"What's going to happen?" he finally asked, swallowing his fear.

"Don't worry. I have some money. We'll be partners." Then she turned to go and he grabbed her by the elbow. She jerked it back, tears welling up in her eyes.

"I'm going!" she cried out. "He's not going to hurt me anymore." She stepped toward him before he could wrap her closer and pounded her fists against his chest, angrily sobbing, suddenly pushing away. "Hurry! They're after you!"

He watched her slip out the door, stunned, listening to her heels clatter down the rickety stairs. He went to the window and folded back the blinds. Saw nothing but night, streetlamps, and a yellow cab pulling away.

Under the cover of night, once she was beyond viewing from Johnny's window, Mona walked to the street phone, inserted a coin. She heard the metallic rattle, then a dial tone, and tapped in Johnny's pager sequence of eights. She took a breath, waited.

Johnny's beeper sounded before he finished buckling the belt on his jeans. In the dark of his apartment, the luminous display on his pager read 444-4444. Death numbers all across the digital display.

The old bastard seeping him.

Just like Mona had said.

He reached under the nightlight, pulled his cash and a Ruger Magnum from the floorboards under the sink. Stuffed fugitive items into a duffel bag.

He tucked the ticket folder into his pocket, stepped out into the yellow light of the stairway, moving down the steps and thinking, Goodbye to Chinatown.

Nite cruiser

Two A.M.

Homeless predators and mental-hospital fugitives stalked the carbon-monoxide-infused spread of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, watched warily by the sex hustlers, pimps, and returning New Jersey johns. Two PA cops patrolled together, tense, a nervous pair of birds.

Johnny kept the neat, flat packets of fifties inside the back game-pouch of his hunting vest, covered the vest under a loosefitting barn jacket, dark, his entire presentation colorless. The Ruger in his waistband.

He went directly to a bank of telephone booths, which carried the stench of urine and stale ugly sex, nestled the greasy handset into the bend of his neck and punched in Gee Man's number. Held his breath for three rings, got a message machine.

"Take care of the car," he said. "Leave me a voice message if anyone asks for me." Stepping back from the stench, he hung up and went toward the brushed-aluminum Greyhound Star Cruiser idling at Departures.

On board he took a window seat across from the driver. The Cruiser held forty-five passengers and carried a ton of luggage in its belly hold.

He scanned the other passengers.

There were no other Chinese on the bus. Just as well. He didn't want company, small talk, or questions. The bus rolled out, only half full.

There was a group of students, a club maybe. Baseball caps worn backwards. Jansport knapsacks. An old white couple carrying cane suitcases. A woman and her daughter who looked Mexican. Most of the rest were hard-scrabble working-class by the look of their clothes: whites, Latinos, farm laborers, construction dogs returning westward, ho.

The Lincoln Tunnel snaked them through to NewJersey. A weariness settled over them inside the bus, a surrender, a resignation known by those who came hoping to conquer but ended up stealing away, back into exile in the dead night, their spirits swallowed whole by the unrelenting, unforgiving metropolis.

Johnny saw the last of NewYork City fading into the receding urban nightscape. The Greyhound pushed along, seeking the Interstate, where it could cruise at seventy-five.

His mind always came back to Mona, the idea that they could be partners. What business could they possibly have in common? Had she mentioned other partners? Women like her had to know some big players. He imagined a karaoke nightclub operation-something catering to an uptown clientele, until somewhere in the Pennsylvania night he realized Mona could never be more than a silent partner, and only in a legitimate business that wouldn't catch the attention of Big Uncle, or the Dragon Boys.

His mind drifted, different cities, different state lines. America from the Interstate, rolling by in the picture-window framed night of the Star Cruiser. Somewhere they could blend in. California Dreaming. Or far enough away no one would ever think to find them there. Canada? Mexico? South America?

But though he pondered through the night, he couldn't come up with where that might be.

Yin And Yang

Jack sat at the desk with the harsh daylight of the squad room window behind him, stared into the middle ground and thought of Ali Por's words, small ears. They made no sense.

A week had passed, more than two since the first rape, and in the zone there had been no new attacks. The pattern seemed broken, the beast gone. The community was beginning to drop its guard, strengthened by the allied tongs' pledge to bring an end to the nightmare. The composite sketches began to disappear from storefronts, from the hanging pagoda streetlamps.

Jack knew it was just a matter of time before he attacked again. He'd seen the sketch featured on an episode of CrimeStoppers, so he knew Sex Crimes was still active on the case.

There was a commotion downstairs, then one of the uniforms ran tip and summoned Jack.

"We got a woman downstairs asking for you. They brought her in on a D and D. Lee, she said her name was."

Lee? wondered Jack, creaking down the stairs.

It was Alexandra, looking disheveled, having apparently shed the Chow in her last name. A female uniform, who had her by the elbow, said, "Disorderly, Detective. She was assaulting a man who claimed to be her husband. There was alcohol on her breath when we got there."

"The husband?" Jack asked Alexandra.

She didn't look at him.

"The man refused to press, but she wouldn't give it up," the uniform answered.

Jack took a breath, flashed the female cop a look that reached out saying, Don't run her through the system.

"I'll take it," Jack said. The officer released Alexandra's arm. Jack took her to the locker room, sat her down on one of the benches and leveled a tough look at her.

"You know you could get disbarred in New York for something as stupid as this?"

Alexandra broke down and explained tearfully how she had recently caught her husband cheating, and was feeling bitter and volatile, and how finally this morning, after she got back from taking her daughter Kimberly to Pre-K, she had tried to throw him out. They had fought, loud and ugly. She was throwing his clothes into the Tower's hallway when the cops came.

"What about the alcohol?" Jack asked.

"For courage." She sniffed into her handkerchief. "I had a couple along the way."

"At ten in the morning?"

"In my office." She blinked. "Leftovers from the Christmas party."

There was a short silence. He put a hand on her shoulder, and when she got up he told her to get herself a lawyer, not herself. Then he walked her out of the stationhouse and steered her in the direction of her daughter's schoolyard.

"Cool out," he said quietly. "Count your blessings. I know it sounds hokey, but it's never as dark as you think. Okay?"

"Okay," she answered, gratitude and shame in her trailing voice as she hurried down the street.

When he returned to the locker room, he noticed the handkerchief on the bench. It was Chinese silk, embroidered in red with the monogram AL. He picked it up and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, not really caring whether or not she'd return for it.

Highway

Johnny fell asleep at dawn, Ohio, Indiana, somewhere. When he awoke it was afternoon, the bus pushing on, the highway changing to a two-lane blacktop ribbon and back to the Interstate again. By sunset they rolled into St. Louis.