Shadowfires

deafening, so Ben chopped him once
more, harder still, then the gun fell out of Vincent's suddenly limp hand, and gaspingly Ben said, “Lights on!”
    Instantly the room brightened.
    Vincent was out cold, making a slight wet rattling noise as slow
inhalations and exhalations passed through his injured throat.
    The air stank of gunpowder and hot metal.
    Ben rolled off the unconscious man and crawled to the Combat
Magnum, taking possession of it with more than a little relief.
    Rachael had ventured from behind the desk. Stooping, she picked up
her thirty-two pistol, which Vincent had also dropped. The look she
gave Ben was part shock, part astonishment, part disbelief.
    He crawled back to Vincent and examined him. Thumbed up one eyelid
and then the other, checking for the uneven dilation that might
indicate a severe concussion or other brain injury. Gently inspected
the man's right temple, where two edge-of-the-hand chops had landed. Felt his throat. Made sure his breathing, though hampered, was not too badly obstructed. Took his wrist, located his pulse, timed it.
    He sighed and said, “He won't die, thank God. Sometimes it's hard
to judge how much force is enough… or too much. But he
won't die. He'll be out for a while, and when he comes around
he'll need medical attention, but he'll be able to get to a doctor on
his own.”
    Speechless, Rachael stared at him.
    He took a cushion from a chair and used it to prop up Vincent's head, which would help keep the trachea open if there was some bleeding in the throat.
    He quickly searched Vincent but did not find the Wildcard file.
“He must have come here with others. They opened the safe, took the
contents, while he stayed behind to wait for us.”
    She put a hand on his shoulder, and he raised his head to meet her
eyes. She said, “Benny, for God's sake, you're just a real-estate
salesman.”
    “Yeah,” he said, as if he
didn't understand the implied question, “and I'm a damn good one,
too.”
    “But… the way you handled him… the way you… so fast… violent… so
sure of yourself…”
    With satisfaction so intense it almost hurt, he watched her as she
grappled with the realization that she was not the only one with
secrets.
    Showing her no more mercy than
she'd thus far shown him, letting her stew in her curiosity, he said, “Come on. Let's
get the hell out of here before someone else shows up.
I'm good at these nasty little games, but I don't particularly enjoy
them.”

----
8 DUMPSTER
    When an old wino in soiled pants and a ragged
Hawaiian shirt wandered into the alley, stacked some crates, and
climbed up to search in the garbage dumpster for God knows what
treasures, two rats had leaped from the bin, startling him. He had
fallen off his makeshift ladder-just as he'd caught a glimpse of the dead woman sprawled in the garbage. She wore a cream-colored summer dress with a blue belt.
    The wino's name was Percy. He couldn't remember his last name.
“Not really sure I ever had one,” he said when Verdad and Hagerstrom
questioned him in the alley a short while later. “For a fact, I
ain't used a last name since I can remember. Guess maybe I did have one sometime, but my memory ain't
what it used to be on account of the damn cheap wine, barf brew,
which is the only rot I can pay for.”
    “You think this slimeball killed her?” Hagerstrom asked Verdad, as
if the alky couldn't hear them unless they spoke directly to him.
    Studying Percy with extreme distaste, Verdad replied in the same
tone of voice. “Not likely.”
    “Yeah. And even if he saw anything important, he
wouldn't know what it meant, and he won't remember it anyway.”
    Lieutenant Verdad said nothing. As an immigrant born and raised in
a far less fortunate and less just country than that to which he now
willingly pledged his allegiance, he had little patience and no
understanding for lost cases like Percy. Born with the priceless
advantage of United States citizenship, how could a man turn from all
the opportunities around him and choose degradation and
squalor? Julio knew he ought to have more compassion for self-made
outcasts like Percy. He knew this ruined man might have suffered,
might have endured tragedy, been broken by fate or by cruel parents.
A graduate of the police department's awareness programs, Julio was well versed in the psychology and sociology of the outcast-as-victim philosophy. But he would have had less trouble understanding the alien thought processes of