I take a cab to West 4th to save time. I think about telling the cabbie to turn the thing around and take me uptown, but that’s a worse play than the subway. On the train I’ll only have to worry about the patrols, and there can only be so many. In a cab, going through rush hour traffic, there are too many chances of getting spotted from the sidewalk or another car. Too random. So the Duke Ellington Express it is.

I get out of my cab at 4th and Sixth. It’s dark and cold, but the lights inside The Cage are on and a half dozen guys in sweats are playing three on three. I stop and light a smoke and watch. I’m in a hurry, but this is a long fucking train ride and I can’t smoke down in the hole. There’s a small cluster of people standing next to the tall chain-link fence watching the showboating street-ballers inside. They whip no-look passes at each other or lob alley-oops. No one plays D. I finish my smoke and light another. 4th to 145th? Even on the express that’s a two-smoke ride.

It’s no-man’s-land. I can take the time for the smoke. No one comes onto this turf. No one risks walking across it, let alone hunting or doing business on it. No one risks doing anything that might offend the Enclave. Piss the freaks off and they come for you. End up eating your fucking marrow.

Eating your marrow?

Doesn’t it have something to do with blood? Shouldn’t they get sick if they eat another Vampyre’s marrow? I mean, even if you boil those bones, the Vyrus has been in there. Shit. That’s weird. And what did Daniel say? That again. What the fuck was that about?

Color me pensive. Color me lost in thought and avoiding getting on the train, lighting a third cigarette without even thinking about it, because that’s my story. That’s my excuse for why I don’t smell Tom until the fucker jams the barrel of his gun in my back.

– What is it, Pitt? Old dog syndrome? New tricks just don’t sink in? Can’t get it through your head to stop fucking around on my watch?

He shoves the gun a little deeper into my backbone, hurrying me east on 4th toward Washington Square Park and the Society border.

– Hadn’t heard no-man’s was part of your beat now.

– Fuck off. You know what I’m talking about. Shaking down pledged members on Society turf, going into their homes and grilling them on Society business.

– Where you get that?

– Think you’re the only one who can pump Philip Sax for information? Get out the rubber hoses and that pussy opens up and spills everything. Didn’t even have to lay in to him. We did anyway, just to teach him a lesson, but we didn’t have to.

He’s alone. Tom’s not the brightest bulb, but he knew better than to follow me over here with a troop. Enclave would have had his ass for that. But he’ll have partisans waiting across the border. We set foot on the far curb of Washington Square East and I’ll be bracketed by his boys right away.

– Not even Terry’s gonna be able to help you on this one, Pitt. Poking on our turf without our say-so. Poking into official Society business. And then crossing over to report to those assholes? Fucking-A, I knew you stooged for the Coalition, but Enclave? That’s just sick. Fronting for those mujahideen motherfuckers.

– Got your head on a swivel, Tom? Keeping your eyes peeled? One of those motherfuckers hears you talking about them like that, they’ll find you in your safe house and flay you alive with their teeth.

– Fuck off. Fuck off and walk.

I glance back at him.

– Seriously, you ever see them in action? Scary shit. Like Bruce Lee on speed. Only like if you had to cut off his head or something to kill him. Saw two of them spar once. One got his arm torn off, kept coming. Other arm came off, kept coming. Got his leg wrapped around the other guy’s neck, brought him down and scissored him. Squeezed the guy til his eyes about popped out. Whole time he’s spraying this white gunk from his stumps. That was sparring. Scaaaaary shit.

– Shut the fuck up.

I glance back again as we cross Washington Square West. His eyes are zipping side to side.

The light is against us at Fifth. I step off the curb as a battered and graffitied delivery van whips around the corner. Tom grabs my left arm and pulls me back into him, the gun getting pinned sideways between us. He knows right away he’s made a mistake. Poor him.

He tries to keep his grip on my arm while he gets the gun barrel jammed back where it belongs. And he is a strong fucker. But Mr. Two Pints In Two Days is stronger just now. And faster. I go left, twist my arm free and clip him with my elbow as I dodge into the street and around to the far side of a NYC Parks Department pickup sitting at the curb. He takes a couple steps around it to the right. I go right. He goes left. I go left. He shows me the gun, flashing it low and out of sight from the people on the sidewalk, reminding me who’s in charge.

– Get the fuck over here, Pitt.

– Why?

– Get the fuck over here or I’ll shoot you.

– Park’s full of undercover cops looking to bust the dealers in there. Pull the trigger and they’ll be on your ass in a flash. Throw you in a cell. That’s if you’re lucky, if the Enclave aren’t watching. Waiting to see if you’re gonna cause a scene.

– Shut the fuck up.

– Shit, Tom, don’t you ever bother to put together a plan? I mean a good one.

– Shut the fuck up.

– Know what Terry calls you behind your back?

– Shut!

– Halfcock.

– The!

– I assumed it was cuz you’re always going off that way.

– Fuck!

– But maybe he knows something I don’t.

– Up!

– If you get what I mean.

He gets it.

He comes storming around the hood of the truck, shoving the pistol into one of the huge pockets of his army surplus jacket, those dirty blond dreads flying behind him.

– Gonna kick your fucking ass. Gonna beat your fucking face like I beat it before.

He did beat my face pretty bad that time. I got a gap between two molars that used to be filled by a third molar before he knocked it out. That pissed me off. So when he comes toward me with his fist raised, I let him tag me once on the neck and grab his sleeve and pull him close so he thinks I want to grapple, and then I use my free hand to whip out the.32 that’s still tucked in the back of my waistband because he was too fucking stupid to give me a little pat-down when he got the drop on me, and while he’s trying to wrap his hand around my throat I press the barrel against the top of his thigh and pull the trigger.

The shot is muffled by our bodies, but the folks who were just slowing down to look at our little scuffle decide it’s best to keep moving along. Tom falls to the ground, hands pressed over the hole in his leg, and I turn around and start walking quickly back toward Sixth. I mix in with the folks a little farther down the sidewalk and listen for the telltale sound of running feet that would mean there actually were a couple cops in the park wasting time on the dime-bag dealers.

I don’t bother looking back to see what Tom is doing. He’ll be on his feet by now, but he won’t try coming after me with that hole in his leg. He’ll be moving as quickly as possible back toward the Society border, making for the partisans he has posted there, hoping like hell there are no cops around. Once he crosses onto his own turf there’ll be a safe house right around the corner, the place he was planning to take me.

I reach The Cage and walk past it and down the steps into the West 4th Street station, crossing my fingers that Tom didn’t get nabbed. I might get away with shooting him, but if he gets busted, if it ends up being that kind of scene, I may as well take this train to the end of the line and get out and start walking ’til I walk right off the edge of the island.