"Just a moment," she said. She walked quite calmly and quite deliberately to her own bedroom at the end of the hall. She heard Larry call "Mom!" but she didn't answer. She went directly to her dresser, opened the top drawer and took out a leather case. She snapped open the case, dust-covered because it had not been used since Peter gave it to her as a gift, and lifted the pearl-handled.22 from where it lay on its velvet bed. She checked the gun to make sure it was loaded, and then she walked down the corridor to Larry's door, the gun dangling loosely at her side.
"Mom?" Larry asked.
"Yes, just a moment." She reached into the pocket of her apron for the key, inserting it into the lock with her left hand. She twisted the key, shoved open the door, leveled the.22, and stepped back.
Larry rushed for the door almost immediately. He saw the gun in his mother's hand, and then pulled up short, staring at her unbelievingly.
"Wh… what's that?"
"Back away," Harriet said, holding the gun quite steadily.
"Wh…"
She entered the room, and he moved away from her and the gun. She closed the door behind her, moved a straight-back chair to a position in front of the knob, and then sat in it.
"Wh… what's the gun for?" Larry asked. There was something in his mother's eyes that he could remember from his childhood days. It was something stern and reprimanding, something with which he could not argue. He knew. He had tried arguing with it when he was a little boy.
"You said you were going to jump out the window," Harriet said. "It's at least a forty-foot drop to the pavement, if not more. If you jump, Larry, you're liable to kill yourself. That's what the gun's for."
"I… I don't understand."
"This, son," Harriet said. "You're not leaving this room, either by the door
"What!" Larry said incredulously.
"Yes, Larry," Harriet said. "I'm a good shot, too. Your father taught me, and he was the best damn shot at the academy. Now sit down and let's talk, shall we?"
"You're…" Larry swallowed. "You're k… kidding me, of course."
"It would," Harriet answered, "be a little foolish to gamble on that premise, son, considering the fact that it's me who's holding the gun."
Larry looked at the.22 and then blinked.
"Now sit," Harriet said, smiling pleasantly, "and well talk about all sorts of things. Have you thought of what you're giving Dad for Christmas?"
There's a trouble with murder.
There are, to be truthful, a lot of troubles with murder-but there's one in particular.
It gets to be a habit.
No one's claiming, you understand, that murder is the only habit-forming activity around. That would be untrue and somewhat foolish. Brushing the teeth is habit forming. So is taking a bath. So is infidelity. So is going to the movies: Living, if one wanted to be a little morbid, is also a little habit forming.
But murder is, and in a nonexclusive way, definitely habit forming.
That's the main trouble with murder.
The man who killed Anнbal Hernandez had a very good reason, according to his own somewhat curious way of thinking, for wanting Anнbal dead. Now, if you're going to justify murder at all, you'd have to admit that so far as good reasons went, this fellow had a pretty good one. All within the framework of murder, of course. There are good reasons and bad reasons for everything, and there are doubtless many people who might feel that there simply is no such thing as a good reason for murder. Well, there's no arguing with some diehards.
But this fellow's reason was a good one, and once the somewhat gory task of murder had been done, the reason seemed even better because a
The reason for killing Anнbal's sister also seemed to be a pretty good one at the time. Hadn't the fool girl exhibited all the symptoms of a tongue about to start wagging? Besides, a girl shouldn't start arguing with a man when he… well, it served her right. Of course, she really hadn't known anything, except about Gonzo, well, that was reason enough. Tell the police that Gonzo had asked her to lie, and then the police would pick up Gonzo, and Gonzo would empty his stomach of everything. That was dangerous.
Standing now in his pigeon coop on the roof, he could see how dangerous it would be if Gonzo got picked up. He was still a little rattled by the fact that Byrnes had put a tap on their call, even though he'd been assured no one was listening. That would seem to indicate a fool-hardiness on the part of Byrnes, and one doesn't get very foolhardy when his son might be involved, unless one has an ace up his sleeve. And what could that ace be?
