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 minute. 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.”

Phipps watched the new signal brighten on his tracer as they got closer and closer. Then, in a matter of seconds, it faded to nothingness.

The old man must have detected something in his posture. “What is it, William?”

Phipps wordlessly handed the tracer back.

He braced himself. Sometimes the old man took bad news by “keeping in practice”—calmly, coolly pulling out his favorite automatic and extinguishing someone at random. Phipps was the only one within easy reach.

But the old man simply sighed. “Home, William.”

Harris and Doc traveled for quite a while, changing subway lines a couple of times.

After that, it only took one call to find her. Harris could have cheered when she came on the line: “This is Gaby.”

“It’s me.”

“Let me call you back.”

He gave her the number.

A minute later the phone rang under his hand. He picked it up. “Hi.”

Her voice dropped nearly to a whisper. “I’m at another phone. I didn’t know if they monitored incoming calls.”

“Good thinking. Creative paranoia is probably very helpful right now.”

“What the hell went on in my apartment?”

“Two fake cops jumped in and grabbed my friend Doc. They must have been waiting around for you to come home. We got out of there. Did the real cops get the guys I left there?”

“No.”

“Damn. Did you tell the cops I was supposed to be there?”

“Give me some credit for intelligence, all right? I said that I got an anonymous call saying that the people who grabbed me before knew I was staying with Elaine. So I decided to go home instead.”

“Thanks.”

“No, thank you. The cops in New Rochelle say somebody broke into Elaine’s house after we left. So you score big points there. Did you use that device you were talking about to find me?”

“No, I used my poor, misfiring brains. I figured that even if the police were through with you, you wouldn’t want to leave them so fast . . . knowing there was somebody after you. So all I had to do was find out which precinct was nearest your place. Sixth.”

“Yeah, I’m getting to be a fixture here. They have kind of a museum display in their squad room, and I’m on a first-name basis with every bit of memorabilia.”

“I need to talk to you, Gaby. I can fix it so the guys after you can’t follow you.”

“How?”

“This tracer thing doesn’t work if you’re in the subway. When you leave the police, take a cab and see if you can get the driver to lay down some rubber. You have to shake off anybody following you, at least for a minute or two. And use that minute to get down to the subway. Meet us at the platform at Eighty-sixth Street and Lex.”

She was long in answering. “It may be a while before I can get out of here.”

“We’ll wait. I’ll be easy to spot. I’m wearing the gray suit my grandfather was buried in.”

“Okay.”

Harris hung up and returned to the bench where Doc sat.

A couple of hours had worked changes on Doc. He now wore sunglasses, a sweatsuit jacket, and the Phantom of the Opera T-shirt Harris had bought in a corner store during a brief solo return to street level.

Harris had also been at him with tricks barely remembered from his college theater career. Doc’s hair was now gray—streaked with shoe polish applied with a toothbrush in the bathroom. His skin was dark with the orange­-brown tan that came out of a bottle. He looked older, his features lined with makeup pencil. Harris could have put an additional twenty years on him—Elmer’s glue, toilet paper, and makeup base could do an amazing job of simulating wrinkled, sagging skin—but he hadn’t wanted to get too elaborate. This disguise might be adequate to keep the police from noticing Doc if they had a description of him from witnesses outside Gaby’s place.

Doc’s wrists were bound up in bandages, but his hands, where they showed, looked better anyway. Dead flesh was slowly peeling away, revealing pink skin beneath. Doc was a long way from being healthy, but the injury was healing much faster than any burn Harris had ever seen. But then, it wasn’t exactly a burn.

And Doc was more alert. He looked as happy and ener­getic as the losing quarterback in the Super Bowl, but he was awake and could walk under his own power.

He looked up as Harris returned. “You found her.”

“Yep. We’ll meet her where I told you.”

“We cannot wait for tonight, Harris. The deviser chasing Gaby will catch up to us. He is very capable. Or all the iron around us will kill me. I’ll begin the ritual as soon as we return to the park.”

Harris sat down beside him. “You don’t have the book.”

“I remember the ritual. I remember everything.” He made it sound like a sentence handed down by an ­unfriendly judge. “Not always when I need to, unfortunately.”