Kellerman, Jonathan - The Theatre

Baldwin grabbed his elbow, dropping his Time magazine in the process. Shmeltzer went semi-limp, let the bastard support his weight, smiling to himself and thinking: Probably the first real work he's done in years.

The American grunted, fumbled with his key ring until he'd attached it to his belt, freed his other hand to prop up Shmeltzer's steadily sagging body.

"Have you seen the doctor yet?"

Shmeltzer gave a miserable look and shook his head. "Waiting. Waiting all day… oh!" Letting out a wheezing breath.

Baldwin's pale eyebrows rose in alarm.

"Your heart? Is it your heart?"

"Oh! Ohhh!"

"Do you have a heart problem, sir?"

"Oh! Hurts!"

"All right. Listen," said Baldwin. "I'm going to lower you down. Just wait here and I'll go get one of the doctors."

He let Shmeltzer slide to the floor, propped him against the wall, and jogged off back toward the east wing. The moment he rounded the corner, Shmeltzer got to his feet, rapped on the Records Room door, and said, "Get the hell out!"

The door opened, Daoud emerged, eyes alive with excitement. Success.

"This way," said Shmeltzer, pointing west.

The two of them ran.

As they put space between them and the Records Room, Shmeltzer asked, "Get anything?"

"Everything. Under my robes.".

"Mazel tov."

Daoud looked at the older man quizzically, kept running. They passed the examining rooms and the X-ray lab. The hallway terminated at a high wall of windowless plaster marked only by a bulletin board.

"Wait," said Shmeltzer. He stopped, scanned the board, pulled off a clinic schedule, and stashed it in his pocket before resuining his run.

A right turn took them into a smaller corridor lined by a series of paneled wood doors. Recalling the Mandate-era blueprints they'd examined last night, Shmeltzer identified their former function: servants' quarters, storage rooms. The Brits had pampered themselves during their reign: The entire west wing had been devoted to keeping them well clothed and well fed-quarters for an army of butlers, maids, cooks, laundry room, linen closets, silver storage, auxiliary kitchen, auxiliary wine cellar.

Now those rooms had been turned into flats for the do-gooders, doctors' and nurses' names typed on cards affixed to each door. Al Biyadi's room was next to Cassidy's, Shmeltzer noticed. He took in the names on the other cards too. Committing all of it to memory-automatically-as he continued to run.

Behind them, from behind the corner, came the sound of distant voices-echoing voices full of worry, then surprise.

The voices grew louder. As did the footsteps. Hard Gestapo heels.

At the end of the smaller corridor were French doors that yielded to the turn of a brass handle. Shmeltzer and Daoud ran out onto a stone landing guarded on both sides by reclining statuary lions, leaped down half a dozen steps, and found themselves facing the rear grounds of the hospital-neglected estate grounds, once elaborately landscaped, now just an expanse of red dirt bordered by the ragged remains of privet hedges and walled by tall old pines. Empty flower beds and patches of rusty earth interrupted by seemingly random copses of younger trees. To the far west of the ground was an enclosed pen for animals; all else was open space.

But the entire property was enclosed by three meters of chain link.

Trapped.

"Where now?" said Daoud, running in place.

Shmeltzer stopped, felt his knees aching, his heart pumping furiously. Thinking: Funny if I got a real heart attack.

He surveyed the grounds, looked back at the hospital. Much of the rear of the huge pink building's ground floor consisted of glass panels-more French doors leading out to a canopied sun porch. A solarium back in Mandate days-goddamned Brits sunning themselves while their empire rotted out from under them. Now the dining room.

The sun porch was unoccupied, but if anyone was inside the dining room looking out, he and the Arab would be easy to spot. A real mess.

Still, what was the alternative?

"Keep going," he said, pointing to the north end of the property.

What had once been a rolling lawn was now dirt coated with stones and pine needles. They ran for the shelter of a copse of pines, ran through several meters of shade before exiting the trees and finding themselves on steeply sloping barren ground leading directly to the northern perimeter of the property-a cliff edge. A hinged rectangle had been cut out of the chain link, framing blue sky. A door to the heavens.

