Doc Sidhe (15 page)

A good friend. She heard what Elaine had to say and volunteered Gaby her car with no hesitation. Then she set about opening up the bed in the couch for Elaine and Jim.

So her departure had come off without a problem. Her arrival at home was another matter.

When she pulled onto her own street, she saw the official vehicle, a squad car, parked right in front of her building. Something had obviously gone wrong here.

No parking available—as usual. She parked in a tow-away zone around the corner and ran up the stairs to her floor. She took a deep breath as she saw a uniformed officer emerging from her door. "Hi," she said. "I live here."

The officer smiled. It wasn't an amused smile. "Go right in."

Three minutes later the black limousine cruised past the same block. The old man in the backseat looked over the police unit and made a disgusted noise. "Tell the van to stay and watch. We'll follow the other signal."

Harris couldn't have had more trouble juggling cats. He had to walk and support Doc—not easy, as the man was half-unconscious and
heavy
. He had to make sure all the stuff he'd taken from the apartment didn't spill out of his pockets, and that included three revolvers and the damned volt-meter gadget. Thank God these ugly slacks with the dorky high waistband had deep, deep pockets. And he had to figure out what to do next. Doc wasn't conscious enough to do much thinking.

Run. That was first. Just outside the building's main door, they'd turned left, toward Bank Street, and rounded the corner before the sirens arrived. Harris heard the police car pull up in front of the building and cut its siren. The two of them weren't spotted, a little bit of good luck mixed in with all the bad. Now they were headed toward the nearest subway station he could remember, at 7th Avenue and 14th, and he felt fresh out of ideas.

Why was that? Used to be he was full of ideas. Just in the last day, though, Doc and the others had been doing all the thinking for him. Hell, he'd been letting Zeb do all his thinking before that. He was out of the habit.

It was time to think again, and to think analytically. Like dissecting an opponent's technique before moving against him.

Problem.
Doc was hurt and had refused medical aid. That meant Harris had to do everything for both of them. No solution for it. Except maybe to get help Doc would accept. Harris could trust Zeb and make Doc accept it; maybe he'd stop by and visit his manager. Ex-manager.

He noticed under a streetlight that Doc's hands seemed to be a little better; the blisters hadn't faded, but they had closed and the flesh around the wrists was showing a little pink among the gruesome cracking expanses of black. That was a hopeful sign, but he didn't put much stock in it.

Problem.
Somebody was after Gaby, and he'd have to track her down again. She probably wouldn't go back to Elaine's.

Wait a minute. He let go of Doc's arm with his right hand and began fishing in his pocket. The gizmo. Still there; he dragged it out, looked at it, and pushed the only switch to turn the thing on. It made a low buzzing sound and the little screen, set where a volt-meter's dial would be, began to glow.

It was like a radar screen, but gold-toned and without the rotating line he was used to from TV. In the center was a big, fuzzy glow; it had to be Doc. Further away, another dot, also bright . . . headed more or less in his direction.

No,
two
dots. The second one was a lot closer and fainter. It wasn't on-screen all the time.

Two dots, and only one of them could be Gabriela. Okay. Maybe, if the dots didn't fade out completely, he could find her again with this thing.

Problem.
Cops would be looking for him and Doc. Harris could blend in with a crowd . . . once he got some new clothes. Doc couldn't, not as easily.

Both the faint and the strong signal had gotten closer and brighter as the two men walked, but as they descended the steps into the station, the fainter signal abruptly faded and disappeared. By the time they got to the bottom, the other signal had dimmed to nothing. The big signal in the center, Doc's signal, was as strong as ever.

Harris stared perplexed at the screen for a moment, then looked back up the steps. "Doc. Can you stand by yourself for a moment?"

Doc didn't look up or speak, but he nodded.

Harris carefully leaned him up against the wall. "I'll be back in just a second." He walked up the steps.

The brighter signal increased in intensity as he ascended, and by the time he reached street level again the fainter signal had returned.

