Hosts

"Hey!"

Sandy jumped, looked up, looked around—the Savior stood by a tree twenty feet away. He cocked his head down the slope toward the highway.

"Wait a minute or two," he said, "then meet me in the underpass."

Sandy watched him walk off, waited the requisite time, then followed. He found him waiting in the shadows of a concrete arch that supported a short span of the West Side Highway. Noise from the traffic above rumbled through the space.

"Look," Sandy said, approaching him, "before we go any further I just want to say—"

The Savior held up his hand for silence and sca

"If you're worried about my being followed, I wasn't."

"Probably right," he said. "Didn't see anyone tail you into the park, but you can never be sure about these things."

After a moment of narrow-lidded surveillance, he turned to Sandy. "What's the story, Palmer? We go

He sounded pissed, and had a right to be, but Sandy had figured the best way to play this was not to allow himself to be put on the defensive.

"No games," he said. "I just don't think you were playing straight with me. I don't think you're working for the government, and I'm not so sure you were ever a Navy SEAL, either."

"True or not, what's the difference? You got your story, the paper's selling out—"

"How do you know that?"

His mouth twisted. "Had to go to three newsstands before I found a copy. Which means your bosses must be happy. You're a big shot now. Where's your gripe?"

Sandy resisted the urge to wipe his moist palms on his pants. This was a dangerous man and he had to be careful how he spun this. He'd mentally rehearsed his spiel for the last hour. Now it was show time.

"No gripe at all. It's just that I figured out the real reason you don't want your face in the papers, why you don't want anyone to know your name: you're a wanted man."

Bingo. The Savior had been sca

"You're nuts."

"Hear me out. I figure it had to be a felony. A misdemeanor wouldn't put you into hiding. So you're either wanted for a crime or you've jumped bail or escaped prison."

"Got it all figured out, don't you."

Sandy shrugged. "What else can it be?"

"Should have known I couldn't fool you." The Savior shook his head and looked away. "The orphan part is true, but I made up the part about the cop telling me to join the army or go to jail. I've been in and out of trouble most of my life. Got picked up after knocking over a liquor store."

"A liquor store…" Sandy was afraid to ask the next question. "No one was shot, were they?"

"Nah. I just flashed a starter pistol. But that didn't matter; got charged with armed robbery. Couldn't plea down. I was only nineteen at the time. I wasn't going up for that, so I jumped bail and I've been on the run ever since."

"Are you wanted for anything else?"

The Savior didn't answer immediately. He was staring past Sandy again. Finally he pursed his lips and said, "Shit. Move back."

"What?"

He shoved him against the sloping concrete wall of the underpass.

"Back!"

Sandy turned to see this guy about his own age in cut-offs and a T-shirt and a scraggly attempt at a beard racing a crummy looking bike full tilt down the slope toward the underpass. He clutched a gray handbag and kept looking over his shoulder.

His eyes widened as he entered the underpass and saw that it was occupied, but the Savior gave him a friendly, reassuring wave and said, "Hey, how's it goin'?"

"Not bad," the guy panted.

Then a lot of things happened quickly, too quickly for Sandy to process fully. Suddenly the Savior was moving, taking a quick step forward and kicking the bike's rear wheel. The guy lost control, hit the curb, and went flying over the handle bars. Sandy watched in shock as the Savior kept moving, following the man as he sailed toward the pavement, leaping as he landed chest first, and landing with his heels driving into the guy's upper back. The muffled crunch of breaking bones turned Sandy's stomach, as did the man's scream of pain.

What the fuck? Sandy thought.

"That was my mother back there!" the Savior shouted. He crouched beside the writhing man who was trying to rise but couldn't seem to get his arms to work. "You just rolled my mother!"

"Aw, shit!" the guy said, his voice a faint wheeze.

"My mother!" he screamed, his face reddening.

"Didn't know, man!" he groaned, every syllable wrapped in pain. "Didn't mean nothin'!"

The Savior turned to Sandy, his eyes wild. "Your turn to be a hero," he said, pointing to the gray handbag beside the man. "Take that back to the old lady he knocked down back near the top of the slope. Tell her you found it on the grass."

Sandy could only stare, stu

"Come on, Palmer. Move! I'll meet you over by the basketball courts." He bent again over the fallen man and screamed, "My mother!"

"I know, man," the purse snatcher grunted. "I'm sorry… like really… sorry."

He gave Sandy another look, then trotted out the opposite end of the underpass, leaving Sandy alone with the stranger. Gingerly he stepped closer, picked up the handbag, then beat it back to the sunlight and the park.

The Savior's mother? Was she in the park? Was this her bag?

He spotted a cluster of people near the top of the slope and jogged toward them. An old woman sat on a bench in the center of the cluster, sobbing. Her knees and hands were scraped, her stockings torn.

"… just pushed me," she was saying. "I don't know where he went. I never saw him."

The Savior's mother… Sandy shook his head. Not likely. The old woman was black.

"Did you lose this?" Sandy said, edging into the circle around her.

She looked up and her tear-filled eyes widened. "My bag!"

"Where'd you get that?" said a beefy guy, eyeing Sandy suspiciously.

Sandy handed the bag to the woman, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder and stuck to the story.

"I was walking down by the highway and found it."

"Everything's here!" the woman said, opening her wallet. "Oh, thank you, young man! Thank you ever so much!" She pulled out a couple of twenties. "Let me reward you."

Sandy waved her off. "Absolutely not. No way."

The beefy guy slapped him on the back. "Good man."

Sandy made a show of checking his watch. "Look, I've got a meeting," he said to the man. "Will she be all right?"

"We called the cops. EMTs are on their way."

"Great." To the old woman he said, "Good luck to you, ma'am. I'm sorry this happened."

She thanked him again and then he was on his way down the sloping path toward the basketball courts, trying to process the events of the past few minutes. He'd led a sheltered life, he knew. His exposure to violence while growing up had been limited to a few schoolyard shoving matches. But all that had changed with the bloodbath on the train. His baptism of fire.

But in some strange way he found this new incident even more disturbing. The Savior had acted so quickly, with such decisiveness—one moment the purse snatcher had been cycling by, Sandy had blinked, and next thing he knew the man was flat on his face with two broken or dislocated shoulders and the Savior screaming at him about his mother.

What was that all about?

And more frightening had been the terrible dark joy in the Savior's eyes as he'd hovered over the downed man. He'd enjoyed hurting him. And he'd done it without the slightest hesitation. That was very, very scary. And even scarier was the thought now of dealing with him one on one.

Sandy began to sense that he might be in over his head, but he brushed it off. He wasn't here to threaten this man; he wanted to do him a favor.