Hell of a view, thought Shmeltzer, taking in the distant cream-and-purple contours of the desert, the terraced hills of Judea, still coated with greenery.

Sapphire sky above; big dry blanket below. Hills for folds. Caves for moth holes.

Caves.

He looked back through the trees, saw two figures on the sun porch, one of them in khaki, the other in white. They stood there for a while, went back inside.

Who the hell cared about one sick old Arab?

Daoud had opened the chain-link door. Was gazing out at the wilderness.

"What's it look like over the side?" Shmeltzer asked him.

The Arab dropped to the ground, crawled to the edge, and peered down.

"Small drop, easy," he said, surprised. "Looks like a hiking trail."

They lowered themselves over the side, Daoud first, Shmeltzer following. Landed on flat, soft earth, a wide terrace-three meters by two. The first of several oversized steps notched into the hillside.

"Like stairs," said Daoud.

Shmeltzer nodded. Below the steps was a thick, coarse growth of water-spurning shrubbery. Ugly stuff, green-gray spikes and coils, some of it browning in the heat.

He noticed a split in the brush, a parting like the Red Sea. The two detectives climbed down the steps and entered it, edging through a narrow pathway, barely one person wide. Beneath their feet, flat surface rounded to a concave ditch; they sank suddenly and had to use their arms for balance. But soon they grew used to the concavity, were walking steadily and rapidly down the side of the hill. Bent at the waist to avoid being snagged by the thorny branches overhead.

Shmeltzer slowed and looked up at the branches. An arch of greenery-the classic Jerusalem arch, this one fashioned by nature. Opaque as a roof except for frayed spots where the sun shone through, letting in shards of light that cast brilliant white geometric patterns upon the hard-packed earth.

A tunnel, he thought. Leading straight down to the desert, but from the air or below you'd see only brush, a serpentine line of gray-green. Probably fashioned years ago by the Brits, or maybe the Jordanians after them or the Turks before them. An escape route.

"How you doing?" he asked Daoud. "Still got the stuff?"

The Arab patted his middle. "Still got it."

"Okay, let's follow this. See where it leads."

After a while, Nightwing got more open about herself, lying in his arms in the backseat of the Plymouth after she did him.

and talking about her childhood-growing up fat and pimply and unpopular, terrorized by an asshole father who crawled into her bed every night and raped her. The next morning he'd always feel guilty and take it out on her by slapping her around and calling her a whore. The rest of the family going along with it, treating her like scum.

Once he saw tears in her eyes, which nauseated him; hearing about her personal shit made him sick. But he didn't stop her from spilling it out, sat back and pretended he was listening, sympathetic. Meanwhile he was filling his mind with pictures: real science experiments on whimpering mutts, touching the stiffs in the path lab, memory slides of what he'd done to Fields, how the slimeball's head had looked all bashed to trash. Thinking: It's easy to be a shrink.

One night they were driving on Nasty, headed for a parking spot, and she said, "That's him-that's BoJo!"

He slowed the car to get a good look at the pimp, saw a short, skinny nigger in a purple suit with red fake-fur lapels and a red hat with fake leopardskin band and peacock feathers. Little slime was standing on a corner talking to two fat blond whores, his arms around them, showing lots of gold tooth.

Nightwing slumped low on the seat and prodded his arm. "Speed up. I don't want him to see me!"

He slowed the Plymouth, smiled. "What, you're scared of a little shit like that?"

"He may be little, but he's bad."

"Yeah, right."

"Believe it, Doctor T. C'mon, let's get out of here!"

"Yeah, right."

After that, he started watching the nigger.

BoJo was a creature of habit, showed up on the boulevard Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, always around eleven P.M. Always driving from the south side of town in a five-year-old lacquer-flake purple Pontiac Grand Prix with gangster whitewall tires wrapped around chrome reversed mag wheels, silver sparkle vinyl top, etched opera windows, fake ermine tuck-and-roll interior with purple piping, "BJ" mono-grammed in gold on the doors, and blackened windows with stickers on them warning that the entire shitty mess was protected by a supersensitive motion-detector alarm system.

