Johnny Get Your Gun (2 page)

Billy danced away, a mocking smile on his lips. “Come and get it,” he invited. As Johnny jumped to his feet, his meal forgotten, Billy began to run. Because of his size he could run much faster, and even with the urgency of desperation Johnny could not catch him. Every few moments Billy slowed down, then when Johnny could almost touch him he sprang away again, waving his hand with the radio in it over his head. Then he tossed it into the air and caught it.

The bell rang. That was a blessed relief, the lunchtime game was over and Billy would hand back the radio. He had done a cruel thing and Johnny would not forgive him for a long, long time.

“Hurry up back or you’ll be late,” Billy warned. Then standing on tiptoe he pushed the radio up onto a high window ledge where Johnny could not possibly reach it. “Be good,” Billy said, “and I’ll get it down for you after school. Now run!”

In blind, frustrated rage, Johnny lowered his head and charged his tormentor, his fists flying. Billy sidestepped expertly and slapped Johnny neatly on the side of the face. Johnny attacked again, with desperate intensity, but Billy only blocked his blows. He laughed at the huge success of his joke played on the much smaller boy who wore funny clothes and talked in such a peculiar way. He had meant to give back the radio, but his teasing had borne wonderful fruit and he didn’t want to surrender such rich fun.

The final bell rang, the one which would have to be obeyed. Billy took to his heels and left Johnny alone, it was the easiest way to keep things as they were. Johnny tried once to reach his precious set, saw that it was impossible, and vowed revenge.

During the two hours of the afternoon school session he sat at his desk, his lips together, a hard look in his eyes. When at last he was released for the day, he ran back to where his radio was, determined to ask the first person tall enough to do so to reach it down for him.

Once the radio was safely back in his own hands the crisis would be over, but the agony of it would not cease until that moment. He could see the edge of his precious set protruding over the sill—proof at least that it was still there.

Billy appeared beside him. “So you want your radio, huh?” he mocked. “Well, why don’t you reach up and get it.”

Johnny gritted his teeth together. “Give me my radio!” he demanded.

Billy laughed. “Now you’re not going to get anything
asking like that.” He reached up and touched the set, emphasizing his ability to do what Johnny could not.

Johnny looked quickly around him for help, but the playground was almost empty. School was over and the children were rapidly leaving. All of the fury which he had been holding down during the bitter afternoon seized hold of him; without warning he lashed out. He caught Billy by surprise, his right fist landed on the older boy’s cheek. For a moment Billy was stunned, then he swung his arms out and knocked Johnny down. Stretching up, he pulled down the radio and held it as if to dash it on the ground.

Johnny was on his feet, the knee of his trousers split, ready to fight to the death. Billy sensed that the joke had gone too far; he gulped air, sped a few feet away and when he had enough distance turned and threw the radio. He hadn’t meant to do that, but he had been struck on the face and he was angry. As soon as the set was in the air he saw that Johnny wouldn’t be able to catch it.

With one desperate lunge Johnny hurled himself toward the point where the radio would fall. It brushed the ends of his frantic fingers, dribbled off, and fell to the asphalt surfacing.

Billy came from where he was standing, when Johnny did not move he ventured a step or two nearer to him. From there he could see that the case was cracked.

“Gee, Johnny, I’m sorry,” he offered. His anger was gone in the cold reality of guilt.

Johnny did not hear him. With a sob racking his throat,
he bent over and tenderly picked up the little plastic case that only seconds before had been to him a living thing, the best friend he had.

As he held it in his fingers he could sense that something was loose inside. With his lips quivering he very carefully clicked the switch that was supposed to turn it on. He rolled the little wheel as far as it would go towards full volume, but there was no answering sound.

Johnny cried. He did not feel the contrite hand that Billy laid on his shoulder or hear the words. “I’m sorry. My dad’ll get you a new one.” He was in a paroxysm of grief so all-engulfing he was alone on another plane belonging to a different world.

