Read Ed McBain - Downtown for Free Online

anything. Michael kept coming up off his knees because being on your knees was a bad position when a gorilla was charging you, and the gorilla kept right on charging and bellowing but not firing the gun, which caused Michael to think yet another time that the gun was empty. "I said freeze, _police!" the woman shouted again, which wasn't at all what she'd said the first time, and which this time caused the gorilla to hesitate for just the slightest bit of an instant, but that was all the time Michael needed. He feinted at the masked man's head with a right jab, and then kicked sideways and hard at his ankles, hoping the snow underfoot would help the maneuver, which it did. The man's feet slid out from under him and he went crashing down in the opposite direction, the gun flying out of his hand. This time Michael was on him in a wink, straddling him, and chopping the flat of his hand across the bridge of where the nose should have been under the mask. The man screamed. Michael hoped he'd broken the nose. The woman screamed, too. "Police, police, break it _up, goddamn it!"
    She was standing at the top of the steps leading down to the subway. She didn't look like any cop Michael had ever seen in his life.
    She was, in fact, a very fat woman in her late thirties, he guessed, wearing a short black monkey-fur jacket over a red garter belt, red panties, red seamed silk stockings, and red high-heeled boots.
    At first, Michael thought she was a mirage. Coming up out of the subway that way. Half-naked. In a snowstorm no less. Flaming red hair to match the lingerie and boots. Blazing green eyes, five-feet four-inches tall and weighing at least a hundred and fifty pounds.
    Michael picked up the gun and pointed it at the man in the snow. "Up!" he said. "On your feet!" "Drop the gun," the fat redhead said.
    Michael had no intention of dropping the
    57 gun. Not while the man sitting in the snow was still breathing. "You hurt me," the man said. High, piping, frightened voice.
    "No kidding?" Michael said, and reached down for the ski mask, pulling it off his head, wanting to see just how _much he'd hurt him. The man was Chinese. Or Japanese. Or, for all Michael knew, Vietnamese.
    Everything seemed suddenly like a dream. He was back in the jungle again, where everyone had slanted eyes, and where day and night he dreamed of naked redheaded women materializing in the mist, though not as short or as fat as this one was. Back then the women who materialized were very slender, but they were all carrying hand grenades in their armpits. The bad guys were slender, too. And very small. This bad guy was very large. "You son of a bitch," he said. In perfect English.
    "Nice talk," the fat redhead said. "You," she said to Michael. "I told you to drop the gun." "Where's your badge?" Michael said. "Here's my badge," she said, and took from her handbag a shield that looked very much like the one Cahill had flashed in the bar, gold with blue enameling. "Detective O'Brien," she said, "First Squad." "Officer," the Oriental man said at once, "this person broke my nose."
    "No, I don't think so," Michael said.
    "Get up," Detective O'Brien said. "I think he broke some of my _teeth, too."
    He was on his feet now, tongue searching his teeth for chips, hand rubbing his nose at the same time. Michael knew the nose wasn't broken. He'd have jumped out of his skin just touching it. The teeth were another matter. He'd butted the man pretty hard. "What are you doing sticking up people?" he asked. He had the idea that Chinese guys--if he was Chinese--didn't go around sticking up people. Japanese guys, neither. He wasn't so sure about Vietnamese.
    "What are _you doing trying to _kill people?" the
    man said.
    59 "I was defending myself," Michael said. "From what? A fake gun?" Michael looked at the gun in his hand. It had the weight and heft of a real gun, but it was nonetheless plastic. By now, the man had decided that nothing was broken. Teeth all okay, nose still intact. Which