The three began walking toward Intensive Care.

“He’d have been better off if it had hit him full force,” Arrowsmith continued. “Would have drilled right on through the shoulder. Tumbling like it did”-she made a circling motion with an index finger-“it pretty much smashed up the rotator cuff.”

She stopped in front of one of the ICUs.

Through the glass door, Frank saw Pencil Crawfurd, chest bandaged, a tangle of tubes running in and out of his body, his bed surrounded by electronic monitoring equipment.

“He’s still out,” Arrowsmith said.

“Any guess how long?” Jose asked.

“Maybe another two, three hours.” Her eyes fixed on the motionless figure. She sighed, as if acknowledging how powerless all the tubing and electronics were to affect what would happen. “Maybe a couple a days.”

“He starts coming around…” Jose offered Arrowsmith a contact card.

She laughed. “Save your card. All these years, Jose, I got your number.”

TWO

Frank turned off Florida Avenue onto M Street, NE.

A dingy assortment of run-down row houses lined both sides of the street. The stark glare of mercury-vapor lamps washed over battered doors, raw-dirt front yards, plywood-patched windows sprayed with gang graffiti. A gutted mattress lay on the sidewalk. Farther on, a Safeway shopping cart, minus a wheel, leaned against a long-dead tree.

“Looks like all the shit in the world nobody wanted’s been dumped here,” Jose said.

“Little urban renewal needed.”

Jose grunted. “A little nuclear bomb.”

“Here we are.” Frank pulled over to the curb.

The two-story brick row house stood out from its crumbling neighbors: bright yellow with white trim, azaleas and climbing wisteria. A black ornamental cast-iron fence set the property off from the rest of the neighborhood.