"Ah, precisely my point. William, all existence tries to dictate what you can do and not do. I find it tremendously galling that life insists that we use mechanical devices to escape gravity's bond. That we find ourselves inconvenienced by luck or practical considerations. That we die. Freedom consists of telling the universe what to do. Not the reverse."
"I don't get you."
"Well, in the short term, it means I have chosen to study Miss Donahue before we eliminate her. I have decided. And regardless of the relative importance of that study, I refuse to let man or god stop me. My wish is more important than theirs. Else I'm just another bee in the hive. Do you understand?"
I understand you've got some busted gears. "Yes, sir."
* * *
Harris finished stuffing Gaby's pocketbook and address book back into her pack. He rose to shut the window again—and felt it shake under his hand as the apartment door slammed open. Someone in the living room, an unknown male, shouted "Police, don't move!"
Cops. That was okay. He had a right to be here. He might be arrested, but Gaby would show up and fix things.
If she made it home.
If she weren't grabbed again on the way.
And if she were, and he were in jail, he wouldn't be able to help her. Dammit! He could run out on Doc, or stay here and perhaps not be available when Gaby needed him. Swearing to himself, he stepped out through the window onto the fire escape, then began descending as quickly and quietly as he could.
He got to the bottom of the fire escape on the second floor. Below was the sidewalk along 11th Street. He climbed over the wrought-iron railing and lowered himself partway down, then dropped to the concrete, jarring his feet.
So what had happened? Probably Leo Crenshaw next door, being a dutiful neighbor. Such a nice guy. Harris felt a sudden urge to throw the man out his window.
He heard a scream from the window he'd just left.
A man's scream. He thought it was Doc's.
Phipps left the limousine and joined the men from the van. They sent Adonis around to the back of the house—instructing it very carefully, as they always had to do, where the various hands of the pocket watch had to be before it walked through the back door. Then Phipps and two of his men moved up to the front door.
The old man watched and waited. He smiled; they were so close to his dream. It was like the end of a huge, exquisite meal, and the masterwork of a dessert had just been laid before him.
He watched one of Phipps' men—was it Dominguez, the one with all the tattoos? no, Kleine, the one with the charming children in all the wallet photos—kick in the front door. The three men rushed in. One of them closed the door immediately.
Minutes passed. Lights went on and off at various places in the Carpenter house. There were no gunshots, and the old man nodded approvingly. Knives were much better. Less apt to wake the neighbors.
But Phipps and all the others came trotting back out of the house . . . without the Donohue woman. Phipps' face was rigid as he climbed back into the driver's seat. "They're gone," he said.
The old man raised his brows. "Interesting."
Phipps picked up the tracer and turned it on. "The cars are still in the garage, and the place was locked up tight. Maybe they spotted us— Dammit!"
"Is she not registering?"
"No, she is. Her signal's getting fainter. She has a big head start. But that phantom blip is back." Phipps scowled at the device, then handed it over to the old man.
The screen showed a big, fuzzy blur in the center. That represented the overlapping emanations from the old man and Adonis. The old man tilted and rotated the device until he picked up the fainter glow that had to be the Donohue woman.
But there, in the same direction, at the edge of the screen, was a new glow. Faint, fading in and out. But if he read its characteristics right, it was a strong signal, far away, at the limits of the device's ability to detect.
He bit back on a curse. "Let's go. The Donohue woman first. Then we find out who our new friend is."
Phipps put the limo into motion. The van carrying the other men and Adonis lumbered into line behind.
One man kept Doc under the gun while the other quickly checked out the other rooms in the apartment, then stood Doc up against the wall and patted him all over. A search for hidden weapons, Doc guessed, and they found his pistol immediately. The man doing the patting pulled it free, saying "Lookee here. Don't tell me you have a license for this."
