MASTERSON WAS CLEAN-SHAVEN and neatly dressed, as usual, but not wearing his blue business suit. He had on creased black slacks and a gray silk shirt with a bold sunrise pattern printed across its chest. A brimmed straw hat with a rainbow-colored band was perched squarely on his head. The shirt’s top buttons were undone, and a thick gold chain glinted among dark chest hairs just above where the sun was rising. With his getup and black horn-rimmed glasses, he looked like a bean counter on vacation, trying to pretend he was casual and relaxed. It was difficult to believe he was a self-righteous homicidal maniac.
Carver believed. Struggling to stand up, he lashed out with his cane and struck Masterson in the shin bone, then raised the cane and just missed his head with the backswing, sending the jaunty straw hat sailing. The big man blinked in pain and backed away a step. Then he used his forefinger to adjust his horn-rimmed glasses, as if to see Carver more clearly, and came at him again.
Carver, halfway to his feet and leaning against the wall, jabbed at Masterson’s face with the cane, but Masterson snatched the cane away and tossed it aside. He threw a powerful punch toward Carver’s midsection, but Carver scooted along the wall and took much of the blow’s force on his hip, which ignited with pain, then went numb.
Missing full impact with his punch threw Masterson off balance, and he stumbled a few steps. The sudden motion had caused a heavy gold cross on his thick neck chain to work out from beneath his silk shirt and dangle on his chest.
He found himself standing next to Carver’s cane, propped at an angle against the wall where he’d flung it. Masterson smiled, drew back a gigantic foot, then stomped hard on the middle of the cane and broke it. He studied the two pieces of the cane, then bent low and scooped up the broken half that had the sharpest point. Holding the cane up with both hands in front of his face, he declared, “The arm and the terrible swift sword of the Lord!”
“Poetic,” Carver said, “but it’s only my cane.”
Masterson moved in on him more slowly now, and with great caution.
When he was a few feet away, he made a move as if to swing at Carver’s head with the cane, then with amazing quickness and dexterity he stooped in a momentary squat with one bent knee and kicked Carver’s good leg out from under him.
Carver landed hard on the carpet. He rolled over to avoid the kick Masterson aimed at him. The big man knew how to fight and was deadly with his feet. Carver couldn’t avoid the second kick, which caught him in the side. He was sure he heard a rib crack. Breath shot out of him and he tried to curl his body into the fetal position for protection.
Masterson would have none of that. He bent low and punched Carver in the forehead, causing a pain as if his skull had been cleaved. Carver fought off dizziness and nausea as he felt himself being forced onto his back.
“The Lord saith, ‘Expel the wicked from your company!’ ” Masterson pronounced, straddling Carver’s chest. His weight settled on Carver like a building. He must have recently eaten Chinese; his breath was hot and reeked of soy sauce. He raised the cane high, its pointed end directly above Carver’s exposed throat, then grinned wide, the eyes behind his thick glasses like black wells. “Judgment day!” he shouted, and brought the cane down.
Carver clutched Masterson’s wrist with both hands. He felt the point of the cane bite at his throat. Then he dug his heels hard into the thin carpet, pushing up with every fiber of strength in his arms and body, and managed to force the cane upward a few inches.
He knew he was only buying seconds. Masterson was as powerful as fate, and the downward pressure of the cane was tremendous. Carver couldn’t last long. Every breath was agony. He knew that soon the pointed end of the hard walnut cane would penetrate his throat. When his victim’s strength ebbed, Masterson would bring to bear all of his weight and power down on the cane. The sharp wooden point might make it all the way out the back of Carver’s neck.
It was probably his last struggle, and Carver knew it. He held nothing back. As he strained to keep the point of the cane away from his throat, his vision blurred. He was aware of Adelle standing near the apartment door, a white sheet draped gracefully over her body like a toga. Benedict was beside her, nude and staring at what was happening before him on the hall floor.
“Not this!” Benedict was repeating in a horrified voice. “Not this!”
One of Carver’s perspiring hands lost its grip on Masterson’s wrist, then closed on the cross and the heavy gold chain dangling from the big man’s thick neck. Carver gripped the cross and deftly wrapped the chain around his hand, twisting, twisting. He saw Masterson’s broad face redden as the chain tightened around his neck and dug into his throat, but the downward force on the broken cane remained constant.
That’s how they were, Carver trying to strangle Masterson with the gold chain, Masterson inches away from thrusting the pointed end of the broken cane into Carver’s throat, when Carver was aware of the naked figure of Benedict standing over them, holding a large orange object in his right hand.
Benedict was shouting again for them to stop struggling. An impersonal bombing was one thing, but the hands-on killing he was about to witness was too much for the idealistic physician to endure. Carver wrestled with Masterson while Benedict wrestled with his Hippocratic oath.
The neck chain broke and fell away to dangle from Carver’s hand. Masterson grunted and shifted his body forward, leaning over Carver. The sharp point of the cane was again at Carver’s throat. It had already penetrated flesh and he could feel warm blood trickling down the side of his neck.
He was going to die. It was impossible to comprehend, but it was true. He heard a high voice from his childhood, long-ago hide-and-seek . . . Ready or not! . . . Ready or not! . . .
There was a shower of ceramic pieces as Benedict brought the heavy orange lamp down on Masterson’s head.
The pressure on the cane lessened.
It disappeared altogether as Benedict raised what was left of the lamp base again and hit Masterson behind the ear. This time it was heavy brass that struck thick skull, making a sound like a melon being thumped.
The crushing weight on Carver’s chest shifted as Masterson slumped unconscious.
Smelling soy sauce, Carver shoved the huge body away, rolled onto his side, then managed to scoot to a wall and sit up, his back pressed hard against the rough plaster.
“I couldn’t let him kill you,” Benedict was saying, his eyes wide. “Useless, senseless death. There’s been enough of it.” He looked as if he might break and sob. Adelle, in a kind of trance, drifted over to him like a spirit in her flowing white sheet and stood next to him.
Carver’s injured side caught fire with each gasp for oxygen. He was aware of footsteps clattering up the stairs. One of the tenants must have heard the fight and called the police.
Two uniformed cops were suddenly in the hall, filling it with blue. One of them was wielding his nightstick, the other had his nine-millimeter handgun drawn and was holding it low and pressed to his thigh, pointed at the floor.
“What’ve we got here?” the taller of the two asked, trying to be firm and in control but sounding afraid.
Carver attempted to tell him but couldn’t get the words out. When he tried to speak, the pain in his side erupted, cutting his breath short. He was afraid the pain, with the exhaustion and lack of oxygen, would cause him to lose consciousness. He tilted back his head. Maybe it would be easier to breathe that way. The hall had become dim, as if curtains had been drawn over the single window at the far end of the corridor. He heard sirens outside now, very close, down in the street.
Then the other cop was standing nearby at an angle and had his walkie-talkie close to his mouth. He was saying something about an ambulance. Carver couldn’t understand him or the garbled words coming out of the walkie-talkie. It sounded as if the cop might be underwater. Carver wondered if that could be the problem.
It was possible.
Just as possible as that Red Sea thing in the Bible. Water and miracles seemed to have a lot to do with each other. Wine into water . . .
The hall ceiling tilted and rose up and up, and the pain floated Carver away.