through the writhing wall again, towards the back of the room. A tall black man objected to Alex's assault.
'Hey, mon! Stop it! You own The Owl, I think not!'
'Get out of my way! Goddamn it, take your hands off me!'
'With pleasure, mon!' The black removed his hands from McAuliffs coat, pulled back a tight fist, and hammered it into Alex's stomach. The force of the blow, along with the shock of its utter surprise, caused McAuliff to double up.
He rose as fast as he could, the pain sharp, and lurched for the man. As he did so, the black twisted his wrist somehow, and McAuliff fell into the surrounding, nearly oblivious dancers. When he got to his feet, the black was gone.
It was a curious and very painful moment.
The smoke and its accompanying odours made him dizzy; then he understood. He was breathing deep breaths; he was out of breath. With less strength but no less intensity, he continued through the dancers to the narrow corridor.
It was a passageway to the restrooms, 'Chicks' to the right, 'Roosters' to the left. At the end of the narrow hallway was a door with a very large lock, an outsized padlock, that was meant, apparently, to remind patrons that the door was no egress; The Owl of Saint George expected tabs to be paid before departure.
The lock had been pried open. Pried open and then reset in the round hasps, its curving steel arm a half inch from insertion.
McAuliff ripped it off and opened the door.
He walked out into a dark, very dark, alleyway filled with garbage cans and refuse. There was literally no light but the night sky, dulled by fog, and a minimum spill from the windows in the surrounding ghettolike apartment buildings. In front of him was a high brick wall; to the right the alley continued past other rear doorways, ending in a cul-de-sac formed by the sharply angled wall. To his left, there was a break between The Owl's building and the brick; it was a passageway to the street. It was also lined with garbage cans, and the stench that had to accompany their presence.
McAuliff started down the cement corridor, the light from the street lamps illuminating the narrow confines. He was within twenty feet of the pavement when he saw it. Them: small pools of deep red fluid.
He raced out into the street. The crowds were thinning out; Soho was approaching its own witching hour. Its business was inside now: the private clubs, the all-night gambling houses, the profitable beds where sex was found in varying ways and prices. He looked up and down the sidewalk, trying to find a break in the patterns of human traffic: a resistance, an eruption.
There was none.
He stared down at the pavement; the rivulets of blood had been streaked and blotted by passing feet, the red drops stopping abruptly at the kerb. Holcroft had been taken away in an automobile.
Without warning, McAuliff felt the impact of lunging hands against his back. He had turned sideways at the last instant, his eyes drawn by the flickering of a neon light, and that small motion kept him from being hurled into the street. Instead, his attacker - a huge black - plunged over the kerb, into the path of an onrushing Bentley, travelling at extraordinary speed. McAuliff felt a stinging pain on his face: Then man and vehicle collided; the anguished scream was the scream at the moment of death; the screeching wheels signified the incredible to McAuliff. The Bentley raced forward, crushing its victim, and sped off. It reached the corner and whipped violently to the left, its tyres spinning above the kerb, whirring as they touched stone again, propelling the car out of sight. Pedestrians screamed, men ran, whores disappeared into doorways, pimps gripped their pockets, and McAuliff stood above the bloody, mangled corpse in the street and knew it was meant to be him.
He ran down the Soho street; he did not know where, just away. Away from the gathering crowds on the pavement behind. There would be questions, witnesses... people placing him at the scene - involved, not placed, he reflected. He had no answers, and instinctively he knew he could not allow himself to be identified - not until he had some answers.
The dead black was the man in The Owl of Saint George, of that he was certain: the man who had stunned him with a savage blow to the stomach on the dance floor and