"I—"
"Shut up. I'm required to advise you of your rights. You have the right to remain silent . . . "
The man gave Doc a halting, badly memorized litany of his rights—good to know, he thought, and committed them to memory as they were spoken—while finishing the search. Then the man twisted his arm up behind him, obviously to conduct him to whatever served them as a gaol. Or so Doc thought.
Then pain, horrible burning pain clamped onto his wrist. It shot like fire up his arm and through his body. He heard the bellow of agony tear free of him, felt his knees begin to buckle, saw redness cloak his vision.
Torture. Harris didn't say these police were torturers. Murderers. He twisted, brought his other elbow into his torturer's gut, and was rewarded with a grunt of pain from the man. But the pressure on his arm didn't let up, and shock was already robbing him of his strength. With his free hand he shoved against the wall, pushing them both backward—
Then the second man hammered his head, once, twice, with something small and metal-hard. All strength left him and he crashed to the old, gray-green carpet.
As Doc's senses dimmed, he felt them twist his other arm around and shackle it, too, with the poisonous metal. Pain tore through his other arm.
"Christ, Jay, what's going on with his wrists?"
"Hell if I know. Maybe they were already like that."
Doc tried to speak, but the pain was too intense. Only a faint hiss emerged.
"Get the cuffs off him."
"Hell you say. He'll be all over us again."
"Then get on the phone and call this in. We're going to need . . . "
That was the last he heard.
* * *
Harris' stomach did flip-flops: what were they doing to Doc up there? Why? Had he been stupid enough to attack the cops?
Hell, "cops" didn't mean anything to Doc, and there was no telling what he might have done. At least there hadn't been any gunshots. Harris got to the corner and looked up the street. There was no police unit parked within sight; they must have arrived in an unmarked car. And in a couple of minutes, they'd be leading him down in cuffs . . .
Cuffs. Did New York cops use steel handcuffs, or nickel-plated? Oh, hell.
Harris ran to the entrance, praying he'd remembered to take Gaby's keys—and there they were, still in the fanny pack. Once again they got him through the main door.
He ran up to the third story two steps at a time, then slowed for the last flight.
No one in the hall outside her apartment. Mr. Crenshaw would be in his room, waiting for someone to tell him everything was all right.
Harris moved up to the door. It was ajar a couple of inches. He faintly heard someone talking. Peeking in, he could see Doc's feet. Doc had to be lying on his stomach. The man's legs shook.
Harris hesitated. If the cops had cuffs on him, Doc could die before they figured it out. But if that wasn't what was going on, Harris could be throwing away years of his life.
Or getting killed.
False bravado steeled him against that last thought. Hell, I almost got killed just showing that I could walk on I-beams. He threw the door open and charged.
One man, black and in good shape, was just emerging from the kitchen. The other, white and big, was kneeling over Doc's body in the middle of the living room. There was something going on with Doc's hands . . .
The men were caught off guard. Harris stopped over Doc's body and rotated into a side kick that caught the black man right in the balls, folding him up like a hinge; he
fell to his knees.
Harris, still recovering, drove a knuckle-punch into the second man's neck; then he had his balance again and brought his foot up in a forward kick against the man's face. The white man, already grabbing at his injured throat, went over backwards, hitting the floor with a boom that shook the walls.
A glance for the black man; that man was up on shaky legs and was clawing awkwardly at his coat pocket. Harris stepped in close and spun. His backhand cracked into the man's temple, dazing him, and a follow-through punch combination to the gut and ribs put him down.
Less than ten seconds from start to finish. Harris stood over the bodies of the men he'd beaten and trembled as though he'd run a marathon.
He'd just beaten up two cops. His life was over.
Doc. The white-haired man lay still as death . . . and his hands. The flesh around the wrists was blackened as though it had been exposed to an acetylene torch. Blisters radiated away from the handcuffs, covering his hands, continuing up under his sleeves. His breathing was fast and shallow, like a dog's pant—but at least he was breathing.
Harris hurriedly took the cops' guns, then shut the door to the apartment. A minute's worth of searching yielded the handcuff keys in one of their pants' pockets.
