Escapade (9781301744510) (23 page)

"O'Connell. Good thing you're here, There's a
man dead upstairs and—"

To Zeke's astonishment, O'Connell leveled his
pistol at him. "Halt or I'll shoot" Not waiting for Zeke's
response, he began cocking the hammer.

Although startled, Zeke was quick enough to
duck. Instead of plugging him through the head, the shot whistled
past his ear, shattering a gilt-framed mirror behind him.

No need to ask O'Connell what the hell he
thought he was doing. The copper's intent was obvious. Zeke didn't
give him a chance to take aim again. By the time the second shot
sounded, Zeke had plunged beneath an arched doorway.

Another small passage led him back to the
region of the kitchens. A lusty-looking female hovered near the
coal stove, looking undisturbed either by the screams or the sound
of gunplay. She calmly poured herself a cup of coffee, only
glancing up long enough to give Zeke a knowing leer.

"What's a matter, honey? Your old lady catch
you here? The back door is that way, handsome."

Zeke couldn't even pause long enough to thank
her. Finding the door, he hurled himself through it, almost into
the arms of another policeman. The copper fell back with a grunt of
surprise as though he really hadn't expected Zeke to make it this
far or to be so full of fight.

Before the man could draw his weapon, Zeke
sent his fist crashing against the copper's jaw, felling him to the
ground. The action took no more than the space of a heartbeat,
which was just as well, for he had no time to hesitate, to reflect,
only to run.

He plunged down an alleyway behind the
brothel, weaving past the rear entrances of tenement buildings.
Where was he going to go? He was not even sure where he was, only
that if this was O'Connell's beat, he had to be back in the
warehouse district. Zeke was a little familiar with the area. The
problem was that O'Connell was even more so.

In no time at all, the sergeant was hard on
his heels. Another shot rang out, and Zeke felt a burning sensation
in his right arm. Bloody hell! He'd been hit.

He stumbled a little and heard a heavy
footfall—O'Connell closing in for the kill. Mustering what strength
he had, Zeke upended a row of garbage cans, causing the policeman
to curse and lose his footing.

As O'Connell went down, Zeke half-buried him
in the refuse and then tore off running. As he clutched his arm,
his fingers sticky with the warmth of his own blood, Zeke knew he
couldn't keep up this pace. His breathing came in labored
gasps.

Somehow he got himself over a fence,
squeezing down the narrow space between two buildings. He had
eluded O'Connell for the present, enough that he could lean up
against the crumbling brickwork, drawing gulps of air into his
tortured lungs.

He was weakening and he knew it. The shocks
to his system in these past twenty-four hours had been too much;
only that ages-old instinct for survival had kept him on his feet
this long. Just ahead of him loomed the main street, but from the
sound of police whistles, he knew the place had to be crawling with
O'Connell's minions. Risking a peek round the corner of the
building, he saw that he was right. Blue coats, at least half a
dozen of them, their guns at the ready, paced the length of the
pavement.

Zeke ground his teeth, fighting off a wave of
dizziness. He had fallen into a most well-prepared trap. It was no
good reminding himself he was no longer Johnnie Marceone, but J. E.
Morrison, a tycoon with a mansion on Fifth Avenue. Under ordinary
circumstances, the prudent thing to do would be to surrender to the
police, demand to see his lawyer.

But these weren't ordinary circumstances. His
lawyer was dead, and Zeke knew if he tried to surrender to
O'Connell, he'd never make it as far as the precinct house. Not
alive.

He had to get out of here, find some place to
hide and quickly. But where? He might be able to make it as far as
the docks, take the risk of jumping into the East River, but
chances were he would lose consciousness and drown.

The street out there already seemed to be
shifting, threatening to give way beneath his feet. He could barely
bring the building opposite into focus other than to tell it was a
warehouse of some sort.

Zeke squinted his eyes, forcing his vision to
clear. He had seen that place before. Had it been only last night
that he had lingered outside, staring up at one particular window,
as moonstruck as any raw kid, waiting for Rory to come out?

