I bit my lip to make the fuzziness go away, and kept moving. Ahead of me, there was gunfire, a lot of it. I came to the last landing before street-level, and saw three men in police uniform firing out at somebody in the parking lot. There was a fourth guy there, too, behind the cops. He turned to look up at me as I reached the landing. Harcum.
I fired at him, but missed, and he shoved one of the cops ahead of him through the doorway. I saw the cop fall, and Harcum leap over him and out of sight. The other two cops ran out after him.
I went down the last flight like a mountain goat, twisted my ankle at the bottom, and brought up hard against the wall. I looked through the doorway and saw the Lincoln moving jerkily across the parking lot, four Casales running after it and shooting. I ran out, limping, and saw a Casale Brothers truck off to my left. I hobbled to it and climbed into the cab. As I’d hoped, the driver had been in too much of a hurry to take the keys with him. I started the engine, swung the truck around, and took off after the Lincoln. The windshield spattered in front of my face and I crouched down behind the wheel, just barely looking out over the hood.
The Lincoln reached the street, wobbling badly from two flat tires, and swung right. But the driver couldn’t control it any more, and it veered back to the left again. I pulled up on the right, swung the wheel hard, and drove the Lincoln up over the curb and into the stoop of one of the empty buildings.
I clambered down from the cab, my bad ankle not wanting to support my weight, and fell against the trunk of the Lincoln. They were piling out, and I fired through the back window, hitting one of the cops. The other one was apparently already dead. And Harcum was out and running, fat but agile, diving through a shattered basement window and out of sight.
To have followed him that way, I would have had to silhouette myself in the window, the streetlight behind me. Instead, I climbed up onto the Lincoln, the.45 tucked under my belt because I only had my right arm to work with, and crawled through a first-floor window into the living room. I got the.45 into my hand again and limped cautiously across the room, the floor scattered with brittle lengths of ancient wallpaper. I moved slowly, trying not to make any noise, and finally got out to the hall. I found the door leading to the basement and waited, leaning against the wall.
A couple of minutes went by. Outside, I could hear the muffled sounds of the battle still raging. In the distance, coming steadily closer, the wail of fire engines. Looking up, I saw through the doorless front entrance an angry red glow. The plant was burning.
My mind kept wanting to think about tomorrow, but it couldn’t. Harcum was in this building, and my arm was beginning to throb. There wasn’t any such thing as a tomorrow anyway.
Another explosion bellowed out from the plant, drowning out the roar of the fighting.
I waited, thinking, Get it over with, Harcum, come up here and get it over with. You and the others, you’ve ripped everything to pieces, and I’ve helped, and now let’s finish it.
The basement door slowly opened, and a darker shadow came out to the shadowy hallway, silhouetting itself against the red glow in the entrance. Round, plain Harcum, who had tried four times to kill me and not shown himself to me once.
He crept slowly down the hallway toward the front of the building, and I could make out the gun he was holding tensely in his right hand. I stood away from the wall, the.45 trained on his round figure, and I said, “Face me, Harcum. For once in your life, face me.”
But he wouldn’t. The second I started to talk, he ran. I cried, “Harcum!” but he kept running, through the doorless entrance and outside, above the crushed stoop and the wrecked Lincoln. He was framed there for a second, against a double-glow of yellow streetlight and angry red from the flaming plant, and then a ragged volley of shots tore and jerked him like a marionette, till the strings were suddenly clipped and he plummeted off the broken stoop and out of sight.
I hadn’t killed him. I had come to kill him, I had emptied two guns, I had caused all this waste, and it had taken someone else to kill Harcum. He wouldn’t face me.
I limped forward, and was almost to the door when the big explosion came, shaking the building like a gambler shaking a dice cup, and I staggered, putting my weight on the bad leg. I fell, losing the gun, and lay on my face, waiting for the trembling of the building to lessen and stop. It did, finally, and I struggled back to my feet.
Outside, the fire engines were arriving, their sirens screaming down through the octaves to a dying-away guttural groan. There were no more shots, only the shouting of the survivors and the incredibly loud crackling of flames.
I moved along the wall to the front entrance and peered out. The plant was wrapped in flames, fantastically tall and loud and bright, and in their glare I could see the firemen hurrying about their business, and the police cars arriving, bearing the neutral cops, the Hal Ganz kind of cop.
It was difficult to climb down the pile of lumber that had once been the front stoop. I had to crawl down backwards, and when I reached the bottom I heard Cathy calling my name, over and over again, from far, far away.
I turned around, and Cathy was way down the street, running toward me. But between us was a Casale, standing directly in front of me, cradling a shotgun.
He looked at me, icy cold. “You set this up, you son of a bitch,” he said. “You set this up.”
I whispered, “I had to.”
He raised the shotgun.
The sound I heard was Cathy screaming.