Superman when one of the smaller boys spots him and yells, and Superman glances over his shoulder and takes off, the other boys scattering in his slipstream. They head in different directions, apparently a standard drill, but Rafferty stays behind Superman, watches the long hair flowing in the sun as the boy lopes down the sidewalk, easily, effortlessly out-pacing him.
He wills his legs to pump faster, feeling Doughnut's cigarettes clawing at his throat. Chain-link blurs past. Superman takes the right that Rafferty's cab took, glancing back, running straight into the traffic. Rafferty follows, already gasping with the effort, as cars swerve to avoid him, their brakes a high screech like a diamond on glass.
A soi opens up on the left, and Superman streaks into it, lengthening his stride as though shifting gears, and Rafferty knows he will never catch the boy. He thinks for a despairing instant about giving up, but the boy leaps onto the curb and catches his foot, staggering for a moment, and Rafferty closes the gap by a few yards before the running boy gets his feet under him again. A shot of hope courses through Rafferty's veins, red and hot. He finds speed he didn't know he had.
Then he has to negotiate the curb himself, and he looks down to keep from stumbling, and when he looks up, the boy is gone.
He slows, irresolute, scanning the street. Two turned heads, adults, form a kind of wake that tells him which direction the boy took, and for the second time in a few days, Rafferty runs into an underground garage.
And thinks instantly, This is a mistake.
He hears feet scuffing behind him, five or six people by the sound of it, and he runs farther into the gloom of the garage, putting distance between him and them, trying to see Superman. The light coming through the door behind him dims and then brightens again, and he looks over his shoulder to see eight or ten children, none of them any older than Superman, crowding through it and separating into two groups. There are already four others, the first feet he heard, circling off to his right. He thinks, Coyotes.
'Boo!'
No answer, but something strikes his shoulder, sharp as a knife, and a stone clatters onto the concrete at his feet. Another missile whistles past his head, a chunk of cement as big as a child's fist, and bangs into the door of a car. Then an impact on his right elbow, and his arm goes numb. More cement.
He calls the boy's name again. Knowing it will do no good, knowing the boy will not answer. Knowing he has to get out of the garage. He turns to see more than a dozen of them, all small, between him and the door. Individually they would be harmless. He starts toward them, thinking he can break through the line, and they charge.
They swarm over him, a storm of hands and feet, knees and elbows, climbing him, hitting him high and low, taking him to his knees. A small hand comes up with a stone in it and slams it down across his cheekbone with an impact that ignites a sudden flare of red light, blossoming and vanishing like a pound of flash paper. For a blind moment, he sees nothing, feels the hands tearing at him, feels the bright radiating pain of a bite on his upper arm, and then something hammers his shoulder, high up, where the muscle is still sore from the fight in the soi, and he manages somehow to get a leg under him. Nails rake his face, aiming for the eyes. Kicks rain on his ankles and shins. He tries with all his strength to shake the children off, a bear besieged by a pack of dogs, and the back of a hand swipes his mouth and skids off wet skin. He is bleeding.
Fierce gasps as they jockey for position, the smell of dirt and sweat, kicks and blows drumming on his back and thighs, a hand grabbing at his hair. Another stone, in the small of the back this time, just missing the spine, and Rafferty strikes out for the first time with all the force he can command and connects with something solid, hears the high cry of a child, and his assailants retreat just enough to give him room. He gets his numbed hand down to his waist and brings it up with the automatic in it. He knows he cannot use it, and he hopes they don't know it, too.
He is on his knees. The children take a step away, ringing him, two deep. He can hear their panting, smell their breath. Their eyes are on the gun, but he cannot cover them all at once even if he could bring himself to fire, and again something slams into his back, savagely enough to knock the breath out of him. Then again, in a different place, but still only inches from the spine.
A shouted word, and the blows stop. He turns slowly, keeping the gun close and low, and sees Superman emerging from between two cars. The boy walks toward them deliberately, his eyes narrow, fixed on Rafferty's. Rafferty tries to say something and fails.
The children part to let Superman through. He looks down at Rafferty, who is still kneeling, and extends a hand. There is only one thing Rafferty can do to demonstrate faith.
He hands the boy the gun.
Superman hefts it, as though considering its weight.
'Let me explain,' Rafferty says. A rock grazes his ear, and then there are children climbing his back, beating at him, and he goes down beneath them. The world is a concrete floor and a crowd of dirty shoes. Pain ignites along his spine.
The shot almost blows out his eardrums.
The children back off, and Rafferty looks up to see Superman brandishing the gun, aiming it in the general direction of the kids. 'Leave him alone,' the boy says.
The gun clatters to the floor in front of Rafferty's face. The clip lands next to it.
'You can have it back now,' Superman says with contempt, and the children turn and walk away. Sauntering, not running. At the door to the garage, the boy turns to look at him. 'I'll be back,' he says. 'For Miaow.' Then they are gone.
Rafferty is still for a long while. Getting to his feet requires a set of careful stages, moving one thing at a time. It seems to take an eternity to limp blinking into the bright day. The children are gone. He mops the blood from his face and flags a taxi, bleeding, stinking with fear, and aching in every joint. He ignores the driver's eyes in the mirror. When the elevator doors open on his floor, he has to lean against the hallway wall for another long moment before he can force himself to cross the hall and open the door of his apartment, where he finds himself looking into the bottomless eyes of Madame Wing.
42
Toadface and Skeletor flank her wheelchair like a pair of mismatched tutelary figures guarding a throne. Madame Wing raises her chin.
'You stink,' Madame Wing says.
'Yeah, but I can take a shower,' Rafferty replies shakily. 'What are your options?'
She perches in the chair, more batlike than ever, sharp knees drawn up to her chest. The inevitable blanket covers her legs, but her feet protrude from the bottom edge. She has prehensile feet-long, thin toes with narrow, yellowish nails that extend far enough to curl downward, long enough to break if she had to walk. They are the ugliest feet Rafferty has ever seen. It gives him a cold twinge of comfort that she has had to live with such hideous feet.
Skeletor-Nick-leaves her side to circle him, keeping his distance, and shuts the door. He positions himself with his back to it.
Rafferty leans against the wall, his joints too loose and his bones too heavy, his body too big and bulky to move. Pain radiates out from a dozen places where he was hit. 'This isn't exactly what I had in mind,' he says.
'Change of plans,' says Toadface.
'So I see.' Rafferty draws a deep breath and blows it out. 'How you doing, you merciless old bitch?' he asks Madame Wing.
She knocks the insult away with a knot of knuckles. 'Where is the man who took my money?'
'You'll never know.' He can't tell the truth. He knows she can reach Chouk in jail, as easily as stretching out a hand and slapping him.
'Oh,' she says comfortably, 'I think I will.'
