Danny raised an eyebrow at that.

“Oh, because you’re bleeding all over yourself, you want sympathy?” Luther stepped back up to Danny, the big man lying back against the streetlamp pole like it was all he had left of friends in this world. “I ain’t got that for you. Whatever’s wearing you down, shit, throw it off. God don’t care. Ain’t nobody care. Whatever you need to do to make yourself right, get yourself out of pain? I say you do that thing.”

Danny’s smile was cracked, his lips half black. “Easy, huh?”

“Ain’t nothing easy.” Luther shook his head. “Simple, though, yeah.”

“I wish it was that—”

“You walked twenty blocks, puking up your own blood, to get to one place and one person. If you need any more truth in your life, white boy, than that?” Luther’s laugh was hard and quick. “It ain’t showing up on this here earth.”

Danny didn’t say anything. He looked at Luther through his one good eye and Luther looked back. Then he came off the lamp pole and reached out his arm. Luther stepped under it and they walked the rest of the way to the clinic.

CHAPTER twenty-eight

Danny stayed in the clinic overnight. He barely remembered Luther leaving. He did remember him putting a sheaf of paper on Danny’s bedside table.

“Tried to give that to your uncle. He never showed up for the meet.”

“He was pretty busy today.”

“Yeah, well, you make sure he gets it? Maybe find a way to get him off me like you said you would once?”

“Sure.” Danny held out his hand and Luther shook it, and Danny floated off to a black-and-white world where everyone was covered in bomb debris.

At one point he woke to a colored doctor sitting by his bed. The doctor, a young man with the gentle air and slim fingers of a concert pianist, confirmed that he’d broken seven of his ribs and the others were badly sprained. One of those broken ribs had nicked a blood vessel and they’d had to cut Danny open to repair it. This explained the blood he’d vomited and made it highly likely that Luther had saved his life. They wrapped Danny’s torso tightly with adhesive tape and told him he’d suffered a concussion and would piss blood for a few days from all the shots the Russians had delivered to his kidneys. Danny thanked the doctor, his words slurring from whatever they’d pumped into his IV, and passed out.

In the morning, he woke to his father and Connor sitting by the bed. His father had one of his hands wrapped in both of his and he smiled softly. “Look who’s up.”

Con’ folded the newspaper and smiled at Danny and shook his head.

“Who did this to you, boy?”

Danny sat up a bit in the bed and his ribs screamed. “How’d you even find me?”

“Colored fella—says he’s a doctor here?—he called into headquarters with your badge number, said another colored fella brought you in here all banged to hell. Ah, it’s a sight, you in a place like this.”