Fierenzo spent the first minute in a low crouch, examining the area around the lock. The lad with the sledge hammer, he decided, had been remarkably accurate. There was a fresh-looking indentation where the previous lock might have been shoved into the metal behind it, but aside from that there didn't seem to be any damage to the gate itself. Straightening up, he went inside, his eyes fixed on the sloping pavement beneath his feet, and walked back to the stone steps.

Nothing.

He walked the route again, eyes tracking slowly back and forth, covering every inch of the ground.

But if there had ever been anything there, the morning's drizzle had apparently obliterated it. He finished back at the gate, then retraced his path one more time down to the bottom of the slope and the black metal fire escape zigzagging its way upward.

He stopped beneath it, shading his eyes against the mist still drifting out of the sky and trying to recall everything the Whittiers had said. They had been accosted on Broadway by a short, wide man with a hacking cough who had stuck a .45 Colt in their faces. He'd brought them here, shown them a girl named Melantha, and told them to take care of her. He'd then handed Whittier the gun and staggered away toward the rear of the alley, disappearing the moment Whittier's back was turned.

And sometime along in there, the dimmed-out streetlights had come back on.

Fierenzo frowned, his thoughts flicking back to when he'd left Broadway and started down 101st Street fifteen minutes ago. He'd been preoccupied at the time with locating the alley; but he vaguely remembered seeing that half a block north...

He left the alley and walked back to Broadway. There it was: a ConEd cherry picker with someone in the basket working on one of the streetlights.

The crew foreman standing beside the truck turned a New York glare his direction as Fierenzo walked up. "You want something?" he asked in a pronounced Brooklyn accent and a tone that made the question a challenge.

"Just a little information," Fierenzo said, holding up his badge. "What's wrong with the lights?"

"Now? Nothing," the foreman said, the glare softening a little. "But we got a bunch of complaints Wednesday night from here down to 86th that something was screwy with them."

"What time was this?"

The foreman shrugged. "Ten, eleven o'clock. Something like that."

Roughly the same time the Whittiers claimed they'd seen the streetlights go dim, then come back on.

"And you're just getting on this now?"

"Hey, like I said, there's nothing wrong with 'em," the other protested, the attitude starting to come back. "Anyway, it took us the last two days to clean up the mess over on Riverside Drive."

"Yes—the big power outage," Fierenzo said, nodding. "That was Wednesday night, too, wasn't it?"

"Yeah." The foreman shook his head. "Hell of a thing. The people up there said the lights went dim, then a couple seconds later blew up like a six-block fireworks show."

"And what do you say?"

"What do you mean, what do I say?" the other retorted. "They blew up, all right. Dim, I don't know about."

"What caused it?"

"Damned if I know that, either," the foreman said. "It was like something overloaded 'em, only there wasn't any sign of something that coulda done that. Mostly, we just checked the cables and brought in a spitload of new bulbs."

" 'Spitload'?"

The foreman shrugged. "The wife wants me to cut back on the language. The kids are starting to pick it up."

"Mm," Fierenzo said. "Thanks."

He turned and went back to 101st. So there was some marginal confirmation to at least part of the Whittiers' story. Unfortunately, it was once again purely anecdotal. If the Whittiers had been up on Riverside Drive, at least they'd have some blown-out bulbs they could point to. Here on Broadway, there wasn't even that much.

He reached the alley and once again headed down the slope. All right. Whittier had said he'd seen what looked like blood on the gun when the mugger handed it over. An injury might explain the staggering he'd also reported; and if the wound was in the man's chest, it could also explain the wetsounding cough.

But if he was bleeding on the gun, maybe he'd bled on the ground, too. Bending low, his eyes panning back and forth across the dirty pavement, Fierenzo went slowly down the alley one more time, wishing he'd thought to bring a Luminol kit with him.

He reached the stone steps without spotting anything. The man's clothing had probably absorbed most of the leaking blood, at least long enough for him to get out of the alley.

He straightened up, wincing at a sudden kink in his back. Time to cut his losses and get back to the more promising thread of the investigation. By now Powell should have tracked down the cab the Whittiers had blown out of Yorkville in this morning and gotten their destination. Turning around, he glanced one last time up at the building beside him.

And froze. There, on the wall, was a faint patch of darkness on the brick, like the mark left by a man with a blood-saturated shirt who had pressed tightly to the wall trying not to be seen.

Only the spot was eight feet up.

Fierenzo stepped back from the wall, shading his eyes against the drizzle. There were more of the stains, smaller than the first and more smeared out, as if the bleeder had been moving up and sideways along the wall.

He swore gently under his breath. Finally, some tangible evidence. Unfortunately, it made no sense.

If the mugger had had a block and tackle setup on the rooftop for a quick getaway, why bother going sideways along the wall? Why bother hugging the wall at all, for that matter? And Whittier's own testimony said the streetlights had been back on by then. How could he possibly have missed seeing someone pressed against a wall twenty feet away?

But logical or not, the evidence trail itself was clear. Assuming the dark stains were indeed blood that had managed to survive the rain, the man had definitely been moving up and sideways along the wall.

Heading straight for the fire escape.

The wall blocking off the tiny courtyard was a good six feet high, and it had been years since his academy days when Fierenzo had routinely had to climb such things. But he wasn't as out of shape as he'd feared, and he made it to the top with a minimum of sweating and hardly any cursing at all.

From there it was a simple matter of hauling himself up onto the fire escape.

There were no bloodstains on the bottom two landings. But then, he hadn't expected there to be. The pattern on the wall had been angling upward, toward the third or possibly the fourth of the seven landings.

He found the expected stain on the third-floor railing: a small one, wrapped halfway around the bar as if the bleeder had barely had the strength to pull himself up and roll over onto the landing. For a moment Fierenzo studied the mark, then crouched down to examine the grating that made up the landing's floor.

He was still searching for bloodstains when he heard a faint noise from above him.

He looked up. There was nothing on the next landing, and the interference between the grating meshes made it impossible to see anything higher than that. But he had definitely heard something.

Moving as quietly as he could on the metal steps, he continued up.

He had passed the fourth landing and was halfway to the fifth when the noise came again. This time it was loud enough for him to identify as a suppressed cough.

For a few seconds he stood still, thoughts of desperate men and shoot-outs flashing through his mind, wondering if it was time to call for backup. But then the cough came again: and this time, he could hear an edge of pain or fatigue to it.

And if he couldn't handle a lone, injured man who'd been out in the cold for three nights, he had no business being a cop in this city. Checking to make sure his Glock 9mm was riding loose in its shoulder holster, he continued up.