The staked Goat

fixing the old daybed in the room. I goosed the head of claims investigation for twenty dollars more per week than he wanted to spend on them.
    The first seven nights passed without incident. The arson squad had run a discreet check on the night-watchman. His name was Craigie. He was seventy-one, nearsighted, and straight as an arrow. With my binoculars, I could see him outlined in the reflection of his battery lantern, the warehouse owner being too cheap to use floodlighting. Craigie was as punctual as a steeple clock, and I began to feel that I knew him as well as I knew the Coopers.
    My hosts extended their bedtime so they could have tea with me before I went upstairs. They both wore cardigans off the 2-for-$5 rack at Zayre’s. Jesse was one of the first black marines in combat in World War II, losing most of one hand to a Japanese grenade. Emily had retired from teaching fourth grade in a non-Catholic parochial school. The whole time we talked, rarely more than twenty minutes a night, Emily would hold Jesse’s good hand. I did my best not to think about the times Beth and I had kidded about what we would be like when we grew old.
    On the eighth night, Craigie made his nine, ten, and eleven o’clock circuits, lantern bobbing. No lantern at 12:00, or 12:05, or 12:10. At 12:15, I was dropping over the security fence at the back of the warehouse. I had a highbeam penlight in my hip pocket, and a .38 Smith & Wesson Combat Masterpiece in my right hand. I followed the perimeter of the warehouse until I found a window ajar. The owner was no more lavish on alarm systems than he was on searchlights. I edged the window up and stepped through, into the warehouse. I tried to slide the window back down, but at the first squeak I stopped. While my eyes were adjusting to the darkness, my ears picked up a soft, dapping noise above the industrial hum all large buildings, however vacant, produce. The flapping sound grew closer, the sound of running feet.
    He might have had me if he hadn’t tripped over a wooden pallet some forklift operator had failed to stack. He cursed and stumbled just as my adjusting eyes picked him up, fifty feet to my left.
    ”Freeze!” I yelled, dropping to one knee.
    He said something as he let fly two quick shots. In the quiet darkness of the warehouse, the firing sounded and looked like atomic bombs launched by a flamethrower. One slug thumped harmlessly into a bale of something three feet from me. The second ricocheted two or three times, whining crazily through the dead air above our heads.
    I pulled the trigger of the already cocked weapon. I cocked and fired again before his scream from the first registered on my ears. I thought I heard the skittering clatter of a lost weapon, too. Just to be sure, though, I circled around and came in on him from ninety degrees off where I had fired.
    He was curled like a fetus on the cold floor, rocking side to side with his left hand high on his right shoulder, and his right hand on his thigh. He was moaning, ”Jesus, Jesus.” I flicked on my penlight and caught the dark outline of his revolver ten feet away from him.
    I moved over to him and held my weapon against his temple while I quickly and unfruitfully patted him down. He was bleeding freely from both wounds.
    ”Where’s Craigie?” I asked.
    ”What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” he said.
    I shined my penlight into his face. He was thirtyish, heavy features, curly black hair.
    ”The nightwatchman, where is he?”
    ”Man, get me to a fuckin’ hospital!” he yelled.
    I put the ball of my right foot onto his wounded shoulder and pressed about as much as you would to ease forward twenty feet in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The lump on the floor emitted a nerve-curdling scream and flopped left to right like a gill-hooked sunnie.
    ”You tell me where the nightwatchman is or I’m the only surgeon you’ll ever see.”
    ”Oh sweet shitting Jesus, man, he’s in the back, in the back!”
    I took off for the back, scoffing up the torch’s weapon on the way. I got sixty or seventy feet when a wall of flame whipped up in front of me. I jumped back, lost my balance, and went down in a heap on my left elbow. It was bruised but not broken. By the time I got up, the flames were three feet closer and impenetrable.
    ”Craigie,” I yelled, ”Craigie, can you hear me? Craigie?”
    It was like asking after coal pitched into a furnace.
    I walked back toward the torch, rubbing my left elbow.
    ”Christ, get