“God damn it. God damn them all to hell!” He didn’t know who, but someone was going to pay for this.
At that moment, the door to the room swung wide. Zeke would have given every last cent he possessed for it to be the scarred thug, or better still the mysterious and cowardly “boss man” who had yet to show his face.
Instead he stared upward into the haggard features of a buxom woman, clad in a scanty negligee. She gasped as stared at Addison’s blood stained body and then at Zeke, the knife still poised in his hand.
From then on everything seemed to happen by prearranged cues. The girl backed out of the door, screeching with a melodramatic flair that would have done credit to Maude Adams.
“Oh, help. Murder! Police.”
Flinging her hands into the air, the girl vanished, still screaming. Zeke dropped the knife, ready to plunge after her, only to hesitate. It seemed somehow obscene to abandon Addison, leave him in a place like this.
A ridiculous qualm, for there was nothing he could do for the young man now, only live long enough himself to see the murder avenged. With one last look at the attorney’s absurdly youthful features, Zeke staggered out into the corridor. It was already filling up with women, ladies of pleasure in all stages of undress, straggly hair, pale cheeks devoid of rouge, purple hollows beneath their eyes.
The first girl had already raised the alarm, and they all fluttered about, shrilling like a flock of frightened starlings.
“Oh, there he goes. The murdering fiend!”
Zeke’s appearance set off a fresh series of shrieks. He wanted to clutch his ears as he bolted down a rickety flight of steps. He expected at any moment to come up against the thug with the scarred chin, or some other burly rogue bent on preventing his escape. But he encountered no one until he reached the small foyer below. The front door was flung open to admit a blue-coated officer.
Zeke gaped at the sight of the dapper Sergeant O’Connell. He would’ve been prepared to wager that the policeman had never responded to a distress call so fast in his life. He was glad for once the copper was doing his job.
“O’Connell. Good thing you’re here, There’s a man dead upstairs and?—”
To Zeke’s astonishment, O’Connell leveled his pistol at him. “Halt or I’ll shoot.” Not waiting for Zeke’s response, he began cocking the hammer.
Although startled, Zeke was quick enough to duck. Instead of plugging him through the head, the shot whistled past his ear, shattering a gilt-framed mirror behind him.
No need to ask O’Connell what the hell he thought he was doing. The copper’s intent was obvious. Zeke didn’t give him a chance to take aim again. By the time the second shot sounded, Zeke had plunged beneath an arched doorway.
Another small passage led him back to the region of the kitchens. A lusty-looking female hovered near the coal stove, looking undisturbed either by the screams or the sound of gunplay. She calmly poured herself a cup of coffee, only glancing up long enough to give Zeke a knowing leer.
“What’s a matter, honey? Your old lady catch you here? The back door is that way, handsome.”
Zeke couldn’t even pause long enough to thank her. Finding the door, he hurled himself through it, almost into the arms of another policeman. The copper fell back with a grunt of surprise as though he really hadn’t expected Zeke to make it this far or to be so full of fight.
Before the man could draw his weapon, Zeke sent his fist crashing against the copper’s jaw, felling him to the ground. The action took no more than the space of a heartbeat, which was just as well, for he had no time to hesitate, to reflect, only to run.
He plunged down an alleyway behind the brothel, weaving past the rear entrances of tenement buildings. Where was he going to go? He was not even sure where he was, only that if this was O’Connell’s beat, he had to be back in the warehouse district. Zeke was a little familiar with the area. The problem was that O’Connell was even more so.
In no time at all, the sergeant was hard on his heels. Another shot rang out, and Zeke felt a burning sensation in his right arm. Bloody hell! He’d been hit.
He stumbled a little and heard a heavy footfall—O’Connell closing in for the kill. Mustering what strength he had, Zeke upended a row of garbage cans, causing the policeman to curse and lose his footing.
As O’Connell went down, Zeke half-buried him in the refuse and then tore off running. As he clutched his arm, his fingers sticky with the warmth of his own blood, Zeke knew he couldn’t keep up this pace. His breathing came in labored gasps.
Somehow he got himself over a fence, squeezing down the narrow space between two buildings. He had eluded O’Connell for the present, enough that he could lean up against the crumbling brickwork, drawing gulps of air into his tortured lungs.
He was weakening and he knew it. The shocks to his system in these past twenty-four hours had been too much; only that ages-old instinct for survival had kept him on his feet this long. Just ahead of him loomed the main street, but from the sound of police whistles, he knew the place had to be crawling with O’Connell’s minions. Risking a peek round the corner of the building, he saw that he was right. Blue coats, at least half a dozen of them, their guns at the ready, paced the length of the pavement.
Zeke ground his teeth, fighting off a wave of dizziness. He had fallen into a most well-prepared trap. It was no good reminding himself he was no longer Johnnie Marceone, but J. E. Morrison, a tycoon with a mansion on Fifth Avenue. Under ordinary circumstances, the prudent thing to do would be to surrender to the police, demand to see his lawyer.
But these weren’t ordinary circumstances. His lawyer was dead, and Zeke knew if he tried to surrender to O’Connell, he’d never make it as far as the precinct house. Not alive.
He had to get out of here, find some place to hide and quickly. But where? He might be able to make it as far as the docks, take the risk of jumping into the East River, but chances were he would lose consciousness and drown.
The street out there already seemed to be shifting, threatening to give way beneath his feet. He could barely bring the building opposite into focus other than to tell it was a warehouse of some sort.
Zeke squinted his eyes, forcing his vision to clear. He had seen that place before. Had it been only last night that hehad lingered outside, staring up at one particular window, as moonstruck as any raw kid, waiting for Rory to come out?
