Niceville

then fluttered into the high blue sky like scraps of blackened ash from a burning building. When Merle looked back down at the sidewalk, he was staring at Charlie Danziger. Danziger was on the far side of the street. Merle’s first impulse was to quietly close in on the man, tap him on the shoulder, and when he turned around, put two rounds through his forehead, smiling as he did so.
    He even swung the canvas bag off his shoulder at the same time that he moved back into the shadow of a theater marquee, edging behind the line of young people waiting to get inside—something about Rollerblading vampire spies. Merle stood there in the shade of the marquee for a moment, watching Danziger, who was moving pretty well for a guy who had stopped at least one of Merle’s 9 mm slugs yesterday.Up until now, Merle wasn’t sure how much damage he’d done to Danziger during their shoot-out.
Not much
, he concluded, with regret.
    Danziger was snaking through the crowds on the sidewalk, a big hard-looking cowboy wearing jeans and a suede jacket, those navy blue cowboy boots, walking fast, although obviously favoring his right side, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his attention fixed on something up ahead of him, Merle had no idea what, but from the look on Danziger’s face, even at this distance, he wasn’t having kind and loving thoughts. He looked pale, intent, focused, like a man about to do something risky.
    It occurred to Merle to get out his cell phone and call Danziger, just to freak him out, and then he remembered that he’d lost his cell phone while he was stumbling through the woods last night.
    And he also remembered what he had said to Glynis this morning—
They have no way to spend it. The idea was to keep it hidden for a couple of years. I know who they are. I have time—
    Hell, he didn’t even know exactly how much they took out of the bank, although Danziger had figured there was upwards of a million and a half to be had that day, if they pulled it off.
    No, he thought, coming off point as Danziger’s stalking figure started to get lost in the mist, only his shock of white hair showing above the milling crowd. What he had told Glynis was still a good decision. He would come after them when he was ready, six months from now, when they weren’t expecting him.
    He waited until Danziger was completely out of sight, came out into the sunlight again, and headed across Forsythia toward Lady Grace Hospital, threading through the streaming traffic as the afternoon sunlight began to slant through the trees, making their deep blue shadows stretch slowly out.
    The lobby of Lady Grace Hospital was a huge vaultlike open space with flying buttresses and arches covered in gilt running fifty feet up to a painted cupola in powder blue dotted with golden stars. A window wall on the right of the lobby as he came in shed a yellow light down on a random collection of couches and armchairs, with a few people sitting on them, slouched, limp, as if condemned to wait here for a bus that wasn’t coming.
    One of the figures, Merle realized as he walked past, was the craggy old man who had sat next to Merle on the Blue Bird.
    He was here, sitting in the sun, his plaid shirt bleached out in the afternoon light, his head slowly turning to track Merle across the floorboards, his pale eyes unblinking, his thin blue lips working, the same air of dull despair floating around him like a fog.
    At the far end of the black-and-white-checked marble floor a broad walnut counter stood between two darkened hallways. The chair behind the desk was empty, but on the stuccoed wall above the desk a black-ribbed sign with white lettering indicated the various wings and departments of Lady Grace.
    In a niche above the sign, a statue of the Virgin Mary, her arms stretched out in benediction, her drapery the same powder blue as the interior of the cupola, smiling a vapid simpering smile, her eyes oddly Chinese, stared directly down at Merle as he crossed the floor.
    Nurses in pale blue uniforms and sensible shoes, cleaning staff in red, and doctors in scrubs or wearing white lab coats milled around the main floor, clustered around a Starbucks.
    Others, waiting for elevators while studying their clipboards, stood in the dim shadows beyond the desk. The entrance hall looked like a church but instead of sandalwood incense it smelled of coffee and Lysol and wintergreen.
    No one paid the slightest attention to Merle as he studied the sign briefly and