From out of the Outlands

 

Email to Al Sullivan

 

Part Six

 

 

Police file:

I don’t get paid enough for things like this.

Oh I get paid good but I'll have no policeman’s contract to make me forget what’s out there on the street.  Nor cops specializing attitude to make me forget what I saw right on this doorstep.

Sure before I started this job I was nearly destitute myself, working in all those new jobs the government keeps talking about, minimum wage jobs behind some fast food counter entertaining rude slumming kids from the local Inlands to the worst of the gangs and mutants from the Outlands.

There’s nothing more than degrading and to have a stingy neighborhood son of a bitch staring at you for giving him the wrong kind of hamburger or over salted fries.  And you know you can’t open your mouth and tell the sucker off or your own kids starve.

The kids are the problem.  If it was just me and the old lady, I might have walked, going from cheap job to cheap job until I found one with little respect.  But with the kids I’m trapped.  They've got bills.  They got needs.  And you windup wondered how you're going to make out with the futures so bleak.  My thing is to give them everything I can now, who the hell knows if they'll ever see better.

So when the man from the employment agency offered me this job, I snatched it up.  A man don't argue with good money and extended benefits in times like these and security guards job ain't as dangerous is people think.  Not a safe as the cops in their bulletproof cars mind you.  But once you get a job behind the wall, you don’t have to worry about getting shot guarding a McDonalds or a local liquor store.

It wasn't until I started the job that I discovered that a hitch.  Me standing on the inside the rich people's neighborhood and fancy new meaningless uniform and the badge while outside the wall, the homeless and destitute parade, making a sham of it all, with my new bosses expecting me to get rid of them.

How can you tell cold people that they can’t use the heat coming from the neighborhood ventilator shafts? But the rich folk say they would rather waste it then give it away to people like welfare. My boss – who seems to have handled the situation better, tells me it’s a matter of principle: rich folk pay good money not to see scum on their doorstep, then he orders me to chase them off.

And I do.

I figured most of these people outside weren’t worth much on the human scale of things anyway, foul-mouthed son’s of bitches, too lazy to get a job the way I did.

Sure, it’s dangerous out there, but there’s work to be had, and if I could work on the treadmill for minimum wage, why couldn’t they?

At least that kept them off the bread lines.

 And after all, employers did protect them some even when they try to be their jobs.  At night.  It was only when I looked out close-up to these characters that the truth started hitting me.  He get to see things different when you see the same people stay after they outside wall may start having faces.  Even the strangers seem to take on familiarity I wasn't exactly comfortable with.  Not that I knew any of these people before I started this job, but I could have, any of them could've been me.

And it wasn't just the drunk, drugged or mentally ill anymore clinging to our wall steps, there were whole families rooted at our gates like tree trunks, setting up little cities of cardboard.

Sure I shut my eyes to it and kept my big mouth shut. Because I knew that if I didn’t do my job, it would be me I saw out there, along with my kids, picking along the ground for crumbs like human pigeons.

            But  when I found the kid frozen to death by our back gate all my theories fell apart.  He was a Goddamn newborn baby, man, that someone saw to save by dumping it on our step -- hoping some rich person would raise, as if anybody in this neighborhood cared about such things as if the kid was God sent Moses with everything but good luck and wicker basket, blue dead and cold.

That's why quit. That’s why I’m tending burgers and cleaning apartment buildings.

            I just can’t get that blue kid’s face out of my mind.

***********

            “Do you have time to see me?” Cromwell's niece said over the terminal, though she had blanked out her picture.

            “What's wrong? Why can't you do a visual?”

            “I can't turn on the video and I can't tell you anything over this system. Everything over there is recorded, or so you said. I don't want any of this on tape. Will you meet me?”

            “You name the place,” Vincent said, catching something he didn't like in the woman's voice, not something threatening so much as scared – the fright he'd heard in the sound recordings before Laura's death, the fright he now imagined in the voice of every one of Cromwell's victims before their end.

            “There's a little place just north of Soho on Bowery,” she said. “A place across from the mission. You know where it is?”

            “Yeah, I know,” Vincent said. “I'm surprised you do.”

            A slight laugh sounded from the other end, but not a humorous laugh, except perhaps in a self-depreciating way. “My uncle isn't the only one who goes out slumming,” she said. “When can we meet?”

            “I can be there in ten minutes if you'd like.”

            “I rather have an hour,” she said. “It'll take me time to make my excuses.”

            “Excuses?”

            “I'll tell you about it when I see you,” she said, and then cut the connection, leaving no sound as well as no picture on Vincent's screen.

            Almost immediately, Hudson barged in, his eyes wide and curious behind his horn-rimmed glasses. “Was that who I think it was?” he asked.

            “Yes,” Vincent said, easing himself up from his desk, his head full of possibilities, though none quite fit the reality.

            “What did she want?”

            “To meet with me and talk.”

            “Are you sure it's safe?”

            Vincent stirred out of his thoughts and stared at his second in command. “What do you mean?”

            “I mean it might be a trap.”

            Vincent frowned, his lips twisting into something sour. “Why bother? He got off. He doesn't need to worry about me.”

            "Of course he's got to worry about you. You said so yourself. His urges will drive him crazy.”

            “No, I don't think he has that good a handle of them. They'll come, but not in the manner he can reason out. He might live two different lives. He might even believe he's innocent.”

            “You mean like Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde?”

            “Something like that. Maybe we should take the file and have the police shrink work up a more comprehensive profile.”

