went back, into the doorframe. Coyle grabbed a hunk of my jacket and hauled me forward, toward a waiting haymaker. I tucked my chin down and drove off the wall and ducked under the blow and smacked him in the cheek with my forehead. He cursed again and we both went over. I kneed him somewhere and he cuffed me on the ear and a flare went off behind my eyes. I scrambled up but Coyle got there first and dug a thumb at my throat. I gagged and yanked the pry bar from my pocket and swung it at his thigh. He roared and went down, but on the way he grabbed my wrist and dragged me into his forearm. Stars lit and the pry bar went flying and so did I, into the card table and into a corner. It took a moment for my vision to clear, another to realize that the hot wet patch down my back was coffee and not blood, and one more to register that Coyle was gone. I hauled myself up and shook my head and lunged out the door.
The cold air was like a slap as I came up the basement steps, and I picked up Coyle headed south, toward a cluster of Dumpsters on a square of hardtop. He wasn’t moving well and the path was treacherous; he slipped more than once. I didn’t push it, but kept him in sight, a muscular figure lurching under sodium lights, past the Dumpsters, through a tangle of bushes, and onto an icy street. My limbs loosened as I trotted along, and my pulse steadied, and after a little while the pain in my ribs dimmed.
On the street, Coyle turned west. I lengthened my stride and trimmed the distance between us. He glanced over his shoulder a few times and sprinted forward a few paces after each look, but smoking had robbed his wind and he couldn’t keep it up. When he saw I was closing, he cursed.
“Fuck you, asshole,” he shouted over his shoulder, and “Get the fuck out of here.” It screwed up his breathing even more.
We rounded a curve and the road ahead became an overpass spanning the Metro-North train tracks. Coyle put his head down and charged at it. But when he got there, he didn’t cross. Instead, he vaulted the metal railing and slid down the embankment. Shit. I ran faster and followed.
The embankment was steep and snow-covered, and I went down along the trail Coyle had made, mostly on my ass. I skidded at the bottom onto a badly plowed service road that ran parallel to the train tracks, and that was separated from them by a high schoolyard fence. I looked north and south. The road was empty. There was no sign of Coyle, but snowy prints led beneath the overpass. I took a slow, deep breath and pulled the flashlight from my jacket pocket, and the Glock from its holster behind my back. I flicked on the light.
The beam disappeared into the darkness beneath the bridge, and I walked forward, listening for ragged breathing. My ears were straining when I saw a bright yellow light to the north. I stopped, and heard a rising and falling air horn. Train. The light grew brighter, and swept across the rails, and the rush and rumble widened, and swallowed every other sound. So I never heard him coming.
He charged from the left and lifted me off the ground, and if not for the schoolyard fence I’d have been on my way to Grand Central, pasted to the front of a Hudson Line train. As it was, I was doing only slightly better. The flashlight vanished and so did my breath, in a burning bellow, but I held on to the Glock and brought it up in both hands as I bounced off the fence. It wasn’t above my waist before Coyle was on me- both hands wrapped around my own, fingers behind the trigger and over the slide. His bristled, block head ground into my eye socket, and his extra forty pounds drove me back.
My boots scrabbled over the icy hardtop and only the fencing kept me from going over. Coyle was pushing and grunting, and the smell of cigarettes, burnt coffee, and sweat was smothering. My heels were sliding away when I brought my knee up hard- and connected. Coyle roared, and for an instant sagged, and then he twisted and yanked and the Glock came out of my hands. I heard my fingers break before I felt the pain.
We spun apart, and I caught myself on the fence and nearly screamed when I did. I came up panting and so did Coyle, holding the Glock in his big palm, looking down at it, bleeding from his nose, his mouth, and the split in his eyebrow. Looking at me. Looking at the gun. My arms and legs were shaking with fatigue and adrenaline, and I gathered what juice I had left for…I wasn’t sure what. Coyle stared for a long minute, and then a fat tear fell from his eye onto the Glock. His voice was choked and his words were squeezed between gasped breaths.
