“Don’t worry about him.”
“See anybody else?”
The doctor was quickly developing a fugitive mentality. Peter didn’t respond; he had now noticed a couple of things that dampened his expectations of a clean escape.
Someone had carelessly left a dark gray trench coat across a chair in a treatment room. So that meant at least one MORG operative was sitting around or prowling the hall in his shirtsleeves. He could have been the man with the gauze eye patch and the sorrowful expression, or the man with the bandaged arm stretched out on three folding chairs.
Peter looked at a door marked private. It stood open an inch or two. The room beyond was dark. From inside one man could monitor half the emergency ward. Behind the Admitting desk there were two doors with cloudy glass panels in them: one-way glass, for general security purposes?
If so, at this moment he and Dr. Paradies might be under observation by a roomful of MORG.
Peter doubted that anyone could make him all that quickly, but he kept his head down, chuckling at something the doctor said. He wasn’t feeling funny. The itch in his blood told him he had to choose a quick and unexpected out, and he needed to act immediately.
The tall cop left the Admitting desk and sauntered in front of Peter and Paradies on his way outside. Peter glanced at the radio car, which was backed into an ambulance bay, right side door open. The patrolman behind the wheel was drinking coffee. Apparently they’d dropped someone off for treatment.
Peter followed the doctor outside. Not enough open space; hospital on two sides, a concrete wall across the drive. Steps to a parking lot, chain-link fence all around, high sodium vapor lamps. Twelve or fifteen cars were parked behind the fence overlooking the emergency entrance. So the only fast and sure way was down the drive. Paradies dropped his cigarette pack and had to go down on one knee to gather up loose filtertips. Peter leaned against the brick hospital wall and checked behind him through the double glass doors. The man with the eye patch was walking slowly toward him. He walked like a man trying to decide if he should cut loose and be the hero of the piece. Peter winced.
“What do we do now?” Paradies said, shivering and cupping his hands around a match. The cigarette twitched between his lips.
“Enjoy your smoke,” Peter told him; “I’ve decided to give myself up.”
Paradies looked up in shock as Peter walked across the short stretch of tarmac to the police car. He got there just as the tall patrolman was getting in beside his partner. Peter slid in next to the cop, drawing his gun as he did so, closing the door behind him. He pushed the muzzle of the Beretta deep into the armpit of the cop he was crowding and said,
“You’re under arrest.”
“Whaaat?” the tall cop said. He had started to resist, but then he got a crick in his neck trying to look at the gun.
“You’re under arrest—for impersonating police officers. I’m taking you in. Move this thing.”
The cop behind the wheel said, “Hey, look, buddy, just what the hell do you think you’re—”
“Marty, Marty, he’s got a piece! It’s sticking in my armpit, Marty!”
Marty raised his hands a few inches off the wheel in a gesture of exasperation. He looked sidelong at Peter, who regarded him calmly over the straight edge of the glasses.
“Okay, okay, what do you want me to do?”
“Take Broadway. Uptown.”
“What for?”
Peter dug the Beretta viciously into the armpit of the cop next to him; the cop sucked air through his teeth and said, “Just roll it, we’ll talk while we’re driving.”
Marty put the car in gear and went bumping down the drive to Broadway. There was a blinking yellow caution light on the side of the hospital building, but not much traffic; Marty made a swooping turn into Mitchell Square. Peter saw, with a quick motion of his head, two MORG sedans whipping around in the parking lot, just as a couple of chase cars came down Fort Washington and made smoking sliding turns into One Hundred Sixty-fifth Street. Peter also had a glimpse of MORG agents equipped with walkie-talkies running from the Emergency Department, and one of them was Eyepatch. They’d made him, all right. But something, probably faulty communications, had prevented them from closing the ring in time.
“Any particular place you want to go?” Marty said in a surly tone of voice.
“The GW,” Peter said:
“The GW? You want to go to fucking Jersey?”
“That’s right.”
“A little out of our sector,” said the cop whom Peter was holding hostage.
