A Quiet Flame

“You,” he told her. “Pretty lady. Take off your jacket and your shirt.”

She stared at him with dumb insolence and, when nothing happened, he got handy with the gun, pressing it under her chin. “You’d better do it, pretty lady, or I’ll blow your head off.”

“Do as he says, Anna. He means it.”

The man grinned his one-toothed grin and stood back to enjoy the sight of her undressing. “The brassiere, too. Take it off. Let’s see those titties.”

Anna looked at me, desperately. I nodded back at her. She unhooked her bra and let it fall onto the ground.

The man licked his lips, staring at her bared breasts. “Now those are nice,” he said. “Real nice titties. Nicest titties I’ve seen in a while.”

I pressed my spine back a little against my belt, feeling the big sheath knife that was there and wondering if I even knew how to throw a knife—especially one that looked as if it belonged on a butcher’s chopping block.

The man with one tooth reached forward and tried to take one of Anna’s nipples between his forefinger and thumb, but she shrank away from his touch behind the shield of her forearms.

“Stand still,” he said, twitching nervously. “Stand still or I’ll shoot you, pretty lady.”

Anna closed her eyes and let him take hold of her nipple. At first he just kneaded it with his fingers, like a man rolling tobacco. But then he started to squeeze, hard. Her face told me that much. So did his. He was smiling with sadistic pleasure, enjoying the pain he was inflicting on her. Anna bore it silently for a while, but that only seemed to make him do it harder, until she begged him to stop. He did. But only to squeeze her other nipple.

By now I had the knife in my hand. I slid it up inside the forearm of my sleeve. There was too much distance between the two of us to risk attacking him with the blade in my hand. Most likely he would have shot me, and then raped and killed her. It was too much gun to take a chance with. But throwing the knife was risky, too.

I let the knife slide into the palm of my hand and gripped the blade like a hammer.

Anna sank onto her knees, whimpering with pain, only he kept hold of her, his face contorted with ghastly pleasure, enjoying every second of the agony that was written in her face.

“You bastard,” she said.

That was my cue, and with a small step forward and both arms pointed straight at the target, I threw the knife, putting my whole hip into it to add to the power of my throw. I aimed at his side, just below his outstretched hand that was still twisting her nipple.

He cried out. The knife appeared to hit him in the ribs, but then it was in his hand. He let it go and it fell onto the ground. At the same time, he shot at me and missed. I felt the bullet zip over my head. I rolled quickly forward, expecting to find myself facing the two-inch barrel, or worse. Instead I found myself staring at a man who was now on all fours, coughing blood onto the ground between his hands and then curling up into a ball, holding his side. I glanced at the knife and, seeing the blood on the blade, guessed that it must have pierced his side to a depth of several inches before he had plucked it out of his torso.

My close proximity seemed to deflect him from the pain and distress of his wound. Twisting his whole body to one side, he tried to shoot again, only this time without lifting his forearm from the stab wound in his side.

“Look out,” yelled Anna.

But I was already over him, wrestling the gun from the grip of his bloody hand even as it fired harmlessly into the ceiling. Anna screamed. I punched him hard on the side of the head, but the fight had already gone out of him. I tiptoed away from him, trying to avoid the pool of his blood that was spreading on the floor like an expanding red balloon. He wasn’t dead yet. But I could tell there was no saving him. The blade had gone through a major artery. Just like a bayonet. From the amount of blood on the floor, it was clear he would be dead in minutes.

“Are you all right?” I picked up Anna’s brassiere and handed it to her.

“Yes,” she whispered. Her hands were cupping her breasts, and her eyes were full of tears. She was looking at him, almost as if she pitied him.

“Put your clothes on,” I said. “We have to leave. Now. Someone might have heard those shots.”

I put his gun under my belt, holstered my own, put the flashlights in Anna’s bag and picked up the two knives. Then I glanced around for anything the cops might get their teeth into. A button. A hank of hair. An earring. The little spots of color on a canvas, like Georges Seurat, that Ernst Gennat had been fond of. But there was nothing. Just him, wheezing his last breaths away. A dead body that didn’t know it yet.

“What about him?” asked Anna, buttoning her shirt. “We can’t just leave him here.”