The men’s room was at the rear of the deli, in a corridor that dead-ended at a door marked EMERGENCY EXIT. A sign warned that this was to be used only in an emergency, and advised that a bell would sound if anyone opened the door. Michael went into the men’s room, washed his hands at one of the sinks, tried the window over the toilet bowl, discovered it was painted shut, and then went out into the corridor again.
The sign was still there on the door.
A push bar was set on the door about waist-high.
Michael read the sign yet another time.
Then he shoved out at the bar.
The door flew open.
Sergeant Mendelsohnn had told him that the war in Vietnam was merely a piss-ant war compared to the one in Korea, in which noble war he had been proud to serve because it had been a true test of manhood. In Nam, the way Charlie scared you shitless was he crept around the jungle in his black pajamas and you never saw him. It was a phantom army out there. That’s what was so terrifying. You imagined Charlie to be something worse than he really was. But in Korea … ah, Korea. Mendelsohnn waxed entirely ecstatic about Korea. In Korea, the Chinese lit up the whole battlefield at night! Could you imagine that? You were advancing in the dark and whappo, all of a sudden these floodlights would light up the whole place, it was like having your ass hanging on the washline in broad daylight.
And also in Korea—man, what a war that had been—there were Chinese cavalry charges! Could you imagine that? Cavalry charges! With bugles and gongs! Unlike the gooks in Nam, the ones in Korea made all the noise they possibly could. They terrified you with their noise. You were ready to die just from the noise alone.
Like now.
The minute Michael shoved open the door, the instant the door opened just the tiniest little crack, the bells went off. Not a bell, as had been promised on the warning sign, A Bell Will Sound. These were bells. Bells in the plural, bells in the multiple, bells that would have deafened the hunchback of Notre Dame, bells that would have sent the entire American Army in Korea fleeing in terror with or without bugles or horses or floodlights, bells that if Hitler had mounted them instead of whistles on his Stuka dive-bombers, there would now be his picture on American hundred-dollar bills.
Michael reeled back as if he’d been struck in the face with a hammer.
And then he remembered that when the going got tough the tough got going, and he pushed the door open wider and hurled himself out into the night, the cold air joining with the bells to assault his ears in fierce combination as he stepped onto and into the unshoveled snow behind the diner. The bells would not stop. Or perhaps they had stopped and he was now hearing only their echo. Perhaps—
And suddenly there were lights!
And horns!
The goddamn Chinese were coming!
This was Korea, and this was the test of his manhood!
Standing there trapped in the glaring lights, with the gongs still echoing in his ears and the horns blowing, Michael knew they would come riding out of the night on their Mongolian ponies and slash him to ribbons with their sabers. And then …
Oh Jesus …
The first Chinese soldier came out of the glare of the lights and moved toward him slowly as if in a dream, white snow underfoot, white covering the world, white and green and long black hair and …
“Michael!” she shouted.
“Connie!” he shouted back.
“This way! Quick!”
She grabbed his hand in hers, and together they crashed through the fans of brilliant illumination coming from the limo’s headlights. Snow thick underfoot.
Shoes sodden. Socks wet. They reached the car. She ran around to the driver’s side. He opened the door on the passenger side. No bells went off. The bells were still ringing in his head, though. He got in.
“You okay?” she asked. “I’ve been searching all over for you.”
“Yes,” he said.
Her voice reverberated inside his head.
He pulled the door shut. The good solid sound of a luxury car’s door settling snugly and securely into its frame. And then a small, expensive electric-lock click that miraculously cleared his ringing ears. Behind them, he heard someone shouting. He didn’t know who and he didn’t care why.
“Where to now?” Connie asked, and eased the limo into the night again.
St. Luke’s Place was a tree-shaded street with a public park on one side of it, and a row of brownstones on the other. It was exactly one block long, a narrow oasis between the wider thoroughfares that flanked it. At three in the morning, the only house with lights showing was in the middle of the block. Michael looked up at the third-floor window, located the name Wales in the directory set in a panel beside the door, rang the bell, identified himself as the man who’d telephoned not five minutes ago, and was immediately buzzed in.