As he neared the corner he watched a glide-cart operator argue with a customer. The operator's born-and-bred-in-Brooklyn accent flattened the English language like a sweaty heavyweight flattened an opponent.
A maxibus rumbled to the curb, braked with a wheeze and a belch, and disgorged a flurry of passengers. They came in all sizes and shapes, in a cacophony of languages and a hodgepodge of purposes.
And all, of course, were in a hurry to get somewhere else immediately.
He stepped back so as not to be jostled and kept mindful of his pockets. Street thieves were known to pay the bus fare for its easy plucking opportunities.
As he turned, he felt a faint prickle on the back of his neck. Cop? he wondered. Had they picked up his trail again? He shifted slightly, angling himself so that he could use a shop window as a dull mirror to scan the street and sidewalk behind him.
He saw nothing but the busy and the annoyed, and the small flood of tourists who enjoyed gawking at the display of wares on Madison.
But his antenna continued to quiver. Casually, he shifted his bag of grapes, slipped a hand in his pocket, and slid into the crowd.
The glide-cart vendor was still fighting with the language and his customer, passengers were still pushing their way on or off the maxibus. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his grocer friend hyping his produce to passersby.
There was a soft whirl overhead as a traffic copter made its rounds.
He nearly relaxed, nearly told himself he'd allowed the police tag to make him edgy and foolish. Then he caught the quick flash of movement.
Instinct kicked in. He pivoted. His hand came out of his pocket, and his body was braced and set. For an instant, he was face-to-face with Sylvester Yost.
The pressure syringe skimmed over his ribs, missing its true mark as Summerset continued his pivot. His hand shot up, and the stunner in it scraped along Yost's shoulder.
As Yost's arm went dead, the syringe dropped to the sidewalk to be crushed under the feet of rushing commuters. The men were shoved hard together, held there a moment like long-lost lovers, then pushed roughly apart by the stream fighting to pour onto the bus before the doors slammed shut.
Summerset's vision blurred at the edges, tried to narrow down to a slit. He fought to clear it, to keep his balance, and would certainly have gone down if the press of bodies hadn't kept him upright.
On rubbery knees he tried to lunge forward. The faint buzzing in his ears was like an awakening nest of hornets. His body moved too slowly, as through syrup, and his hand, still gripping the stunner, missed Yost, took down a shocked and innocent tourist from Utah, and had his terrified wife screaming for the police.
As Summerset stumbled clear, he could do nothing but watch Yost, one arm dangling uselessly, rush for the corner, and disappear.
He managed two steps in pursuit before the world went gray and he went down hard on his knees. When he was hauled to his feet, he struggled weakly.
"Sick? Are you sick?" The grocer dragged him clear, quickly stuffing the illegal stunner back in Summerset's pocket. "You need to sit down. Walk. You need to walk with me."
Through the wash of noise in his head, Summerset recognized the familiar voice. "Yes." His tongue was thick, and the words slurred like a drunk's. "Yes, thank you."
The next thing he remembered clearly was sitting in a small room crowded with crates and boxes and smelling like ripe bananas. The grocer's wife, a pretty woman with smooth golden cheeks, was holding a glass of water to his lips.
He shook his head, tried to take stock of his reaction and pinpoint the kind of tranq Yost had managed to get into him. A small dose, he thought, but powerful enough to cause dizziness, mild nausea, and weakening of the limbs.
"I beg your pardon," he said as clearly as he could manage. "Could I trouble you for some Wake-Up, or one of the generic brands of its kind? I require a stimulant."
"You look very ill," she said kindly. "I'll call for the MTs."
"No, no, I don't require the medical technicians. I have some training. I simply need a stimulant."
The grocer spoke softly in Korean to his wife. She sighed, passed him the water, and left the room.
"She will get you what you need." The grocer crouched so that he could study Summerset's glassy eyes. "I saw the man you fought with. You got him, but not too good. He got you better, I think."
"I dispute that." Then on an oath, Summerset was forced to lower his head between his knees.
"You got the bystander best of all. He's out flat." Amusement filtered through his voice. "The cops'll be looking for you. And you ruined my lovely grapes."
"My grapes. I paid for them."
Eve shrugged into her jacket, kicked her desk, and tried to decide if she should alert Roarke that Summerset had, as Roarke had predicted, shaken her police tag.
The hell with it, she thought. She had to get into the field. She was dumping the problem of Summerset into Roarke's lap.
Even as she stepped toward the 'link, the problem walked into her office.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"Believe me, Lieutenant, this visit is every bit as distasteful for me as it is for you." Summerset glanced around her cramped office, skimmed his elegant gaze over her stingy window, her lumpy chair. Sniffed. "No, I see it could never be as distasteful for you."
She walked around him, shut her door with a bad-tempered slam. "You ditched my men."
"I may have to live under the same roof as a cop, but I certainly am not obliged to have them following me around on my free time." He sneered, feeling much more like himself again. "They were inept and obvious. If you were going to insult me, the least you could have done was engage adequately trained individuals."
She wasn't going to argue. She'd plucked two of the best available trackers. And both of them had already taken a lashing from the sharpest edge of her tongue. "If you're here to file a citizen's complaint, see the desk sergeant. I'm busy."
"I'm here, against my best judgment, to give a statement. I prefer discussing this with you, under the circumstances. I don't wish to trouble Roarke."
"Trouble him?" Her gut clenched. "What happened?"
He glanced at the choice of seats again, sighed, then opted to give his statement standing.
He had to give her credit. After one explosive oath, she fell silent. She listened, her eyes narrowed, flat as a shark's and just as ruthless.
When he was done giving what he felt was an admirably concise and thorough statement, she hammered him with questions over points he'd never considered.
Yes, he habitually stopped at that market, at that time, on his half-day. He most often observed the maxibus stop there as he enjoyed the rough ballet, so to speak, of passengers.
Yost had come up behind him, slightly to the left side. Yes, he himself was right-handed.
Yost had been wearing a sandy wig, a brush cut, military style, and a pearl gray overcoat. Light material, though it had been warm enough to go without a topcoat. The stunner had brushed Yost on his right shoulder, causing him to drop the syringe before the full dose could be administered.
It had, apparently, caught the bystander mid-chest, but he was recovering well from that and the minor scrapes and bruises received on his trip down to the sidewalk.
"Does anyone know you were carrying an illegal weapon?"
"The grocer. Otherwise, I told the beat droid Yost had the stunner, and had attempted to attack me with it and hit the unfortunate man from Utah instead. I did, however, give the man's wife my card so that all medical expenses could be sent to me. It was the least I could do."
"The least you could have done was let me and my men do our jobs. If you hadn't ditched the tag, we might have nabbed him when he went for you."
"Perhaps," Summerset said evenly, "if you had been courteous enough to discuss your plans that involved me with me, rather than sneak behind my back, I might have cooperated."