Tripwire

hospital, which seemed to be what she needed. So we dropped her at St. Vincent’s, because it’s on the way back here.”
    “Bellevue is nearer Grand Central,” O’Hallinan said.
    “I don’t like the traffic over there,” Tony said neutrally. “St. Vincent’s was more convenient.”
    “And you didn’t wonder about what had happened to her?” Sark asked. “How she came by the injuries?”
    “Well, naturally we wondered,” Tony said. “We asked her about it, but she couldn’t speak, because of the injuries. That’s why we didn’t recognize the name.”
    O’Hallinan stood there, unsure. Sark took a step forward.
    “You found her on the sidewalk?”
    Tony nodded. “Outside Grand Central.”
    “She couldn’t speak?”
    “Not a word.”
    “So how do you know she was off the Kisco train?”
    The only gray area in the rehearsals had been picking the exact moment to drop the defense and start the offense. It was a subjective issue. They had trusted that when it came, they would recognize it. And they did. The thickset man stood up and crunched a round into the shotgun’s chamber and leveled it across the counter.
    “Freeze!” he screamed.
    A nine-millimeter pistol appeared in Tony’s hand. Sark and O’Hallinan stared at it and glanced back at the shotgun and jerked their arms upward. Not a rueful little gesture like in the movies. They stretched them violently upward as if their lives depended on touching the acoustic tile directly above their heads. The guy with the shotgun came up from the rear and jammed the muzzle hard into Sark’s back and Tony stepped around behind O’Hallinan and did the same thing with his pistol. Then a third man came out from the darkness and paused in the office doorway.
    “I’m Hook Hobie,” he said.
    They stared at him. Said nothing. Their gazes started on his disfigured face and traveled slowly down to the empty sleeve.
    “Which of you is which?” Hobie asked.
    No reply. They were staring at the hook. He raised it and let it catch the light.
    “Which of you is O’Hallinan?”
    O’Hallinan ducked her head in acknowledgment. Hobie turned.
    “So you’re Sark.”
    Sark nodded. Just a fractional inclination of his head.
    “Undo your belts,” Hobie said. “One at a time. And be quick.”
    Sark went first. He was quick. He dropped his hands and wrestled with his buckle. The heavy belt thumped to the floor at his feet. He stretched up again for the ceiling.
    “Now you,” Hobie said to O’Hallinan.
    She did the same thing. The heavy belt with the revolver and the radio and the handcuffs and the nightstick thumped on the carpet. She stretched her hands back up, as far as they would go. Hobie used the hook. He leaned down and swept the point through both buckles and swung the belts up in the air, posing like a fisherman at the end of a successful day on the riverbank. He reached around and used his good hand to pull the two sets of handcuffs out of their worn leather cups.
    “Turn around.”
    They turned and faced the guns head-on.
    “Hands behind you.”
    It is possible for a one-armed man to put handcuffs on a victim, if the victim stands still, wrists together. Sark and O’Hallinan stood very still indeed. Hobie clicked one wrist at a time, and then tightened all four cuffs against their ratchets until he heard gasps of pain from both of them. Then he swung the belts high enough not to drag on the floor and walked back inside the office.
    “Come in,” he called.
    He walked around behind the desk and laid the belts on it like items for close examination. He sat heavily in his chair and waited while Tony lined up the prisoners in front of him. He left them in silence while he emptied their belts. He unstrapped their revolvers and dropped them in a drawer. Took out their radios and fiddled with the volume controls until they were hissing and crackling loudly. He squared them together at the end of the desktop with their antennas pointed toward the wall of windows. He inclined his head for a moment and listened to the squelch of radio atmospherics. Then he turned back and pulled both nightsticks out of the loops on the belts. He placed one on the desk and hefted the other in his left hand and examined it closely. It was the modern kind, with a handle, and a telescopic section below. He peered at it, interested.
    “How does this work, exactly?”
    Neither Sark or O’Hallinan replied. Hobie played with the stick for a second, and then he glanced at the