Hosts

Sandy hated to admit it, but he doubted he'd hang on through an hour at Rikers. And then an idea struck.

"Not if I say you called me and I got the story over the phone!"

The Savior seemed to be considering this as he stood silent and stared at Sandy.

Finally he nodded. "That'll work. You go ahead and make up something—whatever you want. Say I said it and that'll be that."

"No-no. That won't cut it. I want this to be real. The truth."

They were talking about his future here. He couldn't base it on a fabricated story.

"The truth? Since when does anyone care about that?"

"I do. Pretty much."

The Savior stared at him. "You're not going away, are you."

Sandy mustered all his courage and shook his head. Would the man who'd saved his life, take it? He thought not.

"Sorry. I can't drop this. I just can't."

A long silence with the two of them standing statue still, facing each other, while growing moisture soaked Sandy's armpits.

Finally, "What do you want, kid?"

"I'll need some background, but I'm sure people will be mainly interested in how you learned to shoot and why you were carrying a pistol that night, and most important, what was going through your mind before and after you killed the killer."

Another pause, then, "Jeez, this is stupid, but if it'll make you go away—and I mean that: you go away and forget you ever saw me." He held up the printouts he'd taken. "And you get rid of the rest of these."

"Deal," Sandy said. Easy promise to make—the Savior had no way of checking.

"And I don't mean burn them. Burning causes suspicion and you'd be amazed what can be reconstructed from ashes these days. Tear them up into one-inch squares and flush them. Nothing more anonymous than a sewer system with eight million contributors."

"But there's one I can't get back. It's at a place called Julio's and—"

"I'll take care of that one."

And then it was suddenly clear what had happened this morning. Of course! The men in Julio's had recognized the man in the printout. Julio had sent Sandy here to the park, then called the Savior and told him where he'd be.

His excitement building, Sandy pulled the tape recorder from his knapsack. "Let's get started."

"Put that away. No recording. And we're not sitting out in the open here either. I've got a car nearby. I'll drive and talk, you take notes."

"Fair enough," Sandy said.

This is it! he thought as he followed the Savior out of the park. His blood tingled like champagne through his arteries. It's happening! It's all coming together! I'm on my way!

6

"You're retiring the Semmerling?" Abe said. "This I don't believe." Jack didn't want to believe it himself. He'd kept the tiny .45

strapped to his ankle for so long it felt part of him. This was like carving out a piece of his flesh. But in light of what he'd learned from Sandy

Palmer, he knew it had to go. So after ditching Palmer he'd come straight to Abe's and told him about his "interview."

"The kid knew all about it from listening to the cops on the scene.

One of them identified it from its description."

Bad enough to be caught with any weapon in this town, but to be caught carrying a gun the cops had issued a BOLO for…

Abe raised his. "A gun maven cop. Such luck you have."

"Yeah. Mostly bad lately."

He worried about this cub reporter or whatever Sandy Palmer was. Not that he was a bad kid, but too damn ambitious. He might make the wrong kind of compromises to get ahead—the kind that could land Jack in a lava pit.

And he lacked simple common sense. He'd got into Jack's car without an instant's hesitation. If Jack were more impulsive, or maybe had enough screws loose that he didn't care if Palmer had one of those drawings tucked away with a note, he easily could have killed him in the car and dumped him in any one of a dozen spots he knew around the city where he wouldn't be discovered for days, maybe weeks.

But he hadn't. The only thing he'd done to Sandy Palmer was lie.

Jack had led him to his car—making sure they approached from the side so he didn't get a look at the tags—and driven him around for nearly an hour while he filled the car with pure bullshit. Pretty good bullshit, he thought, considering it was created on the fly.

Palmer had taken copious notes, stopping Jack along the way for questions and clarifications. Finally Jack managed to scrape him off at a subway station, but not before the human remora had extracted his voicemail number just in case he had some "follow-up questions." Jack figured the number was safe—billed to a credit card registered to a nonexistent person.

"So what did you tell this crusading reporter?"

"I told him that the Savior was an orphan, in and out of foster homes and trouble until a cop gave him a choice of either getting booked on a B and E or joining the army."

"I see a movie already."

"I think it's been done. And Pat O'Brien probably played the cop. Anyway, Young Savior joined the U.S. Navy instead of the army and qualified for SEAL training. He received a medical discharge due to a back injury."

"And now he's a Jarbissener who—"

"Whoa. You lost me on that one. A farbiss-what?"

"A bitter, cranky person—you know how you get sometimes. The way I see it, such hatred this Savior has for society he's a recluse."

"Do you mind?" Jack said. "This is my life story I'm telling here. Let me tell it."

"So I can't add a little flavor, a little color?"

"An ex-Navy SEAL isn't colorful?"

"You a SEAL?" Abe laughed. "Obeying a drill sergeant? That I'd like to see."

"I wasn't a SEAL, but the Savior was."

"Do you even know what SEAL stands for?"

"Haven't a clue. But I'm sure an ex-SEAL like the Savior does. And although he has no official status with the government, he still freelances for certain government agencies."

"Is one known by three letters, the first of which is a C and the last an A, maybe?"

"He's not free to tell. But because of the nature of his government work he's always armed. Always. As a result he was able to save lives the other night. Also because of the nature of his work, he ca

"This is good. Such a screenwriter you would have made. A derivative hack, maybe, but that shouldn't disqualify you."

"But here's the icing: The Savior is baffled as to why he should be called a savior or a hero or anything of the sort. He only did what any other decent citizen would have done, had they been equipped to do so."

"That'll stir some talk."

"Right. Talk about something other than the Savior, I hope. Boy Reporter has his exclusive, making him happy so he goes away and leaves me alone. The cops try in vain to match the background described by El Savior to a real person, making them unhappy. They go back to watching and waiting, time passes, people forget about the Savior dude, and life gets back to normal."

Abe's eyebrows rose again, higher this time. "You're smoking something that potent and not offering any to your old friend Abe?"

Jack sighed. "Yeah, I know." No way this was going to fade away that smoothly. "But I can dream, can't I?"

"Dream away, but in the meantime I can offer you a true autoloader, better than your Semmerling."

"In .45?"

"No. But you load an AMT Backup .380 with a half dozen MagSafe sixty-grain Defenders—keeping one in the chamber, please—and you'll have almost as much stopping power as you had with the Semmerling.

A new ankle holster you won't need because this will fit in the one you have, and best of all you'll need only one hand to keep firing because you won't have to work that farkuckt slide for every shot."

Life without his Semmerling… Jack supposed he was going to have to get used it. Wouldn't be easy.