Interesting. Did concrete block transmission? It looked like it. Harris trotted back down the stairs and watched two of the signals fade again. That meant he couldn't find Gaby while he was below ground.

It also meant the other guys might not be able to track
Doc
while he was below.

Harris shut the device off and pocketed it, then slid back under Doc's arm. "Doc, we need to ride the subway for a while. I'll tell you the rest when we're moving."

Phipps watched the new signal brighten on his tracer as they got closer and closer. Then, in a matter of seconds, it faded to nothingness.

The old man must have detected something in his posture. "What is it, William?"

Phipps wordlessly handed the tracer back.

He braced himself. Sometimes the old man took bad news by "keeping in practice"—calmly, coolly pulling out his favorite automatic and extinguishing someone at random. Phipps was the only one within easy reach.

But the old man simply sighed. "Home, William."

Harris and Doc traveled for quite a while, changing subway lines a couple of times.

After that, it only took one call to find her. Harris could have cheered when she came on the line: "This is Gaby."

"It's me."

"Let me call you back."

He gave her the number.

A minute later the phone rang under his hand. He picked it up. "Hi."

Her voice dropped nearly to a whisper. "I'm at another phone. I didn't know if they monitored incoming calls."

"Good thinking. Creative paranoia is probably very helpful right now."

"What the hell went on in my apartment?"

"Two fake cops jumped in and grabbed my friend Doc. They must have been waiting around for you to come home. We got out of there. Did the real cops get the guys I left there?"

"No."

"Damn. Did you tell the cops I was supposed to be there?"

"Give me some credit for intelligence, all right? I said that I got an anonymous call saying that the people who grabbed me before knew I was staying with Elaine. So I decided to go home instead."

"Thanks."

"No, thank
you
. The cops in New Rochelle say somebody broke into Elaine's house after we left. So you score big points there. Did you use that device you were talking about to find me?"

"No, I used my poor, misfiring brains. I figured that even if the police were through with you, you wouldn't want to leave them so fast . . . knowing there was somebody after you. So all I had to do was find out which precinct was nearest your place. Sixth."

"Yeah, I'm getting to be a fixture here. They have kind of a museum display in their squad room, and I'm on a first-name basis with every bit of memorabilia."

"I need to talk to you, Gaby. I can fix it so the guys after you can't follow you."

"How?"

"This tracer thing doesn't work if you're in the subway. When you leave the police, take a cab and see if you can get the driver to lay down some rubber. You have to shake off anybody following you, at least for a minute or two. And use that minute to get down to the subway. Meet us at the platform at Eighty-sixth Street and Lex."

She was long in answering. "It may be a while before I can get out of here."

"We'll wait. I'll be easy to spot. I'm wearing the gray suit my grandfather was buried in."

"Okay."

Harris hung up and returned to the bench where Doc sat.

A couple of hours had worked changes on Doc. He now wore sunglasses, a sweatsuit jacket, and the
Phantom of the Opera
T-shirt Harris had bought in a corner store during a brief solo return to street level.

Harris had also been at him with tricks barely remembered from his college theater career. Doc's hair was now gray—streaked with shoe polish applied with a toothbrush in the bathroom. His skin was dark with the orange-brown tan that came out of a bottle. He looked older, his features lined with makeup pencil. Harris could have put an additional twenty years on him—Elmer's glue, toilet paper, and makeup base could do an amazing job of simulating wrinkled, sagging skin—but he hadn't wanted to get too elaborate. This disguise might be adequate to keep the police from noticing Doc if they had a description of him from witnesses outside Gaby's place.

Doc's wrists were bound up in bandages, but his hands, where they showed, looked better anyway. Dead flesh was slowly peeling away, revealing pink skin beneath. Doc was a long way from being healthy, but the injury was healing much faster than any burn Harris had ever seen. But then, it wasn't exactly a burn.

And Doc was more alert. He looked as happy and energetic as the losing quarterback in the Super Bowl, but he was awake and could walk under his own power.

He looked up as Harris returned. "You found her."

"Yep. We'll meet her where I told you."

