Ed McBain (32 page)

"He'll live," Palazzo said. "He's healthy, ain't he? He's young. He's sound of mind and body. From the way Brown tells me he ran, he must be a hardy specimen."

"A murder rap..." Davis said.

"Murder rap, shmurder rap. So long as you got your health," Palazzo cracked.

The arm began bleeding in earnest. It started as a slow trickle of blood that oozed its way through the fresh bandage. But the trickle became a stream, and the stream soaked through the bandage and dripped onto Johnny's wrist, and the drops ran into his cupped palm, hung on his fingertips, and then spattered onto the sidewalk in a crimson trail.

It got colder, too, and he missed his jacket, and he cursed himself for not having grabbed it when he'd left the girl's room. With her screaming like that, though, it's a wonder he managed to remember his head even. Still, it was goddamn cold, too cold for October, too cold even for January.

The trail of blood led from Lexington Avenue down to Third Avenue, past the lighted fronts of the furniture stores, past the all-night restaurants and the bakeries that served coffee from big shining urns. He was very conscious of the blood trail, and he wondered if city cops ever used bloodhounds. All he needed was a pack of mutts chasing down Third Avenue after him. He smiled, the picture striking him somehow as amusing. He could almost see his photo in the
Daily News,
Johnny Trachetti up a lamppost, his pants seat torn to shreds while the mutts stood up on their hind legs and barked and snapped. Caption:
Killer at Bay.

Bay, you know. The hounds baying, you know?

Very funny, he told himself, but you couldn't wrap a joke around your back, and a laugh wouldn't stop the wind, and the wind was sure cold.

Nor could corny humor hold back the flow of blood from his arm.

Right now, he needed a place for the night.

He remembered the warehouse just off Third Avenue, where the furniture store kept all the new goods. There was a window the guys used to sneak in through, where one of the bars was loose and capable of being swung out of position. They'd taken Carmen Diaz there once when they were all around sixteen and they'd had a jolly old time on the mats the movers used to wrap around the furniture. He wouldn't forget that time so easily because it had been his first time. Nor would he forget how they had gotten into the warehouse, because that had been the trickiest part.

He ducked off Third Avenue now, and into the darkness of the side street. There was no one in sight, and he scaled the fence rapidly and then went directly to the window with the loose bar.

He tried all the bars, beginning to lose hope, and then suddenly happy when the fifth one came free under his hands. He moved the bar to one side, jimmied open the window, and then squeezed through the opening. It was a tighter fit than it had been when he was sixteen, but he made it and dropped to the concrete floor, reaching up to close the window behind him.

He found the old iron stairwell and took that up to the third floor where he knew all the mats would be. When he heard the voices, he turned around and was ready to run, but they'd already spotted him.

"Hold it, Mac," one of them said.

A watchman, he thought.

He froze solid because there was no sense in running now. Maybe he could bull it through, and if not he still had a good left arm, and he still knew how to throw a fist.

The man moved closer to him, a big man in the near darkness.

"Whatta you want, Mac?" he asked.

"You the watchman?" Johnny asked.

The big man laughed. "A watchman, huh? A watchman? You on the bum, too, kid?"

He felt immensely relieved all at once, so relieved that he almost smiled. "Yeah," he said, "I'm on the bum."

"Come on in. You want a cup of java?"

"Man, I could use some," he said. The big man laughed again and reached out for Johnny's arm. He tried to pull it away, but he wasn't quick enough, and he winced in pain, and the big man looked at his sticky fingers.

"You hurt, huh, kid?" he asked. There was no sympathy in his voice. There was instead a crafty sound, as if the man had made a very valuable discovery and was hoarding it under the floorboards of his mind.

"Come on," he said, his voice oily now. "We'll get you that java."

He led Johnny to the circle of men huddled in one corner of the huge concrete-floored room. An electric grill was plugged into an outlet, and a battered coffeepot rested on the glowing orange coils. Johnny looked at the circle of bearded faces, four men all told, five counting the big man who'd led him to the group. The men were smiling, but there was no mirth on their faces. His arm dripped blood onto the concrete floor and the eyes calculated the dripping, and then shifted back to his face, the smiles still on the mouths, but never reaching the calculating eyes.

