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“No chance,” said Creem. “Why go all the way across the river when there is killing galore here?”

“You meet this guy, you’ll understand why.”

“How do you know he’s still kickin’ it?”

“I sure hope he is. We’re going over the bridge at first light.”

Angel took a minute then to return to his apartment for the last time. His knee ached as he looked around: unwashed clothes heaped in the corner, dirty dishes in his sink, the general squalor of the place. He had never taken any pride in his living condition—and it shamed him now. Perhaps, he sensed, he knew all the time that he was destined for something better—something he could never have foreseen—and he was just waiting for the call.

He threw some extra clothes into a grocery bag, including his knee brace, and then lastly—almost ashamedly, because taking it was like admitting it was his most cherished possession, all he had left of who he once was—he grabbed the silver mask.

He folded the mask into his jacket pocket and, with it next to his heart, he realized that, for the first time in decades, he felt good about himself.

The Flatlands

EPH FINISHED TENDING to Vasiliy’s injuries, giving particular attention to cleaning out the worm hole in his forearm. The ratcatcher had sustained a great deal of damage, but none of it permanent, except maybe the hearing loss and ringing in his right ear. The metal shard came out of his leg and he hobbled on it but did not complain. He was still standing. Eph admired that, and felt a bit like an Ivy League momma’s boy by his side. For all his education and scholarly achievements, Eph felt infinitely less useful to the cause than Fet.

But that would soon change.

The exterminator opened his poison closet, showing Setrakian his bait packs and traps, his halothane bottles and toxic blue kibble. Rats, he explained, lacked the biological mechanism for vomiting. The main function of emesis is to purge a body of toxic substances, which was why rats were particularly susceptible to poisoning. Why they had evolved and developed other traits to compensate for this. One was that they could ingest just about anything, including nonfood materials such as clay or concrete, which helped to dilute a toxin’s effect on the rat’s body until they could get rid of the poison as waste. The other was the rats’ intelligence, their complex food-avoidance strategies that aided in their survival.

“Funny thing,” said Fet, “is that when I ripped out that thing’s throat, and got a good look in there?”

“Yes?” said Setrakian.

“The way it looked to me, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts they can’t puke either.”

Setrakian nodded, thinking on that. “I believe you are correct,” he said. “May I ask, what is the chemical makeup of these rodenticides?”

“Depends,” said Fet. “These use thallium sulfate, a heavy metal salt that attacks the liver, brain, and muscle. Odorless, colorless, and highly

toxic. These over here use a common mammalian blood-thinner.”

“Mammalian? What, something like Coumadin?”

“No, not something like. Exactly like.”

Setrakian looked at the bottle. “So I myself have been taking rat poison for some years now.”

“Yep. You and millions of other people.”

“And this does what?”

“Same thing it would do to you if you took too much of it. The anticoagulant leads to internal hemorrhaging. Rats bleed out. It’s not pretty.”

In picking up the bottle to examine its label, Setrakian noticed something on the shelf behind it. “I do not wish to alarm you, Vasiliy. But aren’t these mouse droppings?”

Fet pushed his way in for a closer look. “Motherfucker!” he said. “How can this be?”

“A minor infestation, I’m sure,” said Setrakian.

“Minor, major, what does it matter? This is supposed to be Fort Knox!” Fet knocked over a few bottles, trying to see better. “This is like vampires breaking into a silver mine.”

While Fet was obsessively searching the back of the closet for more evidence, Eph watched Setrakian slip one of the bottles inside his coat pocket.

Eph followed Setrakian away from the closet, catching him alone. “What are you going to do with that?” he said.

Setrakian showed no guilt at having been discovered. The old man’s cheeks were sunken, his flesh a pale shade of gray. “He said it is essentially blood thinner. With all the pharmacies being raided, I would not like to run out.”