            “Yeah,” Hudson said, nodding slowly, though turned back frowning again. “That's all well and good, but I still don't trust the silver bitch. Her calling you without the screen on, not wanting anything taped. It means trouble, chief.”

            “I'm sure it does, but for whom?”

            “Then you're going?”

            “Absolutely.”

            “Fine, then I'll call a team...”

            “No team,” Vincent said. “I don't want to scare her off.”

            “Damn it, chief, we can be discreet.”

            “Maybe. But I won't take the chance. We're fishing here. She may be bait for me. But she might also be the line I need to real in Cromwell. I'm playing this close to the cuff. Work up the profile. I'll take a caller with me and punch the button if things look bad.”

                                                                    **********

            The cab pulled up in front of the diner and Vincent eased out. The old neighborhood's sights, sounds and smells swirling around him from his childhood, haunting as hell, bringing back a sense of pain and nostalgia. He missed the bakeries in the morning, and rolls he used to steal so his family could eat. He missed the sound of the city coming to life, the buses and cabs, the honking horns of trucks trying to make early deliveries. Nothing had changed here or could change here. It was a limbo out of which people climbed, but never transformed. Band-Aids fixed the small problems, like the wood over windows of stores broken in recent riots, but never replaced. The old brownstones that occupied the cross streets, deteriorated, and vanished in dust, but never found new foundations or reinvestment. That life had ceased here when the walls went up, when the young urban professionals found they could segment whole neighborhoods, providing whole streets of safety and luxury as opposed to the individual buildings they had taken over in the 1970s, 1980, and 1990s.

            By putting a wall up around Soho they guaranteed their walk to the galleries and the bars without having to step over the bodies, without smelling the scent of the street, the good or the bad smells, the smells that made the city into a city. They dissected the city, cutting it up into pieces until it ceased being a living thing. Now, segments of life remained, organs scattered and separated, working towards their individual survival, a heart there, a kidney here, the brain some place uptown. Each believed it could go on living without the body, without real, flesh on flesh connection with its other parts. None -- not even the mayor -- saw the slow dying of each. Not just the death of the neighborhoods, or the city, or even the states, but the death of a way of life people thought of as America.

            Then, with a long sigh, he strolled across the narrow sidewalk to the door of the diner, pushing in, his hand meeting the brass worn smooth by generations of other hands. No fancy security locks. No buttons or buzzers. No wary storeowner staring out with suspicion or a shotgun. Then, the smell of the hamburgers and French fries greeted him, the rich greasy scent that brought back his childhood in one swift sniff.

            Nothing inside the place had changed in all those years. The register and the candy counter sat to the right just inside the door. The black sign with white letters still told people to wait for the hostess to seat them. The booths -- with the cracked red leather cushions still swung out right and left like sad oak-colored wings, as thick with kids’ initials as any city monument. Most of the booths had people, working, blue collar slobs, low level employees to Soho who could not afford the prices of Soho restaurants, even if residents there had shown enough consideration to allow them to stay in for their meals. The long counter opposite the door and filling the far wall was hunkered down with bent backs, too, sweat stained shirts surrounded by small clouds of cigarette smoke.

“Billy?” an aged voice screeched from behind this counter as a gray-haired version of a woman he once knew suddenly caught sight of him, her apron as thick with food as any of her plates. “George! Get out here. Our little Billy is here.”

            Vincent shifted, his face growing red around the cheeks as the hard men at the counter glanced over their shoulders at him, their grim mouths saying they weren't impressed.

            “Come here, Billy,” the woman said. “Let me get a good look at you.”

            Vincent slowly crossed the room, standing a yard away from the sign marking the take out section of the counter. The old woman made her way through the gap, grasping his right hand in her shaky ones, her gray eyes staring up into his, then searching his face, seeming to recall him as a much younger man.

            “You came back to us, Billy, after all this time. And here we thought you forgot all about us. Sit yourself down. Have yourself something to eat. You look skinny, and sad. You haven't been doing well, have you?”

            As always, the old woman, Martha, read Vincent well, gauging things from his face and posture, he hardly realized himself.

            “I'm doing all right,” he said, but let himself get led to one of the stools, where he sat. George appeared at the kitchen door. He had aged, too, the way most working people did, with his back bent so much he'd lost a foot of height. His hair had thinned, too, leaving very little on the top to turn gray, though puffs of silver showed thickly enough around his ears.

“You see him, George?” Martha said. “I'm not seeing things. It's him right here in the flesh?”

            “It's him, Martha,” George said, peering proudly at Vincent. The old man had kept up better with the news, and beamed at the idea of a local success story. “So what's a big shot like you doing coming back to a place like this?”

            “Big shot?” Vincent laughed. “That's a new one on me.”

            “The chief of police of our fair city is a big shot to us,” George said, in a voice that boomed through the diner, carrying to every one of its grubby and grumbling patrons. Now, all looked up, a slight stain of alarm in their eyes, and curiosity, too.

            “Well?” George asked again. “What brings you back to the old neighborhood.”

            “Business, I'm afraid,” Vincent said. “I'm supposed to meet a woman here.”

            “A woman? A married man like you?” Martha said, her eyes full of scolding.

            “Martha, Martha,” George said. “He has no wife, come away and let him be.”

            “Of course he has a wife. He invited us to their wedding...”

            George glanced painfully at Vincent, apologizing with his stare. “Come, Martha, we can talk with Billy later. We have customers to serve.” Then over his shoulder, George nodded towards one of the booths. “Take one for your meeting. I'll come clear the dishes in a minute.”

