they wouldn't want to make a scene. Better to let Vincent get out of town and track him later.
Vincent neared the end of the alley, the traffic thick on the street in front of him. Pedestrians clogged the sidewalks, hustling off to make the nine o’clock ritual. He felt better already, though his pulse was playing “The War Of 1812” in his temples. Safety in numbers, and nowhere were numbers more numerous than on a Manhattan street.
He attempted to whistle, but his throat was too dry. He put on his indifferent grimace, the mask that New York wore, and slouched into the crowd. He fell in behind a woman walking her poodle. He nearly stepped on the poodle when it stopped to relieve itself. The woman pretended not to notice either Vincent or the steaming brown pile on the concrete.
Vincent reached inside his jacket, to the inner pocket. He stopped. The ticket was gone.
Someone had taken his papers. The social security card, the Indiana driver's license, the credit card made out to 'Robert Wells,' even a blood donor card. All the FBI's clever forgeries, along with four more bills, were now in the hands of some idiot mugger. Or mugger of idiots, whichever way you wanted to look at it.
Vincent had been so wrapped up in worrying about Joey Scattione that he hadn't considered falling victim to a less ruthless and much more random predator. His predicament hit him like a wrong-way cab. If he were forced to be Vincent Hartbarger, he wouldn't last a half a day in this city. Not with Joey's people on the hunt. And Vincent Hartbarger at the moment was broke, no way out, no standby plane ticket, no bulletproof vest. No gun.
'Out of the way, dude,' growled a kid with a skateboard under his arm. The kid shoved past Vincent, greasy black hair shining in the lights from a nearby shop window. Vincent moved against the glass, out of the main crush of foot traffic. He glanced at the passing faces, on the lookout for Joey's people.
Calm down, take a breath. Think.
Thinking brought the headache roaring back. Goon must have used a tire iron.
He fumbled for a cigarette, then remembered that Robert Wells didn't smoke. But he wasn't Robert Wells anymore. He searched for the secret folds in his coat, the place where he'd kept his Vincent effects. Because he'd planned all along that, once he blew this town and shook the spooks, he'd return to being Vincent, at least until he could scrape together a new identity. He didn't have much faith in the Feds and their 'witless protection program.'
But the worse got worser. His fingers came away empty. The mugger had taken his Vincent stash, along with the extra fifty he'd tucked back for hard times. Vincent closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, inhaling car exhaust as if the carbon monoxide would dull his headache.
I'd rather be anywhere than right here, on Joey's turf, in Joey's town. Hell, I'd even take Muncie. At least in Muncie, the only thing I'd have to worry about would be dying of boredom. And I hear that takes YEARS…
Voices to his right pulled him back to the morning street. Two people were shouting, pointing into the shop window. In New York, two people talking on the street either meant a drug deal, a sex solicitation, or the beginning of a murder. But these seemed like ordinary folks, the kind who talked to windows instead of invisible demons.
Vincent looked into the storefront. It was a pawn shop, bars thick across the window, a bank of surveillance cameras eyeing the street like hookers on payday. A Sanyo television lit up the window, the flickering images reflected in the glass. It took Vincent a moment to register what he was seeing.
A shot of the East River, a harried-looking reporter trying vainly to control her hair in the breeze, a cutaway to emergency response and fire vehicles, then a wide shot of Kennedy Airport. Back to the river, a small orange speck in the water. Zoom in. A torn life jacket.
A computer graphic popped up in the corner of the screen, the station logo a leering eye. Underneath, in slanted red letters, 'Flight 317 Crash.'
Poor bastards, Vincent thought. Imagine what kind of headache you get from dropping a mile-and-a-half from the sky.
He was turning back to the street, his pity for the victims already fading, when the number '317' bounced back into his roaring head. He froze, got shoved by a balding man in a suit, yelled at by a package courier.
317. Hadn't that been his flight? The one that was supposed to whisk Robert Wells to a new life?
He went into the pawn shop. A bank of TVs filled one wall, half of them tuned to news coverage of the crash. The anchor had her hair in place now, must have snagged some hair spray during the cutaway. The computer graphic now read 'Live!' under the station logo, in those same blood-red letters.
'We're at the scene of the crash of NationAir Flight 317, which plummeted shortly after takeoff from Kennedy Airport this morning-'
'What a mess, huh?' said a voice behind Vincent. He thought at first it was one of Joey's boys. But it was the pawn shop proprietor, a small man with glasses and a scar across one cheek. His nose looked like an unsuccessful prizefighter's.
'Yu-yeah,' Vincent agreed.
'Took about a minute for it to hit the water,' the shop owner said, leaning over a glass case of watches. 'Just enough time for them to pray and crap their pants.'
The man starting laughing, the laugh spasmed into a coughing fit. The news anchor's voice fought with the racket of the man's lungs.
'— no survivors have been found. The Boeing 747 was reported to be carrying a full contingent of 346 passengers, according to NationAir records. F.A.A. authorities are arriving on the scene-'
'It was one of them Aye-rab bombs, I bet,' said the shopkeeper. 'Don't see why the rest of us got to suffer 'cause the kikes and the ragheads can't get along.'
'They said the plane was full,' Vincent said, half to himself.
'Yep. You know how they are these days. Wedge 'em in with a crowbar. They interviewed the man who was first in line to go standby. Everybody showed, so he never got on. He was thanking God seven ways to Sunday.'
No standby passengers. But what about the ticket belonging to Robert Wells? Someone must have used it. Someone Vincent stumbled toward the street, his head reeling.
'Hey, got a special today on handguns,' the shopkeeper called after him. 'No waiting.'
But Vincent was already out the door. He walked fast, fell into the New York rhythm, blind to everything.
Someone must have used his ticket. Who?
The mugger.
The mugger must have checked in with the ticket, became 'Robert Wells' himself, and grabbed a seat across the country. Maybe the mugger wanted out of this town so bad that he'd risk having the authorities waiting for him at LAX. And for his trouble, the idiot was probably now in a thousand pieces, feeding fish in Long Island Sound.
If so, the creep had gotten what he deserved. Vincent touched his sore head to remind himself that everybody had to go sometime. Everybody had to pay that one big debt. The trick was to put it off as long as possible.
As he turned the corner, another thought came to him. Unless the spooks had been watching, then they didn't know that Robert Wells a.k.a. Vincent never boarded the plane. They would get the list, see the name, go over the data on the terminal computer, and verify that indeed Robert Wells had met his end on Flight 317.
A perfect bow-tie on their witness protection program. Case closed. The Fed's star witness against Joey Scattione was now utterly and forever safe from the mobster's long reach. Even Scattione couldn't finger a man in the afterlife.
Vincent walked faster, excited, his pulse racing, red wires of pain shrieking through his temples. He realized that Scattione would also think him dead. Scattione was way sharper than the Feds, even though he'd been convicted on racketeering and drug charges. Thanks to Vincent, who'd been one of his best street lieutenants.
But Vincent knew a good deal when he saw one. When the net tightened and the Feds needed a pigeon, Vincent did even better than squawk: he'd sung like a deflowered canary. After, of course, he’d elicited a long sheet of promises, including permanent immunity and protection. And a new identity.
An identity that was dead.
What he needed right now was his old friend Sid.
Vincent turned into a bar, though it was scarcely ten o'clock. A man in drag who looked like he hadn't slept was slumped in one corner, holding a cigarette that was four inches of ash. Two cabbies were drinking off the effects of the third shift. The bartender kept his attention focused on the tiny black-and-white that hung in one corner. It was tuned to the same news coverage of the crash.
