Collision

Ben sucked breath into his lungs, staggered to his feet, heard a man saying, “What the hell?” A woman screamed, and yelled in Spanish, “Gunshots, I heard gunshots.” Ben ran down the ditch, staying low, bending low to crawl through a drainage section that barreled under the street.

The crowd-someone would be calling the police. Please, God, he hoped. He eased out of the opposite end of the drain and clambered up the side of the gulley. He found himself in a vacant lot, with a large sign announcing more office space soon to come.

No sign of Hector. They might have fled as soon as they saw witnesses. Hector would not want anyone identifying him. Hector would be running.

Ben groped for his cell phone. Gone. He remembered Jackie had taken it.

Blood welled from the laces of his running shoes. The pain in his chest throbbed and he probed his flesh, half-afraid to find a bullet hole. His chest ached to the bone, as though it had taken a hammer’s blow. A tear in his shirt pocket. He found a hard rectangle beneath the hole. Pilgrim’s small sketchbook, with the drawings of the young girl, wore a bullet embedded in the leather cover.

He had to find Pilgrim, but he had to get off the streets. He was bloodied and muddied and memorable.

He ran toward a convenience store and the alley behind it.

It was a surprise to learn that homeless people had cell phones. A group of three men stood behind the store. They stopped talking, giving Ben a suspicious glare as he approached them.

“Excuse me,” Ben said, “is there a pay phone nearby?”

“Naw,” one of the men said. “What happened to you?”

“I fell into a ditch. Hurt my foot.” All three men looked down and inspected his foot; blood oozed from the sock.

“Church down the street, they give you some ice for that,” one man said.

“Ice and a prayer,” a second man laughed. “Who you need to call?”

“Friend. He’ll come get me.” Ben glanced over his shoulder. No sign of pursuit. They’d have risked being seen if they’d lingered, with the crowd at the bus station looking for them. It didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be combing the area looking for him.

“You’re the man on the front page,” the first man said.

Ben froze. The three men studied him.

“Yeah,” the second man said.

“We stay informed. Ain’t got much else to do but look at the paper,” the third man said.

“Is there a reward?” the first man asked. The other two moved in a circle, cutting off Ben’s lines of retreat.

“Please. Please don’t report me.” He was begging for a break from people who’d either never had one or never made the most of one they’d gotten. “I’m innocent. Please. I’m trying to stop the people who killed my wife.”

The three men looked at each other. “Like on The Fugitive?” one asked. Ben nodded.

“If there’s a reward, cops’ll figure out a way not to pay us, that’s for damn sure,” the first man said. “I don’t want to be on TV, either. Family’s always looking for me.”

“Here.” The second man dipped in his pocket, pulled out a bulky phone. “You can use mine but no more than one minute. Prepaid. Got mine at Wal-Mart. And nothing personal, but I hold the phone so you don’t run off.”

“His foot’s bleeding, he runs, it’s a short race,” the first man said and laughed at his own wit.

The man held the phone and, stunned, Ben dialed the number. Then the man moved the phone to Ben’s ear. “Speak up clear, Mr. Fugitive. It’s not the best-quality sound.”

33

The threat of rain hadn’t kept the soccer fields empty; dozens of families and kids, in varying shades of uniforms and ranging from ages four to ten, wandered between the rectangles of green. Mothers, fathers, and siblings stood on the sidelines, chatting among themselves or calling out sweetened encouragement to the players. Coaches clapped and frowned; high school kids serving as referees blew whistles and acted supremely bored.

Dads cheered their daughters. Pilgrim knew Tamara played soccer but he’d never worked up the nerve to watch a game from a distance; the risk was too great. Why did he choose this place, filled with fathers and daughters? Salt in the wound, rubbed there himself.

Pilgrim moved through the crowd. He was dressed in a phone repairman’s shirt and baseball cap, a treasure from his cache, and he stayed on the edge of the crowd.

He spotted two people watching him in the first five minutes: a soccer mom who didn’t seem to know the other moms on her side of the field, standing a bit apart, arms crossed, her eyes not fixed on the glorious play of a child but instead scanning the crowd a bit too often. There was another, a compactly built young man in a referee’s shirt, but the shirt was untucked and hanging loose over long pants. Might be a gun there. He was no bigger than the teenaged refs, but his face was that of an older man. He kept glancing around at the other games.

Neither approached him. They wanted him to talk to Vochek. Probably they would try to take him after they talked, when he left.

But she had broken her promise, or a superior had overruled her. Stupid.