"Who you brung for dinner, Bugs?" one of the men asked.

"A nice young punk," the big man answered. "Hurt his poor little arm, though, didn't you, sonny?"

Johnny wet his lips. "Yeah, I ... I got cut."

"Well, now, that's too bad, punk," one of the men in the circle said. "Now that's too bad you got a cut on your arm."

"Maybe we got a nurse here can fix it up," another man said.

"Sure, we got a lot of nurses here, kid. We'll fix you up fine, kid. Here, have some coffee."

He wasn't sure now. He wasn't sure what they meant, and he wasn't sure whether they intended him harm or whether they were giving him sanctuary. He knew only that there were five of them and that he had only one good arm.

One of the men poured the coffee into a tin cup, and the strong aroma reached his nostrils, clung there. He wanted that coffee very badly, he wanted it almost desperately. The man handed the cup to Bugs, and the steam rose in the orange glow of the grill.

Bugs said, facing Johnny squarely now, "You want the coffee, punk?"

"I'd like a cup," Johnny said warily.

"You got money to pay for it, punk?" Bugs asked. Maybe that was it. Maybe all they wanted was money. But suppose...

"No," Johnny lied. "I'm broke."

"Well now, ain't that a shame?" Bugs said, winking again at the other men. "How you 'spect to get any coffee unless you pay for it? Coffee don't grow on trees now, does it?"

"I guess not," Johnny said slowly. "Forget the coffee. I'll do without."

"Now, now," Bugs said, "no need to take that attitude, is there, boys? We're willing to barter. You know how to horse-trade, punk?"

"I don't want the coffee," Johnny said firmly. He was already figuring how he'd make his break because he knew a break was in the cards, and the way the cards were falling he'd have to make the break soon.

Johnny wet his lips and moved closer to the glowing grill.

Bugs kept eyeing him steadily, the vacuous, stupid smile on his face.

"All right," Johnny said nervously. "Give me the cup."

Bugs extended the steaming tin cup. "That's a good little punk," he said. "That's the way we like it. No fuss and no muss. Now go ahead and drink your coffee, punk. Drink it all down fine. Go ahead, punk."

He handed the cup to Johnny, and Johnny felt the hot liquid through the tin of the container and then he moved. He threw the coffee into Bugs's face, lashing out with his left hand. He heard Bugs scream as the hot liquid scalded him and then Johnny's foot lashed out for the grill, kicking wildly at it, hooking the metal under the glowing coils. The grill leaped into the air like a flashing comet, hung suspended hot at the end of its wire, and then the wire pulled free of the outlet, and the grill glowed for an instant and then began to dwindle, its coils turning pale.

He was already running. Bugs was screaming wildly behind him, and he heard footsteps, and he heard another scream and knew that the wildly kicked grill had burned someone else. He headed for the steps, with the sounds angry behind him, the footsteps thudding against the bare floor. His own feet hit the iron rungs of the stairs, the echoes clattering up the stairwell, down, down to the main floor and then across the darkened room with the piled, dusty furniture, the shouts and cries behind him all the way. He leaped up for the window, jimmied it open, and then shoved the loose bar aside.

"I'll kill the louse!" he heard Bugs shout but he was already outside and sprinting for the fence. He jumped up, forced to use both arms, with the blood smearing across the fence in a wild streak. And then he was over, just as Bugs squeezed through the bars and ran for the fence. He was tired, very tired. His arm hurt like hell, and his heart exploded against his rib cage, and he knew he couldn't risk a prolonged chase because Bugs would surely catch him.

He was at the corner now and Bugs still hadn't reached the fence. He spotted the manhole and he ran for it quickly, stooping down and expertly prying open the lid with his fingers. He'd been down manholes before. He'd been down them when the kids used to play stickball and a ball rolled down the sewer and the only way to get it was by prying open the manhole cover and catching it before it got washed away to the river. He was in the manhole now, and he slid the cover back in place, hearing it wedge firmly in the caked dirt, soundlessly settling back into position. He clung to the iron brackets set into the wall of the sewer, and he could hear the rush of water far below where the sewer elbowed into the pipes. There was noise above him, the noise of feet trampling on the iron lid of the manhole. He held his breath because there was no place to go from here, no place at all. The footsteps clattered overhead and the iron lid rattled and then the footsteps were gone.

