Killer's Wedge

by McBain, Ed

  But Willis knew judo the way he knew the Penal Code, and he could lay a thief on his back faster than any six men using fists. He was, as he surveyed the gun in Virginia Dodge's hand, already figuring on how he could disarm her.

  "What's up?" he asked the assembly at large.

  "The lady with the gun has a bottle of nitro in her purse," Byrnes said.

  "She's ready to use it."

  "Well, well," Willis said.

  "Never a dull moment, huh?" He paused and looked at Virginia.

  "Okay to take off my coat and hat, lady'?"

  "Put your gun on the desk here first."

  "Thorough, huh?" Willis said.

  "Lady, you give me the chills. You really got a bottle of soup in that bag?"

  "I've really got it."

  "I'm from Missouri," Willis said, and he took a step closer to the desk.

  For an instant, Kung thought the jig was up. He saw only Virginia Dodge's sudden thrust into the bag, and he tensed himself for the explosion he was certain would follow. And then her free hand emerged from the purse, and there was a bottle of colorless fluid in that hand. She put it down on the desk top gently, and. Willis eyed it and said, "That could be tap water, lady."

  "Would you like to find out whether it is or not?" Virginia said.

  "Me? Now, lady, do I look like a hero?"

  He walked closer to the desk. Virginia put her purse on the floor. The bottle, pint sized gleamed under the glow of the hanging light globes.

  "Okay," Willis said, "first we check the gat." He pulled gun and holster off his belt and placed them very carefully on the desk top, his eyes never leaving the pint bottle of fluid.

  "This plays a little like Dodge City, doesn't it?" he said.

  "What's the soup for, lady? If I'd known you were having a blowout, I'd have dressed." He tried a laugh that died the moment he saw Virginia's face.

  "Excuse me," he said.

  "I

  didn't know the undertakers were holding a convention. What do I do with my prisoner, Pete?"

  "Ask Virginia."

  ~Virginia, brother, are one's name Virgin and "Well, how angel here?"

  "Bring her in. Tell her to sit down."

  "Come on, Angelica," Willis said, "have a chair. Angelica! Oh, Jesus, that breaks me up. She just slit a guy from ear to ear. A regular little angel. Sit down, angel. That bottle on the desk there is nitroglycerin."

  "What you mean?" Angelica asked.

  "The bottle. Nitro."

  Nitro~ You mean like a born'?"

  "You said it, doll," Willis answered.

  "A born'?" Angelica said.

  "Madre de los santos!"

  "Yeah," Willis said, and there was something close to nwe in his voice.

  huh?" Willis burst out laughing.

  ?~~Jfl we getting them today.

  You know what this is?

  Angelica! Virginia and Angelica.

  The the Angel!" He burst out laughing again. about it, Virginia? What do I do with my

  CHAPTER 6

  From where Meyer Meyer sat near the window

  typing his D.D. report, he could see Willis lead the Puerto Rican girl deeper into the squad room to offer her one of the straight backed chairs. He watched as Willis unlocked the handcuffs and then draped both wrist lets over his belt. The skipper walked over and exchanged a few words with Willis and then, hands on hips, turned to face the girl. Apparently Virginia Dodge was going to allow them to question the prisoner. How kind of Virginia Dodge!

  Patiently, Meyer Meyer turned back to his typing.

  He was reasonably certain that Virginia Dodge would not walk over to his desk to examine his masterpiece of English composition. He was also reasonably certain that he could do what he had to do unobserved especially now that the Puerto Rican bombshell had exploded into the room. Virginia Dodge seemed completely absorbed with the girl's movements, with the girl's string of colorful epithets. He was sure, then, that he could carry out the first part of his plan without detection.

  The thing he was not too sure of was his English composition.

  He had never been a very good English student. Even in law school, his papers had never been what one would call brilliant.

  Somehow, miraculously, he had received his degree and passed his bar examinations only to receive a Greetings from Uncle Sam, advising him that he was to serve in the United States Army. After four years of trudging through muck and mire (Hello, Muck! Hello, Meyer!), he'd been honorably discharged. By that time, he'd decided that he didn't want to spend the next ten years of his life building a practice. Cubbyhole offices and ambulance chasing were not for Meyer Meyer. He had joined the police force and married the girl he'd been dating ever since his college days, Sarah Lipkin. (He could still remember the fraternity house banter:

  "Nobody's lips kin like Sarah's lips kin."

  The banter had never disturbed him.

  Patiently, he had smiled and listened to it.

  Patiently, he had continued dating her.

  Besides, the banter was true. Sarah Lipkin was the kissin'est fool he'd ever met.