“Just take me for a nice long ride. Right now you’re the only two people in the world I feel safe with. I want to enjoy your company.” The cops exchanged looks. Marty did the humoring.
“Sure. Sure, why not? We’ll like cruise around, and maybe after a while you want to talk. That’s okay with us. So what’s your name?”
“Peter.”
“I’m Marty, Marty Coranallis, and that’s Patrolman Dominick.”
“Hi, Peter. Why don’t you call me Dom?”
“Hi, Dom.”
“Should I move over a little? The front seat’s all busted down; too many lardasses in the Three-Four.”
“I have enough room, Dom. How about this gun in your armpit, I’m not hurting you, am I?”
“Tell the truth, I’m just a little uncomfortable—you keep looking back. Something bothering you, Peter?”
“Yes, there is.”
Marty said, “But you don’t want to talk about it yet, that it, Peter?”
“Just keep making the lights, Marty,” Peter told him.
The four MORG sedans stayed a block behind as the NYPD radio car drove up Broadway to One Hundred Seventy-eighth Street. More cars were proceeding parallel and northbound on Riverside Drive, on Fort Washington, Wadsworth and Amsterdam Avenues.
In Chase Two, Darkfeather’s assistant, a man named Beau Cliff, said, “Why don’t we take him off their hands?”
“Two reasons, Beau. There’ll be a lot of gunplay if we chivvy in now. Those two cops are bound to get holed. The New York Police Commissioner is one of Childermass’s pets. After the business on the Staten Island ferry two years ago, Childermass made the Commissioner a solemn promise. So we can’t be held accountable for any more Inspector’s Funerals. Peter probably knows that; that’s why he grabbed those cops. No chance he’ll get away from us. Let’s ride easy for now, until we find out what it is Peter wants to do next.”
“What do you suppose he’s telling those cops?”
“Whatever it is,” the Indian said, “they won’t believe him.”
Gillian, wearing the belted white Misty Harbor trench coat which had been one of her Christmas presents, sat in a chair by the windows in room 909 Herlands North, and chewed her fingernails to splintery ruin.
When she heard the tapping at the door she got up quickly, grabbed her overnight case and was half way across the room when the door opened and two men dressed in dark gray appeared in the slab of light from the hall.
One of them switched on his flashlight. Gillian gasped and turned her face aside.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding.”
The other one, a hand pressed to the button in his right ear, said, “Recall signal. Full scramble. They’ve got him.”
“What about—?”
“Full scramble!”
“Okay.” The flashlight was switched off. Gillian didn’t look up. She felt a hand on her shoulder and shied nervously.
“Little girl, you stay right here in this room. Understand? You’ll be sent for.”
When the door closed Gillian opened her eyes. She saw a roomful of sparklers. Her heartbeat was running away, yet her extremities felt bloodless and prickly-cold. After all those days in bed, just a few minutes on her feet made her feel sick and faint. Gillian yearned to fall across the bed and close her eyes. But she’d been discovered; naturally they blamed her for what had happened to Mrs. McCurdy. Something awful would happen to her if she
didn’t get out of the hospital. She couldn’t afford to wait any longer for Mrs. Busk. So Gillian picked up the case she had dropped, sighed deeply and walked a gently swaying tightrope to the door.
“Marty and me have been partners a long time,” Dominick said. “Six years.” They were driving across the Hudson River on the upper level of the George Washington Bridge, heading for the apartment towers on the heights of Fort Lee, New Jersey.
“That is a long time,” Peter said, seeming rigidly preoccupied. “You’re not a regular doctor of some kind, are you, Pete?”
“No, I stole this smock.”
“In other words, you’re in disguise?”
“Yes.”
Dominick chuckled. “That’s a pretty clever disguise.”
“Thanks, Dom. It didn’t work, though. They were waiting for me.”
“Somebody’s after you?” Dominick said sympathetically.
