The awareness of the sounds fading outside did not get through to Paolo Rona as quickly as it would have normally, because Paolo was busy with his little friend. It took him almost a minute to corner and kill the rat with his filia, his boot knife, pinning it to the wall by the corner board next to his bed. The rat twisted on the blade point and squealed up at Paolo, Paolo watching the look in its small black eyes, thinking to himself how he must look to the rat, wondering in a detached sort of way what it would be like to die like that. His scanner popped and crackled a bit, and although it had been doing that all evening, something about this call got his attention. He stepped up to the table and turned up the volume.
“—Maryland plates, radio.”
“What’s your twenty, 290?”
“Fourth and K.”
Paolo went to the window, strained to look back up the street. There was a D.C. patrol car stopped in the middle of the street, two cops still in the car. Shit. They looked to be checking vehicle plates. But why?
“Okay, those plates come back ten-95.”
“Okay, radio. Ten-four. Mark it 99.”
Paolo watched as the patrol car started to move. It rolled past the entrance to the Zanzibar without stopping, reached the corner, and turned right onto Fifth. Whatever they wanted, they had it.
Paolo started to relax, and then he looked back up the street and saw the dark blue Crown Victoria. That car looked federal as hell.
Ten-95?
That meant—referred to another agency, didn’t it?
Paolo stepped away from the window, scooped up his Glock, and stuffed it into the back of his pants. He snatched up the AmEx card and the Virginia DL and his scanner, started to gather up the papers and shove them into his bag. He gave the room a quick look, snatched up the can of spray glue, and pressed the button, holding it out at arm’s length for a fifteen count, moving it back and forth, a billowing cloud, covering everything on the tabletop. His heart was slamming through his chest. Throat aching, a pulse in his neck thudding painfully, he watched the cloud of mist settle. Then he grabbed the matches from his cigarette case, struck one, and stepping back, lit the whole matchbook and threw it at the tabletop.
The cloud of misted glue flared into a huge ball of blue-yellow fire six feet high and as wide as the front of the room, the heat driving him backward. The tabletop burst into flames.
The front door took two huge slams from someone outside. Through the flames and the smoke Paolo saw the hinges shake, and dust fell from the doorframe. This is why you always booked a ground-floor room, man. He turned and bolted for the open window.
The doorway shattered in, plaster flying, slivers scattering, the doorjamb coming away in two pieces. A white man with a mustache stumbled into the room, ran right into the fire cloud, and recoiled. He saw Paolo at the window, saw him through the fireball.
Then the man kicked the table flying and came through the fire after Paolo, his face set and hard, his eyes wide, lit by the fire and the burning papers. He looked like a nightmare. Paolo knew him.
Paolo never looked back. He bailed right out the window, landed in a tumble on trash bags piled up outside. The radio skittered out of his hand. He looked up, saw a large black man coming down the steps, saw the gun in his hands, saw it coming up and centering, but not yet.
Paolo fumbled for his Glock, missed it. Doc fired once, the muzzle full of fire from Paolo’s point of view, and he felt a round thud into the garbage bag beside his head. Paolo scrambled up and took off running. Behind him he heard the black man saying “Freeze! Federal officers!”
The muscles in Paolo’s back tightened, but he kept running, his head up, his mouth wide open, legs a blur, people dodging and ducking out of his way, the street scene jiggling crazily, lampposts strobing by, his heart now thrumming like a bird’s heart, Paolo expecting the front of his shirt to blow out any second now, his lungs to spatter the sidewalk in front of his running feet.
Fifty feet behind him and losing ground, Doc lumbered after him, huffing into his radio. “I got him out here, he’s eastbound, on foot. I’m on him.”
Luke felt the heat from the fire, backed off from the window, and ran back through the front entrance. He ran to the car, holstering the Taurus, cursing. A couple of black kids hooted at him as he ran by, made pig-snorting noises. Luke reached the car, fumbling with his keys, raging now. What a fuck-up, what a totally fucked-up night.
Luke ripped the door open and flicked off the lo-jack, started the car, cranked the wheel with one hand as he held the radio up.
“Doc, where are you?”
Doc came back, his voice hoarse and unsteady, keeping time with his footrace up along K Street.
“I’m losing him. He’s almost to the corner of Fourth.”
Now Luke had the car out and was pulling it around in a tight U-turn, the street scene spinning crazily.
“Shoot him!”
“I can’t, I got no backstop.”
Paolo heard the squawk and crackle of the radio, heard the big man’s shoes slapping down on the sidewalk, saw black faces as he passed, saw the corner—the blessed corner—coming up. Run, chico!
Luke hit the accelerator, saw Doc’s big black figure about a half-block up, people jumping out of his way, and then he saw Paolo Rona in black jeans and a hot pink T-shirt, flying—literally flying—away toward the intersection of Fourth and K Streets.
The big blue car squealed, jumped forward. Luke leaned over the wheel, his eyes fixed on Paolo’s pink T-shirt, on Paolo’s pumping legs. Tonight’s the night, you goddamn little fuck.
“Doc, I’m on him.”
Breathless, Doc’s voice came back.
“I hear you coming.”
Doc swerved out into the street, ran through the parked cars to the north side, turned, and looked at Luke closing up. Luke hesitated, then hit the brakes.
Shit, Doc, he thought but didn’t say. Doc was into the car in a half-second, just getting his right leg in when the jolt of the car accelerating slammed the passenger door.
Doc’s face was wet and shiny.
“Like hell! I wasn’t gonna catch him!”
“Lose some weight!”
“Fuck you, no offense. There he goes!”
Paolo was almost to the corner. Luke had his foot to the floor. Rona made the corner, a black and pink blur, looked back for a second, his face a brown flash, his eyes widening as he saw the big blue car closing up fast, heard the roar of the engine. Doc was on the radio.