The thing he had loved and that had loved him was dead. The only thing he had had to cherish as his very own had been snatched from him.

By a murderer
.

Billy had seized his radio, tortured it, and then hurled it to its helpless death.

His emotion changed. Total grief began to give way to blinding red anger. In awful rage his body tightened so that he could hardly breathe. Then the lust for violent revenge seized complete control of him, a great sob escaped him, and his fingers locked fiercely around the broken case of his beloved, trusted, murdered companion.

With frozen, terrible detachment he saw that for what Billy had done, Billy would have to pay. An obsession took
hold of him, a total determination to do as he had been taught.

Billy was too big for him in a fist fight. He could run faster, he was stronger, and he had much longer arms. But there was another remedy that would still Billy’s mocking laughter, a way to make him pay, and pay completely, for what he had done. He could have his revenge and have back his shattered honor, because he knew where his father kept his gun.

Estelle Hotchkiss was disturbed about her son.

He had seemed all right when he had returned from school, but he had been quieter than usual and when she had spoken to him, he had replied only in monosyllables. She had at first dismissed this as another manifestation of the kaleidoscopic moods of a growing boy.

Later on the phone had rung. Billy had answered it and had had a short conversation; when she had seen him shortly after that he had appeared to be downright terrified.

“Is there anything wrong?” she had asked. He had answered something under his breath and she had let it pass, he was often that way when he had suffered a minor setback of one kind or another. He was having trouble with history and he had mentioned that there was going to be a test on the Revolutionary War or some such topic. That, she decided,
was probably it—he knew that he had done badly on the examination and it was preying on his mind.

It was good for him to worry a little, it might inspire him to study a little harder the next time.

By five o’clock Billy’s odd mood had not passed, if anything it had deepened. By now Estelle had decided that something more than just an examination had gone wrong and that her son would tell her about it in his own good time. She went quietly about her normal affairs and waited for the moment to arrive.

The first real indication came when she said to him, “Billy, go outside and see if the paper has come, will you?”

“I don’t want to.” It was an abrupt, unusual answer.

She stopped the work she was doing and looked at him. “Billy, I asked you nicely to go and see if the paper is here, now please do it.”

“I can’t.”

Those two words caused her a sudden chill, her son had never spoken to her like that before. She put down the carrot she had been scraping, laid the tool aside, and turned to give him her full attention.

Billy stood there, not defiantly, but with his head down.

“Billy, look at me,” she said.

Reluctantly he obeyed.

“Ever since you came home from school you’ve been acting very strangely. I know that something is wrong. I want you to tell me what it is.”

After a long moment he lowered his head again and
remained silent. For a moment she thought that it was stubbornness, then she sensed that it was far more than that. She dropped down until she was sitting on her heels and he could not escape her by looking down any longer.

“I want to know what’s wrong,” she repeated.

After another long pause Billy answered, dragging out the words only because he had to. “I can’t tell you,” he said.

Estelle Hotchkiss had grown up with three brothers, one older and two younger than herself, so she had a better than average insight into the sometimes strange world of boys. “Something happened at school, didn’t it,” she said.

Billy hesitated for another long interval and then nodded his head.

“Did you have trouble with one of your teachers?”

“No.”

From his tone, and the way in which he spoke, she concluded reluctantly that he was in some manner in the wrong, otherwise he would have been more anxious to defend himself. She pressed her lips together for a moment, thought carefully, and then looked at her boy once more.

“Is that why you can’t go and bring in the paper?” she asked.

Billy’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Yes,” he confessed.

“Then we’ll go out and bring it in together.”

Suddenly he became alive; he grasped her arm with almost frantic strength and his eyes widened in terror. “No, no!” he exploded.

She looked at him steadily. “Billy, what have you done?”

When he did not answer she started toward the front door, almost dragging him with her.

“Don’t go out there!” he shouted.

That settled it, something very serious was wrong. Her voice changed as sympathy gave way to authority. “Billy, I want you to tell me this minute what happened. If you don’t I’m going to call your father on the phone. This can’t go on any longer.”

