I BARRELED THROUGH THE SIDEWALK crowd like a running back. A mail carrier hesitated an instant too long in the open entryway, and I crashed into him, knocking him down and sending his packages flying. He hurled insults at my back as I took the marble stairs three at a time.
My heart was hammering too loud for me to hear anything through the bug. Was Formes still alive?
I came off the stairs at a crouching run, down the long hallway, boot soles as quiet as I could make them on the marble. Number 309 was at the far end. The door was closed.
I stood to one side and slowly tested the doorknob. Unlocked.
The rustle of soft movement inside, heard through the bug. The choking sounds had stopped. If Formes wasn’t dead already, he didn’t have long. Where the fuck was Guerin?
I eased the door open half an inch, on blessedly silent hinges. Maybe Boone was distracted enough with Julian that I could take him.
Another inch. Peering through the crack, I could see part of the living area and part of the kitchen. A fleeting shadow on the floor as someone moved.
The doorjamb by my shoulder exploded.
I flinched, stumbling back into the hallway. A second shot tore a fist-size chunk out of the door’s edge, just about where my head had been.
I had the little .32 out of my pocket and leveled at the door. Come on, you son of a bitch. Come after me.
Instead there was a bang and the sound of shattering glass from far inside. Boone was breaking a window. Trying to reach the fire escape.
I kicked the door wide. The crunching of glass continued down the hall in the bedroom. I went in low and fast, ducking behind the kitchen counters.
Julian Formes was lying on the floor beside his worktable, twisted in a final backbend of agony. His face was mottled crimson, the pale bruises of finger marks still on his throat.
I heard the clatter of feet on metal. I aimed the .32 at the open bedroom door and went up the hall. Boone was gone, banging down the steps on the fire escape below. A flash look out the window. He was already two floors down, the tall man in the black suit I’d seen entering the building. Between the metal slats, I glimpsed brown hair, clipped to a stubble.
I slid over the sill, feeling a hot jab of pain as the broken glass sliced my jeans and leg. The rusted steel of the fire escape shook threateningly under my weight. Its stairs were too tight and too steep, and my steps felt maddeningly slow.
Below me Boone jumped from the last level to the alley, black coat flapping behind him. I kept scrambling until I reached the second-floor platform. Boone was ten yards out and running hard, heading for daylight on Second Avenue, away from the square and its sudden crowd of onlookers.
I pocketed the .32, climbed over the railing, and dropped, fifteen feet to the asphalt. I didn’t roll with the impact so much as bounce, hitting feetfirst and hard onto my side. My newly repaired forearm twanged like a guitar string wound too tight. I forced myself up and after Boone.
Too slow. He had a big lead. I frantically scanned the street. Clumps of people going about their day, in and out of the stores and restaurants in the lunch rush. Nobody staring or pointing as if Boone had just run past them. The cars and trucks flowed sluggishly along.
Where would he go? The opposite side of the street and down another alley. I lurched through the traffic. A Subaru slammed on its brakes as the driver stress-tested his horn.
The first alley I checked was empty. So was the second. Doors off the alleys, some of them propped open. A seafood restaurant on this side of the road, with back entrances. Too many possible routes.
Boone was gone. Fuck. Double fuck.
That was two leads blown, him and Formes. And I hadn’t even gotten a look at the bastard’s face.
Sirens now, howling down James Street toward the front of the building that Boone and I had just fled.
As if on cue, my phone buzzed. A text from the detective: WHERE ARE YOU?
A good goddamned question. I wasn’t about to limp back to Formes’s apartment and submit myself for another visit to a police interview room. Even if Guerin cleared me as a suspect in Formes’s death, Captain Unser would have a couple of warrant-officer MPs waiting in the precinct lobby, eager to provide me mandatory room and board at Lewis.
In a different alley two blocks down, I ditched my baseball cap. The .32 went under my flannel shirt, and I jammed Dono’s lockpick set into the pockets of my jeans. There were holes torn in the knee and shin of my jeans. My leg was oozing blood into my sock.
I checked my cell phone. Still on. Give the maker points for durability. I’d lost the earpiece in the chase. I put the phone to my ear.
“—not the neighbors on this floor. Downstairs.” A male voice. The bug in Formes’s apartment was still working.
“Bang on the doors, see if anyone else is home and awake.” It was Guerin. Even through the bug, he sounded pissed off and tamping it down. “How many cars did you reach?”
“Three.”
“Get two more. I want cruising in a ten-block radius. Start from the outer edge and work in. And find me a witness who can tell us what they were wearing.”
“I’ll wrap this place up for CSU after we go.” Kanellis’s voice, farther away and faint. “Eddie?”
“There’s blood here, on the windowsill,” said a third voice. “One of the perps cut himself.”
“Good. Maybe we pull a print, too,” Guerin said.
“Where’s your guy Shaw?” said Kanellis.
“Not answering his phone.”
“Think he got impatient?”
Guerin didn’t answer him. I’d heard enough anyway. I hung up on the bug and called Guerin directly.
“Where are you?” he said immediately.
“Forget me. The guy you want is named Boone. Six-two or -three. Lanky. Brown hair, cut so short he’s almost bald. I don’t know about facial hair, I didn’t get a look. Wearing a black suit, ten minutes ago.”
“Come in and we’ll do a full workup,” Guerin said.
“I feel like I’m telling you shit you already know.”
There was a pause. “Boone McGann is Burt McGann’s brother.”
That explained Boone’s Midwest accent. I thought of the robbery scene. The tactical choice I couldn’t figure out. Three men instead of four.
“Where was Boone on the day of the robbery?” I said.
“In jail. In California. A probation violation.”
“But he’s out now.”
“Yes.”
“And probably pissed off about his dead brother.”
“Come in and we’ll talk about it.”
“I can do better. I’ve got Formes’s computer and thumb drives. And what I think is the recording from the bugs he planted at Dono’s house.”
Another pause. “Including the shooting?”
“I sure as shit hope so. It’s encrypted.”
“You can’t stay out on the street, Van.” First name. Never a good sign. He’d probably have a lock on my cell signal within a few minutes if Kanellis was already talking to the phone company.
“I’ll drop Formes’s gear where you’ll find it.”
“And forget about the blood on the window. That’s mine.” I hung up and took the battery out of my phone.
Would Guerin put an all-points out on me? I had to assume he would. Dono’s house was blown. With half of the West Precinct combing the area, I couldn’t even risk returning to where I’d parked the truck, not yet.
And in all the action of the afternoon, I’d missed my daily deadline to report in to Captain Unser.
Fugitive from justice and AWOL, too. Lucky damn me.