            Vincent slid across the cracked red leather of the booth seat, the table thick with the remains of someone else's breakfast, platters stained with egg, cups stained with coffee. The smell of both filled him with memories of those more innocent times when Justice didn't occupy his every waking moment, survival did. Survival seemed more basic, and innocent, though he remembered the violence, too, the insanity of waking up in the morning to gunfire, and being too frightened to move beyond the thick rags he called blankets, as if their moth eaten cloth could keep out a determined, fate-driven bullet.

            Survival had a way of making things turn out right, a kind of self-serving justice that brought about the correct result no matter what the evidence was or how anyone tampered with a jury. As long as by the end of the day he still breathed, justice was served. Just where this new fashion of justice came into his life, he still couldn't recall, a creeping sense of social justice that made him understand that the need for rules, even when the rules allowed a son of a bitch like Cromwell to escape. Without the rules the world became divided, each person's sense of individual justice rubbing against each other person's, fighting and killing prevailed until it wasn't justice that guaranteed survival, but the largest gun, and the least resistance to using it.

            Vincent was still thinking this way when Cromwell's niece walked in. He could tell something was wrong by the way she stopped and stared around the room, not so much like an Insider frightened of attack, but of someone afraid she might run into someone she knew, frightened more of the familiar than the strange, her head turning, her eyes shielded by a dark set of over large sunglasses -- these hid half her face. Still, she managed to catch sight of Vincent seated in the booth, and she looked relieved as she advanced, weaving over or around the outstretched legs of the work-a-holic men seated there. Even then, Vincent noticed something odd, a slight limp, she tried desperately to disguise. She looked pained when she slid into the booth across from him.

            George came to clean up.

            “Look, Billy, I'm sorry about Martha. She forgets things. She didn't mean to remind you about your wife...”

            “Forget it, George,” Vincent said. “Bring us two coffees. We'll decide on more after that.”

            George nodded, wiped the table, and took the plates.

            “What happened to your wife?” Cromwell's niece asked, still hiding behind her glasses, though it was clear she had changed. Her hair color had begun to revert to a light brown, and stood in various stages from platinum blonde on the top to brown at the roots. She had let a lot more than that go, too. Although dressed well by Outlands standards, she had dropped most of posh designer style clothing, wearing a simple dress and stockings with a cloth overcoat.

            “She was raped and murdered,” Vincent said, watching the woman's face change around the glasses, a shocked look coming to the eyes he could not see.

            “You don't think my uncle...”

            “No,” Vincent said. “This happened a long time ago.”

            “I see,” she said, then stared down at her hands. Several of her polished fingernails were broken. The polished pealed from several more.

            “So?” he said. “You wanted to see me?”

            She continued to stare at her hands. Her fingers shook a little so she gripped them with her other hand. “I wanted to talk to you about my uncle,” she said in a soft voice, then stopped as George appeared, delivering cups, saucer and container of milk, apologizing with his eyes for the interruption.

            “What about your uncle?” Vincent asked, when George had vanished again.

            “Well,” she said. “I don't know if he killed those women or not, but he's gotten mean.”

            “I don't understand.”

            The woman removed her sunglasses. Vincent blanched, the color draining from his cheeks as he stared at the purple welts that marred the girl's flesh around each eye.

            “Cromwell did that?”

            “Yes,” she said. “And more you can't see.”

            “Why?”

            “That's it. I don't know. Maybe it was the court case or the fact that you still have police officers all around Chelsea. He's afraid to go out, and he blames everyone for it, including me.”

            “You? Why on earth would he blame you?”

            “I don't know that either. He's gone crazy. He paces back and forth in his room. He curses and shouts. He tells me I'm a whore and then he beats me, trying to make me change my ways.”

            “I see,” Vincent said. “Obviously it's had some success.”

            “It's driven me crazy. I want to leave, but he's in charge of my trust fund, and I'm afraid if I just run off, he'll stop the payments.”

            “So it's worth getting yourself beaten for?”

            “I don't know what's worth anything. I just want it stopped.”

            “Have you talked with neighborhood security?”

            “Fuck them,” she said overly loud, drawing attention from several of the surprised men in the other booths, then in a lower voice she said, “He owns them. They'll do exactly what he says. Even if they weren't on his payroll, they'd want something in return for helping me-- something I wouldn't want to give.”

            “I see,” Vincent said softly. “What does this all have to do with me?”

            “You're a police officer. You can put a stop to it.”

            “Can I?”

            “Goddamn it, stop treating me like this. You're the only man in this whole fucking city that's been willing to stand up to my uncle, the only man in the world my uncle fears. If you can't help me, then nobody can.”

            Vincent sat there for a long time, saying nothing, staring neither at her or the room around her, his head full of confusion, his head full of images of old style survival justice verses new style social justice. He didn't know into which category this fit.

            “I'm not sure how you expect me to help you,” Vincent said finally. “I mean we just tried him for murder and he got off. What more can we do?”

            “You can drag him out of Chelsea and try him in a real court with a real jury, one that won't crack when he stares at them.”

            “I'm not sure a full fledged campaign against one of the town's prominent neighborhoods would sit well in city hall.”

            “You wouldn't have to assault the walls,” she said. “I could help get you in.”

            “To arrest your uncle?”

            “Yes.”

            Again, Vincent pondered the possibilities, and wondered how legal the whole thing would be, kidnapping a high neighborhood official to put him on trial for what amounted to an assault case. But he wouldn't be violating any rules going in. And a neighborhood wasn't as exclusive under the law as many residents believed. What generally stopped the police -- what had stopped Vincent from storming Chelsea last time -- was the political fall out. But if a resident of that neighborhood invited them in. If they would arrest the man and carry him out without the kind of bloodshed a full-scaled attack would bring, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea.