“Radio, this is Bravo Sixteen federal agents, we are eastbound on K Street at Fourth Street Southeast, Seven District. Radio?”
“Bravo Sixteen, identify your agency!”
“Deputy Marshals. We’re in vehicle pursuit of a running suspect. Male Hispanic aged thirty-three, five-eleven, one hundred sixty pounds, black jeans, pink T-shirt, wanted on a federal warrant. Armed and dangerous.”
“Ten-four, Bravo Sixteen. Units to support Marshals Bravo Sixteen in pursuit eastbound K and Fourth Street?”
Paolo looked back again as they got alongside, Luke slowing the car, one hand on his door, and Paolo rounded the corner, still flying, skittered, recovered—and dashed directly in front of them, crossing the intersection northbound. Luke jerked his door open, sighted the Taurus on Paolo’s right temple as the man flew past. Beyond Paolo’s head he could see cars and trucks stopped at the lights, white and black faces behind windshields, directly in the line of fire. Shit!
Luke braced the door with his left hand, bellowed at Rona.
“Rona! Freeze!”
Paolo’s head twitched right, his eyes wild. He knows me, thought Luke. Then Paolo was rolling over the hood of a parked car. A city bus was idling at the corner, fumes rising from the pipes, and Rona was headed right for it. The doors were open, interior lights shining down on the heads of twenty or thirty passengers. Doc saw it too.
“Luke, we’re gonna make the front page.”
The radio crackled back with patrol units coming on.
“Two nine oh, we’re in the sector. Say again description!”
“Two oh five, we’re at Fifth and—”
The radio burst into chaos as at least five different units jammed the channel, voices wild and shouting, and Radio trying to shut them up. Useless panicky half-trained assholes. Luke heard that metallic ping that his temper made when it snapped. Goddamn amateurs.
Doc held his star out the window, holding up the cars on his right, as Luke cut across the curb lane, going north after Rona on Fourth Street. He smacked his fist on the horn as a cab blocked him, the driver leaning out of the window, his black face ugly with anger, swearing at them. Luke stayed on the horn, looking past the tangle of cars. He saw Paolo reach the bus, his legs flailing, saw him get a hand on the door, something in his hand. In the white glow from the bus door, he saw it was a pistol.
Luke jammed on the brakes, jumped out of the vehicle, Doc yelling something at him, and he pounded up the street after the bus. He knocked down two young women coming out of a storefront, slammed into a man who stepped into his way, shouldered him off—
The bus was starting to move.
Twenty feet.
Luke yelled at the bus driver. “Marshals! Stop!”
Ten feet.
Now the bus was accelerating. Luke raced up alongside it, slamming his left hand on the side of the bus. It rang like a cheap tin gong. The passengers stared down at him like cows going to a slaughterhouse, dim, oblivious, doomed. An elderly woman shook her head at him, showing yellow teeth like old ivory, she was yelling something down at him. Four feet, he was keeping up, gaining on the door. If he could just reach the aluminum handbar, he could swing up, break the glass with his Taurus.
Two feet. His chest was starting to burn. His knees were going out, fire coming up the right thigh. He raised the Taurus.
Close. He was close.
He cleared the side panel, the bar was right there at his left hand, he got his fingers on it, tightened, felt his feet begin to drag as the speed of the bus caught his body, heard the huge tire whining against the bumpy blacktop, very aware of the weight and power of the machine now, of the big black tire spinning at his hip, of the road streaming by underneath him, the wind making his eyes water.
The door opened up—
Luke wrenched at the handbar, lifting himself off the pavement, feeling the ground give away—
A hand reached around the door, a face—Rona was staring down at him, his mouth wide, his eyes glittering in the streetlight.
“Hey, Culebra! Bite this!”
In Paolo’s other hand was a huge weapon. A Glock, Luke thought, in a strange hallucinatory moment of silent concentration.
Luke pulled the Taurus up, tried to aim it forward—
Paolo’s hands looked odd. Shiny and white. Rubbery. He had gloves on, surgical gloves. The bus slammed over a pavement crack. The Taurus bobbled in his right hand, his left shoulder felt like it was coming apart. Under his feet the road was a black blur. The tires roared at him. The Glock was in his face, he could even see the skin tightening under the latex as the grip hardened, see the index finger inside the matte black trigger guard, see the light in Rona’s face, the gleeful intent—
Luke let go, hit the pavement rolling, tucking the Taurus up under his belly, the world spinning as lamplights and car lights and red lights and the gutter and staring faces and more lamplights and more car lights all rolled and rolled, the ground slamming his shoulder, then his back and his hip and his knee, and then he hit—hard.
Time passed.
He opened his eyes slowly, looked up, and saw a shiny white metal tube, bent at angles, and above the tube a black greasy cone-shaped surface. He moved his head to the left, feeling pavement under his skull, and saw a tire, low and wide and shiny black, with brand-new treads. He looked back up and realized he was looking at the transmission of a car.
He was under a car.
He lay there for an uncertain time, aware of feet gathering around the edges of his vision, of faces appearing under the car to peer at him; aware of voices and a siren growing louder, aware of a massive numbness in his left shoulder. He tensed his fingers and felt the weight of the Taurus in his hands. Pain was starting to register, along with a deep sense of embarrassment.
He was thinking about trying to move when heavy feet thudded up to the car, and he could hear Doc’s voice, close to panic, full of fear, but controlled, yelling for the crowd to back off.
Knees thumped to the ground, then huge black hands appeared, followed by Doc’s blue-black face, his eyes full of grim expectations. He looked at Luke, who looked back at him.
Doc’s face went away. Then it came back. Then he grinned at him.
“That didn’t go too well, did it, Luke?”