Do No Harm

The sun began its slow fade beneath the horizon. The air was just tainting gray as David entered the familiar neighborhood. He parked in the designated spot, beneath the cone of light in front of Healton's. The other vehicles had disappeared in the last few blocks, as was planned.

He got out of the car and immediately felt a sense of isolation. The neighborhood was quite still. He moved up the first street, his white coat baggy over the wound on his side. He passed the abandoned lot on his right. The scorched car, his final destination, was empty. A homeless man sat bundled against the fence, the front of his worn jacket stained with what smelled like egg. Face ruddy and textured, a thick mustache bristling. Eyes anomalistically clear. Blake. David stared at him a beat too long. Blake raised his eyebrows in a show of impatience. David had another checkpoint to pass down the block in a minute and a half. "Hey, pal, spare a cigarette?"

His voice spurred David to movement. He continued along the path that Yale had detailed for him, away from the lot, past the front of the Pearson Home. He thought he saw a rifle scope flash in one of the apartment windows across the street, but wasn't sure if he'd imagined it since he knew snipers were stationed up there. The thought that Clyde might be here somewhere, in or near the area, quickened his heart. Maybe Clyde was watching him now.

The next intersection was busy and highly visible. Across the street, Bronner was pretending to make a call in the phone booth, wearing a flannel and a Dodgers cap. He did not look over at David, but he touched his shoulder casually with his fingertips, their agreed-upon signal that everything was clear.

David headed down the sidewalk. His path would loop him around past Clyde's former apartment building before returning him to the empty lot. A boisterous group of men exited a bar. David's eyes blurred momentarily, and he saw the faces as a smeared conglomeration-some coming at him, some moving past on either side-and he knew the situation was now beyond his control. His fate was in the hands of the undercover police officers in the area. The wound in his side began to throb, as if in warning. The group went on. Clyde was not hiding in their midst.

David turned left on Brecken Street. Patches of browning grass broke up the sidewalks; the curbs were lined with battered cars and trucks. The sky darkened a bit, discernibly, which he hoped was not a bad omen. He started down the street, with its many alleys and doorways and dark spaces between vehicles. The fact that someone had scouted the area before his arrival provided little reassurance. A chill tangled around his spine when he heard the clicking of footsteps ahead of him, but then he realized it was merely the echo of his own, amplified off the surrounding buildings. He no longer felt any pain in his side; it had gone numb.

He tried to calm himself by focusing on Peter's familiar voice, transmitted to him from the repeater over five miles away. Peter was sending his office manager home. Then, the ding of the elevator, followed by another, rapid ding. A one-floor ride.

In front of David, a form shifted in a doorway and stumbled down the stairs. David took a quick step back, glancing up the street for backup, but none arrived. The man swept by him, drunk and fat, and staggered up the street, murmuring to himself.

David tried to slow his heart. A flash on the roof across the street as a sniper lowered his rifle and sank again out of view. They were here protecting him, omnipresent and out of sight.

David wasn't getting anything through the earpiece aside from a whistling-the fabric of Peter's pants moving across the transmitter? He'd detected a similar sound earlier when Peter had walked from his car to the office. Then, the noise of a key in a lock. Peter must've gone upstairs, to continue setting things in order in the new procedure suite.

David turned down an alley and ducked through the gap in the fence that led to the abandoned lot. No sign of Clyde. Wrapped in layers of clothes, Blake shifted, a formless mass slumped against the base of the fence.

David walked slowly to the middle of the lot, glass popping beneath his shoes. He opened the door to the scorched car and sat down, resting his hands on the steering wheel.

The loop had been unsuccessful.

David tilted his head down and murmured into his mike, "Nothing." He raised his shirt and checked his bandage. It had blotted up some fluid from the wound, but was still firmly in place. In his right ear, he heard the clink of equipment. Peter rattling the surgery clamps? Testing the cauterizer? David stared through the cracked windshield at the Pearson Home. Layla's skewed silhouette moved against the curtains of the second-floor window. The same room where Clyde had once dangled boys by their necks to watch them gasp and tremble.