            A charge was a charge, even if it wasn't one for murder.

            Vincent would find satisfaction in sending the man to jail for a few years. In jail, a different kind of justice would make the death penalty moot. In there, where so many outlanders lived out their lives, fresh rich meat from a neighborhood like Chelsea would not survive long, dying because of beatings, or going mad because of rapes -- rapes with its own ring of justice, he thought.

            “All right,” Vincent said. “I think we can deal. But you're going to have to give my men some detailed information about the layout of the neighborhood. We'll want to have an escape plan and all that.”

            “No problem,” the woman said. “If I can do it over the computer.”

                                                                   ***********

             Vincent pulled into the garage without checking the remote alarm. Over the years since his wife's death, the point had seemed moot. What was he going to protect, his stereo? Life at the house was largely a fiction. He ate here, slept here, came here only when he could no longer stand the chatter at the station. But life did not exist here. And frankly, he hated the ghosts the old place brought up, the memories of the woman with whom he had planned out the future, shaping a small little world of his own where he might safely bring up kids without making them afraid to be alive.

            Not until he had pulled the release lever to the car door did he notice the light above the house door lit, one he had installed himself to warn him of an intruder. He could feel the cool air strike his cheek, another oddity, since the garage door should have closed after the vehicle entered. He heard the sound of cloth brush metal, just a whisper of moment, probably some nervous fool tightening his grip of a pistol, counting off some pre-arranged numerable arrangement before opening fire.

            Vincent dove towards the inner door, just as three automatic pistols erupted, bits of metal flying from around the car door where he had been standing -- the hot led shattering door and glass with armor piercing bullets. He rolled through the door and into the small downstairs hall, ignoring the elevator with its inviting door, choosing the door beside it that led to the stair. Bullets shattered the interior of the elevator, ripping cloth and metal as thoroughly as they would have his body had he chosen that option. Just before he charged up the stairs, he glanced out at the garage and catch sight of at least three armored figures marching towards him through the debris. They were grim-faced figures whose faces he recognized, even through the their thick plastic face-shields, each losing none of the sadistic qualities they'd displayed when exiling him from Chelsea. The faces were the same. But the uniforms had vanished. None were foolish enough to betray themselves to accidental witnesses. Few of the street bums would remember more than the armor this way, but anyone would have recognized and remembered the gold and gray braid of a Chelsea uniform.

            Up the stairs, Vincent charged, hearing the crash of the armored boots behind him as the guards smashed their way in from the garage. They fired up the narrow gap along the railing, sending a stream of metal ricocheting through the stairwell for four floors. None of the bullets came close to hitting Vincent, who had wisely climbed up the stairs along the wall -- the bullets whizzing up, pinging against the metal banister like hot little bees with lead stingers. In the echoes, the remote sound of the boots began, a dull thudding of plodding feet, climbing the stairs in pursuit.

Vincent stopped on the second floor, the three rooms here full of dust and memories, three rooms meant largely for relaxation, a living room with wall screen, a Jacuzzi, and an exercise room. His gaze quickly searched each for a possible weapon, making him wonder why he had relied so heavily on the security devices, and had not thought to supply each floor with a gun. The continued sound of steps on the stairs convinced him to cease his search here. He rushed up the next flight to the more practical living area, where the kitchen and dinning room had served him as the center of his life here, empty cartons overflowing in the trash, empty bottles and cans in the recycling bucket. Here, too, he surveyed the rooms for weapons. The drawers would have supplied him with countless knives, knives utterly useless against the armor the guards wore.

            Downstairs on the floor below, something fell, the crash vibrating the whole building as the guards ravaged the place. They had come not only to kill him, but wreck his life as well, making certain that the message got out to any other uppity cop that dared to prosecute a rich man. It was a crime not to be tolerated. The crash seemed to shake something loose in Vincent. He didn't like being hunted, though in his youth cops and gangs had done their share in pursuing him. But he liked messages of this kind less, and vowed to make these fools pay for their audacity. But not here. Not in his own home where they could wreck his memories as well as take his life. He needed to draw them out onto the streets, where their armor and their weapons would not protect them as well as they would here in closed quarters.

            Vincent, of course, had not designed the security system of the house without some options, another means of escape that couldn't be watched from the exterior. He abandoned the kitchen and rushed to the stairs again. The helmet of the advancing guard appeared around the corner, lifting his pistol just as Vincent tossed the chair down on him. Chair and guard tumbled back.

            “Hey Bosk!” Vincent yelled.

            No one answered.

            “Is Bosk with you guys?” Vincent yelled again. “Or did that chicken shit send you out all by yourselves?”

            “I'm here, Vincent,” the gruff voice sounded from below, the voice muffled by the face-shield, but clearly Bosk's.

            “I suppose there's a reason for this?” Vincent asked, easing another chair over in case another guard decided to attempt the curve in the stairs.

            “You know what the reason is.” Bosk shouted back.

            “Maybe,” Vincent said. “But I'd like it clarified a little. Are you doing this because Cromwell ordered it, or because you're getting even for yourself?”

            “Let's say it's a little of both, Vincent,” Bosk said. “Let's say I'm getting paid good money to finally put an end to your meddling in my life.”

            “I'll have to remember that when I charge you with attempted murder, Bosk,” Vincent said. “Last time I let it go because I felt sorry for you. This time I'll throw the book at you.”

