Curtains by Scott Nicholson

wrong-way cab. If he were forced to be Vincent
Hartbarger, he wouldn't last a half a day in this city. Not with
Joey's people on the hunt. And Vincent Hartbarger at the moment was
broke, no way out, no standby plane ticket, no bulletproof vest. No
gun.
    "Out of the way, dude," growled a kid with a
skateboard under his arm. The kid shoved past Vincent, greasy black
hair shining in the lights from a nearby shop window. Vincent moved
against the glass, out of the main crush of foot traffic. He
glanced at the passing faces, on the lookout for Joey's people.
    Calm down, take a breath. Think.
    Thinking brought the headache roaring back.
Goon must have used a tire iron.
    He fumbled for a cigarette, then remembered
that Robert Wells didn't smoke. But he wasn't Robert Wells anymore.
He searched for the secret folds in his coat, the place where he'd
kept his Vincent effects. Because he'd planned all along that, once
he blew this town and shook the spooks, he'd return to being
Vincent, at least until he could scrape together a new identity. He
didn't have much faith in the Feds and their "witless protection
program."
    But the worse got worser. His fingers came
away empty. The mugger had taken his Vincent stash, along with the
extra fifty he'd tucked back for hard times. Vincent closed his
eyes and leaned against the wall, inhaling car exhaust as if the
carbon monoxide would dull his headache.
    I'd rather be anywhere than right here, on
Joey's turf, in Joey's town. Hell, I'd even take Muncie. At least
in Muncie, the only thing I'd have to worry about would be dying of
boredom. And I hear that takes YEARS...
    Voices to his right pulled him back to the
morning street. Two people were shouting, pointing into the shop
window. In New York, two people talking on the street either meant
a drug deal, a sex solicitation, or the beginning of a murder. But
these seemed like ordinary folks, the kind who talked to windows
instead of invisible demons.
    Vincent looked into the storefront. It was a
pawn shop, bars thick across the window, a bank of surveillance
cameras eyeing the street like hookers on payday. A Sanyo
television lit up the window, the flickering images reflected in
the glass. It took Vincent a moment to register what he was
seeing.
    A shot of the East River, a harried-looking
reporter trying vainly to control her hair in the breeze, a cutaway
to emergency response and fire vehicles, then a wide shot of
Kennedy Airport. Back to the river, a small orange speck in the
water. Zoom in. A torn life jacket.
    A computer graphic popped up in the corner of
the screen, the station logo a leering eye. Underneath, in slanted
red letters, "Flight 317 Crash."
    Poor bastards , Vincent thought. Imagine what kind of headache you get from dropping a
mile-and-a-half from the sky.
    He was turning back to the street, his pity
for the victims already fading, when the number "317" bounced back
into his roaring head. He froze, got shoved by a balding man in a
suit, yelled at by a package courier.
    317. Hadn't that been his flight? The
one that was supposed to whisk Robert Wells to a new life?
    He went into the pawn shop. A bank of TVs
filled one wall, half of them tuned to news coverage of the crash.
The anchor had her hair in place now, must have snagged some hair
spray during the cutaway. The computer graphic now read "Live!"
under the station logo, in those same blood-red letters.
    "We're at the scene of the crash of NationAir
Flight 317, which plummeted shortly after takeoff from Kennedy
Airport this morning—"
    "What a mess, huh?" said a voice behind
Vincent. He thought at first it was one of Joey's boys. But it was
the pawn shop proprietor, a small man with glasses and a scar
across one cheek. His nose looked like an unsuccessful
prizefighter's.
    "Yu—yeah," Vincent agreed.
    "Took about a minute for it to hit the
water," the shop owner said, leaning over a glass case of watches.
"Just enough time for them to pray and crap their pants."
    The man starting