Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [21]
Littlemore looked at the table just as the glass test tube rolled off its edge. Reaching out his good right hand, he caught it in midair.
“Now feed me a nice fat one,” Younger continued in a low voice to Littlemore, “right down Broadway.”
“Shut mouth!” ordered Drobac. “Where are they? I said turn round. I shoot you in back.”
“All right—I’m turning around,” Younger called out. As he turned to face Drobac, very slowly, he met Littlemore’s eyes and nodded. The detective understood what Younger wanted him to do: a “fat one down Broadway” is baseball slang for a pitch easy to hit. What he didn’t understand was why. Nevertheless, shrugging, Littlemore lobbed the test tube into the air a couple of feet in front of Younger. Using the curtain rod as a baseball bat, Younger swung hard and shattered the tube, shooting at Drobac a black cloud of uranium dioxide, which ignited immediately into a fireball.
Drobac was suddenly aflame from the shoulders up, a pillar of particolored fire, blue and green and yellow and crimson. Arms reaching out blindly before him, he staggered into the center of the room, dropping his pistol, clutching at his burning facial hair. Younger seized the man’s gun from the floor. Littlemore scrambled across the room and retrieved his own pistol.
Not a moment later, the powder had burned itself out, like flash paper. The fire was gone, leaving only curls of smoke and a charred, striped-suited man standing stock-still in the middle of the room, patting at his face as if to confirm that he still had one. His eyes went from wild to calm to sheepish. No one moved; Younger and Littlemore kept their guns trained on Drobac. The smell of singed hair was everywhere.
Drobac tensed. Slowly he drew a long knife from his jacket.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Littlemore.
Drobac ran straight at the large window, flicking his wrist just before crashing through the very panes that Younger had meant to use as a point of entry minutes before. Littlemore didn’t fire on him. Younger did, repeatedly, but his gun, the fugitive’s own weapon, had jammed—its mechanism apparently fouled by the flaming uranium dioxide. Littlemore and Younger rushed to the windowsill, where in the shadows they saw a man pick himself off the pavement and run, limping, into the darkness.
“Look!” Colette called out, pointing toward the fireplace.
Miljan was staring into space, eyes wide, transfixed. Drobac, it turned out, had left his knife behind, planted in his associate’s heart.
It was a long time before other policemen arrived along with an ambulance to take the bodies. Eventually Littlemore agreed to go to the hospital for his shoulder. After that, the question was where to install Colette and Luc for the night. Littlemore said they couldn’t go back to the Commodore Hotel. Betty Littlemore, the detective’s wife, who had rushed to the hospital upon learning that her husband had been shot—and then appeared half-annoyed because his wound was so superficial—persuaded everyone to come home to the Littlemores’ apartment on Fourteenth Street.
“We’ll stop by headquarters on the way,” said Littlemore. “Statements. Paperwork. Sorry.”
Two hours later, the last police reports were signed. A squad car, empty, engine running, awaited them in the midnight darkness outside the magisterial police headquarters on Centre Street.
In two pairs they descended the steps in darkness: in front the women; behind them, Littlemore and Younger, the latter carrying Luc over his shoulder. Littlemore’s jacket hung loosely over his left shoulder, which was trussed in a sling.
An officer called out to Littlemore from the doorway, asking for instructions. Younger and Littlemore turned around to face him. As a result, Luc was looking toward the street, where his sister and Betty were climbing into the police car. What he saw, no one else saw: two female forms, lit up in the glare of the squad car’s headlamps. One had red hair fluttering in the midnight breeze; the other wore a kerchief. The first slowly approached the car; her feet were below the beam of light,