Harris unlocked the cuffs on Doc, then delicately pried them free of his flesh. Blisters broke as he did so, and clear fluid ran across the man's burned wrists; Harris had to swallow down revulsion as he got Doc free of the restraints.
Now what? Tossing the cuffs across the room didn't magically cure Doc. His wrists still looked terrible. He was still out cold. And the cops wouldn't stay unconscious forever. They'd wake up mad . . . and more were probably coming. Dammit!
Wait a second. He'd been through their pocket goods while looking for the keys, and . . . Harris scrambled over to where one officer's wallet lay; he flipped through it.
Driver's license, Jay E. Costigan. Credit cards. Money.
No badge. No police ID.
He dug out the black man's wallet. Same story. And this man had in his pocket a volt-meter device like the one Doc had taken from the attackers at the Monarch Building.
They weren't police. They were more of the men who'd grabbed Gaby. But that meant the cops wouldn't be coming for him: good.
He left Gaby's apartment, ran to the next door up the hall, and pounded on it. Mr. Crenshaw was a bit of a nosy pain, but he was always willing to help—
Crenshaw shouted from beyond the door, his voice wavering, "Go away! I have a gun! I've called the police!"
For a moment, Doc imagined he was back in the burning house in Wickhollow, watching fire claim the body of Siobhan Damvert, feeling fire climb his sleeves and back.
Then, even through the cloud of pain, he knew. Poison. He was badly poisoned and probably in shock. And he was upside down—being carried by someone with a jarring gait. He opened his eyes.
The backs of gray-clad legs, slowly and shakily descending a dark stairway. Every step shot pain through Doc's arms, which hung limp. "Harris?"
"Doc? Thank God. Can you walk?"
No. He wouldn't manage ten steps. "I . . . yes."
Harris waited until they reached the next landing, then lowered Doc as carefully as he could. Doc couldn't bear to soften the descent with his arms; he took it on his shoulder and neck and let himself roll down until he was on his back.
Harris, sweating profusely and stinking of effort, stared helplessly down at him. He reached for Doc's hands, obviously thought better of it, and knelt beside him. He grabbed him around the torso and helped him sit up. Even that effort was almost too much; Doc almost passed out just getting upright. But a minute later Harris got Doc up on his feet, pulling Doc's arm over his shoulder. Doc didn't let him know how much that hurt.
They took the stairs as fast as Doc's weakened, rubbery legs would allow. "We're on the second floor," Harris said. "Almost down. Gaby's next-door neighbor heard enough to scare him and he rolled the cops. The real ones, I mean. I can hear a siren. Man, I've got to get you some medical help."
Doc couldn't lift his head but could shake it. "No," he whispered. "They would kill me. By accident if nothing else. Get me clear of here."
A dozen more bone-jarring steps and they were at the front door, then beyond. There was no traffic on the street, but the sirens were getting louder. Harris got Doc down the concrete steps and to the sidewalk, then turned away from the sound of sirens. "Easy does it. Look casual. Look drunk. If we can make it a couple of blocks, we can get to the subway and be away from here."
Something stirred at the back of Doc's memory. It was so hard to think . . . "Gaby Donohue was returning home."
"Shit."
"No need to curse."
"Right, right. I've got no reason at all."
Chapter Eleven
Gaby put down the phone, took a deep breath, and told Elaine and Jim, "We need to get out of here." Then she explained.
It was a nerve-wracking ten minutes. They dressed, crept out the back door into the darkened yard and climbed clumsily over the back fence. A few minutes later and a block away, they were hammering on the back door to the house of one of Elaine's suicide-hotline friends.
A good friend. She heard what Elaine had to say and volunteered Gaby her car with no hesitation. Then she set about opening up the bed in the couch for Elaine and Jim.
So her departure had come off without a problem. Her arrival at home was another matter.
When she pulled onto her own street, she saw the official vehicle, a squad car, parked right in front of her building. Something had obviously gone wrong here.
