“You don’t,” Warren answered simply. “You’ll just have to trust me.
Denise blurted, “Trust! You break into a private conversation—against court orders, I hasten to add—and you talk about trust? It seems to me…”
Warren cut her off. “Shut up, Bitch!” Boy, that didn’t sound right. “Nathan has no choice but to trust me, because if he doesn’t, he’ll get killed, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Believe it or not, son, I’m one of the good guys. Now, run!”
“Where to?” the boy asked, desperation building in the pit of his stomach.
Oh, shit! thought Warren. He hadn’t planned that far ahead. There was only one landmark he could think of, and it was out in the middle of everything: the obelisk in the town square.
“Can you take us off the air for just a minute, Bitch?” Warren asked, his tone pleading and polite.
Denise heard the sincerity in the police officer’s voice, the fear.
She didn’t have to do anything he asked, but she decided that she could ill afford not to.
“All right,” she agreed, “but I’ll be able to listen in.”
“Must you?” Warren asked.
“Unless you want an earful of dial tone,” Denise replied.
“Suppose you were to take your earphones off?”
Denise sighed loudly into the microphone. “Okay,” she conceded. “You’ve got thirty seconds of dead air.”
Enrique looked at her as if she’d gone completely over the edge, but followed suit anyway, removing his own earphones. In all his years in radio, this would be his first half-minute without his ears covered. They felt strangely cold.
“Go ahead, guys,” Denise instructed. “Your clock is running. Let’s go to commercials, Rick.”
As Nathan listened, he felt his world becoming very small, just himself and this cop named Michaels. He started to object twice, but Michaels wouldn’t let him. During the first ten seconds of the monologue, Nathan learned that there was a plot to kill him, and that it didn’t involve the police. In the next ten, he heard that most of the police who were on the street thought that Nathan had killed the cops in the jail last night, and that they were cleared to shoot him if he resisted arrest. Finally, he learned that this Lieutenant Michaels was the only person in the universe that he truly could trust, and that the most important thing that Nathan could do was let Michaels bring him in.
“The running’s over, Nathan,” Michaels concluded. “You have to trust somebody now, and I’m all you’ve got. Do you know where the Lewis and Clark Memorial is in the square?”
“You mean the tall pointy tower?” Nathan said. “Yeah.”
“Make your way over there and we’ll find each other. I’m wearing a brown suit with a blue shirt and a striped tie. You’ll see me. I look like a cop.”
In spite of the danger, Nathan smiled. “I guess you know what I look like,” he offered.
“The whole world knows what you look like, pal. Now, move! You’ve got no time left.”
Nathan hung up the phone and looked at Billy.
“Well, do you trust him?” Billy asked.
Nathan thought for a moment before answering. “Yes.” The answer surprised both of them.
The commercials had run a full five minutes, giving them an extra 270 seconds of privacy, not because Denise had been conned into it by the cop, but because she really feared for Nathan’s safety. When the spots were done, she and Enrique reentered the world of electronic noise, only to hear the screeching tone of a telephone that had been left off the hook.
“Well, folks,” she announced to her audience. “It seems we’re all alone here.. “
Billy’s directions to the obelisk were brief and complete, matching Nathan’s dimming memories of his flight the night before. The young fugitive was impressed by the distance he’d actually run: over two miles, according to Billy.
Nathan hurriedly tied his shoes and went to the front door, where Billy was waiting with Barney to say goodbye.
Nathan smiled sadly and nodded. “Thanks, Billy,” he said. “You didn’t have to help me. I appreciate it.”
Billy looked down at the floor. “Sure I did,” he joked halfheartedly. “You’re a murderer. You might have killed me.” He reached into his pants pocket and handed the older boy a three-inch-tall X-Men figure, Cyclops. “Here,” he said. “He brings me good luck.”
Nathan felt moved. He took the toy gratefully and stuffed it into the front pocket of his ragged denim shorts. “Thanks,” he said. At once, they both became aware of the sounds of sirens growing in the distance. “I gotta go,” Nathan said, and he disappeared out the apartment door.
Nathan’s plan was to use the back stairs; to get out the way he’d gotten in, through the basement. Somehow that made more sense to him than going out the front door. When he’d taken only three steps down the hall, he heard the pounding of running feet behind him.
“Hey, Nathan!” a voice called.
Nathan’s body reacted to the sound of the voice even before his brain could process its source. He sprawled face-first onto the stained carpet of the hallway, like a baseball player sliding into third, just as he heard the familiar phut, and a tiny geyser of plaster fountained from the wall. He shoulder-rolled to his left as a second bullet slammed into the spot he’d just occupied on the carpet.
Nathan scrambled on all fours to a sharp turn in the hallway to his right and dove the last four feet for cover behind the wall. Plaster dust stung his eyes as a shot aimed for his head blasted through the outside corner of the wall instead. Just before the last shot was fired, Nathan caught a glimpse of his attacker through his peripheral vision. He was dressed in a cop’s uniform.
Nathan never stopped. He shoulder-rolled again to his feet and charged down the second hallway, ignoring the bitter profanity that exploded from the cop. Only fifty feet more, and he’d be at the stairwell door, over which only a bare lightbulb remained in the sign that had once read EXIT. Twenty feet now, and the pounding of his own footsteps was joined by the heavier stride of the cop, beating a bass counterpoint to the quick staccato of his borrowed sneakers. He knew better than to look behind him.
When he heard Pointer’s footsteps stop abruptly, Nathan knew he was in trouble. Without a conscious thought, he zigzagged the last ten feet to the exit. He heard the suppressed gunshot at the same instant as an invisible fist slammed into the right side of his rib cage and a neat round hole appeared in the metal door three inches in front of him. The impact of the blow forced an oof sound from his lungs, and he staggered as he propelled himself through the fire door.
Nathan didn’t run down the stairs; he flew down them, using the steel railings to vault from one landing to the next, barely touching a single concrete step on the way.
When he reached the bottom, he risked a quick look back up the stairwell. Pointer was two levels behind, but gaining quickly.
Nathan whirled away from the interior stairwell and tore through the basement on his way to sunlight. The clutter of boxes and equipment all seemed so harmless now. A drunk arose from a corner near the exit door, perhaps intending to relieve Nathan of a few dollars, but he shrank away from whatever he saw burning in the boy’s eyes.
Propelled by fear, Nathan plowed through the exterior door as if it weren’t there, slamming it against the wall hard enough to break the doorknob. Thirteen steps later, he was at ground level, sprinting across the street toward a schoolyard. The sirens were extremely close now.
The drunk startled Pointer as he pursued his prey through the basement, earning him a bullet through the heart.
By the time the Hit Man had cleared the exterior stairs and reached ground level, the first of the arriving police cars was already visible down the street, and Nathan had started to blend in with the schoolyard scenery across the street. Just before disappearing around the far corner of the school building, the boy paused and gave him the finger.
Pointer found that amusing. In a smooth and well-practiced motion, Pointer unthreaded the silencer from his weapon and surreptitiously slipped the Magnum back into its holster. He nodded politely to the first string of arriving cop cars and strolled casually across the street toward the school.