17
I caught Manny as he started to fall. He looked at me with confusion. Then some sort of vast regret and sadness passed across his face. Such a sense of loss. Not fear or pain, but loss, a whole landscape, a vista of it.
People were yelling. Lights were pointing; cameras and the people attached to them were gathering around. I could distinguish the police calling for EMS. Manny held onto me.
“Susan,” he said.
“Take it easy. You’re gonna be alright.”
“Susan.”
“I’ll get her. She’ll meet us at the hospital. Hold on.”
A cop was trying to push me aside, to get to Manny, to administer to his wound. He’d been shot in the stomach and chest. Blood was flowing out of him. His hand clutched my arm. “Promise me,” he said.
“Take it easy. Let the—”
“The medics?”
“They’re coming,” I said.
He nodded, drifting off. But his hand held on. Then his eyes snapped back to attention, and he fixed his gaze on mine. “You find out who did it.”
“We saw. The cops shot him. He’s dead.”
“Not him, Carl. You got to save Nazami. There’s a wrong being done.”
“Yes, I’ll—”
“Don’t bullshit me, Carl. You swear, swear now.”
“I promise.”
“On your word, your Bible, whatever the hell, you do this for me. You find out who really killed MacLeod, and you save that kid. You swear. Do you swear?”
“Yeah, Manny, I’ll do it.”
“By all that’s holy, you swear?”
“By all that’s holy.”
The cops pulled me away. There was a lot of shouting—“let ’em through, let ’em through”—and EMS arrived. They put on pressure bandages and carried him away on a stretcher. Manny’s cell phone was lying on the pavement. I picked it up to bring to him.