New Yorkers by Hortense Calisher

“When the kid came in again, I think Mirriam was saying—I think she was saying, ‘I’ll get that gun, I’ll get that gun’—over and over. I was having trouble holding her—she took me by surprise. And the kid, coming in just then—must have thought her mother was saying to her, to get it. The gun that was on the table. But Mirriam meant my gun. Mine.” He glanced at the gun on the floor, still with a frown of puzzlement. “How she could have—Mirriam must have turned when I did. I don’t know whether she saw the girl even, before the kid shot her.”
    “For you,” the Judge said hoarsely. “The shot was for you. ” As he spoke, he saw what he had said. So witnesses, establishing what is unthinkable, establish it all.
    “Well, there it is,” said the other. “Quickly.” But his face had suffered a change. Or to the witness, did they always? It had begun to look like a face liars might trust.
    “A slap,” said the Judge, looking down at the gun. “That’s what it sounded like from outside. A slap.”
    The other nodded, shrugged.
    “But Mirriam said something. After.”
    “No, that was the kid.”
    “A—scream?” It hadn’t been, that third oddly trilling voice.
    And again the man’s face made that strange grimace with which it had begun its repertoire, an embarrassed gawk of pity trying to hide in its own lineaments. Involuntarily the Judge turned his own head, as at that first signal, but there was no pajamaed child there now.
    “Ah, what the hell,” the man said, in his roughest voice yet. “The kid must have been trying to tell her mother all evening. She said something about…she said like ‘It’s come like you said, Mummy. The blood.’” Then he turned on his heel, found himself facing that covered mound, and wheeled again, toward the other wall.
    When the Judge finally raised his head from his hands, he thought his tongue had been sounding like a clapper in his throat. Save her. Save. But he must have said nothing.
    “Listen, fella,” said the man. “Before the doctor comes. Go down and get us both some whisky.” He wasn’t looking at the Judge.
    It was several seconds before the Judge answered. Then, rising, he nodded, but faltering, like an old man. “Your—clients. Who are they?”
    “I was in the force once, on the strong-arm squad. Now I—have a few concessions around town.” And some swagger to it. But hesitation too. “There’s a medical examiner I know, down at the morgue. Let me put him wise. From outside. Just to keep it quiet. That’s natural. The wife of a man like you.” He was all hustle now, the cheapness coming out in him after all. A bad time to see it.
    He saw the Judge see it. There was that dimension in him too. “Listen, Mannix. I’m not as honest as you, your kind. But so help me, I’m honest enough for this. You’ll never hear from me any more.”
    The Judge bent his head, and turned to go down.
    “Mannix!”
    He turned back.
    “The kid can shoot, can’t she?”
    He had regained himself. “Deaf children…often have target practice.” He spoke as if instructing an interested world, to the air. “Any vibrational synchronizing…is good training. The school thought. She and her mother used to go with him. My son.” Then he went down the stairs.
    Downstairs, he entered the dining-room at the back of the house, and closed the door. Deliberately, he opened a sideboard, set a bottle on a tray and two glasses, and sat down in a chair beside them to wait, his eyes on his shorter sleeve. The doctor had a possible delivery to check on the way, in any case was always slower than intended; there was more time than had been said. And he had a bet on. It wasn’t as certain as his boyhood bets with his own bus fare. But he had more chance of seeing its outcome than Chauncey and Borkan now would ever have, on any bet confabulated around himself. It vamped in his ear like a popular refrain. You won’t hear from me, any more.
    The floors of his