The Shadow Box Read Online Free PDF Page B

cut him terribly. The knife slipped from wet fingers. He tried to call to his companion for help. Air and blood blew through his cheek.
    The one in the dreadlocks was clawing at his belt. Fal lon spun the bald one and shoved him at the other. He followed, low, and aimed the edge of his shoe at the sec ond man's knee. The hard chopping kick tore at his ten dons. Fallon heard them pop through an agonized shriek. The man was going down but a gun had appeared in his hand. A revolver. Big, heavy, chrome-plated. Fallon moved in quickly. In a single motion he jammed one shoe against the gun and raked the man's eyes with the rough edge of his cast. Another scream. With his good hand he seized the revolver, gripping the cylinder so that it couldn't be turned. He wrenched the gun free. He brought it down across the nose of the man who would have shot him and then against his collarbone. A third blow broke his jaw. He stopped when the one in dreadlocks could no longer raise his arms.
    He turned to the bald one who was on his back, rolling, trying to hold his face together. As Fallon approached, this one tried to kick up at him. Fallon seized the kicking leg, placed a foot on the other, and heaved upward as if to tear the man in half. Another shriek, cut short, and then a high-pitched hooting sound. From across the avenue, a woman's voice said, ‘‘Someone call the police.”
Fallon turned the gun in his hand and cocked it. The bloody knife was at his feet. He kicked it under a parked car then stood over the one in dreadlocks. He was semi conscious, moaning. The other now mewed like a cat.
Fallon pointed the gun at the second man's leg. A voice in his mind said, Cripple them, Michael. No use doin' this twice. But the woman was still yelling and suddenly, in the distance, he saw the strobe of blue lights. Time to go, the voice told him. Just walk away slow. Fallon obeyed. He reached the next corner and turned toward Central Park.
“Michael . . . where did you learn to do that?”
“Do what?”
“ ‘Hurt people.''
“ Moon. Moon taught me.''
    He supposed that he should have waited there. And explained what had `happened. But he'd had enough of the police. Enough of the media.
    Doyle had been right about that. Fallon had, over a period of eight weeks, figured in two major homicides. He'd had microphones stuck in his face at Uncle Jake's funeral and again after Bronwyn was killed. He had man aged to duck them after the subway incident but that one made the papers all the same. And they were waiting for him outside the courthouse when he appeared for Mrs. Mayfield. A reporter asked him whether he had considered that there might be a Fallon curse.
    The next day, that same reporter's tabloid ran a photo it had found in its morgue. The photo was a shot of his parents' old apartment house. On it, they had traced a dotted line from a sixth floor window to the sidewalk below, showing where another Fallon had leaped to his death.
He didn't need them hearing about this new episode.
       He didn't need to see his face on a television screen, an object of pity. Some street reporter wondering aloud how one man could attract so much trouble. Or how it was that he took those two so easily. Those were his main reasons for not waiting.
“Was another that you wanted to keep that gun?”
“Yes, it was, Doc. Enough was enough.”
    He had walked toward Central Park, a n d into it, because to go straight home would have been foolish. One of those witnesses might have followed and then told the police where he lived.
    Once in the park, he did have second thoughts about the gun. If the police were to find him, it might be hard to explain. What did you intend, Mr. Fallon? A little more hunting? Otherwise, who in his right mind would walk through Central Park at night? Seen too many Charles Bronson movies, Mr. Fallon?
“Would they have been right?”
“ Doc . . . I don 't know.''
“The truth, Michael.”               `.
“ I f someone had