"We cannot wait for tonight, Harris. The deviser chasing Gaby will catch up to us. He is very capable. Or all the iron around us will kill me. I'll begin the ritual as soon as we return to the park."

Harris sat down beside him. "You don't have the book."

"I remember the ritual. I remember everything." He made it sound like a sentence handed down by an unfriendly judge. "Not always when I need to, unfortunately."

"Are you up to it? You made it sound like it wore people out. You're already wiped out."

"I can do it."

"That's not what I asked."

Doc looked at him wearily. "Harris, it does not matter. We can't protect her here. We have to get her back to the fair world."

The phone jarred Phipps out of his sleep; he answered it out of reflex. "Six one two. No, wait—"

"You're not at your extension now," the old man chided him. "But you will be. Fast. I have one of them again, William."

"Don't you ever sleep? Never mind. I'll be right there." Phipps hung up. The old man's office was only an elevator ride away from his bedroom, an arrangement that the old man found convenient. Groggy with lack of sleep, Phipps staggered to his feet.

It wasn't dawn yet, but the traffic of men and women through the subway system had started to pick up when Harris spotted her coming off the uptown number six. He waved and she ran to him.

She wrapped herself around him, held him close. For a moment, he floated around in the suburbs of heaven.

She pushed him back to look at him. "You're really okay."

"Yeah."

"That suit sucks."

"You romantic thing, you."

She looked uncomfortable. He knew her too well, knew she'd just remembered yesterday's dinner. He let her step away from him.

He turned and gestured. "Gaby, this is my friend Doc."

Doc made the effort to stand and gave her a little bow.

She gave him a searching glance. "Doc what?"

"MaqqRee," Doc said. "You may call me Desmond if you prefer."

"Desmond," she repeated. Harris saw her struggle not to wince. "Doc is fine," she said, then looked at Harris. "Okay. You think you can tell me what's going on?"

"We need to go over to the conjurer's circle in Central Park. I mean, the circle of white stones."

"But if what you said was true, as soon as we go up, their tracer thing will show where I am. If it really exists."

Harris pulled the tracer out of his jacket pocket and turned it on. Doc's glow at the center of the screen had completely absorbed Gaby's.

"That doesn't show anything."

"It will when we reach the surface," Doc said. "And it will let us know how much time we have."

The three of them reached the circle of stones and Doc immediately began setting right those that had fallen over or been moved.

"So where were you all day?" Gaby asked, maddeningly persistent.

"You won't believe me. Not until Doc shows you this trick," Harris added. "I've got a question for you. Gaby, have you ever heard of anybody who looked like you, had sort of the same name? I've seen a woman called Gabrielle. Your spitting image. Nobody knows much of anything about her."

Even in the moonlight he could see her swallow. "No."

"Did you just accidentally say no when you meant yes? You always said women don't really do that."

"You bastard." The heat in her voice surprised him. "Don't make a joke out of this."

"Then don't lie."

She tried to glare at him, but she looked guilty instead. She stared down at the grass. "Harris, don't laugh, okay? But I've always felt connected to somebody else. I mean, I've always had these dreams about meeting a sister I never met. When I was a kid I used to drive my parents crazy—`Are you sure I wasn't twins? Did you leave another baby at the hospital?' That sort of thing."

"What did they say?"

"They said that reading too much was rotting my brain." She looked up again and tried to gauge his expression.

"Oh, yeah. Hell, they said that the last time I saw them." Harris turned the tracer on again. The bright glow was still distant—but now it was moving slowly. "Doc, I think they're onto us."

Doc nodded. His circuit done, he knelt in the circle's center and began unloading things from his pockets—gold coins, a small gold cylinder with an opening at one end, tiny statuettes carved of stone.

"Give me that thing." Gaby took the tracer from Harris' hand and trotted off a few dozen yards, looking intently at the screen. She wandered back and forth out on the grass for a minute, long enough for Doc to start chanting, before she returned.

She handed it back to him. "Okay. It picks
him
up. It picks up this other signal. I'll take your word for it that the glow in the middle is me. What's he doing?"