Death Wish by Brian Garfield Page A

money for equipment.”
    It was no longer the answer. Why should play-at-war games attract them when they had real wars to go to?
    These were new thoughts for him and he wasn’t comfortable with them but they kept crowding everything else out of his mind. By the time they passed Lincoln Towers he was deep into a fanciful daydream about a ball-team of vicious teenagers to whom Paul was supplying high-explosive shrapnel grenades, disguised as baseballs, designed to annihilate teenage gangs.
    He paid through the little tilt-slot in the plexiglass and got out on the corner. He was about to cross the street when his eye fell on a convertible parked in front of the supermarket. Part of the roof had been slashed open; it hung in gaping shreds. Probably there had been some item of minuscule value visible on the back seat; someone had pulled a knife, ripped the car open, reached in and stolen the object. People ought to know better than to park canvas-topped cars on the streets.…
    He stopped, drew himself up. What the hell kind of thinking is that?
    Do we have to give up every God damned right we have? Do we have to let them scare us into giving up everything?
    Fallen rain gleamed on the street like precious gems. He looked over toward the river—along the block, under the concrete of the West Side Highway. The lights of a boat were sliding past. Out there on the filthy river in a boat you’d be safe.
    Safe , he thought. And that’s all we have left to shoot for?
    The light changed and he had crossed the street and stepped up onto the sidewalk before he saw the man standing in the shadows right by the corner of the building. Standing against the wall, shoulder tilted, arms folded, smiling slightly. A black man in a tight jacket and a cowboy hat. As lean and efficiently designed as a bayonet.
    Paul’s toes curled inside his shoes. His hair rose; the adrenalin pumped through his body and made his hands shake. They stood face to face with a yard of drizzling rain between them. The black man never stirred. Paul turned very slowly and put his foot forward and walked up the street with the sound of his heart in his ears.
    A panel truck was parked in front of his apartment house, facing the wrong direction for the traffic; there was a police parking ticket on its windshield but it hadn’t been towed away: someone had slipped a few dollars to someone. Paul stopped beside the truck and used its big outside mirror to look back along the street. The black man stood where he had been, indistinct in the shadows. Streaming sweat, Paul went into the building.
    The man’s smile: did he know who Paul was? Was he one of the ones who had killed Esther?
    He was letting his imagination run away with him. Come on, get a grip on yourself . Kids, Carol had said. Teenagers. This guy was full-grown—he wasn’t one of them. Probably his amusement had been purely the result of Paul’s all-too-obvious fear; probably he was an intellectual, a playwright or a musician who’d just decided to post himself on that corner and see how long it would take the cops to roust him along—some sort of experiment to prove something about white bigotry.
    Paul thought about going back outside and telling the guy it wasn’t a very wise experiment. If I’d had a gun in my pocket and you’d looked at me like that you might have been in a lot of trouble, fella . It was only a fantasy; there was no possibility of his going back outside. He nodded to the doorman and went back to the elevator.
    A common enough fantasy though, I’ll bet. If I’d been there when that guy slashed that roof—if I’d seen it happen, and I’d been armed at the time… .

8

    â€œYou wanted to see me, Mr. Ives?”
    â€œHave a seat, Paul.”
    Ives was the remaining survivor of the three nimble-penciled accountants who had founded the firm in 1926. It had moved uptown in stages from Beaver Street to Forty-third.