And that P. T. Barnum had been right.
The neighborhood had been so tough that female officers demanded escorts to the dark, damp parking lot. There were more winos, hookers, and small-time thieves on the streets than cops.
But that was changing. Fifty-dollar-a-week flops were being transformed into fashionable loft condos for yuppies and dinks (double income, no kids), and word was, the city was going to sell the old brick pile to developers who, no doubt, were friends of the present mayor.
Morse pushed his chair farther back, almost colliding with the woman who had the cubicle next to his. He stood and, clutching the report, made his way to the captain's office across the room. Let the brass try to make sense of this one.
If Morse couldn't solve the problem, he could do the next best thing: kick it upstairs.
SEVENTEEN
University of Amsterdam
'I said, slide the envelope toward me,' Leather Jacket repeated.
Lang was now about 90 percent certain he and Louis were not supposed to leave this laboratory alive. The silencers, the fact that Leather Jacket had to have been told Lang was likely armed but made no effort to take his weapon-neither bode well.
He gave the envelope a halfhearted push a few inches.
'The envelope, Mr. Reilly.'
Leather Jacket's irritation was obvious.
Lang lifted the packet and flicked his wrist, sending the envelope spinning toward the door.
The two intruders' reflexively lifted their eyes and reached, if only for a split second.
Not much.
But all he had.
Lang slammed Louis under the adjacent counter as he rolled under the other, freeing his automatic.
A string of spitting sounds filled the room as splinters, glass, and cement flooring fragments flew like shrapnel.
Lang popped up on the far side of the counter and let loose a volley of his own. Leather Jacket cursed, spun, yanked the door open, and staggered out, blood flowing down his leg. He had dropped his pistol.
His companion stood against the wall as his finger slipped from his weapon. The man started to say something as a dark red stain spread across the front of his shirt as though the bladder of ink in an old-fashioned fountain pen had leaked.
His feet seemed to take forever to slide out from under him as he sat on the floor.
Lang was beside him before the wet breathing sound stopped. He kicked the gun out of reach before a hasty search of his. clothes revealed just what Lang had expected: nothing. No ID, no wallet, a total absence of anything by which he might be identified.
The trademark of a professional assassin.
The room stank of cordite and was hazy with burned gunpowder.
Louis crawled out from under his counter and wobbled on shaky knees. He looked at the dead man and quickly averted his eyes. Lang was certain the Belgian was going to throw up. Instead he stared at Lang with equal shock and horror, as if he were observing his boss sprouting a second head.
He muttered something in French, then, 'Monsieur Reilly, I…'
Then he lost it, the old Technicolor yawn.
A man stuck his head in the door and asked something in French.
Lang followed his bewildered gaze around the devastated laboratory, then to the still-heaving Louis. 'Sorry. I can't ever remember whether you can add acid to water. Or is it water to acid?'
The man left the door open. Lang could hear him shouting as he ran down the hall.
By this time Louis had recovered somewhat, although he still looked like he wouldn't be sitting down to a bowl of moules anytime soon.
'Louis,' Lang said evenly, 'listen closely. I'm going after the other guy. In a few minutes the police will be here.'
He nodded. At least he understood something.
Lang continued. 'You are to tell them he took me with him.'
He seemed to comprehend so far.
'Those men came in here and we jumped them, comprendez-vous pas?'
He didn't.
'It is very important that we say the same thing. We thought we were going to be shot and killed, so we attacked first. In the scuffle one of them got shot. The other made me go with him, used me as a shield.'
He might as well have been trying to explain algebra to Grumps.
He tried to keep the urgency out of his voice, although he could hear the pulsating sirens of approaching police cars.
'We had to get the guns, Louis, or we would be dead instead of this guy. You were very brave, Louis, attacking a man with a gun. The other man, the one who got away, used his gun to make me go with him.'
At last, comprehension.
At first the trail of blood drops was unmistakable.
On the street they were becoming farther apart, and the sunlight was fading. After two blocks the telltale splatter disappeared. The guy must have stopped to apply some sort of tourniquet-which meant he couldn't be far away on a gimpy leg.
Lang continued down the street, rewarded by the sight of a man with an obvious limp dodging in and out of the early evening stream of pedestrians.
Keeping back, Lang followed.
Lang was thankful that Amsterdam was less than automobile-friendly. He dodged several bicycles, a tram, and one or two cars. He cleared the street just in time to see his quarry cross a canal bridge.
On the other side the trees lining the waterway spread their limbs under streetlights, making moving specters on the mottled walkways. Street signs-Dude Spiegel, Wolvenstraat-meant nothing to Lang as he followed across another canal, the fleeing figure ahead of him making no effort to conceal his direction of retreat. He obviously thought Lang would have remained behind to interrogate his partner.
Even so, there was no point in being reckless. Lang ducked into a coffeehouse with a view of the length of the street. His first breath filled his nose with the musty smell of marijuana, maybe enough to leave him stoned if he kept breathing the air. There was a time in his college days when a free high would have been appealing, but not this evening.
Lang had chosen the ideal time to hide from sight. The man ahead looked over his shoulder and slowed slightly. Lang waited for him to disappear around the next corner before sprinting past the same intersection and to the next. Flattening himself against the cold brick of a canal house, Lang peered out. As anticipated, Leather Jacket had now slowed to a painful limp, more interested in what might be behind him than in front. As he passed, Lang drew back from the streetlights' warm glow.
Halfway down the walk beside the canal, the mart gave a final look over his shoulder and climbed down to one of the narrow boats tied bow and stern along the waterway. A moment later, lights appeared at a porthole.
Now what?
If there were some way to Capture Leather Jacket, there was little reason to think he would yield any more information than his confederate. Professional hit men weren't known to be loquacious.
Lang noted the name painted across the stern of the boat, Manna, and a registration number, and decided to wait.
An hour later no one had come or gone from the boat, but police sirens seemed to be crisscrossing the city. How long before someone became suspicious of his loitering and called the cops? If he wasn't going to get any
