Two paramedics slammed the rear doors of the rig open. The gurney dropped onto its caster wheels with a violent, metallic *CLANG*, the rubber tires instantly biting into the wet concrete.
“Female, late twenties, severe respiratory distress, acute anaphylactic shock secondary to un-indexed cholinergic toxicity, heart rate one hundred and forty, systolic blood pressure dropping through seventy!” the lead paramedic barked into the damp air, jogging alongside the cart as it crossed the automatic threshold.
I didn’t jog.
I walked behind them with that deliberate, measured, unhurried cadence that every street cop and federal wiretap operative below Fourteenth Street recognized with cold terror: *tack… tack… tack.*
My tailored black Brioni coat was unbuttoned, the heavy silk lining brushing the scuffed tile. Pinned to the inside of my lapel, hidden from civilian cameras, was an unpolished bronze surveyor’s transit pin, its miniature vernier engraved with micro-graduations. Strapped to my left wrist was an antique 1956 Admiralty Gold Chronometer, its mechanical sweep-second hand advancing with that sixty-cycle, unyielding precision: *tack… tack… tack.*
In my right hand, I held the small, dirty, trembling fingers of five-year-old Leo.
He had refused to let go of my wrist. Clutched under his left arm was the battered die-cast red truck—the 1957 Mack miniature with the silver scratch across the radiator cowl and the single black rubber wheel I had hand-carved from a tire patch when I was seven years old in an industrial orphanage in Red Hook.
