He lowered Sidewalk Steve to the floor to unlock the outer door and push it open. He’d just bent over again when something caught him in the small of the back. He heard it, actually, just before it struck, but couldn’t dodge fast enough to avoid the blow. A sharp pain erupted in his lumbar spine, needles of pain strobed up and down his legs, and he fell head-to-feet on top of Sidewalk Steve. He had the presence of mind to roll, though, and the next blow—a baseball bat, he saw now—slammed into Sidewalk Steve’s stomach. The homeless man was so drugged up that he barely flinched, but Chandler didn’t have time to worry about him. His legs, still tingling from the blow to his spine, were sluggish as he pushed himself backward, but with each inch he felt the pain recede. The whole time his eyes never wavered from his batwielding assailant. A short Spanish fellow, with shoulders like softballs beneath his tight jacket. Chandler pushed at the guard’s mind, but there was nothing: his reserves had been depleted, and, as well, he guessed that the guard had been dosed with Thorazine like the doctor, because Chandler didn’t even sense the man’s mind. This would have to be a physical fight. One on one—no, one on two, he saw, as a second guard, armed with a length of iron pipe, stepped into the door behind the first.
All this had taken a second, perhaps two. Now, as the thugs advanced toward him, Chandler held up his hands.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
He was still sitting on the floor when he spoke, and all the two men did was look at each other and laugh.
“We was told that if you managed to get out, we could do everything short of killing you,” the guard with the bat said.
“Three days we been hanging around,” the second guard threw in, smacking his pipe against his palm, “just waiting to have a little fun.”
“Please,” Chandler said, looking around for something to use as a weapon. “You know this isn’t right.”
The room was filled with broken-down factory machinery too big to move, let alone use as a weapon, but here and there were a few beakers and test tubes and pieces of lab equipment. Rubber tubes, metal pans. Nothing resembling a scalpel.
The man with the bat lunged. Chandler rolled, avoiding a blow to the head—the guard had a generous idea of what he could live through—then shot his leg out, knocking his attacker’s feet from under him. Even as he reached for the bat he noted how differently he and his assailant moved. The guard seemed ever-so-slightly slowed down. Chandler could almost believe it was the Thorazine making the man groggy, except he fell to the floor with the same slowness. Chandler’s limbs, by contrast, darted from his body like striking snakes. He snatched the man’s bat before he’d even hit the ground, used the fat end like a pool cue, slammed it into the guard’s temple. At the last instant he pulled back slightly, afraid of shattering the man’s skull, but there was still a sickening snap, and the man went limp on the ground.
Chandler whirled to face the second guard, bringing the bat up to protect his face. The pipe smashed into it close to the handle, and Chandler found himself holding four inches of splintered wood. Another inch and the fingers of his right hand would have been shattered.
“I thought you were told not to kill me,” Chandler said, dodging a second blow, then a third. The guard aimed for his head every time.
“We’re not paid enough to care,” the guard said, swinging fiercely again—but carefully, Chandler saw. The man was making sure not to leave himself exposed as his partner had.
By now, Chandler’s backward movement had taken him to the nearest table, and he put it between him and the guard. He tried to push the table but it was bolted to the floor, so he started grabbing objects and throwing them. His aim was good, but so was the guard’s, and he smashed one beaker after another with his pipe, seemed almost to enjoy the spray of glass and liquids, smiling grimly through gritted teeth and slitted eyes.
“Best hitting practice I’ve had in a while.”
“Yeah?” Chandler grabbed an alcohol burner, aimed right for the guard’s strike zone. “Hit this.”
Glass and liquid sprayed into the air in a sparkling mist. Chandler’s fingers had already sparked a match on the slate tabletop. He threw it, and the air erupted in flames.
“My face!” the guard screamed.
The alcohol from the burner had mostly flown away from the guard, and his skin was nothing more than singed. But the flash had blinded him long enough for Chandler to leap the table and clock him with a fist to the jaw.
He stood there a moment, panting, not from exertion, but adrenaline. The whole fight had taken perhaps a minute. Finally he turned back to Sidewalk Steve, still sleeping on the floor.
“All right, Steve. Let’s get you back outside where you belong.”
Washington, DC
November 9, 1963
Melchior got the call just after 3 a.m.
“I’m sorry to disturb you at such an ungodly hour. I’m trying to reach Thomas Taylor. Tommy.”
“Sorry,” Melchior mumbled. “Wrong number.”
He dressed without turning on the light. Keller’s use of the word “ungodly” meant the situation was urgent; a man’s name meant the call concerned Orpheus; the addition of a diminutive meant something had gone wrong. It was just after midnight in San Francisco, which suggested Keller had been contacted by the guards. Either that or the doctor was working after hours. Neither scenario boded well.
Funny he should use the name Tommy, though. Melchior would have to ask about that.
Melchior had no doubt that anyone listening in would spot the call—the wrong number was a staple contact protocol. As a field agent with twenty years’ worth of contacts, it would be easy enough for Melchior to explain it off as any of a dozen different people. No doubt the Company wouldn’t believe him, and depending on just how suspicious they were feeling, they’d probably trace the call back to Frisco. But none of that mattered, as long as they didn’t find out what was really going on before he took care of Keller’s problem.
Melchior used the building’s rear exit (whose light fixture kept mysteriously shorting out no matter how often the super repaired it) and hurried up the tree-shadowed street to the Chevy the Wiz had given him. He took four consecutive left turns to make sure he wasn’t being followed, then drove randomly for eleven minutes before pulling over at the next pay phone he saw. He dialed the rendezvous number exactly thirty minutes after Keller had called his apartment.
“He’s escaped!” the doctor screamed into his ear before the phone had finished its first ring.
Melchior swallowed his fury. He’d prepared himself for news of Chandler’s death—Keller’s time experimenting on Jews in concentration camps hadn’t exactly left him with a delicate hand—but escape was unacceptable.
“What happened?”
“He got Steve to break down the door. Then he overpowered those thugs you hired.”
Melchior wanted to know how, exactly, Chandler had gotten Steve to break down a steel door, but there wasn’t time for that now.
“Did the guards say anything?”
“Only that Orpheus was very … unusual.”
“We already know that.”
“I mean physically. They said he moved with incredible speed.”