            “Felt sorry for me?” Bosk roared. “You son of a bitch. I get my hands on you, we'll see how sorry you'll be.”

            “Hands, Bosk?” Vincent asked. “I heard you were having a little trouble with one of yours.”

            “It'll only take one hand to do what I want to do,” Bosk said, laughing, with the bitter laugh Vincent recalled from their time on the street. “I only needed two hands when it came to your wife.”

            Vincent stiffened and stared down at the back of the chair he had thrown at the guard.

            “What the hell did you mean by that?” Vincent asked.

            “You mean you can't guess, Vincent?” Bosk asked, out of reach, but his face visible in Vincent's mind. “You don't think your sweet little bride was a victim of random violence? A cop's wife, who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? Oh, no, she was sweet all right, Vincent. And I enjoyed her plenty before I did her in. But she was nothing compared to how much I'll enjoy doing you in.”

            Vincent's chest erupted with pain, a fiery savage pain that exploded up from his stomach, as if he had swallowed a drawer full of knives, each stabbing at him from the inside out. His hands shook as he gripped the back of the chair, he and the chair shaking together with outrage.

            “Did you hear me, Vincent?” Bosk shouted. “Did you hear what I said about your wife?”

            Vincent stared around, but the rooms were still as empty of weapons as they had been during his first search. He needed to get out into the air, out into the street where he could move more freely, and feel the cold air pressing down on him, cooling him off. He couldn't afford to let his rage interfere with his senses, even if that rage had already erased any sense of law and order he might have previously believed. He would kill Bosk. But not like this. Not with a chair for a weapon. Not in his own house. He threw the second chair, then rushed up the stairs for the third floor.

            Behind him, Bosk shouted, sending out a stream of curses and commands. Footsteps pounded on the stairs, as both chairs crashed deeper down in the stair well as the guards tossed them out of the way. Upstairs, Vincent plunged into the hallway, its air full of a dusty sense of infrequent use, everything remarkably neat, like the layout in a funeral home, one bedroom to the right, another to the left, the master bedroom the last door on the right. Around this floor, he and his wife had planned their future, two bedrooms to fill with two kids, all of that now dust and ashes. He hardly remembered the dreams. He hardly remembered the plan of this floor, and struggled when he came to the master bedroom to remember into which corner the escape hatch had been built. He had never actually believed he'd need it. In fact, the whole concept had come into fashion and vanished again so quickly that most people laughed when Vincent told them about the addition, a thing as silly as a hoopla hoop or air raid shelter, they'd thought.

            The release mechanism, he knew, sat at the side of the bed, a tiny lever built into the wooden frame to look like part of the design. He rushed to the bed, pressing every indention on one side before rolling across it to press the indentations on the other. Then, something clicked, and it wasn't the trapped door. He hands clutched the bedpost as he slowly lifted his head. At the door from the hall stood one of Bosk's men, his grim face surprised behind the plastic mask, his hands extended, pointing a pistol straight at Vincent. He had obviously pulled the trigger and found the weapon had jammed. He stared at the pistol, and only looked up when Vincent, flying through the air from the bed, slammed into him. Vincent and the guard fell back into the hall together, Vincent creating a somersault out of it, coming to his feet again in time to kick the pistol free of the guard's grip.

            Down the hall, other guards appeared, each popping out of one of the other bedrooms, each staring a moment before yanking up their guns. The delay allowed Vincent to leap back into the master bedroom, allow him to kick at the bed post again and again and again until something thudded and a piece of the floor near the vanity fell away-- the trap door opening up onto a metal shoot. Vincent leaped for the opening, diving down into it head first, as the boom of firing pistols sounded behind him, and the ping of lead sounded around the opening like so many bees.

            Then, plunging down, Vincent forgot the men behind him and concentrated on his fall, his hands stretched out ahead, feeling the touch of the cold metal as he slid faster and faster, the friction heat working up through his clothing with each increase in speed. He felt like an out of control toboggan, swirling around curves that spiraled  through the center of the building through some old shaft that had once upon a time been part of the buildings central heating. Then, the mental straightened and spat him out into darkness. He sailed for a moment in space, then landed on something soft, sagging and smelling of plastic. All the air escaped his lungs as he made contact, the fall as effective as a fist to his chest.

            For a time, he could not catch his breath or stop the pain. His body still raced despite his sudden stop, spinning around and around. He had to grip the soft plastic around him. He didn't even remember where he was, though presumed he had descended all four floors to the basement. Down here, however, the darkness did not fade the way it might have elsewhere. No light showed, not even something dim to which his eyes could grow accustomed. When he finally managed a deep enough breath, he moved, fingers feeling ahead of him to find the edge of this soft thing, though it seemed to have no edge, only a slope over which he slowly crawled. Finding the floor, he laughed with relief. Something solid and real. Something he could stand on.

            He rose, swayed, then extended his arms and slowly took one large step after another until his extended hand came into contact with a wall. Then, he spread his arms and felt up and down, inching himself to the right until he found a switch -- an old fashioned switch which he flicked up. The light seared his eyes. It seemed many times brighter than it actually was, and his eyes took a few teary moments to adjust. When they did, he saw himself in a small square room, a chute jutting from one wall, and a partially inflated plastic bag the thing upon which he had landed. He almost laughed, then shuddered, as clattering sounds came out of the chute, the sounds of something -- in full body armor -- descending the chute the way he had. He glanced around for a weapon. But the room had nothing but an rusting piece of pipe so thin it would have served better as a spear than a club. He grabbed this, then, struck at the plastic balloon-like couch until the air vanished from it, the tubes from some hidden air pump hissing madly to make up for the sudden leak. He struck again and again until he made re-inflation impossible.

