Dead Harvest

  Two more ambulances screeched to a stop beside the first. Stretchers were unloaded amidst a sea of shouted instructions. The whole place was swarming with people – staff, the wounded, a throng of onlookers, pressing close. Still, the cop held fast. I jumped as the double doors banged open beside me, the first of the stretchers rolling past, at the center of a medical maelstrom.

  Outside the doors, the crowd of onlookers pressed closer, eager to absorb every lurid detail. Over the din, I heard a shouted "Do something!" – and reluctantly, the cop abandoned his post. He herded the crowd backward, trying desperately to give the doctors room to work.

  That was as good a chance as I was going to get. I gripped tight my borrowed stretcher and pushed it through the double doors. Kate, strapped down atop it, didn't stir. There'd been a set of folded blankets stacked on the shelf beneath the woman's stretcher, and one of them now covered Kate to her chin. Her head I'd bandaged with supplies stolen from a nurse's treatment cart left unattended in the hallway. The effect was less professional than I'd intended. It wasn't going to stand up to any kind of scrutiny, but from a distance, it did the trick.

  The ER waiting room had become a triage center; dozens of people not injured enough to require an ambulance were being sorted through by doctors too hurried to spare a second glance at me. Stretcher after stretcher careened past me, headed toward the operating suites. As I pressed toward the entrance, two more ambulances arrived, and were then abandoned as their crews wheeled their respective payloads inside. In his hurry, one of the drivers left his ambulance running. I swear I could have kissed him.

  Though the sky was gray overhead, and the air was thick with exhaust, the cool morning breeze was like a balm to my frayed nerves. The sidewalk was cold and rough beneath my feet. The wheels of the stretcher folded upward as I shoved it into the empty, waiting ambulance.

  I slammed shut the rear door and headed for the cab. A hand grabbed my shoulder – not gently. I turned to find the cop, dark eyes glowering at me from beneath a furrowed brow.

  "Where you think you're going?" he asked. Skeptical, but not yet hostile. That was OK. Skeptical I could work with.

  "Patient transfer."

  "Where you taking her?" he asked.

  "Him," I replied. "Got a suite waiting at Beth Israel."

  "Where's your badge?"

  "Sorry?"

  "Your badge? You know staff's supposed to display it at all times."

  "Of course," I replied. I patted the pockets of my lab coat, a smile of contrition pasted on my face. My left hand dipped into a pocket, and his eyes followed. He never saw my right hand coming.

  The punch connected with the bridge of his nose. A crunch of bone, a spray of blood, and he went down. Not dead, just sleepy. Parlor tricks like the one I'd pulled on the guard upstairs are all well and good, but sometimes, you just gotta go the direct route. Besides, subtle's never been my strong suit.

  I climbed into the cab and threw the ambulance into gear. I gave it a little gas, and it lurched forward. Through the side mirror, I saw a kid of maybe ten staring slack-jawed back at me. He was tugging at his mother's arm and pointing toward the cop sprawled across the pavement, but she ignored him. The show outside the ER was still going strong, and she wasn't about to miss it.

  I gave the kid a wink and a lazy mock-salute, and then pulled out of the hospital drive, disappearing into the early morning traffic.

5.

"City and state?"

  Between the din of the nearby traffic and the work crew drilling through the sidewalk just a half a block away, I couldn't hear a word she said. I pressed the handset tighter to my ear and huddled closer to the payphone. "I'm sorry?"

  "City and state?" the woman repeated.

  "Uh, Manhattan," I replied. "Manhattan, New York."

  "What listing?"

  "Jonah Friedlander."

  The line hissed and clicked, and the woman was replaced by an automated voice that spat out the requested address. I was hard-pressed to tell the two apart.

  I dropped the handset back onto its cradle and hunched across the lot to the waiting ambulance. Across the intersection from where I stood, a police cruiser sat idling at a light. I watched him from the corner of my eye, thinking inconspicuous thoughts. The gas station was packed three deep with cabs waiting for a crack at the pumps, and droves of pedestrians filtered through for a paper or a cup of morning coffee – no way the cop had made me. Of course, the meatsuit didn't want to hear it. His heart was pounding a mile a minute; his palms were sweating; his mouth was dry as dust. Just once, I'd like to possess me a Mob enforcer or something. These peaceful, law-abiding sorts make this job of mine a bitch.