tramping the streets, and he needed directions, so he persisted. 'I just need to know where the station house is.'
'I won't tell you again, shitbrain.'
Luke was annoyed. Who did he think he was? 'I asked you a polite question, Mister,' he snapped.
The cop moved surprisingly fast for a heavy man. He grabbed Luke by the lapels of his ragged coat and shoved him through the gap in the sheeting. Luke staggered and fell on a patch of rough concrete, hurting his arm.
To his surprise he was not alone. Just inside the lot was a young woman. She had dyed blonde hair and heavy make-up, and she wore a long coat open over a loose dress. She had high-heeled evening shoes and torn stockings. She was pulling up her panties. Luke realized she was a prostitute who had just serviced the patrolman.
The cop came through the gap and kicked Luke in the stomach.
He heard the whore say: 'For Christ's sake, Sid, what did he do, spit on the sidewalk? Leave the poor bum alone!'
'Fucker has to learn some respect,' the cop said thickly.
Out of the corner of his eye, Luke saw him draw his nightstick and raise it. As the blow came down, Luke rolled to one side. He was not quite fast enough, and the end of the stick glanced off his left shoulder, numbing his arm momentarily. The cop raised the nightstick again.
A circuit closed in Luke's brain.
Instead of rolling away, he threw himself towards the cop. The man's forward momentum brought him crashing to the ground, and he dropped the nightstick. Luke sprang up nimbly. As the cop got up, Luke stepped close to him, waltzing inside his reach so that the man could not punch him. He grabbed the lapels of the uniform coat, pulled the man forward with a sharp jerk, and butted him in the face. There was a snapping sound as the cop's nose broke. The man roared with pain.
Luke released his grip on the lapels, pirouetted on one foot, and kicked the man in the side of the knee.
His battered shoes were not rigid enough to break bones, but the knee has little resistance to a blow from the side, and the cop fell.
A part of Luke's mind wondered where the hell he had learned to fight like this.
The cop was bleeding from the nose and mouth, but he raised himself on his left elbow and drew his gun with his right hand.
Before it was out of the holster, Luke was on him. Grabbing the man's right forearm, he banged the hand on the concrete once, very hard. The gun immediately fell from the cop's grasp. Then Luke pulled the cop upright and twisted his arm so that he rolled onto his front. Bending the arm up behind the man's back, Luke dropped, driving both knees into the small of the cop's back, knocking the breath out of his lungs. Finally, he took the cop's forefinger and bent it all the way back.
The cop screamed. Luke bent the finger farther. He heard it snap, and the cop fainted.
'You won't beat up any more bums for a while,' Luke said. 'Shitbrain.'
He stood up. He picked up the gun, ejected all the shells, and threw them across the lot The whore was staring at him. 'Who the fuck are you, Elliott Ness?' she said.
Luke looked back at her. She was thin, and under the make-up her complexion was bad. 'I don't know who I am,' he told her.
'Well, you ain't no bum, that's for sure,' she said. 'I never saw an alky that could punch out a big fat prick like Sidney here.'
'That's what I've been thinking.'
'We better get out of here,' she said. 'He's going to be mad when he comes round.'
Luke nodded. He was not afraid of Sidney, mad or otherwise, but before long there would be more cops on the scene, and he needed to be elsewhere. He stepped through the gap in the fence on to the street and walked away quickly.
The woman followed him, stiletto heels clicking on the sidewalk. He slowed his pace to let her catch up, feeling a kind of camaraderie with her. They had both been abused by Sidney the patrolman.
'It was kind of nice to see Sidney come up against someone he couldn't push around,' she said. 'I guess I owe you.'
'Not at all.'
'Well, next time you're feeling horny, it's on the house.'
Luke tried not to show his revulsion. 'What's your name?'
'Dee-Dee.'
He raised an eyebrow at her.
'Well, Doris Dobbs, really,' she admitted. 'But what kind of name is that for a good-time girl?'
'I'm Luke. I don't know my surname. I've lost my memory.'
'Wow. That must make you feel, like ... strange.'
'Disoriented.'
Yeah,' she said. 'That's the word was on the tip of my tongue.'
He glanced at her. There was a wry grin on her face. He realized she was making fun of him, and he liked her for it 'It's not just that I don't know my name and address,' he explained. 'I don't even know what kind of person I am.'
'What do you mean?'
'I wonder if I'm honest?' Maybe it was foolish, he thought, to pour put his heart to a whore on the street, but he had no one else. 'Am I a loyal husband and a loving father and a reliable workmate? Or am I some kind of gangster? I hate not knowing.'
'Honey, if that's what's bothering you, I know what kind of guy you are already. A gangster would be thinking am I rich, do I slay the broads, are people scared of me?'
That was a point Luke nodded. But he was not satisfied. 'It's one thing to want to be a good person -but maybe I don't live up to what I believe in.'
'Welcome to the human race, sweetheart,' she said. 'We all feel that way.' She stopped at a doorway. 'It's been a long night This is where I get off the train.'
'So long.'
She hesitated. 'Want some advice?'
'Sure.'
'If you want people to stop treating you like a piece of shit, you better smarten yourself up. Have a shave, comb your hair, find yourself a coat that doesn't look like you stole it off a carthorse.'
Luke realized she was right No one would take any notice of him, let alone help him discover his identity, while he looked like a crazy person. 'I guess you're right,' he said. 'Thanks.' He turned away.
She called after him: 'And get a hat!'
He touched his head, then looked around. He was the only person on the street, male or female, without a hat. But how could a bum get a new suit of clothes? The handful of change in his pocket would not buy much.
The solution came fully formed into his head. Either it was an easy question, or he had been in this situation before. He would go to a train station. A station -was generally full of people carrying complete changes of clothing, together with shaving tackle and other toiletries, all neatly packed in suitcases.
He went to the next corner and checked his location. He was on A Street and Seventh. On leaving Union Station early this morning, he had noticed that it was near the corner of F and Second.
He headed that way.
.
10 A. M.
The first stage of the missile is attached to the second by explosive bolts wrapped around with coil springs. When the booster is burned out, the bolts will detonate and the springs push the redundant first stage away.
The Georgetown Mind Hospital was a red-brick Victorian mansion with a flat-roofed modern extension at the back. Billie Josephson parked her red Ford Thunderbird in the parking lot and hurried into the building.
She hated to arrive this late. It seemed disrespectful of her work and her colleagues. What they were doing was vitally important Slowly, painstakingly, they were learning to understand the mechanisms of the human mind. It
