"This is some more of that numbers racket war," a gray-haired sergeant said. And then Lamb began to taste something like panic even as the first neon signs began to smear the wintry shadows. He got afraid he might lose his little clay pigeon. Louis the Goon seemed to have a blind genius for getting on the scene when some blood-letting was due. He felt a certain possessiveness toward Louis. Louis belonged to him. And he wasn't going to have him chopped down by any piece of stray lead. Lamb had a bullet ear-marked for Louis.
He said, "I've been wasting time." He got on the shuttle and over to the West side and up to 96th and across the street from where Louis lived. Well, where Louis used to live, anyway. He was there just twenty minutes—it was 4:43 by his wristwatch—when Louis the Goon came down from the corner. He couldn't make out his face at first but he knew him by that square-set hat. Lamb eased away from the stairs of the brownstone, humming "Come to Papa, come to Papa, come to Papa...." This was it.
The ultimate in the demonstration or the ego.... He told himself that as he moved over the scabrous snow of the street.... The zenith in the projection of the psyche.... Louis the Goon had his briefcase clutched up under one arm instead of swinging.... The final triumph over the fear trauma.... Louis was abreast of him, then passing by. Wilson Lamb brought the automatic out from under his coat. He called, "Mr. Engel—" And Louis the Goon turned and Lamb held it, wanting him to get a good look at the heater, wanting to get a good look at him as he saw it.
Engel had the briefcase open, unbuckled. He was bringing something out of it swiftly, jerkily. It was a heater too. That wasn't in the script. Louis the Goon was stepping out of role. But Lamb knew he had him anyway and started to squeeze. He would squeeze three times on that trigger and—
Somebody else squeezed first. It was the man running from that parked car down the street. Lamb got it in the side and then a red-hot finger was probing down into his guts. A man stepped from the vestibule of one of those brownstones and he squeezed and Wilson Lamb couldn't feel the side of his head any more. Knew he would never feel it again. He was down on one hand and one knee and his gun was gone. Some place in the black haze seething around him. Like a hurt animal, half crawling, knowing only the base instinct of self preservation, he tried for that delivery alleyway.
Somebody else had figured that was a good spot too. It was the man with the bluish cheek scar who had accosted him after the triple-killing in that office building. He squeezed. And Lamb took that one square on the chest. In a vague way, as the sidewalk slid up at him, he was aware of that car back-firing away like hell.
The man with the blue scar was standing over him, throwing words to Louis the Goon in a quick, harsh whisper. "This is the one, Whisper. He come in here with you Wednesday. He was on the spot when you give it to them boys in Girra's office, yesterday. Today, he was in that bar when they tried to get you. The Flasher said to stick close to you—an' him."
"Girra's finger man, eh?" called back Engel softly.
"Yeah, Whisper." The blue-scarred man ran. In a moment, a car roared off down the block toward West End Avenue.