He floated higher, until the scene below took on a pearly sheen and the sounds were nothing but echoes.

Then the pain tore through him, an abrupt shock that made the body on the table jerk, that sucked him back. His struggle to pull away was brief and fruitless. He was inside again, feeling again, lost again.

The next thing he knew, he was riding in a drug-hazed blur. Someone was snoring. The room was dark and the bed narrow and hard. A backwash of light filtered through a pane of glass that was spotted with fingerprints. Machines beeped and sucked monotonously. Wanting only to escape the sounds, he rolled back under.

He was in and out for two days. He was very lucky. That’s what they told him. There was a pretty nurse with tired eyes and a doctor with graying hair and thin lips. He wasn’t ready to believe them, not when he was too weak to lift his head, not when the hideous pain swarmed back into him every two hours like clockwork.

When the two cops came in he was awake, and the pain was smothered under a few layers of morphine. He made them out to be cops at a glance. His instincts weren’t so dulled that he didn’t recognize the walk, the shoes, the eyes. He didn’t need the identification they flashed at him.

“Gotta smoke?” Phillip asked it of everyone who passed through. He had a low-grade desperation for nicotine even though he doubted he could manage to suck on a cigarette.

“You’re too young to smoke.” The first cop pasted on an avuncular smile and stationed himself on one side of the bed. The Good Cop, Phillip thought wearily.

“I’m getting older every minute.”

“You’re lucky to be alive.” The second cop kept his face hard as he pulled out a notebook.

And the Bad Cop, Phillip decided. He was nearly amused.

“That’s what they keep telling me. So, what the hell happened?”

“You tell us.” Bad Cop poised his pencil over a page of his book.

“I got the shit shot out of me.”

“What were you doing on the street?”

“I think I was going home.” He’d already decided how to play it, and he let his eyes close. “I can’t remember exactly. I’d been . . . at the movies?” He made it a question, opening his eyes. He could see Bad Cop wasn’t going to buy it, but what could they do?

“What movie did you see? Who were you with?”

“Look, I don’t know. It’s all messed up. One minute I was walking, the next I was lying facedown.”

“Just tell us what you remember.” Good Cop laid a hand on Phillip’s shoulder. “Take your time.”

“It happened fast. I heard shots—it must have been shots. Somebody was screaming, and it was like something exploded in my chest.” That much was pretty close to the truth.

“Did you see a car? Did you see the shooter?”

Both were etched like acid on steel in his brain. “I think I saw a car—dark color. A flash.”