The Long Wait Read Free

wasn’t any fingers on his hands because they were all rolled up into fists. He had a bulge on his hip too. A pair of bulges. One on each side.
    I said, “Too late, Pop. They’re here now.”
    â€œOh, my God, Johnny!”
    â€œSee you later, Pop.” I hung up and opened the door. The bruiser was watching the elevator and didn’t see me come out. The other guy was just getting the clerk’s attention and had the guy reaching for the registry cards when I walked up and stood beside him.
    Maybe he didn’t expect anything like that at all. He was looking at the card with “John McBride” scrawled across the top line, cursing silently to himself, when I said, “I’m not hard to find, friend.”
    Fingers seemed to crawl up his neck under the skin and peel the flesh back from his face. He dropped the card and I saw his hands start to come out slow and deliberately to take me apart right there and I looked down at him some and said. “You put your hands on me and I’ll knock you right on your goddamn ass.”
    His hands stopped halfway to my neck and his eyes got wider and wider until there wasn’t any place else for the lids to go. The bruiser came up on the double with a billy out and ready, looked at me, then his partner while he said, “This the guy?” caught the faint nod and came back to me again.
    â€œWell, well,” he said.
    I grinned at the both of them. “Don’t let your positions go to your heads, pallies. Take me rough and I bet they carry three people out of here.” I grinned some more and kept my eyes on the billy.
    The guy with the billy worked up a passable smile. “You sure sound tough. You sure do.” He made like it was all a surprise to him, but he put the billy away. The other guy was staring at me in utter fascination. His hands had dropped, but his eyes hadn’t. They were gone, completely gone. They were lifeless without being dead, yet there was death and hatred in them like I had never seen before.
    Then they squinted a little bit shut and his face twisted wryly back into shape. “Move, Johnny. Stay in front of me and I hope to hell you try to run for it. I hope to hell you try so I can break your spine in half with a bullet.”
    I don’t scare easy. In fact, I don’t scare worth a damn. Anything that could ever scare me had already done it and now there wasn’t anything left I’d let push me. I looked at each one of them so they’d know it and they knew it. Then I walked out front and got into the police car and let the bruiser and the other guy squeeze me in. The bruiser grunted to himself a couple of times, a sound that meant he was enjoying himself. The other one just sat and when he wasn’t staring at me, stared straight ahead.
    His name was Captain Lindsey. The sign on his desk said so. The other was either Tucker somebody or somebody Tucker because that’s what the captain called him. Being in the room didn’t happen just like that. There was more to it, a kind of open-mouthed wonder about the whole thing like the janitor who let his broom drop and the desk sergeant who stopped talking in the middle of a sentence to a guy he was bawling out and the news reporter who yelled, “Gawdl” and dashed into the press room for his camera.
    He didn’t get any pictures or any story because Lindsey took me into his room where there was a desk, two chairs and a filing cabinet. The two of them took the chairs and let me stand there.
    When I stood there long enough Lindsey said, “You’re a nervy bastard, Johnny. I never thought I’d see it happen like that.”
    I pulled out a smoke and took my time lighting it. Now it was my turn. I said, “You sure you’re not making a mistake?”
    The two cops exchanged glances. Lindsey smiled and shook his head. “How could I ever forget you, Johnny?”
    â€œOh, lots of people make mistakes, you