The pimpmobile was always left in the same no-parking zone on the south side of Nasty. Cops never checked; Grand Prix never got ticketed. When BoJo got out of the car, he always stretched, then lit an extra-large gold-tipped purple Sherman's with a gold lighter shaped like a Playboy rabbit, before setting the alarm with a little handpiece. Repeated the same song-and-dance on his way back to the car.

The little shit's evenings were just as predictable: a westward stroll on Nasty, collecting from his whores until midnight, then the rest of the night spent drinking at a puke-stinking pimp bar called Ivan's Pistol Dawn on Wednesdays and Fridays. Ogling the dancers at a strip joint called the Lube Job on Sundays.

Dr. Terrific followed him. No one noticed the clean-cut guy in the windbreaker, T-shirt, freshly laundered jeans, and blue tennies. Just another soldier on leave, looking for action.

Soldier of destiny.

Once in a while BoJo left with one of the Lube Job strippers or a whore. Once in a while another nigger, a big, light-skinned, muscle-bound type, hung around him playing bodyguard. But usually he did his thing alone, swaggering along the boulevard as if he owned it. Probably feeling confident because of the nickel-plated pistol he carried-big.45-caliber cowboy job with a white fake-pearl handle. Sometimes he took it out of the glove compartment and waved it around like some kind of toy before sticking it back in his waistband.

Fucker certainly seemed confident, dancing and prancing, laughing all the time, his mouth a fucking gold mine. He wore tight, satin-seamed pants that made his legs look even skinnier than they were, custom-made ticky-tacky wide-shouldered jackets, and patent-leather shoes with high stacked heels. Even with the heels he was short. Black dwarfshit.

Easy to spot.

He watched the scuzz for weeks, was there one warm Friday night, waiting, when BoJo returned from his prowl/party at three-thirteen A.M. Had been waiting in the shit-stinking alley for four hours, standing next to a shit-stinking dumpster, but not the least bit tired. Letting the garbage smells pass right through him, floating above it like some angel, his mind pure and free of thoughts.

Seeing only Fields's face, then BoJo's, then the two of them merging into a white/nigger slime mask.

Pow. His hands itched.

BoJo turned off Nasty and onto the side street, snapping his fingers and staggering-probably stoned out of his gourd from too much juice or weed or whatever. He paused a block away from the Pontiac, the way he always did, hitched up his pants, and lit his Sherman's. The flame from the rabbit lighter illuminated his monkey face for one brief, ugly moment.

Soon as the flame died, Dr. Terrific came running silently out of the alley, all superhero clean-cut and full of destiny.

Sliding a crowbar out from under the windbreaker, he jogged over to the Grand Prix on bouncy tennie feet, raised the crowbar over his head, and brought it down as hard as he could, pulverizing the windshield. The sound of shattering glass still sweet in his ears, he zipped around to the passenger side, squatted low on the sidewalk.

The supersensitive motion-detector alarm started screaming.

BoJo had been dragging on his cigarette. It took a second for the pimp to realize what was happening. Another second before he started screaming too. In harmony with the alarm.

Soul music.

Fucker pulled out his gun, ran/staggered to the Grand Prix as fast as those faggy high heels could take him. Tripping and cursing, finally getting there and staring open-mouthed at the rape of the windshield. Meanwhile, the alarm was still screaming out its mechanical painsong.

BoJo jumped up and down, swung the.45 in a arc, and looked from side to side, spitting and cursing, saying "Come here, mothahfuckahs, goddam fuckin' mothahfuckahs!"

The alarm continued pouring its little electronic heart out.

Meanwhile, he was staying still as a dead man, crouching with the crowbar in his hand. Ready. Stupid nigger never saw him, never thought of checking the passenger side of the car. Just kept jumping and spitting and cursing, leaning over to finger what was left of the windshield, staring at whole chunks of safety glass that had come loose, hundreds of bubbles of glass all over the fake-ermine tuck-and-roll dashboard, stuck in the high-pile fake-ermine bucket seats.

Repeating "Mothahfuckah, fuckin' mothahfuckah" like some spear-chucker chant, stomping his little high-heeled foot, waving the gun around, then finally putting it away, taking the handset out of his pocket and turning off the alarm.