“You really think he’s got a plan? How, Alex?”
I shook my head; I had no way of knowing. He was bleeding, had to be weak; maybe he was even delirious. Or maybe he had a plan. Hell, he’d always had a plan before.
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So up we went, all the way. The top floor was nine, and we didn’t see the Wolf as we peeked out of the stairwell. We quickly checked the offices; no one had seen him—and they sure would have remembered if they had.
“In the back. There’s stairs up to the roof,” someone told us in a law office.
Ned Mahoney and I climbed more stairs, then we stepped outside into bright daylight. We didn’t see the Wolf. There was a single-story structure, like a small hat on top of the old building. Water tower? The super’s office?
We tried the door; it was locked.
“He has to be here somewhere. Unless he jumped,” Ned said.
Then we saw him coming around from behind the tower. “I didn’t jump, Mr. Mahoney. And I thought I told you not to work on this case. I think I was clear. Put down your guns right now.”
I stepped forward. “I brought him here.”
“Of course you did. You’re the indefatigable, don’t-give-up, relentless Dr. Cross. That’s why you’re so predictable, and useful.”
Suddenly a New York City policeman stepped out of the same trapdoor opening to the roof that we had used. He saw the Wolf and fired.
He hit the Wolf in the chest, but it didn’t stop him. He was wearing a vest, had to be. The Russian growled like a bear and charged the cop, waving both arms over his head.
He grabbed the surprised officer and picked him up. There was nothing Ned or I could do. Next thing, he hurled the man off the roof.
The Wolf started to race toward the other side of the rooftop, and he seemed genuinely insane. What was he doing? Suddenly I thought I knew. The building to the south was close enough so that he was going to jump for it. Then, coming in from the west, I saw a helicopter. For him? Was that the escape plan? Don’t let this be happening.
I ran after him. So did Mahoney. “Stop! Stop right there!”
He was running in crazy zigzags away from us. We fired but didn’t hit him with the first shots.
Then the Wolf was airborne, both his arms flailing—and he was going to make it to the other rooftop with room to spare.
“You bastard, no!” Ned yelled. “No!”
I stopped running, aimed carefully, and squeezed the trigger four times.
Chapter 119
THE WOLF KEPT pumping his legs and seemed almost to be running on thin air, but then he started to drop. His arms reached out toward the edge of the other building. His fingers reached for the roof.
Mahoney and I ran up to the edge of our building. Could the Wolf get out of this one? Somehow, he always found a way. Except this time—I knew I’d hit him in the throat. He had to be drowning in his own blood.
“Fall, you fuck!” Ned screamed at him.
“He’s not going to make it,” I said.
And he didn’t. The Russian’s body fell, and he didn’t fight it, didn’t make a sound, never screamed out. Not a sound came from him.
Mahoney yelled down at him. “Hey, Wolf! Hey, Wolfman! Go to hell!”
The fall looked as if it had been shot in slow motion, but then he hit the ground in the alleyway between the buildings. Hit it hard. I stared down at the Wolf’s mangled body, the bandaged face, and I felt satisfied for the first time in a long while. I felt fulfilled and whole. We’d gotten him, and he deserved to die like that, squashed like a bug on the pavement.
Then Ned Mahoney started to clap and whoop and dance around like a complete madman. I didn’t join in, but I knew what he was feeling. The man down there deserved this fate, if anyone ever did. Stone-cold dead in an alleyway.
“He didn’t scream,” I finally said. “Couldn’t even give us that.”