The Heckler

“Listen, I didn’t know what to do. So I figured I’d call and tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Mr. Smith. John Smith, you know?”

“What about him?”

“He’s on his way upstairs,” the doorman said.

“What?” Carella said, and at that instant he heard a key being turned in the front door.

14.

CARELLA STOOD IN the bedroom with the telephone receiver in one hand, the blueprint on the night table before him, the sound of the turning lock clicking into his mind. He put down the phone at once, turned off the light and moved to the right of the door, his hand going instantly to his service revolver. He flattened himself against the wall, the gun in his right hand, waiting. He heard the front door open, and then close again.

The apartment was silent for a moment.

Then he heard the cushioned sound of footsteps against the rug.

Did I leave that living-room window open?he wondered.

The footsteps hesitated, and then stopped.

Did I leave the desk open?he wondered.

He heard the footsteps again, heard a board squeak in the flooring, and then heard the sound of another door opening. A fine sheen of sweat covered his face now, clung to his chest beneath his shirt. The .38 Police Special was slippery in his fist. He could hear his own heart leaping in his chest with the erratic rhythm of an African bongo. He heard the door closing again, a closet he imagined, and then footsteps once more, and he wonderedDoes he know I’m here? Does he know? DOES HE KNOW? And then he heard a sound which was not familiar to him, a clicking metallic sound, as of metal grating against metal, an unfamiliar sound and yet a sound which was curiously familiar, and then the floor board squeaked again, and the cushioned footsteps came closer to the open arch at the end of the living room, and hesitated, and stopped.

Carella waited.

The footsteps retreated.

He heard another click, and then a twenty-second spell of dead silence; and then music erupted into the apartment, loud and raucous, and Carella instantly knew this man in the apartment was armed and would begin shooting within the next few moments, hoping to use the music as a cover. He did not intend to give his opponent the opportunity of being the one to start the festivities. He hefted the gun in his right hand, sucked in a deep breath, and stepped into the arch.

The man turned from the hi-fi unit alongside the wall.

In a split second, Carella saw the hearing aid in the man’s right ear, and then the shotgun the man was holding, and suddenly it was too late, suddenly the shotgun exploded into sound.

Carella whirled away from the blast. He could hear the whistling pellets as they screamed across the confined space of the apartment, and then he felt them lash into his shoulder like a hundred angry wasps, and he thought onlyOh Jesus, not again! and fired at the tall blond man who was already sprinting across the apartment. His shoulder felt suddenly numb. He tried to lift the hand with the gun and quickly found he couldn’t and just as quickly shifted the gun to his left hand and triggered off another shot, high and wide, as the deaf man raised the shotgun and swung the stock at Carella’s head. A single barrel, Carella thought in the split second before the stock collided with the side of his head, a single barrel, no time to reload, and a sudden flashing explosion of rocketing yellow pain, slam the stock again, suns revolving, a universe slam the stock, Oh Jesus, oh Jesus! and tears sprang into his eyes because the pain was so fierce, the pain of his shoulder and the awful pain of the heavy wooden stock of the shotgun crashing into crashing into—oh God oh mother oh God oh God

WHEN CARELLA WAS CARRIEDto the hospital later that day, the doctors there knew that he was still alive, but most of them were unwilling to venture a guess as to how long he would remain that way. He had lost a lot of blood on the floor of that apartment. He had not been discovered lying there unconscious until some three hours after he’d been repeatedly clobbered with the rather unbending stock of the shotgun. It was the doorman of the building, Joey, who had discovered him at six o’clock that evening. Lieutenant Byrnes, interrogating the doorman in the presence of a police stenographer, got the following information:

BYRNES: What made you go up there, anyway?

JOEY: Well, like I told you, he’d been up there a very long time. And I had already seen Mr. Smith come downstairs again. So I—

BYRNES: Can you describe this Mr. Smith?

JOEY: Sure. He’s around my height, maybe six-one, six-two, and I guess he weighs around a hun’ eighty, a hun’ ninety pounds. He’s got blond hair and blue eyes, and he wears this hearing aid in his right ear. He’s a little deaf. He come downstairs carrying something wrapped in newspaper.

BYRNES: Carrying what?