I

leave the police, take a cab and see if you can get the driver to lay down some rubber. You have to shake off anybody following you, at least for a minute or two. And use that minute to get down to the subway. Meet us at the platform at Eighty-sixth Street and Lex.”
She was long in answering. “It may be a while before I can get out of here.”
“We’ll wait. I’ll be easy to spot. I’m wearing the gray suit my grandfather was buried in.”
“Okay.”
Harris hung up and returned to the bench where Doc sat.
A couple of hours had worked changes on Doc. He now wore sunglasses, a sweatsuit jacket, and the Phantom of the Opera T-shirt Harris had bought in a corner store during a brief solo return to street level.
Harris had also been at him with tricks barely remembered from his college theater career. Doc’s hair was now gray—streaked with shoe polish applied with a toothbrush in the bathroom. His skin was dark with the orange­-brown tan that came out of a bottle. He looked older, his features lined with makeup pencil. Harris could have put an additional twenty years on him—Elmer’s glue, toilet paper, and makeup base could do an amazing job of simulating wrinkled, sagging skin—but he hadn’t wanted to get too elaborate. This disguise might be adequate to keep the police from noticing Doc if they had a description of him from witnesses outside Gaby’s place.
Doc’s wrists were bound up in bandages, but his hands, where they showed, looked better anyway. Dead flesh was slowly peeling away, revealing pink skin beneath. Doc was a long way from being healthy, but the injury was healing much faster than any burn Harris had ever seen. But then, it wasn’t exactly a burn.
And Doc was more alert. He looked as happy and ener­getic as the losing quarterback in the Super Bowl, but he was awake and could walk under his own power.
He looked up as Harris returned. “You found her.”
“Yep. We’ll meet her where I told you.”
“We cannot wait for tonight, Harris. The deviser chasing Gaby will catch up to us. He is very capable. Or all the iron around us will kill me. I’ll begin the ritual as soon as we return to the park.”
Harris sat down beside him. “You don’t have the book.”
“I remember the ritual. I remember everything.” He made it sound like a sentence handed down by an ­unfriendly judge. “Not always when I need to, unfortunately.”
“Are you up to it? You made it sound like it wore people out. You’re already wiped out.”
“I can do it.”
“That’s not