Til Death

by Ed McBain

  “Good. Then I’m ready to go. You think we ought to leave now? It’s past two, isn’t it?”

  “I think you ought to do something before you leave,” Carella said.

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Put on your pants.”

  Tommy looked down at his hairy legs. “Oh, God! Oh, Jesus! Boy, am I glad you’re here! How could a guy forget to do something he does every day of his life? Boy!” He shucked the jacket and took his black trousers from a hanger in the closet. “What about Sokolin?”

  “He spent a year in jail because he got into an argument about his dead Korean buddy.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good.”

  “It sounds pretty lousy. I don’t imagine he’s got much love in his heart for you.”

  A knock sounded at the front door. Tommy looked up and then slipped his suspenders over his shoulders. “Steve, would you get that, please? It’s probably Jonesy.”

  Carella went to the front door and opened it. The boy standing there was about Tommy’s age, twenty-six or twenty-seven. He wore his brown hair short. His gray eyes were alight with excitement. He looked very handsome in his tuxedo and his white starched shirt-front. Seeing Carella’s similar uniform, he extended his hand and said, “Hi. Usher?”

  “Nope. Relative,” Carella said. He took the hand. “Steve Carella. Brother of the bride.”

  “Sam Jones. Best man. Call me Jonesy.”

  “Okay.”

  “How’s our groom?”

  “Nervous.”

  “Who isn’t? I had to get out for a walk or I’d lose my mind.” They went through the house into the bedroom. “You okay, Tommy?” Jonesy asked.

  “I’m fine. I was ready to walk out of here without my pants, how do you like that?”

  “Par for the course,” Jonesy said.

  “You’ve got dirt on your knees,” Tommy said, looking down at his best man’s trousers.

  “What?” Jonesy followed his glance. “Oh, hell, I knew it. I tripped on the front step going out. Damn it!” He began brushing vigorously at his trousers.

  “Do you have the ring?”

  “Yep.”

  “Check.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Check anyway.”

  Jonesy stopped brushing his pants and stuck his forefinger into his vest pocket. “It’s there. Ready for delivery. Jones to Giordano.”

  “Jonesy used to pitch on our team,” Tommy said. “I caught. I already told you that, didn’t I?”

  “Jones to Giordano,” Jonesy said again. “He was a damn good catcher.”

  “You did all the work,” Tommy said, zipping up his fly. “There. Now for the jacket. Have I got my shoes on?” He looked down at his feet.

  “He was like this before every game,” Jonesy said, grinning. “I know this guy since he was three years old, would you believe it?”

  “We used to get walked around the park together,” Tommy said. “Jonesy missed the Korean bit because he’s got a trick knee. Otherwise we’d have been in that together, too.”

  “He’s the meanest bastard ever walked the earth,” Jonesy said playfully. “I don’t know why I like him.”

  “Yok-yok,” Tommy said. “We’ve got mutual wills, Steve, did you know that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Had them drawn up when I got out of the service. Birnbaum’s son made them out for us. Birnbaum and his wife witnessed them. Remember, Jonesy?”

  “Sure. But you’d better have yours changed now. You’re gonna be a married man in a few hours.”

  “That’s right,” Tommy said.

  “What do you mean, mutual wills?” Carella asked.

  “Our wills. They’re identical. Jonesy gets everything I own if I die, and I get everything he owns if he dies.”

  Jonesy shrugged. “You’ll have to change that now,” he said.

  “Sure, I will. When we get back from the honeymoon. But I never regretted the wills, did you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Birnbaum thought we were both nuts, remember? Wanted to know why two such young fellows were making out wills. His wife—may she rest in peace—kept clucking her tongue all the while she signed. What ever happened to that lawyer son of his, anyway?”

  “He’s out West now. Denver or someplace. He’s got a big practice out there.”

  “Poor Birnbaum. All alone here in the city.” Tommy stood at attention, ready for inspection. “Pants on, tie tied, shoes shined. Am I okay now?”

