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.”
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.