Koko

The policeman he had stabbed sat down heavily on the bricks, his face stunned and empty. Murphy exploded into motion, sending four uniformed policemen after Dengler, then getting the wounded officer carried into the ambulance. He took a last, infuriated look around the courtyard and then ran out through the arch.

“I can wait,” Michael said when one of the policemen tried to push him toward the arch and the ambulance bay. “I have to see Underhill.”

The policeman looked at him in confusion.

“For God’s sake, get him out of the basement,” Poole said.

“Michael,” Maggie pleaded, “you have to get to the hospital. I’ll come with you.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Poole said. “I can’t go until I see what happened to Tim.”

Tim was dead, though. Koko had silently murdered him and taken his coat and hat and left the basement room in disguise.

“Oh, no,” Maggie said. She made to run for the tenement door, but first Poole took her arm, and then Dalton restrained her.

Poole said, “Get down there, Dalton. Let go of my girlfriend and go downstairs and see if you can help Tim, or I’ll pound the living shit out of you.” His side flamed and pulsed. From out on the street came shouts and the sound of running footsteps.

Dalton turned slowly toward the arch, then changed his mind and moved toward the tenement’s entrance. “Johnson, let’s see what’s taking them so long.” One of the policemen trotted after him. Poole heard them clattering down the steps. “I mean that sincerely,” he said. “I’ll pound … the living shit …”

Ellen and Conor moved across the courtyard toward Poole and Maggie.

“He got away, Mikey,” Conor said in a voice full of disbelief.

“They’ll get him. He can’t be that good.”

“I’m sorry, Mikey.”

“You were great, Conor. You were better than the rest of us.”

Conor shook his head. “Tim didn’t make any noise. I don’t—I think—”

Poole nodded. He did not want to say it either.

“He cut you bad?”

“Not too bad,” Poole said. “But I think I’ll sit down.” He put his back against the tenement wall and slid down onto the bricks, with Maggie holding one elbow and Conor the other. When he got down he felt very hot so he tried to take off his coat, but that made his side scream again. He heard himself make a noise.

Maggie knelt down beside him and took his hand.

“Just a twinge. A little mild shock too.”

She squeezed his hand.

“I’m okay, Maggie. Just a little hot.” He leaned forward, and she helped slide his coat off his shoulders. “Looks a lot worse than it is,” Poole said. “That cop was hurt bad, though.” He looked around for the policeman Koko had knifed. “Where is he?”

“They took him away a long time ago.”

“Could he walk?”

“He was on a stretcher,” Maggie said. “Do you want to go to the ambulance now? There’s another one out there.”

Then they both heard the heavy tramp of boots on the staircase.

A moment later two of the officers carried Harry Beevers out of the tenement. He had a big white cloth taped to the side of his head, and he looked like the victim of a savage street fight. Unable to stand by himself, Beevers wobbled between two policemen. “Where’d he go?” Beevers asked in a crushed, painful voice. “Where is that asshole?”

Poole assumed that he meant Koko, and almost smiled—he had a right to ask that question.

But Beevers’ intense unhappy eyes found Poole, and instantly filled with bitterness. “Asshole,” Beevers said. “You fucked everything up! What do you think you were trying to do down there? Get everybody killed?” Unbelievably, he tried to fight free of the policemen and come toward Poole. “What makes you think you can blame everything on me? You fucked up, Poole! You fucked up bad! I almost had him, and you let him get away!”

Poole stopped paying attention to Beevers’ ranting. In the entrance to the tenement appeared Dalton and a tall, burly black policeman holding Tim Underhill between them. Tim’s face was tinged with blue, and his teeth chattered. The side of his sweater had been cut open, and a large quantity of blood had stained his entire left side —like Michael, at first glance he looked as though someone had tried to cut him in half. “Well, Michael,” Tim said while they carried him through the door.

“Well, Timothy,” Poole said. “Why didn’t you say something down there, when Dengler was pulling your clothes off?”

“Set me down next to Poole,” Underhill said, and Dalton and the other policeman helped him across the courtyard and lowered him gently onto the bricks. Another policeman to whom Dalton had signaled came rushing in from the street with a blanket, which he wrapped around Underhill’s shoulders.

“He tied something around my mouth,” said Underhill. “I think it was Beevers’ shirt. Was good old Harry wearing a shirt when he came out?”

“Couldn’t say.”

Lieutenant Murphy burst in through the Elizabeth Street arch, and both men looked up at him. His face was still purple, but as much with exertion as rage—it was just one of those Irish faces, Poole saw. By the time Murphy was sixty, his face would be that color all the time. When the detective saw Poole and Underhill leaning against the tenement wall with their legs out before them, he closed his eyes and his mouth became a taut, lipless line. He said, “Do you suppose you could manage to get another ambulance for these two idiots? This isn’t a convalescent hospital.”

“Dr. Poole wouldn’t leave until Mr. Underhill came out,” Dalton said, “and when Beevers got into the ambulance he threatened to sue everybody in sight unless they took him immediately. So—”

Murphy looked at him.

“Sir,” Dalton said, and went out through the arch.

“Did you get him?” Poole asked.

Murphy ignored the question and walked across the courtyard to lean into the tenement as if he thought that someone else might be down there. Then he looked down into the window well. “Bag that knife,” he said to one of the uniformed policemen.

“Did you?”

Murphy continued to ignore him.

A few seconds later they heard the wailing of an approaching ambulance draw closer and closer until it came up alongside the tenement and turned off its siren.

Dalton came back through the arch and asked them if they wanted stretchers.

“No,” Poole said.

“Don’t we?” Underhill asked. “Are stretchers effete these days?”

“What happened to the policeman Dengler stabbed?” Poole asked. Dalton and the black officer were gently getting him up on his feet, and Maggie fussed around them, patting and touching.

“He died on the way to the hospital,” Murphy said. “I just heard.”

“I’m sorry,” Poole said.

“Why? You didn’t stab him, did you?” Murphy’s face was blazing again, and he strode across the bricks to stand before Poole. “We missed your friend Dengler.” His eyebrows nearly met at the boundary of a deep, angry- looking vertical crease in his forehead. “He dumped the hat and coat on the corner and took off down Mott Street like a rabbit. We think he ducked into a building somewhere. We’ll get him, Poole. Don’t worry about that. He’s not going to get very far.” Murphy turned away, clamping and unclamping his jaws. “I’ll see you and your buddy in the hospital.”

“I’m sorry that one of your men died, not because I had anything to do with it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Murphy said, turning away to precede them through the arch.

“Some people just don’t understand sympathy,” Underhill said to Poole as they were being taken toward the waiting ambulance.