  “You’re beautiful,” Jonesy said.

  “Then let’s go. Ooops, cigarettes.” He snatched a package from the dresser. “Have you got the ring?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Check again.”

  Jonesy checked again. “It’s still there.”

  “Okay, let’s go. What time is it?”

  “Two-twenty,” Carella said.

  “Good. We’ll be a little early, but that’s good. Let’s go.”

  They went out of the house. Tommy locked the door behind him, and then turned left, walking toward the driveway lined with tall poplars that shielded it from the house next door. They walked toward the car with all the solemnity of a funeral party.

  “Where’s the driver?” Tommy asked.

  “I told him he could go get a cup of coffee,” Jonesy said. “He should be back by now.”

  “Here he comes,” Kling said.

  They watched the driver as he ambled up the street. He was a short man wearing the black uniform and peaked cap of a rental service. “Ready to go?” he asked.

  “We’re ready,” Tommy said. “Where were you?”

  “Up the street getting a cup of coffee.” The driver looked offended. “Your best man said it was all right.”

  “Okay, okay, let’s go,” Tommy said.

  They got into the limousine, and the driver began backing into the street.

  “Wait a minute,” Tommy said. The driver turned. “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “There. In the driveway. Where we just came from.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Have you got the ring, Jonesy?”

  Jonesy felt in his pocket. “Yes, I’ve got it.”

  “Oh. Okay. I thought I saw something glinting on the concrete. Okay, let’s go. Let’s go.”

  The driver backed out of the driveway and turned into the street.

  “Relax,” Jonesy said.

  “Boy, I wish I could.”

  The limousine moved slowly up the tree-lined street. The sun was shining in an eggshell blue sky. It was a beautiful day.

  “Can’t you go any faster?” Tommy asked.

  “We’ve got plenty of time,” the driver said.

  He stopped at an intersection at the top of a long hill. Patiently, he waited for the light to change.

  “You turn left at the bottom of the hill,” Tommy said. “The church is on the left.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, hell,” Jonesy said suddenly.

  “Huh?”

  “Cigarettes! I forgot cigarettes.”

  “I’ve got some,” Tommy said.

  “I’ll need my own.” He opened the door on his side. “I’ll get some at the candy store. Go ahead without me before you bust a gut. I’ll walk down the hill.” He slammed the door behind him and started for the sidewalk.

  “Don’t get lost!” Tommy yelled after him frantically.

  “I won’t. Don’t worry.” He vanished inside the candy store on the corner.

  “The light’s green,” Tommy said. “Go ahead.”

  The driver put the car into gear and started down the hill. It was a long steep hill with one street bisecting it. It ran at a sharp pitch to a second street at the far end, a dead end blocked by a stone wall that shielded a steep-angled cliff of jagged rock. The stone wall was painted with alternating yellow and black lines as a warning to approaching motorists. As a further precaution, a huge blinking DEAD END sign flashed in the exact cent
er of the wall. Since the time that excavation for gravel had begun in the area behind the wall, leaving the rocky cliff and the steep drop, only one motorist had driven through the wall and over the cliff. He’d been killed instantly, and it was learned later that he’d been drunk, but the accident had been enough to warrant the yellow-and-black paint job and the blinking light.

  The limousine gained momentum as the car hurtled toward the end of the hill and the painted stone wall.

  “That’s a bad turn at the corner,” Tommy said. “Be careful.”

  “Mister, I’ve been driving for twenty years,” the driver said. “I never missed a wedding yet, and I never yet had an accident.”

  “Yeah, well there’s a steep cliff behind that wall. A guy was killed here once.”

  “I know all about it. Don’t worry, you ain’t gonna get killed. When you been married for fifteen years, the way I have, you’ll maybe wish you did get into an accident on your wedding day.”

  The car sped for the bottom of the hill and the turn. The DEAD END sign blinked monotonously. Clutching the wheel in two massive fists, the driver swung it sharply to the left.

  There was an enormous cracking sound that jolted the automobile.

  The car did not turn to the left.