  Maybe that was why he married her when he got out of the Army.) His decision to leave the law profession startled Meyer. It startled him because he was usually a very patient man, and certainly it would have taken extreme patience to sit out the next ten years waiting for a client to step into the office. And yet, tossing patience aside for the first time in his life, he quit being a lawyer and joined the police force. In his own mind both professions were linked. As a cop, he would still be concerned with law. Patiently, doggedly, he did his job. He did not make Detective 3rd/Grade until he had been on the force for eight years. That took patience.

  Patiently, he worked on his English composition now. His patience was an acquired skill, nurtured over the years until it had reached a finely honed edge of perfection. He had certainly not been born patient. He had, however, been born with the attributes which would later make a life of patience an absolute necessity if he were to survive.

  Meyer's father, you see, was a very comical man. That is to say, he considered himself something of a wit. Half of this consideration was perhaps erroneous. In any case, he was a tailor who played practical jokes on friends every now and then, to his vast enjoyment and their vast annoyance. When his wife, Martha, had already seemed past the age when she could have any further children, when-in fact she was experiencing change of life, nature played its own practical joke on Meyer's father. Martha, of all things, was going to have another baby!

  The news did not sit too well with Meyer's father. He thought dirty diapers and runny noses were all behind him and now, at this late stage of the game, another baby.

  He accepted the news with faintly disguised distaste, suffered through the pregnancy, and meanwhile plotted his own practical joke in retaliation against the vagaries of nature and birth control.

  The Meyers were Orthodox Jews. At the briss, the classic circumcision ceremony, Meyer's father made his announcement.

  The announcement concerned the name of his new offspring. The boy was to be called Meyer Meyer. The old man thought this was exceedingiy humorous. The moile didn't think it was so humorous. When he heard the announcement, his hand almost slipped. In that moment, he almost deprived Meyer of something more than a normal name. Fortunately, Meyer Meyer emerged unscathed.

  But being an Orthodox Jew in a predominantly Gentile neighborhood can be trying even if your name isn't Meyer Meyer. The repetitive handle provided the hate-mongers with a ready-made chant:

  "Meyer Meyer, Jew on fire!" If the haters needed any further provocation for beating up the nearest Jew, Meyer's double-barreled name provided it. He learned to be patient.

  Patient, in the beginning, with his enemies.

  Later, when he realized how maliciously innocent had been his father's little joke, patient with his father. Patient, still later, with the young doctor who had originally diagnosed his mother's malignant cancer as a sebaceous cys
t-a faulty diagnosis which had probably cost her life. And finally, patient with the world at large.

  Patience is, perhaps, a rewarding virtue.

  Patience leads to tolerance. A patient man is an easy~ going man.

  But anger must erupt somewhere.

  Somehow, the body must compensate for years and years of learning to sublimate.

  Meyer Meyer, at the age of thirty-seven, was completely bald.

  Now, patiently pecking at his typewriter, he composed his message.

  "What's your name?" Byrnes asked the girl.

  "What?" she said.

  "Your name! Que es su nombre?"

  "Angelica Gomez."

  "She speaks English," Willis said.

  "I don' speak English," the girl said.

  "She's full of crap. The only thing she does in Spanish is curse. Come on, Angelica. You play ball with us, and we'll play ball with you."

  "I don' know what means thees play ball."

  "Oh, we've got a lallapaluza this time," Willis said.

  "Look, you little slut, cut the Marine tiger bit, will you?

  We know you didn't just get off the boat."

  He turned to Byrnes.

  "She's been in the city for almost a year, Pete.

  Hooking mostly."

  "I'm no hooker," the girl said.

  "Yeah, she's no hooker," Willis said.

  "Excuse me. I forgot. She worked in the garment district for a month."

  "I'm a seamstress, that's what I am. No hooker."

  "Okay, you're not a hooker, okay? You lay for money, okay? That's different. That makes it all right, okay? Now, why'd you slit that guy's throat?"

  "What guy you speaking about'?"

  "Was there more than one?" Byrnes asked.

  "I don' sleet nobody's thro'."

  "No? Then who did it?" Willis asked.

  "Santa Claus? What'd you do with the razor blade?" Again, he turned to Byrnes.

  "A

  patrolman broke it up, Pete. Couldn't find the blade, though, thinks she dumped it down the sewer. Is that what you did with it?"

  "I don' have no erazor blay." Angelica paused.

  "I don' cut nobody."

  "You've still got blood all over your hands, you little bitch! Who the hell are you trying to snow?"

  "That's from d'hanncuffs," Angelica said.

  "Oh, Jesus, this one is the absolute end," Willis said. The trouble, Meyer Meyer thought, is that it's hard to get the right words. It mustn't sound too melodramatic or it'll be dismissed as either a joke or the work of a crank. It has to sound sincere, and yet it has to sound desperate. If it doesn't sound desperate nobody'll believe it, and we're right back where we started. But if it sounds too desperate, nobody'll believe it anyway. So I've got to be careful.

