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“Arkady,” the first man who spoke said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Set up outside this room and don’t go to sleep.”

“What about if it’s catching, Sergeant?” Arkady asked.

“That’s why God invented medical insurance.”

The doctor and the cops talked for a while more. Most of the police left. For the next twenty or thirty minutes we could hear someone, probably the doctor, moving around the room. And then, for thirty-four minutes, there was silence.

As quietly as he could Mel climbed out on our ladder-chair and lifted himself up to look through the hospital room window. Then he opened the window and climbed through. I followed as soundlessly as possible and clambered into the dark room.

We’d been wearing gloves since entering the Kershaw building. Before we crossed over to the clinic the first time we had donned dark ski masks.

A drawn and unconscious Free Man was chained to his hospital bed. His dreadlocks were tangled and there was a twist to his lips.

I had a bolt cutter and so used it on the restraint that chained Man to the bed frame. In the meanwhile Mel was fashioning a shoulder harness from thick rope that he intended to use to lower the unconscious Mr. Man from one building to the next.

I hefted the tangle-headed Man up into a seated position, and Mel began to loop the jury-rigged harness around the left shoulder.

That was when the door burst open and the light came on.

Time froze for a moment there. Officer Arkady had taken on too much what with opening the door and turning on the light. He probably heard something and thought it was Man trying to get out of his cuffs and so had not drawn his weapon. He did, however, reach for his piece when he saw us.

Mel was faster. The habitual offender swiveled to the right and fired five shots, which sounded like no more than pops. Arkady was hit in both legs and both arms. Then Mel rushed the faltering cop and hit him in the center of his forehead with the barrel of the gun.

The cop, who was portly of build, hit the floor like a dead bull and Mel was quick to use the man’s own handcuffs to restrain him. I thought that this was going a little overboard when I noticed there was no blood coming from Arkady’s extremities.

Mel noticed me looking and said, “Rubber bullets.”

Then he took a metal hypodermic from a pouch at his side and administered what I figured was some kind of knockout concoction.

While this was going on I ran out into the hall and located a wheelchair.

When I came back in my cohort asked, “What you plan to do with that?”

“No sentry. We could take the elevator.”

“What if they got cameras?”

“This place is for VIP clients. They don’t want electric eyes following them.”

Mel’s grin actually filled me with pride.

“I’ll go back down to Kershaw and take our stuff out of there,” he said. “You got those whiskers on so don’t have to wear no mask. Once you get out head west toward Broadway. I’ll grab the van and snag you on the way.”

It was the right plan, but I felt like a rat in a trap waiting for that elevator and then taking it down. Even when I made it to the delivery exit on the bottom floor, my heart was going at a triple rate. Mel had handed me his pistol, but that didn’t give me any solace. I’d spend the rest of my life in prison if I was captured. All of that said, there was a feeling of elation in my fast heart that I never had before…or since.

On the sidestreet sidewalk I began pushing the wheelchair. All of the clinic’s security was aimed at keeping unwanteds out. No one was expected to try to escape.

Even though Man was sedated when we found him, Melquarth had given him a shot of his tranquilizer.

“You had two hypodermics?” I asked.

“I got a gun with real bullets too. Same reason you brought along those crowbars, to get the job done.”

We had strapped the thin, long-haired Man with restraints that the chair provided. I looked down through his dreadlocks. His dark brown skin could have been mine. The handsome slant of his face might have belonged to a radical historian college professor.