  With something like awe in his voice, the driver said, “Jesus, it won’t steer!”

  From outside the car, passers-by saw only a vehicle that was wildly out of control, the front wheels pointing in opposite directions as the limousine hurtled forward toward the sidewalk, the stone wall, and the cliff beyond.

  Inside the car, the passengers only knew that the driver could not, for some reason, steer the limousine. In a last desperate effort, he swung the steering wheel to the right and then the left, his foot automatically leaping to the brake pedal. The car swung in a screeching arc toward the sidewalk, its back wheels leaping the curb, the rear end swinging toward the wall and the cliff.

  “Brace yourself!” Carella shouted, and the men in the car tensed for the shock of impact, surprised when the shock was not as great as they expected, startled with the knowledge that something had intervened to prevent the powerful smash through the stone wall, amazed when they realized the something was a lamppost.

  The car ricocheted off the unbending steel pole, swerved in another wild arc, bounced forward onto the front wheels finally, coming to a dead stop as the brakes took hold completely and irrevocably.

  The men in the automobile were silent.

  The driver was the first to speak.

  He said only, “Wow!”

  One by one, they climbed out of the car. Kling had banged his head on the roof of the car, but otherwise no one was injured. The car itself had fared worse. The entire right side was smashed in where the limousine had collided with the lamppost. A crowd was gathering on the sidewalk. A policeman began shoving his way through it. The driver of the Cadillac began talking to him, explaining what had happened.

  Carella walked to the steel lamppost and slapped it with an open hand. “We can all get down on our hands and knees and kiss this baby,” he said. “If it hadn’t stopped us…” He looked over the stone wall, and then wiped his forehead.

  “What the hell do you suppose happened?” Kling asked.

  “I don’t know,” Carella said. “Come on.”

  Together, they walked to where the driver and the patrolman were squatting on their hands and knees at the front of the car.

  They waited.

  “Sure,” the driver said to the cop. “That’s it.”

  “Yeah,” the cop said. “Boy, you were lucky you hit that lamppost. A guy was killed here once, you know that?”

  “What is it?” Carella asked.

  “The steering linkage,” the driver said. “There’s a steering tube under there, connected to the tie rod ends. Well, the one on the right side busted. And without that tie rod end, I didn’t have any control.”

  “It looks like more than that,” the patrolman said.

  “What does it look like?” Carella asked.

  “It looks like somebody worked on that thing with a hack saw!”

  At 3:30 P.M., Tommy Giordano and his best man stepped from the rectory of the Church of the Sacred Heart and walked to the altar. In a loud stage whisper, Tommy asked, “Have you got the ring?” and Jonesy nodded in assurance.

  Angela Carella, resplendent in white, entered the back of the church on her father’s arm. Her face beneath the white veil was frozen in lovely horror.

  On one side of the church, sitting with the bride’s family, were Steve and Teddy Carella, and Bert Kling. On the other side, sitting with the groom’s relatives, were Cotton Hawes and Christine Maxwell. Organ music filled the vaulted stone vastnesses of the church. A photographer who’d snapped Angela as she’d stepped out of the Cadillac, snapped her again as she’d mounted the church steps, and again as she’d started down the aisle, now hopped with gnomelike agility to the front of the church, anxious to catch her as she approached the altar. Tommy’s hands twitched at his sides.

  Louisa Carella began crying. Teddy reached over to pat her mother-in-law’s hand, and then reached for her own handkerchief, and blew her nose to hide her tears.

  “She’s beautiful,” Louisa said, and Teddy nodded, her eyes brimming.

  The organ music swelled to drown out the sound of the joyful weeping, the “Ooooohs” and “Ahhhhs” which heralded the bride’s steady regal progress down the aisle. The flash bulbs popped as the photographer busily kept his shutter clicking. Tony Carella, his bent arm supporting the trembling hand of his daughter, walked down the aisle with the dignity of a monarch about to be crowned, certain that the twitching of his left eye was not visible to anyone in the pews.

