Edgar Paston stood by the window, pale-faced and perspiring. In the street below he could see gangs of black youths running and shouting and smashing windows.
'I'm here,' he said quietly. He came across the office and bent over McManus with a serious face. 'How do you feel?'
McManus winced. 'Oh, terrific.'
Edgar said, 'Shark, I have to find you a doctor.'
McManus moaned again, and shook his head. 'Where do you think you're going to find a doctor — out there? I know you, Paston — you're going to go — straight to the cops — and tell them it was me.'
'Shark, you'll die!'
'What the fuck — do you care? I used you — you used me — and your family got wasted.'
Edgar stood straight again.
'I still think I ought to try and find you a doctor. There have to be doctors who wouldn't ask questions.'
McManus almost laughed. But his laughter turned to coughing, and his coughing became gasps of pain.
'Paston — you're such a stupid shit!'
'Don't say that, Shark.'
'Aah… why should you care?' whispered McManus.
Edgar clenched and unclenched his fists. He seemed to be trying to say something that wouldn't quite form itself into coherent words. He wiped his perspiring forehead with his shirt-sleeve, and then he said, 'Shark — '
McManus was moaning. Edgar knelt down beside him, as close as he could, and took his hand.
'Shark, I do care.'
Shark's breath smelled bad, and his face, in the gloomy darkness of the office, looked like a white wax death-mask.
'Shark, I don't want you to die.'
Shark slowly moved his head from side to side.
'Thass… bullshit.'
Edgar Paston leaned over the dying boy and held his face in his hands. Shark's eyes were almost closed, and he was breathing thickly and slowly through his parted lips.
'Shark, listen, I have to tell you this. Please, listen, will you? I have to tell you.'
McManus opened his eyes a little wider and stared at Edgar as if he had never seen him before in his whole life.
'I don't suppose you'll understand,' said Edgar. 'But I have to tell you anyway. I know Tammy and the kids were killed, but you have to believe that I don't blame you. You were trying to help us, Shark, I know that. It was the cops who killed them. You have to understand that I don't blame you.'
The office was so dark that it was impossible to tell if Shark McManus was listening or not. He quivered from time to time, and whimpered, but he didn't answer.
Edgar Paston was crying now. 'Shark,' he said, 'I got it all wrong. I didn't understand. Don't you see? I got it all wrong because I was dead and you were alive. I didn't recognize you for what you really were. Shark, you've got your youth. Look at me. How old do you think I am? Shark, I've never had a youth! It was school, and then it was college, and then it was Tammy and the kids and work. Christ, Shark, you've got freedom and love and confidence and everything, and all I've got is a useless dreary stupid supermarket!
Shark McManus, after a few moments, seemed to smile. He managed to raise one limp hand and touch Edgar's tears.
'Paston,' he croaked. 'You're such a stupid shit.'
'For Christ's sake, don't say that.'
'I have to say it, man. It's true.'
Edgar Paston sat up. His voice was unnaturally high, and in an odd way he was almost hysterical.
'God!' he shrieked. 'Can't you see how much I envy you?'
McManus was in less pain now. He gave a few breathy chuckles, and rolled his head to one side.
'Paston,' he whispered. 'I don't want to be envied by you. I think I'd prefer to die.'
Edgar got to his feet, and automatically brushed the dust from the knees of his pants.
'Well, that's too bad,' he said impatiently. 'That's just too bad because I'm going to go right out there and find you a doctor. You're going to get well again and then we'll see. Give me the gun.'
'Paston,' said Shark, 'you're out of your head. You can't go out there.'
'Give me the gun, Shark.'
Edgar bent over and caught hold of McManus' wrist. Shark was too weak to resist him, and he gave up the.38 without a struggle.
'Okay now,' said Edgar, forcefully. 'I'm going out there and I'm going to find you a doctor. Give me an hour. If I'm not back after that time — well… '
'Can I die then?' asked Shark McManus. 'Am I allowed to?'
Edgar leaned over and patted him on the cheek.
'You are not to die,' he said tenderly.
Shark nodded. 'Okay, then. I won't.'
Edgar took the gun and left the office. He walked along the landing to the concrete staircase that led down to the street. As he reached the top step, he heard an unexpected scuffling noise, and he paused. He peered into the darkness, and he could have sworn that he saw something moving. He wished he had a torch.
Feeling his way down step by step, with his hand against the rough concrete wall, he came to the next turn in the stairs. He heard the noise again. There was a high-pitched squeaking, and the patter of feet.
'Rats,' he said to himself. 'Oh, Jesus!'
He descended the next few stairs cautiously. The rats scuttled down ahead of him, and he could see their eyes reflecting the dim light from the open street door. He managed to reach the sidewalk, kicking a couple of rats aside, and it was only then that he realized how many there were. The office building was teeming with rats, and so were the streets. Disturbed by the chaotic violence and looting, frightened by fires, aroused by the smell of dead bodies, they were rising from the sewers and electrical conduits of Manhattan in a gray tide.
Edgar ran across Third Avenue and turned down 52nd Street. Now he was out in the open, his confidence was shaken. It was menacing and strange, and the fires that burned through the drizzling rain cast enormous shadows. He had no idea where he could find a doctor, and he peered hopelessly at all the signs and nameplates he saw.
From Third Avenue, he reached Lexington Avenue. Uptown, he could see immense fires blazing. Whole blocks were alight. Downtown, it was all darkness and savagery. He crossed the street and walked quickly towards Park Avenue, panting hard and clutching his pistol tight.
He didn't see them until he had turned the corner. There were eight or nine of them — marauding black teenagers with clubs and knives and razors. They had raided three hotel bars on the East Side, and they were fiercely drunk. The day before, white hoodlums had come up to Harlem and thrown gasoline bombs in their neighborhood stores and their houses, and they were out to fix honkies and nothing else.
Edgar raised the.38.
'Don't you come a step nearer, or I'll shoot!'
The black kids jeered and laughed. Edgar, holding the pistol in both hands, aimed directly at a silhouetted head.
It went through his mind like an action replay. The supermarket doorway. The laughter in the car park. The shot. One of the kids fell to the ground, without a sound. The rest of them scattered. 'He's dead all right. I got him in the head.'
And while his finger froze on the trigger, a tall black boy in green jeans ducked under his line of fire and stabbed him straight in the face with a broken gin bottle. The glass sliced into his cheeks and mouth, and he dropped the gun on to the sidewalk in a slow-motion twist of agony.
They cut his face up first. He felt knives in his eyes. Then one of them grappled his wet, petrified tongue, and they sliced it off with a razor. The last thing he felt before he died, in a hideous burst of agony, was the broken bottle they forced, laughing, into his rectum.
Shark McManus died that night, too. As he lay on the floor of the office, helpless and weak and soaked in diarrhoea, the rats came scampering in. He was so close to death that he scarcely felt them running over him, and
