Cell: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

former speaking-in-tongues babble.
    “He tried to kill us!” the little man wept. “He tried to kill us!”
    “Yes, yes,” Clay said. He was aware that he had once said yes, yes to Johnny in exactly the same way back when they’d still called him Johnny-Gee and he’d come to them up the front walk with his scraped shins or elbows, wailing I got BLOOD!
    The man on the sidewalk (who had plenty of blood) was on his elbows, trying to get up again. Clay did the honors this time, kicking one of the guy’s elbows out from under him and putting him back down on the pavement. This kicking seemed like a stopgap solution at best, and a messy one. Clay grabbed the handle of the knife, winced at the slimy feel of half-jellied blood on the handle—it was like rubbing a palm through cold bacon-grease—and pulled. The knife came a little bit, then either stopped or his hand slipped. He fancied he heard his characters murmuring unhappily from the darkness of the portfolio, and he made a painful noise himself. He couldn’t help it. And he couldn’t help wondering what he meant to do with the knife if he got it out. Stab the lunatic to death with it? He thought he could have done that in the heat of the moment, but probably not now.
    “What’s wrong?” the little man asked in a watery voice. Clay, even in his own distress, couldn’t help being touched by the concern he heard there. “Did he get you? You had him blocked out for a few seconds and I couldn’t see. Did he get you? Are you cut?”
    “No,” Clay said. “I’m all r—”
    There was another gigantic explosion from the north, almost surely from Logan Airport on the other side of Boston Harbor. Both of them hunched their shoulders and winced.
    The lunatic took the opportunity to sit up and was scrambling to his feet when the little man in the tweed suit administered a clumsy but effective sideways kick, planting a shoe squarely in the middle of the lunatic’s shredded tie and knocking him back down. The lunatic roared and snatched at the little man’s foot. He would have pulled the little guy over, then perhaps into a crushing embrace, had Clay not seized his new acquaintance by the shoulder and pulled him away.
    “He’s got my shoe!” the little man yelped. Behind them, two more cars crashed. There were more screams, more alarms. Car alarms, fire alarms, hearty clanging burglar alarms. Sirens whooped in the distance. “Bastard got my sh —”
    Suddenly a policeman was there. One of the responders from across the street, Clay assumed, and as the policeman dropped to one blue knee beside the babbling lunatic, Clay felt something very much like love for the cop. That he’d take the time to come over here! That he’d even noticed!
    “You want to be careful of him,” the little man said nervously. “He’s—”
    “I know what he is,” the cop replied, and Clay saw the cop had his service automatic in his hand. He had no idea if the cop had drawn it after kneeling or if he’d had it out the whole time. Clay had been too busy being grateful to notice.
    The cop looked at the lunatic. Leaned close to the lunatic. Almost seemed to offer himself to the lunatic. “Hey, buddy, how ya doin?” he murmured. “I mean, what the haps?”
    The lunatic lunged at the cop and put his hands on the cop’s throat. The instant he did this, the cop slipped the muzzle of his gun into the hollow of the lunatic’s temple and pulled the trigger. A great spray of blood leaped through the graying hair on the opposite side of the lunatic’s head and he fell back to the sidewalk, throwing both arms out melodramatically: Look, Ma, I’m dead.
    Clay looked at the little man with the mustache and the little man with the mustache looked at him. Then they looked back at the cop, who had holstered his weapon and was taking a leather case from the breast pocket of his uniform shirt. Clay was glad to see that the hand he used to do this was shaking a little. He was now frightened of the