            At that instant, one of the guards shot out of chute, but instead of landing softly on a prepared airbed, he slammed against the far wall. plastic mask shattering. Vincent leaped onto him, yanking back the head with the thin pipe at the man's throat. The pain dulled eyes stared up at Vincent, even upside down, the expression showing the terror men feel when knowing death. Vincent jerked his hands and with the pressure of the pipe, snapped the man's neck. The body stiffened for an instant, then sagged, falling away as Vincent released it.

            “Hey Billy,” a voice shouted out from the chute, someone not Bosk calling from far above. “Did you make it? What did you find?”

            “He found death,” Vincent shouted back. “Exactly what you'll find if you try it.”

            Then, Vincent turned, looked down and saw the pistol gripped in the dead guard's hand, though the fall had loosened the fingers enough for him to wedge it loose without having to break them, too. Eight shots remained. One in the chamber, seven in the clip. Vincent grinned, and then, eased out passed the metal door, which stood slightly ajar. Beyond it, darkness filled another section of basement, the dim light from one room allowing him to find another switch and flick more lights on. At the far end of this room -- which was filled with pipes and wires -- a short set of stairs climbed to another metal door. Vincent rushed up these and then more cautious eased open the door at the top, the locks of which had rusted over the years and opened with a loud report.

            Outside, he found himself in an alley, one so similar to the alley where Laura had fled with Cromwell that it made Vincent pause. Neither end seemed to go anywhere. At least no light showed. Yet, he started to move along the narrow space, feeling uncomfortable in it, as if someone would throw something down on him from above, or shoot at him out of the darkness. He walked slowly at first, then more quickly, and discovered more doors along the route, all of them locked, sealed metal that the owners probably didn't even know existed, walled over on the inside, or part of a basement no longer used for anything other than running a few pipes.

            Vincent wondered about the designers of his escape hatch, and what they had envisioned for him, after he had gotten this far. Did they expect him to climb the brick face of the wall in search of window or a roof? Or did they expect him to stay here, trapped within this constricted space until he went mad or died of exposure?

            Even with these thoughts slowly stirring up in him a sense of panic, he kept moving, remembering the central rule of his life on the street, that to cease moving meant death, that movement itself sometimes provided answers that stillness could not. And in this case, movement did, bringing him to the end of the alley, to another door, one with a lock opened from the inside, a weak lock that gave way to his weight and emitted him -- not to another alley -- to the street.

            Vincent found himself around the corner from the front entrance to his house, among the ruins of a brownstones and dilapidated storefronts that somehow still served for human occupation, lights glowing out of each, faces framed with windows. Some looked down at him and frowned, puzzled by his panicked expression -- just another crazy man in a crazy part of the city, wandering out alone -- bait for the street gangs. They laughed, shook their heads, and then went on with their talk, as if nothing they could do could save him anyway, so why should they bother.

            Then, while Vincent stood, garnering his strength and gathering his senses, the other guards appear, the three he recalled from the house joined by a half dozen others. Among these ran one guard with a golden helmet, and his left arm hung in an armored sling.

            “Shoot him!” Boss yelled, motioning with his good hand like a drowning man signaling for a distant ship, something desperate and sad in his expression, something suggesting he regretted the admissions made on the stairs.

            As he should regret them, Vincent thought savagely, wondering if he should shoot the man here and now or wait until later to trap him alone and slowly take revenge for all the years Vincent has suffered over his wife.

            Yet somewhere in the back of his head, a small voice said “No.”

            It was not a voice Vincent ever expected to hear, but recognized it instantly, as a voice he himself had cultivated over the years of his climbing out of the street, it was a voice he often used to scold his men for their tendencies to strike back at the street as savagely as the street struck them, his law-and-order voice that said justice demanded a different means for dealing with Bosk.

            Fortunately, none of the guards took up Bosk's command. They saw the lighted windows and the faces staring out with surprise from the stores, and they -- unlike their savage counterparts on the street -- did not like the idea of killing someone with so many eyes to see. Vincent grinned and then fled, charging down the sidewalk, trying to keep out of the line of fire, yet at the same time, in full view of the buildings, zigzagging a little as he ran, hoping to get to another series of alleys where he could find more cover and lay out small traps of his own.

            Much of this part of the city had reverted to the 18th century, where open sewer lines and water lines bled straight out to the street, pot holes appeared like a plague over the asphalt face of the roadway, buildings crumbled brick by brink until they sagged, waiting for one good wind to make them collapse. Even here, the lighted windows spoke of occupation, of people too poor and desperate to move, too unacceptable in their habits or their skin color to live in any neighborhood. Each set of eyes watched as he rushed by, each seeming confused, and frightened, and perhaps a little entertained, glad that someone else had become food for the gangs instead of themselves.

            Vincent could hear the guards panting behind him, like an out of shape pack of wolves, not quite up to the task of a long hunt, ready to bolt off at the moment their chieftain's attention wavered.

            “Let the fucker go, Bosk,” one of the bolder men said. “He doesn't know who we are.”

            “Of course he knows who we are,” Bosk growled back. “He talked to me on the stairs. He knows.”

            “He knows you, not us,” one of the others said. “You kill him. Let the rest of us go home.”

            “Anyone that tries to leave now, I'll kill myself,” Bosk said. “We got paid to do a job, and we're going to do it.”

            “You got most of the money,” one of the others said.

            “Shut up,” Bosk barked.

