Except I was sure I felt the body move, ever so slightly, under my hand.

Lawrence was breathing, just.

He was alive.

I PUT MY WEIGHT gently on the bed, careful not to jostle Lawrence, and leaned in close to his ear. “Hang in, man, I’m getting help.” I had no way to know whether he understood what I saw saying or could even hear me.

There was a phone on his bedside table and I was about to snatch the receiver off its cradle when I thought, “Don’t touch anything.”

So I got out my cell and punched in the three emergency digits. Before the operator had a chance to get in a word, I barked out the address, then told her there was a man here, very seriously injured, who’d lost a lot of blood. I couldn’t pry my eyes off Lawrence as I spoke. Looking at him, I couldn’t see any signs that he was still alive. His breathing was too shallow to make his back rise and fall.

“How was the injury sustained?” the operator asked.

“I haven’t turned him over. But someone’s tried to kill him. He’s been attacked. He might have been shot, he might have been stabbed, I just don’t know. Is the ambulance already on its way?”

“Yes, sir. Don’t try to do anything yourself. Wait for the paramedics.”

“Hey, don’t worry. They may have a hard time finding this place. It’s just a door between two shops. I’m gonna go down and-”

“Sir, please don’t leave the phone-”

“I don’t have to. I’m on a cell.” I held on to the phone, but didn’t bother holding it to my ear as I ran out the apartment’s main door and down the narrow stairwell, and turned back the deadbolt on the door that opened out to the sidewalk. The cabby was still sitting where I’d left him. I opened the front passenger door.

“You’re running up quite a fare,” he said, only half glancing up from his crossword.

“I need you to stay here,” I sad. “There’s going to be an ambulance here any minute now, and when you see it, direct them to this door.”

“An ambulance? What’s an ambulance-”

“Once they’re here, you find me, I’ll pay you what I owe you for the cab. I don’t know if I’ve got enough cash, but if not, I’ve probably got a blank cab chit from The Metropolitan in my wallet.”

“Yeah, sure, but let me ask you this. What’s a five-letter word for a dog? Starts with a ‘p.’ ”

I turned and ran back up the stairs, leaving every door I went through wide open. I returned to the bedroom, found Lawrence exactly as I’d left him (like, maybe I was expecting him to be sitting up and making phone calls?), and put the cell back to my ear.

“I’m back.”

“Sir, you shouldn’t have left-”

“Look, I’m assuming you’re sending the police, too, because, in case I forgot to mention it, somebody tried to kill this guy.”

“Yes, sir, you did tell me that.”

I was so rattled I was repeating myself.

The operator wanted my name, and Lawrence’s, and as I gave her all the information, I could hear the wail of a siren in the distance, getting louder with each passing second. And, a few seconds later, a commotion at the bottom of the stairs as the paramedics came charging up.

“Up here!” I shouted. I told the dispatcher help had arrived, hung up, and slipped the phone back into my jacket.

Two paramedics appeared almost simultaneously at the bedroom door.

“He’s still breathing,” I said. “At least he was five minutes ago.”

Said one, “I’ll have to ask you to move out to the living room, sir, so that we can do our job. But I would ask that you not leave the apartment, because the police are going to have to ask you some questions.”

I did as I was asked. In the living room, I looked at the CDs and books and DVDs on Lawrence’s shelves, seeing them but not seeing them, while from Lawrence’s bedroom I could hear the sounds of urgency and controlled chaos. Snippets of hurried conversation slipped out.

“Okay, turn.”

“Jesus.”

“Hand me that.”

“Hello, Mr. Jones, just take it easy.”

Two uniformed cops came through the door, glancing around quickly, trying to assess the scene as rapidly as possible. One, a bulky six-footer with a thick mustache, focused on me while the other went down the hall to the bedroom.

Before he could ask his first question, the cabby was at the door.

“You need me anymore, man?” he asked.

My cop wheeled around. “You’re going to have to stick around, sir. If you’ll just wait in your cab, I’ll be down to speak to you shortly.”

The cabby rolled his eyes and retreated, but not before giving me a look that seemed to say, “Thanks a heap, pal.”

“You called 911?” the cop asked me.

I admitted it. I told him who I was, and that I was doing a feature on Lawrence Jones for The Metropolitan-

The cop’s eyes narrowed. “You work for The Metropolitan?”

The paper has, over the years, been somewhat critical of the city’s rank and file. “That’s right,” I said. The cop said nothing else and waited for me to continue. I told him how I’d joined Lawrence the last few nights on a stakeout in front of a men’s store on Garvin, and when he hadn’t shown up-

“Wait a minute,” the cop said. This habit of his, of interrupting me all the time, was getting annoying very quickly, but I didn’t see that there’d be much to gain by complaining about it. “Garvin? That’s where that store was hit, within the last hour or so?”

“Yeah. I called that one in to 911, too.”

His eyes got even narrower. “Any crime scenes you haven’t been to tonight?”

They brought Lawrence out of the room on a stretcher, his face under one of those respirator masks, his eyes closed, blood everywhere. He didn’t look anything like the tough, cool, unflappable guy I’d been hanging out with the last few days. They maneuvered him through the door and angled him delicately down the stairs.

“Which hospital?” I called out to them.

“Mercy General,” one of the paramedics grunted as he took the high end of Lawrence’s stretcher down the stairs.

“I don’t know who I should be calling,” I told the cop. “I don’t know about any of his family. All I know is, he’s got a boyfriend… I’m trying to think.”

“He’s gay?”

“Yeah.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“You gay?”

“I don’t know, are you?”

“Hey, listen, if you want to be a smartass, I got all night for this, pal.”

“I just don’t know what that has to do with anything. Lawrence is a friend, someone I’m doing a story on. But there’s someone who should know, I think his name is Kent, runs a restaurant in the east end.”

“We can worry about that in a minute. Tell me how you got in here.”

He had several more questions, all of which I answered as honestly as possible. He slipped away a moment to talk to the other officer, who was standing outside the door to the bedroom. These guys were too low on the totem pole to start doing any real investigating. They’d be holding the fort until the crime scene guys and the detectives, the types they built glitzy TV shows around, showed up.

I wandered into the kitchen, glanced at the picture of Lawrence and the man I had assumed earlier was Kent. Then I remembered the name of the restaurant. Blaine’s.

I grabbed a phone book tucked up against the wall under the cabinets and opened it to the B’s. I ran my finger down the listings, found the one for the restaurant, and dialed it on my phone. Someone picked up on the second ring.

“Blaine’s restaurant. I’m sorry, but we’re just closing.”

“Is Kent there?” I asked.

“Who’s calling?”

“My name’s Zack Walker. But tell him it’s a friend of Lawrence’s.”

I leaned up against the kitchen counter and waited. Finally, “Hello?”

“Is this Kent?”

“Yes.”

“Look, you don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Lawrence’s.”

“A friend?” Suspicious. I could almost imagine the eyebrow going up.