Nor did he realize right away that the Camaro's engine was no longer running.
He put the car in drive. Nothing happened. For a moment he was utterly confused. He looked down at the ignition switch and found it vacant.
Cherkassky's pinched voice said to him, "Please, Gennady, why you wait?"
Markov's fat hand fumbled on the floor mat, underneath the seat. "Abramowitz," he muttered. "The key he took."
"Car was running," said Cherkassky.
A siren, faint at first, cut through among the sounds of moped horns and biplanes pulling banners through the sky.
"Big scientist," Cherkassky hissed. "Find a way to start the car!"
Markov sat there sweaty and helpless. "Is bad, Ivan," he said.
Aaron and Suki squeezed each other's fingers, their hips were pressed together on the seat The siren grew louder, its whine began to fill the leafy tunnel of Whitehead Street.
"Fool!" Ivan Cherkassky said. Disgusted, persuaded to the end that only he could do things right, could ensure his own survival, he threw open the Camaro's door, stepped outside, and started walking round to start the car himself.
Piney watched him. Without the others clustered up against him, the skinny Russian could not hide the gun. Pineapple saw it and quick as a crab he scuttled across the warm stone of the curb. By the time the Russian was crossing the front fender, the ragged and devoted man was close enough. He swung his parking sign with all his might and caught Cherkassky right behind the knees. The thin man buckled to the shape of a Z. His head clanged on the car's hood, then he slithered off the bright blue paint like egg.
Gennady Markov, baffled, fired blindly through the tinted windshield. Glass shattered; naked daylight, searing white, streamed in through the spiky gaps between the shards. Neither Cherkassky nor his assailant got up from the pavement.
The siren was growing ever louder. Bystanders, oblivious no longer, hunkered behind trees or bolted down side streets. Markov sat behind the wheel of the useless car and he started to whimper dryly. He was totally alone at last. There was no one to take responsibility for him, to prop him up, to tell him what to do. He listened to the siren. He wondered if his blind shot had killed his only comrade and his enemy.
He panicked. He opened his door and he began to run away down Whitehead Street. His shirt was soaked, his weirdly dainty shoes flopped and stretched under his weight. Fatly he ran, twisting his neck and brandishing his gun, using it to clear away a swath of the world wide enough for him to hide in.
Aaron rocked forward in his seat and took off after him. There was no time to think about what it was that called forth courage—whether it was mere circumstance, or love; no time to wonder about the transformation that brought a father's son to readiness on his own. He just took off, running hard and low.
Markov looked back across his shoulder, saw him closing fast. Still lumbering and straining, huffing and off- balance, the Russian fired. Aaron flinched but kept on charging. The shot went wide and low, it raised a long welt in the asphalt.
Aaron sprinted, measured, and a heartbeat later he left his feet, dove headlong at the fat man's churning thighs, and clawed and dragged him to the pavement
Air came out of Markov when he hit the ground. His elbow slammed down on the street; the impact sprung his fingers, and his pistol skidded off just beyond his reach. Moaning, he tried to slink and crawl to it, kicking out his legs like a giant wounded insect. Hand over hand, Aaron climbed up the man the way one scales the last vertiginous reaches of a peak, dug determined fingers deep into his flesh and held on for dear life, for several dear lives, till Gary Stubbs's tardy unmarked car screeched to a halt some three feet from where they lay.
Chapter 53
Piney hated keys—those guilty emblems of things coveted and hoarded, things one would get in big trouble for messing with. He could not meet the lieutenant's eyes as he handed over the pilfered key to the electric blue Camaro. But the cop didn't scold him. He patted his shoulder. Then he turned his attention back to the two old Soviets who were spread-eagled across the hot hood of his unmarked Ford.
Cherkassky had a ripening bruise on his forehead; his manner was stoic and sullen. Markov was shaking; his pants were torn. He saw no virtue in enduring pain; in response to the discreet pressure of a thumb behind the ear, he quickly revealed where Sam and Bert were being held.
Stubbs radioed for a beat patrol to go there. The Duval Street cops met Aaron and Suki on the sidewalk, just in front of the same dim and recessed doorway where Aaron had first accosted Tarzan Abramowitz. Together they went in, and Suki took a quiet, chastened satisfaction in being there as the cheesy business was shut down.