The Transcontinental Balloon Company. Then he
had regarded that faded sign with wry amusement. Now it beckoned to
him with all the comfort and assurance of a smile on the face of an
old friend.

Likely Rory wouldn't even be there, but with
luck he might manage to cross the street unseen, find a way inside
the warehouse, seek shelter within its shadowy depths.

And the way his arm burned and his head
reeled, luck was about all he had left.

At the area back of the warehouse, Rory
watched the Seamus being prepared for the demonstration as soon as
the man from the government arrived. It was the first time the pale
blue balloon had ever been inflated, and the gas bag hissed,
suspended a few feet above the rough dock boards, like a piece of
the sky held captive, pulling against the rope's hemp cords.

Tony and Pete rushed about attaching the
gondola, slinging the sandbags over the basket's side. Rory knew
she ought to be helping, but lethargy seemed to have overtaken her,
borne of the shock she had received earlier that morning.

She still clutched the edition of the New
York World in her hands. On the El, she had read the article about
Zeke over and over again until she could nearly recite the lurid
details by heart. Stanley Addison had been knifed to death in a
brothel, Zeke Morrison seen fleeing the scene.

It was all a nightmare, some hideous mistake.
It had to be.

While Pete began hooking sacks of ballast
onto the balloon, Tony stepped back, wiping the perspiration from
his brow.

"Glad you didn't strain yourself helping out,
Rory," he grumbled.

Rory shot him a look of reproach. "How do you
expect me to calmly go about my business after seeing this?" She
shook the paper under his nose.

Tony batted it aside. "There's nothing much
else you can do. You got any idea where Morrison is?"

“No.”

"Then how you gonna help him? We been over
and over this, Rory, and I'm tired of talking about it."

They had been having the same useless
argument ever since leaving Grand Street. There was no way to make
Tony understand. She just felt so blasted helpless and scared. God
help her, she had never felt so scared for anyone in her life as
she now was for Zeke.

"You gotta be sensible, Rory," Tony chided.
"You just have to forget about Morrison. Did you ever stop to think
he might be guilty?"

"Of course not!" Her reply waxed a shade too
vehement, perhaps because there had been one awful moment when she
had wondered. She couldn't help recalling Zeke's angry phone
conversation with Stanley Addison. Zeke did have quite a temper. In
the heat of his rage, she could picture him slugging someone
perhaps a little too hard, but never could she envision him
sticking a knife between someone's ribs.

Rory fingered the paper, the page creased and
worn with her handling. "You just won't listen to me, Tony. There's
something wrong about this whole thing. For instance, the World
says the fight took place last night. How could it have? I am sure
Zeke was at my flat at least until eleven o'clock."

"There's plenty of night left after eleven,
Rory."

"You're asking me to believe Zeke got beat up
by two street thugs, had that awful reunion with his sister, then
sneaked out of my flat, looked up his friend Addison, took the man
to a brothel and killed him?"

"So Morrison has a lot of stamina. Look,
Rory, I don't know what happened. All I know is what it says there
in the paper."

"Since when did you start believing
everything you read, Bertelli?"

Tony swore, flinging his hands wide in a
gesture of frustration. "I told you, Rory. I'm done arguing. I
gotta go help Pete. Someone needs to worry about the fate of this
company since you don't seem to care anymore."

He strode away, with Rory glaring after him.
His remark stung, all the more so because he was right. Not when he
said that she didn't care- that wasn't true. But for the first time
in her life something took precedence over her balloons.

Ever since she had met Zeke, the man was
never far from her mind, especially not now when he was in such
terrible trouble. She wondered if she would ever see him again.

That last thought was so daunting, she thrust
it away. Tony barked an order for her to fetch some more iron
filings for the hydrogen generator, and she started to do so when
she heard a footfall on the concrete floor of the warehouse.

Tony's younger brother emerged through the
double doors, slipping out onto the dock with a sheepish expression
on his face. Angelo clearly expected a rebuke from Rory for being
late and looked agreeably surprised when none was forthcoming.
"Morning, Rory," he said, glancing toward Pete and Tony and the
balloon looming overhead. "Geez, looks like all of you have been
busy."

