He drove slowly. His pursuer did not know that Hawes knew he was being pursued. Hawes did not want the pursuer to lose him, nor did he wish to lose the pursuer. There was, of course, the added possibility that the man was not following him at all. Hawes would test this possibility in a moment.
He waited until he’d picked up the man’s headlights in the rear-view mirror. Up to that point, he had been driving slowly, as if unsure of which turn to take. Now he sped up, turned left, and watched the car behind him execute the same turn. He turned right. The Chevy turned right. He went straight for two blocks, and then made a left. The Chevy was still behind him. He executed a series of lefts and rights that eliminated all possibility of chance. The man in the Chevy was certainly following Hawes, and Hawes wondered why. He also wondered who. He could not see the front license plate in his rear-view mirror. He wanted to know who the hell was in that car.
He put on a sudden burst of speed, outdistancing the Chevy by a block, and then pulled over to the curb. He got out of the car and ducked into the nearest alley. Up the street, the Chevy braked suddenly and then pulled to the curb a distance behind Hawes’s car. The man got out of the car, looked up and down the street, and then began walking toward the alley.
The luxuriant summer growth on the trees shielded the street lamps so that the sidewalks were in almost total darkness. Hawes could hear the man’s footsteps as he approached, but he could not see the man’s face. The man had undoubtedly assumed that Hawes had gone into one of the apartment buildings. He stopped at each entrance and looked into the building, moving closer to the alleyway all the time.
The footsteps echoed in the hollow bowl of night.
Hawes waited.
They were closer now, very close, almost, almost…
Hawes reached out, swinging the man around.
The man moved with a reflexive action that caught Hawes completely by surprise. Hawes was no midget, and certainly bigger than the man who hit him. But he had reached out with one hand, grasping the man by the shoulder, and the man had swung around, partially pulled by Hawes, partially under his own power, so that the force of his blow was doubled.
He swung around with his fist clenched, and he threw the fist at Hawes’s midsection, catching him below the belt. The pain was excruciating. Hawes released the man’s shoulder instantly and dropped to the concrete. The man ran out of the alley mouth. Hawes had still not seen his face. Lying on the concrete, raw pain triggering through his groin, he could only think of a stupid joke he had once heard. He did not want to think of the joke. He wanted to get up off the concrete and chase his assailant, but the pain persisted in agonizing waves, and the joke ran over and over again in his mind, the joke about a man overhearing two women describing childbirth to each other. “Such pain,” one said. “Nobody ever had such pain as when I gave birth.”
“Pain? Don’t talk about pain,” the other woman said. “When my Lewis was born, it was unbearable. Such pain no one in the world has ever known.”
And the man walked over to them and said, “Excuse me, ladies, but did either of you ever get kicked in the balls?”
There didn’t seem to be anything funny about the joke now. Lying on the concrete, Hawes knew only pain, and the joke was not funny at all. Lying on the concrete, he could hear the Chevy’s motor starting. He dragged himself to the alley mouth, hoping to catch a glimpse of the license plate as the car went by.
The street was dark, and the car wasn’t observing any speed limits.
Hawes could not read the plate.
In a little while, the pain subsided.
STEVE CARELLA didn’t truthfully suspect John Murphy. He didn’t know whom he truthfully suspected at this stage of the game, but he did know that the man who’d fired the Savage at Kramer had been a dead shot. Only one shell had been fired, and that shell had blown away half of Kramer’s head. Whoever had killed Kramer had been driving an automobile not a minute before-or so it appeared. He had pulled the car to the curb, picked up the rifle, aimed, and fired. His aim had been unerring. The single shot had done it.
Carella doubted that John Murphy’s aim was unerring. The old man’s hands trembled even when he was sitting having a peaceful drink. If they trembled normally, how much more would they tremble when murder was about to be done? No, he did not truthfully suspect John Murphy.
He was not at all surprised, therefore, by the Ballistics report on the test bullet fired from Murphy’s.300 Savage.
The Ballistics report simply stated that the gun owned by John Murphy could not possibly have fired the bullet that had killed Kramer.
Steve Carella was not at all surprised-but he was disappointed, anyway.
ALICE LOSSING lived in Isola.
