was the figure of a nun. She had her hands out, her face was beautiful and dead-white. She turned around to let me see the knife handle jutting from her back. I panicked, ducking around her, avoiding her outstretched hands, and ran toward third. A weird humming sound had blotted out the stadium noises. Now there was only a fine, low, eerie melody hanging in the ozone. My heart was thumping wildly, and my spiked shoes began to feel like ten-ton weights fastened to my ankles.
The nightmare was far from done. Coach Eddie Yost did not meet me.
There was an old lady on third base. A withered crone with a Robin Hood hat, tweed clothes, and an enormous smile lighting up her face. I avoided her, too, missing the bag altogether, because she was standing directly on it Nothing mattered now but escape. I didn't seem to care that my not touching second and third would make my home run illegal, wipe it off the records, and cost the Mets a ball game. All I wanted to do was run and hide from these strange apparitions materializing on the base paths. From the noise sailing down from the seats.
Little Miss Murder Page 6