            At this point, Vincent came to the mouth of the alley, a street that the city and residents abandoned long ago, gathering trash and rotting automobiles, but wide enough and cluttered enough to serve Vincent's purposes. He turned quickly and increased his speed, then, when the others could not see him, he darted to one side, behind the bulk of a rusting rent a truck. There, he waited.

            The sound of their arguing voices preceded them, some of the guards bitching about following after Vincent now that he hit the street.

            “You're crazy, Bosk,” one of them said. “You're going to get us killed. Didn't you hear what that fucker said after Billy went down the tube? Where is Billy? Why haven't we heard from him yet, eh?”

            “Billy’ll turn up,” Bosk snapped back. “Just mind what you're doing or you will get killed, only it won't be no bastard cop that'll do it.”

            “Is that another threat, Bosk? You think you can take me with only one good hand?”

            “I could take you without any hands,” Bosk said. “Keep mouthing off and see me do it.”

            “Calm down, you two,” a third voice said. “We're supposed to kill that cop, not each other.”

            “Yeah,” Bosk's challenger said, his voice still thick with anger. “We were supposed to kill him back at his house, not in the open like this, not where every motherfucking person on the street can watch us do it.”

            “How was I supposed to know he had an escape hatch, Reilly?” Bosk asked.

            “You should have known,” Reilly said, as he and Bosk came into view, slowly moving up the alley, wary but not wise, studying the landscape without really seeing anything at all, least of all Vincent who waited and watched them from the shadows.

            “Well, I didn't,” Bosk said. “So we got to find him and kill him before he calls in more cops.”

            “I think it's already too late for that,” Reilly said. “The man's scooted, searching for a phone right this minute -- if he didn't have a phone on him when he ran.”

            “He doesn't have a phone on him, and he won't find a public one in this neck of the woods.”

            “Then he'll beg someone to let him use theirs.”

            “And they won't. Take my word for it. I grew up around here, too. I know the street as well as he does. He's hiding, waiting for us to go away, then he'll scoot. If we watch out, we can kill him.”

            “Or get killed,” another man said. “I don't like any of this. You didn't see him on the third floor. I did. He didn't act scared, even when he confronted three of us. He didn't even have a gun. He just threw Jimmy at us, and then ran. I think he's watching us right now.”

            “And if he is?”

            “Then he's figuring a way to kill us.”

            “All eight of us?” Bosk asked, mockingly.

            “Six of us,” Really said. “Billy isn’t here, and Jimmy got busted up so bad, he had to go back to Chelsea.”

            “That's still a lot for one man to take on.”

            “He took us on back in Chelsea. Look what he did to your arm.”

            “That was luck,” Bosk said. “He won't get another chance.”

            By this time, all six men had passed Vincent's location, moving with their pistols in one hand and their eyes searching the landscape ahead. They looked like soldiers, but the sloppy frightened kind that the L.A.Wars killed off and wounded, more scared than dangerous. Vincent eased out his hiding spot and into the lane behind him, staying in the shadow of the wall, night falling heavily around him, twilight creating a river of dark right down the middle of the alley. The few windows above cast only a dull yellow light on the ground, and this only served to shimmer off the armor of the seven men ahead. Vincent crept up on the last, a stocky man with wide shoulders who seemed to shiver as he walked, glancing this way and that but never back. Vincent grabbed him, one hand slipping around his neck, the other up under his mask. Vincent's one hand kept the man from screaming out as his other hand squeezed the life out of him. The guard fell like a sack of flour at Vincent's feet. He dragged him out of sight, then followed the others again, as they moved and talked, but never looked back.

            The next man was taller, forcing Vincent to twist him around and fire his captured pistol up under the mask. The plastic did not shatter, yet from the inside it grew red with the remains of the tall guard's face, bits of teeth and bone showing white.

            “What was that?” Reilly cried and turned, a flash light suddenly coming to life in his free hand, beam illuminating the fallen bloody body of the taller guard. “Merit! That son of a bitch cop just shot Merit. And where's Casey?”

            “Shit!” Bosk hissed. “That bastard's slipped behind us somehow.”

            “I knew it,” Reilly said. “I knew you'd get us into trouble, Bosk. You've been overheated ever since he fucked up your hand. Now you've gone and killed three good men to get your revenge.”

            “Merit's dead, I grant you that,” Bosk said, turning on his own flashlight to study the body. “But Casey may have run off. Same as Jimmy.”

            “And Billy? Stop lying,” Reilly shouted. “They're dead. And we'll be dead, too, if we don't high tail it out of here.”

            “You're not going anywhere, Reilly,” Bosk said.

            “I am. And any one who isn't crazy is coming with me. Right, boys?”

            Before any of the others could answer, Bosk fired his pistol, once, then a second time, the second shot piercing a section of armor over Reilly's heart that the first shot had dented. Reilly fell straight down, something gurgling from his mouth.

            “Now, that's settled, right?” Bosk asked, glaring at the two remaining men. They stared at Reilly, then  at Merit, then nodded uncertainly. “We'll spread out and make our way back out of his alley. Turn off your flashlights. Watch the shadows. This guy will shoot at the lights.”

            The three men spread out across the alley, close enough to touch each other if they lifted their arms, all of them walking side by side so that one could not be taken down without the others immediately knowing about it.

            “Bosk,” Vincent called from out of the shadows. “Why don't you send your boys home. This is between you and me.”

            “Fuck you,” Bosk said and fired his pistol in the direction from which the voice came.