He waited until he heard more footsteps, figured them to belong to Bugs's followers.

He was safe. They didn't realize he'd ducked into the manhole. They were probably scouting Third Avenue for him now and they'd give up when they figured they'd lost him.

To play it doubly sure, he edged his way down deeper into the sewer, holding on to the iron brackets with his good hand. The stench of garbage and filthy water reached up to caress his nostrils. He was tempted to move up close to the lid again but it was darker down below and if someone did lift the lid, chances were he wouldn't be seen if he went deeper.

The walls around him were slimy and wet, and they smelled, too, or at least he thought they did. His nose was no longer capable of determining the direction of the stink. It was all around him, like a soggy vile blanket. He felt nauseous and he didn't know whether the nausea came from his dripping arm or the dripping slime of the sewer.

He only knew that he was safe here, and that Bugs and the boys were upstairs, and so he descended deeper until the elbow of the sewer was just beneath his feet and he could hear the rush of water loud beneath him.

He was very weary, more weary than he'd been in all his life. The weight of the entire city seemed to press down on him, as if all the concrete and steel were concentrated on this one hole in the asphalt, determined to crush it into the core of the earth.

He hooked his left arm into one of the brackets, and he hung there like a Christ with one arm free. The free arm dangled at his right side, the bandage soaked through now, the blood running down and dropping into the rushing water below.

Drop by drop, it hit the slimy surface of the brown water while Johnny hung from the rusted iron bracket praying no one would lift the manhole cover. Drop by drop, it mingled with the brown water, flowed into the elbow where manhole joined sewer pipe, rushed toward the river, bright red on the brown, rushed with the water carrying the smell of fresh blood.

And the rat clinging to the rotted orange crate lodged in the sewer pipe turned glittering bright eyes toward the manhole opening, and his nostrils twitched as he smelled the blood. His teeth gnashed before he plunged into the water and swam toward the source of the blood.

Marie Trachetti got the news from Hannihan, the cop on the beat. She threw on her high school jacket and went into the streets looking for Johnny.

She had known from the moment Angelo got shot that Johnny would be tagged with it. She had known, and she had sought him then, hoping to warn him, but she had not found him, and the next thing she knew a search was out for him and he was suspected of the killing.

All that was over and done with now. This Ryan fellow had confessed to shooting Angelo, a crime for which he should have been awarded a medal. But Johnny was clear now, and Johnny had to be told, and so Marie took to the streets in search of him.

She did not, in all truth, know where to look for him. Johnny and she did not run in the same circles. She had her friends, and he had his, and except for that run-in with Angelo, their separate social paths hardly ever crossed.

She started looking in the pool parlors and when she had no luck there, she tried the movies. She met some of Johnny's friends but none of them had seen him, and so she tried all the restaurants, walking up 125th Street and then down Lexington Avenue.

From Lexington Avenue, she walked down to Third, frightened because it was very late at night and because she knew she was an attractive girl in a dark, exotic-looking way. Her brush with Angelo had taught her that.

The sidewalks seemed to be darker than the gutter, and so she stayed in the middle of the street, looking from side to side as she made her way from the corner, hoping to spot Johnny huddled in one of the doorways.

She was wearing high heels, the shoes she wore at her after-school job in the delicatessen. Her heels clattered on the iron top of a manhole cover, sending a loud clicking into the silent night. She did not look down. She continued walking up the street into the blackness.

Johnny did not hear the clicking of his sister's heels on the manhole cover above him. Johnny was at the moment listening to another sound. The sound was a squeak at first. He looked down curiously. And then the sound was a scraping, and when he looked this time he saw the glow of two pinpoints of light, and he knew he was looking into a rat's eyes.

He was scared. He was damned scared. It's one thing tangling with a human, but it's another to tangle with a rodent, and Johnny had always been afraid of rats, ever since he'd been bitten by a mouse when they lived over on First Avenue.