Deadline at Dawn

It had a window, but the shade was down over it, down firmly, down all the way. There were two more glasses in here. One was still full, as if it had been pressed on someone who quickly set it down untouched, in the face of some greater crisis looming.

He was lying there over on the far side, stretched out in disordered repose. Inert, immovable.

Bricky went over close to him, bent down. Then she drew her head back sharply, averted it, fanned her hand in front of her face a couple of times. She got up, nudged her foot along the form here and there, as if with a sort of idle curiosity.

Then she went back to the doorway, looked out.

Helen Kirsch was standing there frozen, her face covered with both hands, in a pose of abysmal tragedy. Bricky just stared.

There was silence for a moment.

The other girl sensed her stare, slowly dropped her hands, met her look questioningly.

There was still silence.

Then, slowly, she discovered something on Bricky’s face. “What are you looking at me like that for? Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

“Come here a minute. I want you to see something.”

Helen Kirsch quailed, shook her head.

Bricky pulled her over against her will, held her, made her look into the second room.

Something grunted on the far side of it. The log-like figure was in flux now. Right while they watched it was struggling to pick itself up, with that floundering motion typical of the drunk who has lain comatose for a long while.

“He’s not dead,” Bricky said. “Just dead drunk. Even if he’d been dead he’d have been the wrong dead man. There’s the hole up there on the wall where the bullet went in.”

A stifled scream from Helen Kirsch centered his wavering attention on them. He fixed a poached eye on her. He seemed to remember her vaguely.

“Whosh your friend?” he grunted. “Esh have another drink, you and me and her.”

They both stood staring transfixedly at him until he was all the way up, like a bear on its hind legs. Then the tableau shattered.

“Let’s get out of here,” Bricky said tersely, “before the whole thing starts over.”

Helen Kirsch would have stood there all night. She acted as though something had numbed her, robbed her of all power of motion. Bricky had to dislodge her, thrust her before her. She prodded her ahead of her, across the intervening room, along the hall, and out onto the stair-landing outside.

Behind them, something heavy fell back again into place, lay still.

Bricky jerked the door to after them, for added safety.

“Come on,” she had to tell her dazed companion. “Come away from here. Don’t stand there.” All the way down the stairs they ran, armed together, the one in sobbing relief, the other in grim frustration.

They came spilling out into the open, in a sweep that carried them paces down the sidewalk before it slackened and died. Then Bricky stopped short, turned to her.

“You love that man downtown, that George or Harry or whatever his name is?”

Helen Kirsch shook her head, unable to articulate. Her eyes sparkled with a threat of tears again.

“Then what’re you waiting for, you little fool?” She threw up her arm, as a brake to a passing cab. “Go back there. Go back there fast!” The cab veered up, stopped. “Get in.”

Bricky closed the cab-door between them. A pale face looked mutely out at her for a moment. Bricky thumbed the driver on.

“You’ve got your happy ending now; don’t crowd your luck. Stay with your Harry where you belong — and keep your mouth shut, your eyes to yourself, and your fingers off gun-triggers after this.”

Chapter 8

And then he suddenly got this break. He was working his way back from the hospital, tail between legs, hands choking pockets, hat low over his eyes. He was coursing the bars now. They were easy to spot, even from a distance of two or three blocks away; they stood out like colored pins on a map, for they were the only places still open and lighted at this hour. He was working his way back at an extreme zig-zag, confining himself to a zone about six blocks wide from north to south, stretching between the hospital and the house. At each intersecting avenue he’d turn up about three blocks one way, combing it for bars, then reverse and go back about three blocks the other way, past his original starting point. Then come back to that again, and go on a block more westward, to the next intersecting avenue, do it over again there. They were all on the avenues, the bars, not on the side-streets linking them.

Some he entered, and stayed in for a moment or two, using his eyes. Some he just thrust his head into from the doorway, and then turned around and went out again. He wasn’t drinking himself. That would have been foolhardy; that would have been too destructive both of time and of keenness of perception.

He could do it this way, because there were certain things to look for, certain tell-tale signs, hieroglyphs, call them what you will, that made it quicker, made for a short-cut.