“Edgar?”
Poe, already paler than a bed sheet, turned white as snow.
The beautiful bright-eyed blonde looked confused. “Edgar? What are you doing in that uniform? You’re not a limo driver.”
“We were at a costume party,” Poe stammered, adding in a whisper through clenched teeth, “I didn’t realize you were working tonight.”
The owner crossed the office in a bound. “Costume party? What the hell are you talking about? Annie, you know this guy?”
“Sure,” said the beautiful bright-eyed blonde. “He’s one of my regulars.” She flashed Poe a dazzling smile. “My most generous regular. He’s promised to buy me a beach house right on the ocean. Listen, hon, when you’re done whatever you’re doing up here, I’ll be waiting for you in the Champagne Room.”
To Stark—who now understood why Poe’s Connecticut home was mortgaged to the hilt—the strip club owner said, “What are you pulling?”
“A Smith & Wesson,” said Stark, moving very close to the boss while shielding the short-barreled .38 from foolish attempts to grab it. “Edgar, grab that sack before she dumps it.”
Poe hurled himself toward the brunette as she threw the sack into the funnel. He caught it, and they ran out the door.
The head bouncer blocked the hall. He laughed. “I’ve been shot by a lot bigger guns that didn’t stop me.”
“It’s not only a gun,” said Stark. Before he had finished the sentence, the revolver and the bouncer’s head had collided. Stark grabbed Poe and jumped him over the bouncer’s body. He said, “Hang on to that sack,” and dragged Poe to the stairs.
“Not up,” cried Poe. “Down. Downstairs.”
“We’re going up.”
Somewhere behind them, someone fired a gun.
Women started screaming. More guns popped. Men yelled in terror.
Stark dragged Poe up the stairs, outdoors into a columned portico, out between two columns, and across the flat roof to the low parapet that rimmed the edge. The limo was parked where he had left it, thirty feet below.
“How do we get down?”
“Rope,” said Stark, uncoiling a heavy rope that was tied around a roof vent. He tossed it. The end fell within five feet of the sidewalk. “Where did that rope come from?”
“Plan. Prep. Rehearse.” Stark swung his legs over the parapet, grabbed the rope, lowered himself hand under hand to the sidewalk. “Throw me the money.”
Poe threw the money and slid down the rope. By the time he was darting across the sidewalk, blowing on his burned palms, Stark had the limo unlocked and the engine started. Poe jumped in beside him.
“Put on your seat belt,” said Stark, and he floored it, screeching into the late-night traffic, up Twelfth Avenue, and onto the Henry Hudson Highway, checking his mirrors repeatedly.
“All clear. Take us back to 1981.”
“I can’t from here.”
“Why not?”
“We have to go back from the same spot we entered.”
“Fifty-First and Twelfth Avenue?”
“Right across from the club.”
“I wish you’d told me that earlier.”
Stark checked his mirrors, for the tenth time, and turned off at the Seventy-Ninth Street. He circled under the highway, up the ramp, floored the big car back downtown. “We’ll have about three seconds at Fifty-First for you to get us the hell out of there.”
Poe’s answer was an unreassuring, “I’ll do my best.”
Stark hit the brakes. “Now!”
They piled out the doors. Stark’s estimate had been overly optimistic.
In one second, a club bouncer howled, “They’re back!”
In two seconds, numerous large men were running across Twelfth Avenue full tilt at Stark and Poe, yanking pistols from coats and trousers.
In three seconds, several stopped running to take careful aim.
Stark raised the hand not holding the money sack, with a hopeless feeling it wouldn’t change their minds. He heard Poe say, “Step back.”
They were in the stone alley and, just as suddenly, at the foot of the rickety ladder.
Up on the rock, a cool fresh breeze was blowing off the river and the sun was sinking low. A siren, faintly audible at first, grew loud. Poe gazed at the river. “That’s not an ambulance, Mr. Stark.”
“I didn’t think it was.” He started to stand up.
Poe said, “There’s a jeep patrol in the park. I wouldn’t run for it unless I were very young and athletic.”
“I thought you said they couldn’t follow us back.”
“Those aren’t bouncers, they’re cops. And they didn’t follow us from 2005. They followed you from this morning on the East Side.”
Stark’s face assumed the flat hard lines of a man unamused as he scrutinized the rock for fields of fire. Three or four police cars converged on the Eighty-Fourth Street entrance, and Jeep with riflemen roared up the bank from the promenade.