Across the first roof, he ran with mouth open, but his throat dried and constricted, and across the second roof he ran with his mouth shut, trying to swallow. But he couldn’t get enough air in through his nostrils, and after that he alternated, mouth open and mouth closed, looking like a frantic fish, running like a comic fat man, clambering over the intervening knee-high walls with painful slowness.
There were seven rooftops to the corner, and the corner building was only three stories high. The boy hesitated, dashed one way and then the other, and Levine was catching up. Then the boy turned, fired wildly at him, and raced to the fire escape. He was young and lithe, slender. His legs went over the side, his body slid down; the last thing Levine saw of him was the white face.
Two more roofs. Levine stumbled across them, and he no longer needed the heel of his hand to his ear in order to hear his heart. He could hear it plainly, over the rush of his breathing, a brushlike throb — throb — throb — throb — throb—
Every six or seven beats.
He got to the fire escape, winded, and looked over. Five flights down, a long dizzying way, to the blackness of the bottom. He saw a flash of the boy in motion, two flights down. “Stop!” he cried, knowing it was useless.
He climbed over onto the rungs, heavy and cumbersome. His revolver clanged against the top rung as he descended and, as if in answer, the boy’s gun clanged against metal down below.
The first flight down was a metal ladder, and after that narrow steep metal staircases with a landing at every floor. He plummeted down, never quite on balance, the boy always two flights ahead.
At the second floor, he paused, looked over the side, saw the boy drop lightly to the ground, turn back toward the building, heard the grate of door hinges not used to opening.
The basement. And the flashlight was in the glove compartment of the squad car. Crawley had a pencil flash, six buildings and three floors away.
Levine moved again, hurrying as fast as before. At the bottom, there was a jump. He hung by his hands, the revolver digging into his palm, and dropped, feeling it hard in his ankles.
The back of the building was dark, with a darker rectangle in it, and fire flashed in that rectangle. Something tugged at Levine’s sleeve, at the elbow. He ducked to the right, ran forward, and was in the basement.
Ahead of him, something toppled over with a wooden crash, and the boy cursed. Levine used the noise to move deeper into the basement, to the right, so he couldn’t be outlined against the doorway, which was a gray hole now in a world suddenly black. He came up against a wall, rough brick and bits of plaster, and stopped, breathing hard, trying to breathe silently and to listen.
He wanted to listen for sounds of the boy, but the rhythmic pounding of his heart was too loud, too pervasive. He had to hear it out first, to count it, and to know that now it was skipping every sixth beat. His breath burned in his lungs, a metal band was constricted about his chest, his head felt hot and heavy and fuzzy. There were blue sparks at the corners of his vision.
There was another clatter from deeper inside the basement, to the left, and the faint sound of a doorknob being turned, turned back, turned again.
Levine cleared his throat. When he spoke, he expected his voice to be high-pitched, but it wasn’t. It was as deep and as strong as normal, maybe even a little deeper and a little louder. “It’s locked, Danny,” he said. “Give it up. Throw the gun out the doorway.”
The reply was another fire-flash, and an echoing thunderclap, too loud for the small bare-walled room they were in. And, after it, the whining ricochet as the bullet went wide.
That’s the third time, thought Levine. The third time he’s given me a target, and I haven’t shot at him. I could have shot at the flash, this time or the last. I could have shot at him on the roof, when he stood still just before going down the fire escape.
Aloud, he said, “That won’t do you any good, Danny. You can’t hit a voice. Give it up, prowl cars are converging here from all over Brooklyn.”
“I’ll be long gone,” said the sudden voice, and it was surprisingly close, surprisingly loud.
“You can’t get out the door without me seeing you,” Levine told him. “Give it up.”
“I can see you, cop,” said the young voice. “You can’t see me, but I can see you.”
Levine knew it was a lie. Otherwise, the boy would have shot him down before this. He said, “It won’t go so bad for you, Danny, if you give up now. You’re young, you’ll get a lighter sentence. How old are you? Sixteen, isn’t it?”
“I’m going to gun you down, cop,” said the boy’s voice. It seemed to be closer, moving to Levine’s right. The boy was trying to get behind him, get Levine between himself and the doorway, so he’d have a silhouette to aim at.
Levine slid cautiously along the wall, feeling his way. “You aren’t going to gun anybody down,” he said into the darkness. “Not anybody else.”
Another flash, another thunderclap, and the shatter of glass behind him. The voice said, “You don’t even have a gun on you.”
“I don’t shoot at shadows, Danny. Or old men.”
“I do, old man.”
How old is he? wondered Levine. Sixteen, probably. Thirty-seven years younger than me.
“You’re afraid,” taunted the voice, weaving closer. “You ought to run, cop, but you’re afraid.”
I am, thought Levine. I am, but not for the reason you think.
It was true. From the minute he’d ducked into this basement room, Levine had stopped being afraid of his own death at the hands of this boy. He was fifty-three years of age. If anything was going to get him tonight it was going to be that heart of his, skipping now on number five. It wasn’t going to be the boy, except indirectly, because of the heart.
But he was afraid. He was afraid of the revolver in his own hand, the feel of the trigger, and the knowledge that he had let three chances go by. He was afraid of his job, because his job said he was supposed to bring this boy down. Kill him or wound him, but bring him down.
Thirty-seven years. That was what separated them, thirty-seven years of life. Why should it be up to him to steal those thirty-seven years from this boy? Why should he have to be the one?
“You’re a goner, cop,” said the voice. “You’re a dead man. I’m coming in on you.”
It didn’t matter what Danny Brodek had done. It didn’t matter about Nathan Kosofsky, who was dead. An eye for an eye, a life for a life. No! A destroyed life could not be restored by more destruction of life.
I can’t do it, Levine thought. I can’t do it to him.
He said, “Danny, you’re wrong. Listen to me, for God’s sake, you’re wrong.”
“You better run, cop,” crooned the voice. “You better hurry.”
Levine heard the boy, soft slow sounds closer to his left, weaving slowly nearer. “I don’t want to kill you, Danny!” he cried. “Can’t you understand that? I don’t want to kill you!”
“I want to kill you, cop,” whispered the voice.
“Don’t you know what dying is?” pleaded Levine. He had his hand out now in a begging gesture, though the boy couldn’t see him. “Don’t you know what it means to die? To stop, like a watch. Never to see anything any more, never to hear or touch or know anything any more. Never to be any more.”
“That’s the way it’s going to be, cop,” soothed the young voice. Very close now, very close.
He was too young. Levine knew it, knew the boy was too young to feel what death really is. He was too young to know what he wanted to take from Levine, what Levine didn’t want to take from him.