            Vincent fired back, but not at Bosk hitting the man nearest in the line. The bullet smacked the mask, cracked the plastic, but did not pierce it, nor was that Vincent's intent. He rolled as return fire sought after his muzzle flash, their bullets smacking off the metal remains of some rusted truck.

            “Let's get the fuck out of here,” the man with the cracked mask said. “He's gonna kill us all.”

            “I'll kill the first man who runs,” Bosk said.

            “But we can't beat him like this,” said the other man.

            “I know, I know,” Bosk muttered, as if slowly adopting their suggestion. “But if we run, he'll shoot us down one by one. We'll walk out, and shoot at anything that makes a noise.”

            Yet when Bosk stepped forward, something fell. The guard with the broken mask gurgled up from the ground, blood spouting out his gashed throat, a jagged piece of glass still glittering from the wound as Vincent rolled back into the shadow amid a dozen shots after him.

The last Bosk's companions bolted, despite his protests, charging in the direction of the street, leaving Bosk running weakly after him, leaving him to fire and fire again, both shots missing the man’s fading figure. His third attempted shot came up on an empty clip, its single click resounding in the alley way seemingly louder than any of the shots.

            “It's seems you've run out of bullets, Bosk,” Vincent said, easing closer, his legs poised to leap.

            “Fuck you, Vincent, I can still kill you,” Bosk said, fumbling with his utility belt for another clip.

            Vincent hit the man full in the chest, knocking the bastard to the ground. Bosk's pistol rattled out of his hand and across the cold concrete, the face beneath the plastic mask red with rage and panic. Vincent grabbed the breathless man's arm, twisted it up, the man, now in acute agony, turning with the arm so that mask and face pressed down against the pavement. Vincent's free hank frisked the man, undoing the clips that kept the utility belt attached.

            “You're hurting my fucking arm, Vincent,” Bosk gasped.

            “If you stop struggling it wouldn't hurt.”

            “I mean the other arm. The one you fucked up last time.”

            “I'll be through in a minute,” Vincent said.

            “Why are you bothering with all this bullshit. Just shoot me and get it over with.”

            “I'm not going to shoot you,” Vincent said, twisting the man's good arm back so that the man rolled off his stomach and onto his back, the expression beneath the mask now utterly horrified.

            “What do you intend to do to me?” Bosk asked.

            “What do you think?”

            “I've got a vivid imagination,” Bosk said. “But any of that would be inhuman.”

            “And you think what you did to my wife was?”

            Bosk's eyes clouded a little, his bottom lip spurting blood from his biting down on it too hard.

            “That was a fucking mistake,” he said.

            “Killing and raping her? Or telling me you did it?”

            “Both,” Bosk said.

            “You want to tell me about it?”

            “You won't like it,” Bosk said.

            “Tell me anyway.”

            “I picked her up at a club,” Bosk said. “I didn't know she was your wife until later. I didn't rape her. She let me have it.”

            “You're a fucking liar!” Vincent exploded and hit the man hard in the chest with his free fist.

            Bosk took the blow with a grunt.

            “I'm not,” he said. “Why would I lie? You're going to kill me anyway. I'm not begging for my life here. I killed the bitch. She started talking about how she was married to a cop, a hot shot fucker who spent so much time fighting crime, she didn't feel like a woman. Bit by bit I figured out who she was and then I killed her. I wanted to kill her just to hurt you. But in a way, I killed her because...”

            Bosk stopped taking. Phlegm had caught in his throat. He cleared it, turned his head, trying to spit out through the gap between the mask and helmet. He failed. The glob clung to the plastic.

            “Why did you kill her, Bosk?” Vincent asked.

            “Because I thought she was better than that,” Bosk said angrily. “I thought you of all people would find yourself a lady that wasn't a fucking whore at heart. I killed her out of disgust for you, for her, for myself. I'd had so many fucking women like her, and you had one, too. I didn't rape her. I didn't have to. In a way, I wish she'd made me rape her.”

            Vincent stared down into Bosk's face at set of brown, blood-shot eyes that stared back. No shifting shiftlessness in that face this time, just an odd sense of regret that made Vincent ache.

            Letting loose of the man's arm, Vincent rose, and stepped back, his own pistol poised to fire.

            “Get up,” he told the man.

            Bosk struggled, grunting when he put weight on the arm Vincent had twisted. Yet Vincent made no move to help the shaky man as he climbed slowly up to his feet, body armor weighting him down, making him look more weary than before. Bosk looked like a beaten dog, one so sad and miserable, Vincent couldn't waste a bullet on him.

            “What now?” Bosk asked.

            “We go to the station.”

            “To the station? For what?” Bosk said. “You don't really think you can make a charge of murder stick against me do you?”

            “No, not murder for my wife. But I could make a charge of attempted murder stick if I had to. But that's not the reason I need you. You're my chief witness against Cromwell. I'm putting you in protective custody.”

            Bosk blinked, his mouth opened slightly, then remained like that, as he stared at Vincent.

            “You want me as a witness?”

            “You did drive Cromwell around to his little meeting, did you not?”

            “Yeah,” Bosk said, reaching up behind his mask with his good hand to clear the phlegm. “But I didn't see him rape anybody or kill anybody.”

            “Putting him at those locations is enough,” Vincent said.

            “But how can you try him again? He's been proven innocent.”

            “New evidence,” Vincent said. “You're it.”

            “And later? When you've got him behind bars? What happens to me?”

“As far as I know you still work for Chelsea -- unless they fire you for doing your duty. If that happens, I'll get you a security slot somewhere else. Now let's get going. I have some arrangements to make about Cromwell's arrest.”

 

 


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