He stripped off his jacket. His dark eyes so
like Tony's gleamed with excitement. "Say, Rory, what's all that
hubbub out on the street? Coppers are prowling everywhere. I never
saw O'Connell so stirred up since the time that street kid tossed a
firecracker under his horse."

"I don't know what it's about," Rory said.
She tensed with apprehension at the mention of O'Connell's name.
She was being absurd. Simply because Zeke was a wanted man, she
needn't suppose every activity of the police was now connected with
him.

Yet she couldn't shake off the same vague
fears that had troubled her last night. It still struck her as odd
that O'Connell had identified Zeke so readily. Perhaps she ought to
take a casual stroll on the street, just to see what was going
on.

While Angelo rolled up his sleeves and
prepared to help with the generator, Rory moved toward the
warehouse.

"Don't forget those filings," Tony bawled
after her, and Rory replied with an absentminded nod of her
head.

She slipped inside the warehouse's darkened
interior. Even with the sun streaking through the small grimy
windows, the building was gloom-ridden and Rory had to pick her way
with care. She had just reached the deeply shadowed area by the
steps leading up to her office when she heard a strange noise.

She stopped. Someone was behind her, someone
breathing hard. Before she could move or cry out, an arm seized her
about the waist. The newspaper she had been carrying flew out of
her grasp.

Rory drew breath to scream, but the sound
died in her throat as a voice rasped in her ear. "No, Rory. Don't!
It's me."

"Zeke?" she quavered, her heart pounding,
torn between hope and disbelief. She whipped about, her hands
colliding with his chest. His face loomed above her, streaked with
dirt and sweat, his dark hair disheveled, his eyes tired but
glittering bright at the sight of her.

"Oh, Zeke, I've been so worried about
you."

She flung her arms about him, catching him in
a fierce hug. Instead of returning the embrace, he flinched,
sucking in his breath.

"Zeke, what's the-.” She drew back, staring
at her hand. It was streaked with blood. Horrified, her gaze flew
to his crimson-soaked sleeve.

"Zeke! You've been hurt."

"Shot. By the police." He gave her a wan
smile. "It's been a helluva morning, Aurora Rose."

"Don't try to explain anything now. Just let
me look at your arm."

"It's all right. The bleeding's nearly
stopped. I think the bullet passed through."

Despite his protests, she tore away a section
of his sleeve, working as gently as she could. He paled, clamping
his teeth together. To her relief, she saw that he was right.
Likely the shot had gone clean through, leaving a relatively neat
hole through the fleshy part of his arm. Still he seemed to have
lost a fair amount of blood.

"We have to get you to a doctor."

"Not possible. The police are looking for me
everywhere. I'm in a lot of trouble, Rory."

"I know. I read about it in the papers."

"The papers?" Despite the pain and exhaustion
hazing his eyes, Zeke looked startled.

"Never mind about that now. I guess I'll have
to do what I can to bind up your arm myself. You stay right
here."

A foolish thing to say, for Zeke didn't
appear as though he were likely to go anywhere. She had no idea
where he had been all this time. She only marveled at the strength
that had brought him this far.

Hastening, she fetched water from the
washroom behind the office upstairs and some strips of the silk
material she used in sewing the balloon panels. When she returned,
Zeke had sagged down on the bottommost stair.

But at her approach, he straightened, his
eyes still keen and aware. He frequently clenched his jaw and
cursed under his breath as she proceeded to clean the wound. But
that didn't stop him from asking questions.

"What'd you mean before- about the
papers?"

Rory told him about the article that had
appeared in the morning's edition of the World.

Zeke grunted. "Damn that Duffy! How'd he get
such a story and so fast? Someone's not wasting much time."

Rory ordered him to stay quiet while she
bound up his arm. But it did no good, for Zeke continued. "Rory, I
don't know who is behind all this, but I swear to you, I am
innocent."

"Hush, Zeke. You don't need to tell me
that."

"You ought to know all the dangers if you are
helping me. Even the local police are involved."