He was taking his time. Scardi fired a shot at him, half-heartedly, and it thunked harmlessly into one of the gates.
He turned and crawled frantically on his hands and knees, up, up, deeper into the crevices of the Tiger Balm. Every move now was agony. His sight was going. Every breath screeched through his tortured lungs. There was hardly enough blood left to sustain his frenetic flight.
Sharky walked into Tiger Balm Gardens, stepped over the fence, and followed resolutely after the mobster.
The silenced pistol spewed and dust kicked p in front of Sharky. He did not duck, did not dodge to one side or the other. He kept going, straight ahead, closing in.
Scardi dragged himself to his feet, backed away from him. His sight was almost gone. A vague shadow was moving towards him. He backed around a ridge in the cliffs and slumped against the rocks.
The unearthly shriek behind him was like no cry he had ever heard in his life.
He turned, looked up. A dragon loomed over him. Its mouth began to open.
Scardi screamed in pure terror.
The dragon’s mouth opened wide and a river of flame’ poured from it, and enveloped him.
Scardi was a human torch, his clothes and body an inferno, his screams of pain as unearthly as the creature that had just incinerated him. He rolled back around the ridge, feet and hands thrashing madly.
Sharky shuddered and turned his back to him.
One shot, he thought. One shot would put him out of his misery.
Well, it was one shot Scardi would not get from him.
He started back down towards the gates. Scardi’s screams followed him almost all the way down. Finally, they died away.
Domino and Papa came down the battered street towards him. She stopped a few feet in front of him.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Never better,’ he said and smiled down at her. Then he took her by the arm and walked to the edge of the lake. The stainless-steel pinball lay upside down in three feet of water. Hotchins was hanging from the guard bar, his head and shoulders under water, his once handsome face distorted like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.
‘So much for the next president of the United States,’ he said. ‘And that was the shortest political campaign in history.’
The elevator stopped and they walked rapidly through the lobby and outside into bedlam. A dozen police cars had pulled up into the plaza, their blue lights whirling. A TV newsman was interviewing a woman who seemed on the verge of shock. An ambulance screamed around the corner and pulled in with its siren dying down to a growl. They walked past a crowd of spectators, some holding drinks from Kerry’s Kalibash, staring up at the building.
Livingston and Friscoe were standing away from the crowd, talking intently with Jaspers who was jabbing the air between them with an icepick finger.
Sharky kept walking, holding Domino tightly against him. He had passed Arch Livingston and Barney Friscoe and Papa before The Bat saw him.
‘Sharky!’ he bellowed.
Sharky kept walking.
‘Sharky!’
He was almost to the car.
‘Sharky, godammit, stop!’
He stopped, still holding her close to him, and looked over his shoulder at The Bat.
‘What the hell’s going on here? What the hell. . . I want some answers. Just who do you think you are, all of you? You’re, you’re. . .‘ He stopped.
Livingston came over to them. ‘You okay?’ he said.
‘I’m okay. I’m taking her outa here.’
‘Whatever,’ Livingston said and smacked him on the shoulder. ‘You run a hell of a machine, brother. Any time.’
‘Thanks.’
The Bat snapped. ‘Now let me tell you something—’
Sharky cut him off. ‘No, you’re not telling me a goddamn thing.’
He started back towards the car.
‘Godammit!’ The Bat screamed. ‘you’re through, Sharky! You hear me?’
But if Sharky heard, he made no response. He kept walking, past the police cars, past the crowd, away from the building, away from The Bat, away from the nightmare. The wind shifted and a cold breeze blew past them, carrying the carrion odour away from Sharky, blowing it back towards Mirror Towers and with it the hurt, the anger the hate.
They got in the car and drove away.