Robert Tanenbaum - Resolved

That was wrong. Felix saw the gun in his hand and the flash and the crack of the bullet over his shoulder. The kid kept the gun pointed at Felix, but nothing happened. The kid looked at the gun, puzzled. A jam. He yanked at the slide. Felix started to move.

In the prison yard there had been any number of debates about what to do if someone was trying to kill you. Jimmy Hoffa was often quoted- charge a gun, flee a knife- after which someone would always say, "Yeah, and look where he is now." But Felix had always thought that was good advice, if you couldn't instantly duck behind cover and get to a car. The thing was, you couldn't outrun a bullet, and you had to figure that a target closing on the shooter would do a lot more to mess up his aim than one running away, where the guy could get into position and squeeze off shot after shot. And if you did have to take a bullet, it was better to be on top of the guy, rather than ten feet away, where he could fill you with holes at his leisure and you couldn't do shit back to him. If the guy was a pro, you were probably dead anyway, but you had to figure a small chance was better than no chance at all. This kid was definitely not a pro.

The Arab kid cleared his jam and brought his pistol up, just a little too late. Felix was on him, knocking his gun arm aside with his left and going in low with the knife. The kid screamed and fell off the blade onto his knees, trying to hold his belly closed and mumbling something in Arabic. Felix stepped behind him quickly and slashed his throat.

Lights flicked on in the windows of the apartment across the street. A car stopped on the avenue and a man stepped onto the curb. Felix heard a woman scream and he saw the man on the curb take a cell phone out of his pocket. Felix knew what number he was dialing. There was, naturally, nothing but newspapers in the shopping bag. He ran for the shadows, toward the river.

At Eleventh, he passed a storefront belonging to a glass company and examined himself in a mirror hanging there. He had been wearing black clothes, so that was all right if he got rid of them soon, but there was blood on his hands and face. He cleaned the knife handle and dropped the knife into a sewer, went into a dark saloon on Twelfth and washed his hands and face, then headed back to his hotel.

There were two police cars parked in front of the hotel, and several uniformed officers on the pavement at the main entrance. Felix was stunned. How did they know? Or maybe it had nothing to do with him, maybe he could just breeze by. No, too dangerous. No one looked at your face in a big commercial hotel, but if for some reason they had already associated him with that dead Arab, like maybe he had a note-"Meet Felix Tighe"- in his pocket, that could trigger this. No, that was crazy, the Arabs didn't know he was there. Or maybe they did. Maybe Rashid had dropped a dime on him, when the kid hadn't shot him. But no, that would mean the Arab in Auburn would be screwed…

No, fuck the Arabs, the Arabs couldn't have… but maybe some clerk had recognized him from the pictures they had in all the papers, on the TV, that Most Wanted program, he'd just made that this week. In any case, he knew he was sweating bullets, and he knew that cops could smell it on you, the fear, and he couldn't do it, he couldn't stand to bluff his way past. He couldn't think anymore, and he was getting close, he couldn't just spin around and run, that would have them on him in a second.

So he ducked into a steak house, and asked the cashier where Radio City was and then stepped out in the opposite direction from the hotel entrance. He walked over to Times Square, bought a nylon duffel, an eight-inch hunting knife, and a change of clothing: jeans, T-shirt, cheap sneakers, work gloves, a raincoat, and a wide-brimmed bush hat. He changed into these in the men's room of the clothing store, tossed the bloody clothes into a trash can, and headed west again. He couldn't take the chance of staying in a fleabag; that would be just where the cops were likely to look. He would have to drop out altogether, to go underground.

Fortunately, from his chasing after the Karp girl, he now knew something about the underground, about places cops hardly ever went. As he walked again toward the Hudson, he was conscious of a feeling he had not had in a while, the feeling of eyes upon him, rational paranoia. He found he didn't like it. He had loved being dead, and now his face was all over town. He was probably the most wanted man in New York at the moment. How to render himself invisible again? As long as his face was unknown, he'd been invisible as a uniformed workingman, and invisible in tourist gear. That wouldn't work anymore. He had to disappear, he had to become someone else, someone everyone saw but didn't look at. His memory threw up a few candidates, and one in particular, who had the added advantage of having some kind of screwy relationship with Lucy Karp.

Felix dry-swallowed another Dexedrine capsule to keep his brain working in the necessary high gear. The new plan gelled in his mind, giving him a little jolt of satisfaction. He was starting to feel on top of things once more. This was his natural state of mind, one entirely unaffected by his recent history, which was that aside from the few murders he had been able to accomplish, every plan he had hatched since leaving prison had ended in failure. The constant inner voice was crooning to him now, telling him he was the king of the world, untouchable, a little god. He turned south on Ninth, and headed toward the Penn Station area and Holy Redeemer.

"How did it go?" Marlene asked. It was after midnight, Marlene was watching celebrities make chitchat on the TV, and Karp had just walked in, looking worn and disgusted.

"That is a piece of work, little Karen," he said, sitting down on the couch. "You were right, though. She doesn't want to go to jail. In fact, that was actually the first thing she said to me when I sat down. No 'hello, how are you, glad to meet you,' just 'I am not going to jail.' "

"It's true, no one has manners these days," she said, as he kicked off his shoes and plopped down with a sigh on the couch next to her. She muted the chatter on the set. "So, is she?"

"Probably not, since she's the only conspirator who knows the whole story. Fong's guy, whoever he is, acted as a cutout between Cherry and Karen. You know what the chances of us finding an anonymous Chinese gentleman who does not want to be found are. Fong we have nothing on without Karen, and nothing on Karen without either Fong or Palmisano. Conceivably we could have assembled a circumstantial case against the bunch of them using Cherry's testimony, but you messed up the possibility of using the girl as a witness."

"And if I hadn't muscled her, we wouldn't know any of this."

"Wrong, Marlene. You could've told me your suspicions, we could've brought the girl in, had a talk with her, with her parent along, as required by law. We could have read her the perjury statute, and the penalties therein, and she would've cracked."

"You're sure of that."

"Dear, the day I can't break a lying fifteen-year-old girl is the day I hang it up. And with that, we could've raided Fong, and audited him, and traced the payoff to Cherry, and maybe even found the guy who picked up the material from her. And then we would've had Karen Agnelli in a bind. As it is, we have to give a walk to the chief conspirator to nail the peripheral ones, which is not how it's supposed to work. Why the hell did you do it?"

She stared at the pretty people on the screen. They seemed to be having a good time, even without sound. What was the answer to her husband's perfectly legitimate question? She didn't know. It had something to do with velocity. She'd taken on Paul Agnelli's problem and she didn't want it anymore. She wanted to go away again.