"Get… but…" He paused, nibbling his lip. The carton of ices in his hands felt suddenly very heavy. "But it's… it's
"It belongs to whoever's using it," Tommy said. "And we want to use it"
"Aw look, Tommy," Zip said, "what do you want bad blood for, huh? Can't we…?"
Tommy reached up suddenly, twisting his face into Papa's trouser leg, pulling him off balance, and dumping him into the street. Zip, his hands full of ices, his mind whirring with the new thoughts China had put there, stood by helplessly, wondering what to do now, wondering why…
"Blow," Phil said to him.
"Aw, come on, Phil, can't we…?"
"Li'1 Killer," Phil corrected.
"Sure, can't we…?"
He shoved out at Zip suddenly. Tommy, trained for the maneuver, stuck out his foot Zip tripped, staggered backward, the cups of ices leaving his hands and spattering over the street. He jumped to his feet instantly, his hand darting for his pocket. Nothing was in his mind right now but salvation. If China had said anything to him, he'd now forgotten it. All he knew was that he was being threatened by two Royal Guardians, that he was outnumbered and vulnerable.
As his hand closed on the switch knife in his pocket, he thought only
"Don't pull the blade, Zip," Tommy said gently.
Zip's eyes moved quickly to Tommy, saw that his hand was already in his pocket. They flicked to Phil who was ready to charge in on his flank. Undecided, he faced them. Elena, on the crate, began to laugh nervously. Tommy grinned and then picked up the laugh, and then Phil joined him, and their laughter was triumphant and, hearing the laughter, Zip began to tremble. He wanted to fight them, he wanted to destroy them, wanted to pull the blade and rip into them, show them who he was, show them who they were laughing at. But fear aawled in his belly like black worms, and he felt his fingers loosening their grip on the knife. In impotent rage, his eyes brimming with tears he did not wish to show, he whirled suddenly and kicked at one of the ices cups in the street.
And then he saw Hernandez on the fire escape.
Flat against the side of the building, edging silently past the first shattered window, and then the next, his gun in his hand, Hernandez hesitated for a moment, and then crouched beside the third window.
He brought up his revolver.
Zip understood what was happening in an instant.
Burning with shame and indignation, wanting to explode, wanting to show these rotten bastards they couldn't kick him around, wanting to shout, to rip, to gouge, to release the shame that growled inside him, wanting to show that he was Zip, Zip, ZIP!, he looked up at the first-floor windows and suddenly, without knowing why, he cupped his hands to his mouth.
When Hernandez heard the yell, he thought at first that his ears were deceiving him. His immediate reaction was to turn his head toward the street. And then he realized that Miranda, in the apartment, had whirled at the sound of the shouted words. And then he recognized the look in Miranda's eyes, and Hernandez tightened his finger on the trigger of the.38, and then he heard the explosions inside the apartment and then he was spinning backward and falling. He had been crouched outside the window, so he fell no more than three feet to the iron floor of the fire escape, but it seemed to him that he was falling through space for a very long time, and it seemed to him that he hit the iron slats with the force of a meteor slamming into the earth.
There were two bullets in his chest.
He had never been shot before, not when he'd been a Marine participating in the Iwo Jima landings, and not since he'd joined the police force. He had seen wounded men, a