Billy’s eyes were suddenly wet with tears and she knew that he was close to the breaking point. “I’m going to bring in the paper,” she said. It had suddenly occurred to her that there was something in it that Billy was most anxious she not see. She resolved to get the paper and to at least scan every item in it. Nothing else she could think of made sense. Without saying anything she forced him to let go of her arm and started for the door.

Then it came. In a voice that she had never heard him use before Billy cried to her, “There’s a boy out there with a gun and he’ll shoot you!”

She gasped for breath; she whirled toward her son. “A
real
gun?” she demanded.

“Yes!” The words came in a torrent now; Billy’s hands were clenched into fists as he fought to make her believe him. “I broke his radio. I didn’t mean to do it, but I did. He called me up a little while ago. He told me he had his father’s gun and that he was going to come here and kill me!”

There was a pause, a cold moment of frozen horror, then Estelle Hotchkiss looked carefully at her son. He was not lying, she could see that. In three quick steps she reached the telephone and dialed operator.

“Get me the police,” she said, and her own voice was shaking.

The desk sergeant who took her call passed a message to radio dispatch within seconds. It went on the air at once to officers Dick Stone and Barry Rothberg who were cruising less than two miles from the Hotchkiss home; within five minutes they were ringing the bell at the front door. At the sight of their uniforms Estelle swung the door wide and with a tight voice said, “Please come in.”

A painful few minutes passed while Billy reluctantly told his story, shamefaced at having to admit what he had done, terrorized by the realization of what he had begun.

As soon as he had finished Stone looked at his partner. “I’ll go outside and have a look around,” he said. “Suppose you stay with these people until I come back.”

“I’ll go,” Rothberg volunteered.

Stone did not bother to answer, he loosened his side-arm in its holster and then went promptly out the front door. He paused on the flagstone entryway for a few seconds and looked about carefully, particularly at the places where someone might be concealed. Across the street there was a parklike wooded area which had been left undeveloped; Stone noted
that it would offer good concealment for anyone who might want to watch the house without being seen. Keeping a careful lookout, he walked with normal speed to the patrol car and picked up the mike. Still keeping his attention focused on the area of trees and shrubs which was much too conveniently located, he reported in.

At that hour most of the members of the day staff, including the investigative and juvenile divisions, had already gone home, but there were others who remained on the job. Community disturbances, traffic problems, fires, crime, and other matters which require police action do not obligingly cease at five, in fact the coming of darkness seems to stimulate them into greater activity. Most of the night work was done in Pasadena by the uniformed division, but there were others always available to respond when they were needed.

Virgil Tibbs was at his desk because he was scheduled for a court appearance and he wanted to be absolutely sure that his preparation was complete. Fresh in his mind was a fiasco of a few weeks before when a confidence man he had spent weeks tracking down went free because he had not been formally notified of his constitutional rights. This time the accused would not be able to get off the hook on any such excuse, but his attorney would be looking for any loophole. Tibbs was determined not to provide one.

When his phone rang he picked it up, spoke his name, and then listened. Within a few seconds he began to jot notes on a pad of ruled paper which was always in a convenient
position. As he wrote down the address he was given he visualized the area and the economic bracket of the people who lived there.

“I’ll go right out,” he said. Automatically he set aside the plans he had made for the evening; it was most unlikely that the sort of thing he had just been told about could be resolved quickly. He could not take time even to stop for a quick hamburger, when people wanted police help every minute was magnified.

Thirteen minutes later Estelle Hotchkiss heard the doorbell ring once, discreetly, and hurried to answer it. Her husband had unfortunately picked this time to be out of his office and he was late coming home, so the full burden still rested in her hands. When she swung the door open she found herself face-to-face with a Negro; this was not what she had been expecting and for a moment she was taken aback. Then she looked again and noted that he was slender, somewhere in his early thirties, and dressed in a dark-colored, lightweight summer suit of unmistakable quality.