“I once worked for a government agency you never heard of. It’s big, though, and very powerful. I turned my son over to them. I’d tell you why, but that’s a pretty long story. Anyway, my son disappeared. They told me he died, but that’s a lie. They needed him, so they just took him. It’s a frightening power these people have. They can make a man disappear any time they want. Did you know it’s a statutory offense for a MORG employee, past or present, to reveal information about the agency? He may not even confirm that MORG exists. Laws like that are passed because a man named Childermass understands the workings of government better than any man alive. Government must grow or wither away, so it loots the public treasury in order to grow. When there’s money available—and power for the taking—there’ll always be a Childermass to encourage good men to look the other way, and exploit their worst fears. Maybe it’s possible to stop Childermass. Somebody’s got to do it. But I’m only one man, Dom.”
Officer Dominick looked cautiously at Peter. Were those tears in his eyes? God help us, Dominick thought, he’s liable to go berserk right here in the car. Start blasting away at all his imaginary enemies.
“Yeh, well, that’s right, and if you don’t mind my making a suggestion—maybe we can help, Peter.”
Marty Coranallis picked up his cue.
“You see, Peter, me and Dom have had a lot of experience dealing with—you know—the kind of people who get their kicks from bothering other people, harassing them—”
Dominick said, “My brother-in-law lives over here. In Teaneck. There’s this place he took me to once, all-night diner on Route Ninety-three in Leonia. What’ya say we stop and have a cup of coffee and—”
“Don’t stop!” Peter yelled, scaring them. “Keep this car moving.”
Dominick swallowed a little taste of vomit. “Okay, Peter—look, man, we’re on your side, we’re just trying to help.”
“Marty?” Peter said.
“Yeh?”
“You know the riverfront below Fort Lee?”
“Not too familiar with it, Peter.”
“What I want you to do, Marty, is get off in Fort Lee, and follow 505 along the water until you come to the old One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street–Inglenook ferry slip. There’s a lot of construction going on where the rail yard used to be, quite a few sudden detours. What we have to do when we get to the torn-up area is lose the cars that have been following us.”
“Following—?” Dominick said.
“Hold your head still, Dom, and keep your hands in your lap! Marty, there are four, maybe five—hell, I don’t know the exact number any more—but they’re all back there, and the two in the lead are the chase cars. A red Camaro and a silver-and-black Granada. They’ve got the works. Those two cars will easily hit one-forty on the flats.”
Marty checked his side mirror and said in a low voice to his partner, “He’s right about the Camaro and the—. I noticed them before, back at the toll.”
“You’ll have to lose those two cars if we’re going to have a chance.”
“They look like Feds to you?” Dominick muttered.
“Who knows?” Marty said. “Maybe something’s going on here.”
“Have you done any high-speed evasive driving?” Peter asked him,
“A little. My brother, on the state cops, they sent him out to the Coast to the Bondurant School. That’s some course they teach out there. He showed me a few wrinkles. Cornering on all kinds of surfaces, skid turns, high-speed reverses—”
“When I give you the word I want you to drive for your life, Marty. Because if the people who are in those cars can make my son disappear—and me disappear—they can make you disappear too.”
They were approaching the Fort Lee off-ramp. The chase cars a hundred yards behind them tightened up a little.
“Peter,” Dominick said, “I’m worried that gun’s going to go off—you know, by accident, when we hit a few bumps.”
“You do have something to worry about there,” Peter agreed.
Gillian opened the door of room 909 and went out into the hall. A squat florid nurse with a wart like a second nose was standing by the water cooler near Gillian’s door; obviously she was on guard duty.
“Hello, dear,” the RN said “Where are you off to?”
Gillian looked at her and didn’t say anything for a few moments. She licked her flaky lips.
“Home,” she whispered.
“Oh, but.”
“I’m going home,” Gillian repeated, not looking the nurse in the eye.
“You can’t leave the hospital without being discharged by your physician, so I guess it will have to wait until morning. I understand you’ve been very sick. You don’t feel at all well now, do you? Poor lamb. What a terrible upset evening we’ve had around here. Things are getting back to normal, though. My name is Evelyn. Why don’t you go on back into the room now, it’s all clean and made up and everything, and I’ll bring you a nice pill to help you sleep, soon as your file comes up from eight.”