No parking available—as usual. She parked in a tow-away zone around the corner and ran up the stairs to her floor. She took a deep breath as she saw a uniformed officer emerging from her door. "Hi," she said. "I live here."
The officer smiled. It wasn't an amused smile. "Go right in."
* * *
Three minutes later the black limousine cruised past the same block. The old man in the backseat looked over the police unit and made a disgusted noise. "Tell the van to stay and watch. We'll follow the other signal."
Harris couldn't have had more trouble juggling cats. He had to walk and support Doc—not easy, as the man was half-unconscious and heavy. He had to make sure all the stuff he'd taken from the apartment didn't spill out of his pockets, and that included three revolvers and the damned volt-meter gadget. Thank God these ugly slacks with the dorky high waistband had deep, deep pockets. And he had to figure out what to do next. Doc wasn't conscious enough to do much thinking.
Run. That was first. Just outside the building's main door, they'd turned left, toward Bank Street, and rounded the corner before the sirens arrived. Harris heard the police car pull up in front of the building and cut its siren. The two of them weren't spotted, a little bit of good luck mixed in with all the bad. Now they were headed toward the nearest subway station he could remember, at 7th Avenue and 14th, and he felt fresh out of ideas.
Why was that? Used to be he was full of ideas. Just in the last day, though, Doc and the others had been doing all the thinking for him. Hell, he'd been letting Zeb do all his thinking before that. He was out of the habit.
It was time to think again, and to think analytically. Like dissecting an opponent's technique before moving against him.
Problem. Doc was hurt and had refused medical aid. That meant Harris had to do everything for both of them. No solution for it. Except maybe to get help Doc would accept. Harris could trust Zeb and make Doc accept it; maybe he'd stop by and visit his manager. Ex-manager.
He noticed under a streetlight that Doc's hands seemed to be a little better; the blisters hadn't faded, but they had closed and the flesh around the wrists was showing a little pink among the gruesome cracking expanses of black. That was a hopeful sign, but he didn't put much stock in it.
Problem. Somebody was after Gaby, and he'd have to track her down again. She probably wouldn't go back to Elaine's.
Wait a minu
te. He let go of Doc's arm with his right hand and began fishing in his pocket. The gizmo. Still there; he dragged it out, looked at it, and pushed the only switch to turn the thing on. It made a low buzzing sound and the little screen, set where a volt-meter's dial would be, began to glow.
It was like a radar screen, but gold-toned and without the rotating line he was used to from TV. In the center was a big, fuzzy glow; it had to be Doc. Further away, another dot, also bright . . . headed more or less in his direction.
No, two dots. The second one was a lot closer and fainter. It wasn't on-screen all the time.
Two dots, and only one of them could be Gabriela. Okay. Maybe, if the dots didn't fade out completely, he could find her again with this thing.
Problem. Cops would be looking for him and Doc. Harris could blend in with a crowd . . . once he got some new clothes. Doc couldn't, not as easily.
Both the faint and the strong signal had gotten closer and brighter as the two men walked, but as they descended the steps into the station, the fainter signal abruptly faded and disappeared. By the time they got to the bottom, the other signal had dimmed to nothing. The big signal in the center, Doc's signal, was as strong as ever.
Harris stared perplexed at the screen for a moment, then looked back up the steps. "Doc. Can you stand by yourself for a moment?"
Doc didn't look up or speak, but he nodded.
Harris carefully leaned him up against the wall. "I'll be back in just a second." He walked up the steps.
The brighter signal increased in intensity as he ascended, and by the time he reached street level again the fainter signal had returned.
Interesting. Did concrete block transmission? It looked like it. Harris trotted back down the stairs and watched two of the signals fade again. That meant he couldn't find Gaby while he was below ground.
It also meant the other guys might not be able to track Doc while he was below.
Harris shut the device off and pocketed it, then slid back under Doc's arm. "Doc, we need to ride the subway for a while. I'll tell you the rest when we're moving."
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