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By Root 2988 0

wards of the court for that time and putting the place in the temporary charge of one Reverend Charles Bancroft, a retired orphanage superintendent. The Doctor himself was forbidden to set foot inside the Institute during that time: for a man of his antsy temperament, sixty days—with no sure knowledge of what would come after—could be a genuine eternity. And the question of how hard he’d take leaving the Institute didn’t involve just him, either. The kids themselves would play a crucial part, for if even one of them snapped while he was gone—and some of those kids were wound pretty tight—the Doctor would, I knew, take all the blame onto himself. He’d always taught his charges to draw strength from the fact that at least one person believed in them and to be ready to use that strength in future times of trouble. But would they be able to do it when the stakes were so high and the outcome was so uncertain …?

The sudden thunder of a gunshot bellowed out of an alleyway just after I’d turned onto Forsyth Street, causing Frederick to rear in fright and me to stop daydreaming and jerk my head around to locate the source of the trouble. It’d come from back by an old rear tenement building, the closest thing to Hell that any living person ever called home. I jumped off the calash to calm Frederick down by stroking his powerful neck and feeding him a couple of cubes of sugar what I always kept in my pocket when I was driving. Keeping my eyes locked on the alleyway, I soon saw the agent of the mayhem: a crazed-looking man, small and wiry, with a big, drooping mustache and a slouch hat. He came wandering out of the alley carrying an old side-by-side shotgun, brazen as can be, with no apparent thought to who might be watching. A scream followed him out, but his only answer was to declare, without turning around, “Now I’ll take care of your fuckin’ little boyfriend!” He then disappeared at the same quick pace around the corner of Eldridge Street. There wasn’t a cop to be seen, of course; there rarely was in that part of town, and if one had been around, the sound of the gunshot would in all likelihood have sent him scurrying in the opposite direction.

I got back onto the driver’s seat of the calash and made for the Institute at a quick pace. Reaching Numbers 185-187 East Broadway—the two red brick buildings with black trim what the Doctor’d bought and converted into one space many years back—I found that there was a young patrolman stationed at the foot of the steps to the main entrance. Jumping to the ground, I gave Frederick a few more pats on the neck and another lump of sugar, then approached the cop, who was too green to know me by sight.

“I don’t suppose you’d be interested to know that there’s a mug wandering up Eldridge Street with a shotgun,” I said.

“You don’t say,” the cop answered, looking me over. “And what business might that be of yours?”

“None of mine,” I said with a shrug. “Just thought it might be some of yours.”

“My business is right here,” the cop announced, straightening his light summer cap and puffing himself up so that his blue tunic looked near to busting. “Court business.”

“Unh-hunh,” I said. “Well, maybe you could tell Dr. Kreizler that his driver’s here. Seeing as getting him off the premises seems to be the main point of the court’s business.”

The cop turned toward the steps, giving me a glare. “You know,” he said, as he went up to the door, “an attitude like that could get you in some tight spots, sonny.”

I let him get inside before shaking my head and spitting into the gutter. “Go chase yourself,” I mumbled.“Sonny.” (Maybe I ought to note here that one of the things all my years with Dr. Kreizler never did affect—besides my taste for smokes—was my attitude toward cops.)

In a few minutes the patrolman reappeared, followed by Dr. Kreizler, a small group of his students, and a pious-looking old bag of bones what I took to be the Reverend Bancroft. The kids, some of the Doctor’s younger charges, were pretty typical of the range of types he generally had at the place: one was a little girl who came