The Key to Midnight

constructed of concrete, iron, two-by-fours, and railroad ties, and in spite of his incapacity, he didn't seem to be an ordinary mortal man.
        When Alex glimpsed the courier's injuries, he was stunned and doubly impressed by all the shrieking, fist-shaking bravado. The leg wasn't merely broken: It was crushed. Splinters of bone had pierced the flesh and the blood-soaked trousers.
        'Thank God you're here,' Kennedy said as Alex knelt beside him.
        The courier slumped against the wall as if someone had cut a set of supporting wires. He seemed to grow smaller, and the maniacal energy that had sustained him suddenly vanished. He was streaming sweat, shivering violently, in tremendous pain. It was amazing that he had summoned sufficient strength to hold everyone off for nearly a quarter of an hour.
        'Have you really punched at the medics?' Alex asked.
        'The bastards don't speak English!' Kennedy said, as if Chicagoans faced with an injured tourist from Kyoto would have held forth in fluent Japanese. 'Jesus, what I had to go through to find someone… who could understand me. I couldn't let them cart me off until I'd delivered… the file.' He indicated one of the suitcases at his side.
        'Good God, man, the file isn't that important.'
        'It must be,' Kennedy said shakily. 'Someone tried… to kill me for it. This wasn't an accident.'
        'How do you know that?'
        'Saw the stinking sonofabitch coming.' Kennedy grimaced with pain. 'A red Toyota.'
        Alex remembered the car that had followed his taxi from the Moonglow Lounge earlier that same morning.
        'I stepped… out of the way… but he turned straight toward me.'
        When Alex signaled the waiting paramedics, two men rushed in with a stretcher.
        'Two guys… in the Toyota,' Kennedy said.
        'Save your strength. You can tell me about it later.'
        'I'd rather… talk now,' Kennedy said as the paramedics cut open his pants leg to examine his injury and to stabilize the broken bones with an inflatable splint before moving him. 'Takes my mind off… the pain. The Toyota hit me… knocked me into the wall… ass over teakettle… pinned me there… then backed off. The guy on the passenger side got out… grabbed for the suitcase. We played… tug of war. Then I bit his hand… hard. He gave up.'
        Alex had been warned to expect a message. This was it.
        With considerable effort - and a little lingering wariness - the paramedics lifted Wayne Kennedy onto the wheeled stretcher.
        The courier howled as he was moved. Tears of pain streamed down his face.
        The wheeled legs of the gurney folded under it as it was shoved into the van-style ambulance.
        Alex picked up both suitcases and followed Kennedy. No one tried to stop him. In the van, he sat on the suitcases.
        The rear doors slammed shut. One of the paramedics remained with Kennedy and began to prepare a bottle of plasma for intravenous transfusion. The ambulance began to move, and the siren wailed.
        Without raising his head from the stretcher, Wayne Kennedy said, 'You still there, boss?'
        'Right here,' Alex assured him.
        Kennedy's voice was twisted with pain, but he wouldn't be quiet. 'You think I'm an idiot?'
        Alex stared at the hideously crumpled leg. 'Wayne, for God's sake, you were sitting there bleeding to death.'
        'If you'd been in my shoes… you'd have done the same.'
        'Not in a million years.'
        'Oh, yeah. You would've. I know you,' Kennedy insisted. 'You hate to lose.'
        The paramedic cut away the coat and shirt sleeves on Kennedy's left arm. He swabbed the ebony skin with an alcohol-damp sterile pad, then quickly placed the needle in the vein.
        Kennedy's bad leg twitched. He groaned and said, 'I've got something to say… Mr. Hunter. But maybe I shouldn't.'
        'Say it before you choke on it,' Alex told him. 'Then please shut the hell up before you talk yourself to death.'
        The ambulance turned the corner so sharply that Alex had to grab at the safety railing beside him to keep from sliding off the pair of suitcases.
        Kennedy said, 'You and me… we're an awful lot alike in some ways. I mean… like you started out with nothing… and so did I. You were damned determined to make it… to the top… and you did. I'm determined… to make it… and I will. We're both smooth on the surface and street