“Fuck it, man- fuck it all. You want me so bad, take me. Take me in, send me upstate, send me straight to hell if you want. I don’t give a shit. I just can’t do this anymore.” He slumped against the fence and slid to the ground. He tossed the Glock in the snow at my feet.
32
There was a corner of Coyle’s room that we hadn’t trashed, and in it was a pint-sized refrigerator. It held two midget ice trays, and Coyle took one and sat on the cot and fashioned an icepack out of a T-shirt. I took the other and sat on the folding chair. I did the best I could with some paper towels, but it was tough going with three broken fingers, two on the right hand and one on the left. They were already beginning to swell and discolor.
Coyle held the icepack to his brow. “It’s a big surprise, I ran?” His soft voice was scratchy and tired. “The cops bring me in- with my record, it’s like they won the lottery. Who are they gonna like better than me?”
A couple of names came to mind, but I kept them to myself and nodded. He adjusted his ice and winced. Meltwater and blood ran down his face. Coyle’s sweatshirt and jeans were filthy and sodden, and so was he, and beneath the dirt, the fatigue, and the still-suspicious glances, there were other things: fear, confusion, and a deep and grueling sadness. He had, for the moment, spent his anger and panic and blind motion; now he was lost and drifting. I’d told him who I was, and a story about what I wanted, the main points of which were that I wasn’t a cop, wasn’t working with the cops, and had no particular interest in helping them out. He didn’t care much, to the extent he had energy to care at all. Elbows on his knees, he seemed to wither and deflate before my eyes. I wanted him to use the air he had left talking to me. Under the cot, only slightly crushed in the mД™lГ©e, were Uncle Kenny’s doughnuts in a cardboard box. I managed to drag them over without whimpering.
“You mind?” I asked. Coyle looked at me and shook his head. I picked a glazed one and offered him the box. He shook his head again. I got up and righted the card table, and found the little coffeemaker miraculously intact underneath.
“You have any coffee?” I asked. Coyle pointed to a cabinet over the sink. I found filter papers and Folger’s and some foam cups inside. He watched while I fumbled with the fixings. When the coffee was brewing, I turned around.
“Tell me about Holly,” I said quietly. Coyle’s mouth tightened and his chin trembled, and he stayed silent. The aroma of coffee filled the room, masking for the moment the stink of sweat and cigarettes and wet clothing. Coyle stared nowhere, a faraway, convict gaze, and I thought I’d lost him even before we started. Then he looked at me and decided something. And then- with eyes on the walls, the floor or someplace over my shoulder, and with a voice hoarse and sometimes shaky- he spoke.
They’d met last spring, at the 9:3 °Club, on a night Jamie Coyle had been on the door. Holly and Gene Werner wanted in, and Coyle had given Holly the free pass he gave all beautiful women. But something about Werner had rubbed him the wrong way.
“Fucking Weenie. Maybe it was the way he was looking at himself in the window, or maybe it was how he grabbed her arm. I don’t know, the prick just pissed me off.” Holly had interceded on Werner’s behalf, which made Werner mad. That had pleased Coyle- that, and Holly’s smile.
“Man, she could melt you. I mean, she was a prizewinner- you had to stare- but that smile…It made something bubble in your chest. She was like nobody I ever knew.”
She’d turned into a regular, occasionally with Werner, but most times not.
“She’d come early sometimes, sometimes late. She’d have a drink or two, always bourbon and ginger ale, and maybe she’d dance. Mostly though it was people watching. Guys would try to work her, girls too sometimes, but Holly was always in her own head, and she could give a damn.
“She’d always come by to shoot the shit, though; it didn’t matter if I was on the door or behind the bar or wherever. A lot of times she’d talk about the crowd. She’d make up things about this guy or that girl, whole stories about their lives. Real funny shit sometimes, and sometimes strange stuff- I didn’t always get it all. Other times she’d talk about next to nothing, the weather or whatever, or she’d ask about my job- how I knew who was gonna be a problem, and how big a problem they’d be, how I knew who would back down, and how much pushing it would take, that kind of stuff. And then there were times she’d just hang out, and not say anything at all.”
All he’d known of Holly’s work at that point was some vague talk about movies. “A director or a cameraman