‘No, everything’s fine,’ Fly said. Despite all the evidence of his senses, Freddy was uneasy. The shadow on the step, the wind in his eye, the very fact that Fly was here when he never came into the city on weekdays: it all added up to something he couldn’t quite catch hold of.
‘What you want?’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘Here I am, anyway,’ Fly said, stepping past Freddy into the foyer. ‘I thought you’d be pleased to see me.’
Freddy let the door swing closed, still wrestling with his thoughts. But they went from him the way they did in dreams. He couldn’t string Fly’s presence and his doubts together long enough to know what one had to do with the other.
‘I think I’ll take a look around,’ Fly was saying, heading towards the elevator. ‘Wait up! You can’t do that.’
‘What am I going to do? Set fire to the place?’
‘I said no!’ Freddy replied, and blurred vision notwithstanding, went after Fly, overtaking him to stand between his brother and the elevator. His motion dashed the tears from his eyes, and as he came to a halt he saw the visitor plainly.
‘You’re not Fly!’ he said.
He backed away towards the nook beside the elevator, where he kept his gun, but the stranger was too quick. He reached for Freddy, and with what seemed no more than a flick of his wrist pitched him across the foyer. Freddy let out a yell, but who was going to come and help? There was nobody to guard the guard. He was a dead man.
Across the street, sheltering as best he could from the blasts of wind down Park Avenue, Gentle - who’d returned to his station barely a minute before - caught sight of the doorman scrabbling on the foyer floor. He crossed the street, dodging the traffic, reaching the door in time to see a second figure stepping into the elevator. He slammed his fist on the door, yelling to stir the doorman from his stupor.
‘Let me in! For God’s sake! Let me in!’
Two floors above, Jude heard what she took to be a domestic argument, and not wanting somebody else’s marital strife to sour her fine mood, was crossing to turn up the soul song on the turntable when somebody knocked on the door.
‘Who’s there?’ she said.
The summons came again, not accompanied by any reply. She turned the volume down instead of up and went to the door, which she’d dutifully bolted and chained. But the wine in her system made her incautious; she fumbled with the chain, and was in the act of opening the door when doubt entered her head. Too late. The man on the other side took instant advantage. The door was slammed wide, and he came at her with the speed of the vehicle that should have killed him two nights before. There were only phantom traces of the lacerations that had made his face scarlet; and no hint in his motion of any bodily harm. He had healed miraculously. Only the expression bore an echo of that night. It was as pained and as lost - even now, as he came to kill her - as it had been when they’d faced each other in the street. His hands reached for her, silencing her scream behind his palm.
‘Please,’ he said.
If he was asking her to die quickly, he was out of luck. She raised her glass to break it against his face but he intercepted her, snatching it from her hand.
‘Judith!’ he said.
She stopped struggling at the sound of her name, and his hand dropped from her face.
‘How the fuck do you know who I am?’
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said. His voice was downy; his breath orange-scented. The perversest desire came into her head, and she cast it out instantly. This man had tried to kill her, and this talk now was just an attempt to quiet her till he tried again.
‘Get away from me.’
‘I have to tell you - ‘
He didn’t step away, nor did he finish. She glimpsed a movement behind him, and he saw her look, turning his head in time to meet a blow. He stumbled but didn’t fall, turning his motion to attack with balletic ease, and coming back at the other man with tremendous force. It wasn’t Freddy, she saw. It was Gentle, of all people. The assassin’s blow threw him back against the wall, hitting it so hard he brought books tumbling from the shelves, but before the assassin’s fingers found his throat he delivered a punch to the man’s belly that must have touched some tender place, because the assault ceased, and the attacker let him go, his eyes fixed for the first time on Gentle’s face.
The expression of pain in his face became something else entirely: in some part horror, in some part awe, but in the greatest part some sentiment for which she knew no word. Gasping for breath, Gentle registered little or none of this, but pushed himself up from the wall to re-launch his attack. The assassin was quick, however. He was at the door and out through it before Gentle could lay hands on him. Gentle took a moment to ask if Judith was all right - which she was - then raced in pursuit.
The snow had come again, its veil dropping between Gentle and Pie. The assassin was fast, despite the hurt done him, but Gentle was determined not to let the bastard slip. He chased Pie over Park Avenue, and West on 80th, his heels sliding on the sleet-slickened ground. Twice his quarry threw him backward glances, and on the second occasion seemed to slow his pace, as if he might stop and attempt a truce, but then thought better of it and put on an extra turn of speed. It carried him over Madison towards Central Park. If he reached its sanctuary, Gentle knew, he’d be gone. Throwing every last ounce of energy into the pursuit, he came within snatching distance. But even as he reached for the man he lost his footing. He fell headlong, his arms flailing, and struck the street hard enough to lose consciousness for a few seconds. When he opened his eyes, the taste of blood sharp in his mouth, he expected to see the assassin disappearing into the shadows of the park, but the bizarre Mr Pie was standing at the kerb looking back at him. He continued to watch as Gentle got up, his face betraying a mournful empathy with Gentle’s bruising. Before the chase could begin again he spoke, his voice as soft and melting as the sleet.
‘Don’t follow me,’ he said.
‘You leave her … the fuck … alone,’ Gentle gasped. knowing even as he spoke he had no way of enforcing this edict in his present state.
But the man’s reply was affirmation.
‘I will,’ he said. ‘But please … I beg you … forget you ever set eyes on me.’
As he spoke he began to take a backward step, and for an instant Gentle’s dizzied brain almost thought it possible the man would retreat into nothingness; be proved spirit rather than substance.
‘Who are you?’ he found himself asking.
‘Pie’oh’pah,’ the man returned, his voice perfectly matched to the soft expellations of those syllables.
‘But who?’
‘Nobody and nothing,’ came the second reply, accompanied by a backward step.
He took another and another, each pace putting further layers of sleet between them. Gentle began to follow, but the fall had left him aching in every joint, and he knew the chase was lost before he’d hobbled three yards. He pushed himself on, however, reaching one side of Fifth Avenue as Pie’oh’pah
