I opened the door to a half-inch crack, and we stood and listened. They were talking and, judging from other sounds, they weren’t anything like as methodical and efficient as Saul and I had been. One of them dropped a drawer on the floor, and a little later something else hit that sounded more like a picture. Still later it must have been a book, and that was too much for me. If Saul and I hadn’t been so thorough it might have been worth while to wait it out, on the chance that they might find what they were after and we could ask them to show us before they left; but to stand there and let them waste their time going through those books when we had just flipped every one of them — it was too damn silly. So I opened the bathroom door, walked down the hall into the living room, and greeted them.
“Hello there!”
Some day I’ll learn. I thought I had Jimmy pretty well tagged. I have a rule never to travel around on homicide business without a shoulder holster, but my opinion of Jimmy was such that I didn’t bother to transfer the gun to my pocket or hand. However, I have read about mothers protecting their young, and have also run across it now and then, and I might at least have been more alert. Not that a gun in my hand would have helped any unless I had been willing to slam it against her skull. Happening to be near the arch when I entered, she had only a couple of yards to come, just what she needed to get momentum.
She came at me like a hurricane, her hands straight for my face, screeching at the top of her voice, “Run run run!”
It didn’t make any sense, but a woman in that condition never does. Even if I had been alone, and she had been able to keep me busy enough long enough for her son to make a getaway, what of it? Since I was neither a killer nor a con, my only threat was the discovery that Jimmy was there, and since I had already seen him she couldn’t peel that off of me no matter how long her fingernails were. However, she tried, and her first wild rush got her in so close that she actually reached my face. Feeling the stinging little streak of one of her nails, I stiff-armed her out of range, and would merely have kept her off that way if it hadn’t been for Jimmy, who had been at the other side of the room when I entered. Instead of dashing in to support Mom’s attack, he was standing there by the table pointing a gun. At the sight of the gun, Saul, following me in, had stopped just inside the arch to think it over, and I didn’t blame him, for Jimmy’s right hand, which held the gun, was anything but steady, which meant there was no way of telling what might happen next.
I lunged at Mom, and before she knew it she was hugged tight against me. She couldn’t even wriggle, though she tried. With my chin dug into her shoulder, I spoke to Jimmy.
“I can snap her in two, and don’t think I won’t. Do you want to hear her spine crack? Drop it. Just open your fingers and let it fall.”
“Run run run!” Mom was screeching as well as she could with me squeezing the breath out of her.
“Here we go,” I said. “It’ll hurt but it won’t last long.”
Saul walked over and tapped Jimmy’s wrist underneath, and the gun fell to the floor. Saul picked it up and backed off. Jimmy started for me. When the distance was right I threw his mother at him. Then she was in his arms instead of mine, and for the first time she saw Saul. The damn fool actually hadn’t known I wasn’t alone until then.