  In the first pew on the bride’s half of the church, Steve Carella sat alongside his wife and chewed his lip.

  Somebody sawed through that rod end, he thought. This was no damn black widow joke. This was serious business.

  Angela climbed the steps to the altar. Tommy smiled at her, and she returned the smile, and then lowered her eyes behind the pale white veil.

  And whoever did the sawing was well aware of that steep hill and that sharp turn. Whoever did it probably sawed it through just far enough to know it would snap when the turn was attempted.

  Tony Carella handed his daughter to his soon-to-be-son. Together, the couple faced the priest. The church was still with the solemnity of the occasion.

  Tommy saw something glinting on the driveway as we pulled out, Carella thought. Probably metal filings from the sawed rod. The rod is thin. Ten minutes with a hack saw could have done a very fine job on it. And Sam Jones was gone for a half-hour walk. And Sam Jones had dirt on the knees of his trousers. And it was Sam Jones who gave the driver permission to leave the limousine in search of a cup of coffee.

  The priest said a prayer and then blessed the couple with holy water. Tommy was sweating profusely. Beneath the white veil, Angela’s lips were trembling.

  “Do you, Thomas Giordano,” the priest said, “take this woman as your lawfully wedded wife to live together in the state of holy matrimony? Will you love, honor and keep her as a faithful man is bound to do, in health, sickness, prosperity, and adversity, and forsaking all others keep you alone unto her ‘til death do you part?”

  Tommy swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  “Do you, Angela Louisa Carella, take this man as your lawfully wedded husband to live together in the state of holy matrimony? Will you love, honor and cherish him as a faithful woman is bound to do, in health, sickness…”

  And it was Sam Jones, Carella thought, who conveniently stepped out of the automobile to buy a package of cigarettes just before the crash.

  “…prosperity and adversity, and forsaking all others keep you alone unto him ‘til death do you part?”

  “I do,” Angela whispered.

  It is also Sam Jones, best man and best friend, who is named in Tommy’s will, who gets everything Tommy owns should Tommy
die. Sam Jones.

  “For as you have both consented in wedlock and have acknowledged it before God and this company, I do by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Catholic Church and the laws of this state now pronounce you husband and wife.”

  The priest made the sign of the cross over the young couple and, sobbing next to Teddy, Louisa Carella suddenly said, “Now I have another married daughter,” and she took Teddy’s hand and kissed it quickly and fervently.

  Tommy lifted his bride’s veil and kissed her fleetingly and with much embarrassment. The organ music started again. Smiling, the veil pulled back onto the white crown nestled in her hair, Angela clutched Tommy’s arm and they started up the aisle, the photographer recording every inch of their progress.

  In the rectory, the telephone began ringing.

  The nun in the rectory held the door open for Steve Carella as he stepped into the small room. Standing by the telephone in the robes he’d worn during the ceremony, Father Paul said, “I knew it’d take a wedding to get you into the church, Steve. But I didn’t guess a phone call would bring you into the rectory.”

  “Two things I never discuss are politics and religion,” Carella answered. “Is the call from the squad, Father?”

  “A man named Meyer Meyer,” Father Paul said.

  “Thank you,” Carella said, and he took the receiver from the priest’s hand. “Hello, Meyer. Steve.”

  “Hello, boy. How goes the wedding?”

  “So far, so good. The knot’s been tied.”

  “I’ve been doing a little further checking on this Sokolin character. Are you still interested?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Okay. I checked with his parole officer. He’s been leading an exemplary life, working as a salesman in a department store downtown. But two weeks ago, he moved from Isola to Riverhead. I’ve got the address, Steve. From what the map tells me, it looks as if it’s eleven blocks from your father’s house.”

  Carella thought for a moment and then said, “Meyer, will you do me a favor? We had an accident a little while ago that stank to high heaven. Will you put a pickup-and-hold on this character? I’d feel a hell of a lot safer.” He suddenly remembered he was in a church rectory and glanced sheepishly at Father Paul.