"How are you doing?"

"Okay. I'm okay."

"You tell us if we bounce you around too much."

"No, you're doing fine."

He could hear the roar of voices from above the second floor, even through the steel door to the lobby. He muttered something, and the officer bearing him on the right said that he might as well get used to it.

"Here he is! Here he is! Get back!"

The door opened on a wall of people, police, cameramen, and reporters, all shouting at him, pushing each other. The light was so bright that he was temporarily blinded. A doctor started cutting at the left leg of his pants. He could see a stretcher at his feet.

"I want to stand a while."

"How do you feel?" a female reporter asked.

"Did you really kill them all?"

"Where's Al Powell?"

"Right here." He was standing back six feet, his hand on the butt of his .38, his eyes searching above the heads of the crowd.

Leland smiled. "You look better on television."

"I'll remember that." He stepped away, not looking at the short, dark-haired white man on his left. "This is Captain Dwayne Robinson."

"We're going to have to ask you a few questions, Leland. We're studying the video tapes now, and we're very interested in who got rid of that money, and why."

Leland saw Powell shake his head: the tapes showed nothing.

"I'm not answering questions without the advice of a lawyer," Leland said. "I think his first advice would be that I get medical attention."

"Let us talk to him," a dark-haired, moustached reporter said.

Leland recognized what was happening with the first sound, to his left, at the door to the northeast staircase. He wanted to get to the floor, but Robinson was blocking him, pushing him back against the wall. Karl shouted and opened fire on the reporters, whose screams and shrieks as they fell almost obscured the sound of the Kalashnikov. It was like looking in the mirror. Karl was covered with dirt and blood. He wanted to kill them all. It was another kind of madness, like the greed that had brought this down on them. Karl was not going to be satisfied until somebody stopped him. Not even Stephanie had been able to stop Leland. Not even Stephanie's death.

Now Karl found Leland. It was exactly like looking in the mirror. Karl could see no one but Leland; Leland knew it. Robinson had his gun out, but he never got off a round. Karl shot first, as Al Powell grabbed Robinson's shoulder and pulled him into Karl's line of fire. There was a ferocity to Powell's expression that Leland would not have imagined from what he had just seen upstairs on television. Robinson backed and fell against Leland, who felt himself being hit again, in the thigh, high up. Before the shock and the weight of Robinson's body knocked him down, Leland saw Powell take careful aim and, with two clean shots, tear off the top of Karl's head in a sheet of brains and blood.

Leland tried to pull himself out from under Robinson. With two hands, Powell rolled Robinson's body away. He tore at the leg of Leland's trousers. The blood felt as if someone had poured a bowl of soup in his lap.

"Medic! Medic!"

The doctor was lying dead beside Leland and Robinson. People were just stirring from where they had thrown themselves around the lobby. People started shouting.

"Give me that fucking belt," Powell said, pulling it loose. "You're not going to die on me, not now." He lashed the belt tightly around Leland's thigh. "I liked the way you ducked behind Robinson."

Leland stared.

"He died a hero," Powell said. "Don't you forget it."

"I wish you hadn't done anything."

Powell looked at him. "I know. But nobody should think that about himself — especially not the guy I'm counting on as my partner."

"Robinson made a mistake," Leland said aloud, but to himself.

"He gave his life for you," Powell said. "That's the only way to look at it. You're not bleeding anymore. You're going to live."

"You're a hell of a good cop," Leland said.

"Next to you, I'm no kind of a cop at all." Now he was crying. Cops crowded over him, craning for a look. A bottle of plasma was being set up. A new face appeared.

"Don't let go of that belt, kid."

"Sergeant," Powell said.

"Sergeant, I'm sorry. That's exactly right. Don't let go"

"You take it easy," Powell said to Leland. "You have years of living ahead of you." .

Leland had no answer. He wanted to say something, but found himself suddenly unwilling to think. He realized he could let everything go — he could let himself drift. He felt the whole long life he had already lived recede deeper into his memory. He was being picked up, rolled quickly toward the door. Somebody was holding the plasma, running alongside him with Powell. Powell smiled, the same man who had just looked so ferocious.

Leland closed his eyes. Now, and for a little while longer, he was going to think of flying.