Speed walked to Adam and took the bag from his hands. “You all through fucken around?” he said benevolently. He handed the bag to Spurgeon. “You find it for us, Doc.”

He opened it, found a bottle of Ipecac and held it out. Nightingale took off the top, stuck the tip of his tongue into the bottle and spat.

“What is it?” one of the men asked.

“Something to make us sick, I reckon.” He looked at Spurgeon without smiling this time, and began to move in.

Adam already was swinging wildly.

Spurgeon tried to throw a punch but he was less skilled even than the young street fighters. Now hands held his arms and he was overcome by a profound sense of déjà vu. As the big black fists moved toward him the world turned full circle and he was once again fourteen years old and rolling a drunk in a dark doorway on West 17 1st Street with his friends Tommy White and Fats McKenna, on that occasion taking the place behind the victim. The man who now served in the role then occupied by Fats McKenna was going to do an excellent job, he realized as the great force smashed into his stomach and he could no longer breathe. Something jolted against the side of his head and he scarcely felt the rest of it. He saw as in a dream the man he might have been but for the grace of God and Calvin, kneeling on the floor and scrabbling through the medical bag, finally turning it over and dumping its contents on the floor.

“You got it, baby?” a voice asked.

Spurgeon didn’t get to hear whether Speed Nightingale had it. Somebody put the needle back down on the Little Richard thing and the wild horses of sound ran right over everything, including him.

He regained consciousness twice.

The first time he saw Meyerson when he opened his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Maish was saying. “It’s become harder to get the blanks. I may have to go up a buck. Six dollars a prescription isn’t too high.”

“We’re not arguing price,” Speed said. “Just deliver, man. Deliver.”

“You can queer the whole deal by rousting these two guys,” Meyerson said.

“Ain’t no need to worry about them,” a voice said contemptuously.

He wanted to know how it was all going to come out, and as the voices faded away he felt an angry kind of regret.

The face he looked into the second time was big, Irish and ugly. “The shine’s going to be all right,” it said.

“So’s the other lad. But I think his dignity’s hurt.”

When he sat up he vomited weakly and he saw that there were two police officers in the apartment.

“You okay, Adam?” he said, his head aching.

“Yeah. You, Spur?”

“I’ll live.”

Speed and his friends had already been taken away.