  He looked across the room to where Virginia Dodge was watching the interrogation of the Puerto Rican girl.

  I've also got to hurry, he thought. She may just take it in her mind to amble over here and see what I'm doing.

  "You know whose throat you slit?" Willis asked.

  "I don' know nothin'."

  "Then J'm gonna let you in on a little secret. You ever hear of a street gang called the Arabian Knights?"

  "No."

  "It's one of the biggest gangs in the precinct," Willis said.

  "Teen-age kids mostly. Except the guy who's leader of the gang is twenty-five years old. In fact, he's married and has got a baby daughter. They call him Kassim. You ever hear of anybody called Kassim?"

  "In fiction, he's AH Baba's brother. In real life, He's leader of this gang called the Arabian Knights. His real name is Jose Dorena. Does that ring a bell?"

  "No."

  "He's a very big man in the streets, Kassim is. He's really a punk-but not in the streets. There's a gang called the Latin Paraders and the shit has been on between them and the Knights for years. And do you know what price the Paraders have set for a truce?"

  "No. What?"

  "An Arabian Knights jacket as a trophy and Kassim dead."

  '~So who cares?"

  "You ought to care, baby. The guy whose throat you slit is Kassim. Jose6 Dorena."

  Angelica blinked.

  "Yeah," Willis said.

  "Is this legit?" Byrnes asked.

  "You said it, Pete. So you see, Angelica, if Kassim dies, the Latin Paraders'll erect a statue of you in the park. But the Arabian Knights won't like you one damn bit.

  They're a bunch of mean bastards, sweetie, and they re not even gonna like the fact that you cut him-. whether it leads to his untimely demise or not."

  "What?" Angelica said.

  "Whether he croaks or not, you're on their list, baby."

  "I din know who he wass," AngeliCa said.

  "Then you did do the cutting?"

  "Si. But I din know who he wass."

  "Then why'd you cut him?"

  "He wass bodderin' ~ "How?"

  "He wass try to feel me up," Angelica said.

  "Oh , come on!" Willis moaned.

  "He wass!"

  "Dig the virgin, Pete," Willis said.

  "Why'd you cut him, baby? And let's not have the hearts and flowers this trip."

  "He wass grab my bosom," Angelica said.

  "On the steps. In from' the stoop. So I cut him."

  Willie sighed.

  Virginia Dodge seemed to be tiring of the inquisition. Nervously, she sat at the desk commanding a view of both squad room and corridor beyond, the .38 in her hand, the clear bottle of nitroglycerin resting on the desk before her.

  I have to hurry, Meyer thought. Get it all down once and for all with no mistakes, and then start moving. Because if she comes over here and sees this, she is just liable to pull the trigger and blow off the back of my head, and Sarah will be sitting shivah for a week. They'll have to cover every mirror in the house and turn all the pictures to the wall. God, it'll be ghastly.

  So get it done. October ain't a time for dying.

  "He grabbed your bosom, huh?" Willis said.

  "Which one? The right one or the left one?"

  "Iss not funny," Angelica said.

  "For a man he feels you up in public, iss not funny."

  "So you slashed him?"

  ""Cause he grabbed for your tit, right?"

  "What do you think, Pete?

  "Dignity doesn't choose its professions," Byrnes said.

  "I believe her."

  "I think she's lying in her teeth," Willis said.

  "We check around, we'll probably find out she's been making it with

  Kassun for the past year. She probably saw him looking at another girl, and so she put the blade to him. That's more like it, isn't it, baby?"

  "No. I don' know thees Kassim. He jus' come over an' get fresh. My body iss my body. An' I give it where I want. An' not to peegs with dirty hans."

  "Hooray," Willis said.

  "They're really gonna put a statue of you in the park." He turned to Byrnes.

  "What do we make it, Pete? Felonious assault?"

  "What condition is this Kassim in?"

  "They carted him off to the hospital. Who knows? He was bleeding all over the goddamn sidewalk. You know what killed me, Pete? A bunch of young kids were standing around in a circle. You could see they didn't know whether to cry or laugh or just scream. They were kind of hopping up and down, do you know what I mean? Jesus, imagine growing up with this every day of your life? Can you imagine it?"

  "Keep in touch with the hospital, Hal," Byrnes said.

  "Let's hold the booking until later. We can't do much with ..." He gestured with his head to where Virginia Dodge sat.

  "Yeah. All right, Angelica. Keep your legs crossed. Maybe Kassim won't die. Maybe he's got a charmed life."

  "I hope the son a bitch rots in his gray," Angelica said.

  "Nice girl," Willis said, and he patted her shoulder. Meyer pulled the report from the typewriter. He separated the carbon from the three blue sheets, and then he read the top sheet.
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