“Please get out of my way,” Gillian pleaded.
“Oh, come on, don’t be cross with Evelyn. Things will look so much brighter in the—”
She started to take Gillian by the arm. There was a sudden disturbance, of cyclonic intensity, farther down the hall by the nurses’ station.
A woman was shouting in a terrible hoarse voice, “Don’t tell me! Don’t think I don’t know! There’s a madman loose in this hospital, and I’m not staying one more minute!”
“Oh-oh,” Evelyn said, and she scampered back to the station. Gillian followed.
One of the largest women she’d ever seen was having an argument with the other nurse on duty. The woman was about six feet four inches tall, and the etchings on her face put her age in the middle sixties. But she was wielding a four-footed aluminum cane with considerable force, slashing the air. She wore a ratty long coat trimmed in blue fur, and a campaign hat with plastic flowers pinned to it.
“Don’t trifle with me, de Graff,” she warned the nurse who was trying to placate her. “Or you’ll be wearing a plate in your head tomorrow! I refuse to be murdered in this hospital.”
Evelyn made it to the sanctuary of the station before she spoke up.
“Mrs. Toone, Doctor put you in here for your BP. What do you think is happening to your BP right now? You should see yourself, Mrs. Toone, you’re the color of raspberry sherbet.”
Mrs. Toone pointed her cane at de Graff.
“Out of my way!”
“What’s the point, Mrs. Toone? Honestly, there is no danger. The FBI is here. I think it’s the FBI. You’ll just do yourself in if you keep acting like this.”
Mrs. Toone pushed her aside, grounded the rubber-tipped cane and stalked off to the elevators.
“Could I come with you?” Gillian asked timidly. Her voice was slurred, difficult to understand.
Mrs. Toone stopped and peered down at her.
“What’s that, girl?”
“I’m afraid … to stay here.”
“Sure you are! Anybody with any sense would be. You just come right along with me.�
� She stabbed the elevator call button with her stick. “Mrs. Toone! That is a very sick girl! She may not leave—”
“Oh, shut up, Evelyn! Either of you tries to lay a hand on us—”
“I’m calling Security right now. Security will deal with this, Mrs. Toone.”
The nurses’ call board was lighting up. Evelyn couldn’t get through to Security. The working elevator, which had been on the lobby floor, came promptly up to nine.
“I’m warning you, Mrs. Toone! You’re making a very serious mistake, taking that girl with you.”
“Goodbye, goodbye!” Mrs. Toone cried delightedly as the elevator doors closed.
Then she turned and looked more closely at her companion.
Gillian stood there unresponsively, a hand on the railing, her eyes wide open. She was in some sort of fugue state, Mrs. Toone decided. All the brutal excitement, the tales of violence and the fear … she felt rather fizzy and darkling herself. The old BP. Just be calm now. Mrs. Toone put her arms around Gillian. The child whimpered softly. Oh, so dear, Mrs. Toone thought, what a purrrecious! The arteries in her neck felt like overblown balloons, and her head felt strange, an unpleasant burning sensation that was not a fever and not an ache. A burning she could taste and smell; it was like old truck tires. She tightened her arms around Gillian, oh, oh, getting so dark now.
Mrs. Toone was just a tiny bit afraid that she’d overdone it this time.
Benny Alonzo, the night watchman at Medina Brothers’ site number four, Marina Vista, heard the throaty roar of the big mills coming down the slope of the Palisades toward the fenced equipment yard. He heard them dodging through the wilderness of forms that had been constructed and now awaited the continuous pour that would complete the foundations for the condominium complex. Two, three, four different engine sounds—winking red lights were reflected against the dirty windows of the trailer.
Benny gulped the last of his roast beef sandwich and made it to the door as the lead car hit the temporary bridge outside, whumping and rattling across steel plates that spanned a newly dug channel.
It was a New York City patrol car: A red Camaro appeared behind it, maybe fifty yards away. After the Camaro came a whole weaving procession of cars. Fog lights. Sirens. Red flashers hidden behind grills.
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