“It is a fool’s hope,” he said with a little laugh.
“What is?” I asked.
He didn’t give me a direct answer, sort of like Mr. Samson never gave direct answers. Maybe that was part of being a knight. “For Mogart cannot be stopped, not while he wields the Sword. Yet while I live, I must try to stop him.” He turned and looked right at me for the first time. His dark eyes were sad.
“Now is the hour,” he said softly. “Our doom is upon us.”
He walked away without saying anything else and I watched him cross the street. Then I saw two big men step out of the doorway of an antique store and follow him. Both wore long gray cloaks that were too heavy for the warm weather.
Bennacio didn’t seem to notice them; he walked with his head bowed, like he was deep in thought. A little voice inside my head said, “Go home, Alfred.” But I didn’t have a home anymore. Now Mr. Samson was dead and all the other knights except this Bennacio guy, and it was all my fault. I could have—should have—told Uncle Farrell no, I wasn’t going to help him get the Sword. I knew it was wrong at the time, and if I had stood my ground everybody would still be alive and I would have a home. I had hated that little apartment with the worn-out furniture and its old fishy smell. I had wished every day that my mom hadn’t died and my uncle was somebody more like Donald Trump than Farrell Kropp, but now that sounded like heaven to me. I would have given anything to have it back.
Bennacio was walking north on Central, the men keeping pace a few feet behind him.
And for some reason I have never understood, I followed them.
When I turned the corner, they had Bennacio against the wall and were taking turns slugging him, one guy holding him up while the other one slammed his big fists into his gut. They were too busy pounding the crap out of him to notice me.
One of them turned to his buddy and said with a foreign accent, “Finish him.” The second man pulled something long and black from the folds of his gray cloak.
“Hey!” I shouted.
They looked over at me. None of us moved for a second; then the guy holding the dagger jammed it into Bennacio’s side, the other one let him go and, as Bennacio slid slowly down the brick wall, they took off east along the railroad tracks.
I ran over to Bennacio. His eyes were open and he was breathing. He was clutching that white handkerchief in both hands. I put my hand on his side and it came away covered in his blood.
“Leave me,” he said.
I hauled him up, pulling his arm over my shoulder, and kind of dragged him back to Central.
“You’re hurt,” I said. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“No hospital. No hospital,” he gasped.
I spotted a Yellow Cab parked on the corner. I shoved Bennacio into the backseat.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“Where to?” I asked Bennacio.
“The Marriott . . .” Bennacio gasped.
“Take us to the Marriott,” I told the driver.
Bennacio leaned against me, and I tugged the handkerchief from his hands and pressed it against the badly bleeding wound in his side.
“Oh, boy,” I whispered. “Oh, jeez, you’re bleeding pretty bad, Bennacio.”
“Hey,” the cabbie said, staring at us in his rearview mirror. “Your friend okay, kid?”
“No hospital, no hospital,” Bennacio kept whispering. His face was very pale and his eyes were rolling in his head as he leaned against me. I guessed he was dying.
14
I managed to get Bennacio out of the cab and into the lobby of the hotel, with him leaning against me. The clerk behind the desk gave me a look.
“My uncle,” I told the clerk. “Little too much wine.”
Bennacio told me his room number and somehow I got him into the elevator, up to the sixth floor, and into his room. I laid him on the bed.
His eyes were closed and he was breathing in short, hard gasps. I opened his jacket and unbuttoned his white shirt to expose the wound, a gash just below his ribs on the left side. I got some towels from the bathroom and pressed one into his side, watching the blood soak into it. I threw that towel on the floor and replaced it with another. He wouldn’t stop bleeding.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I told him. “You’re gonna bleed to death if we don’t get you to a doctor.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “The blade was poisoned,” he said. “The bleeding will not stop.” Then he raised his head a little and looked at my hand holding the towel against his side.
He must have seen the scar on my thumb, because he whispered, “You have been wounded by the Sword.”
“Yeah.”
“In the bathroom,” he gasped. “My straight razor. Bring it to me.”
I found it in a little black leather bag on the vanity. The razor had a long retractable blade that slipped into the handle. I didn’t think anybody used a straight razor anymore. How did I know this Bennacio wasn’t lying—that he wasn’t really a goon for Mogart, come to kill me? But even if he was lying, even if he was a bad guy, who was I to let him slowly bleed to death?
I brought the razor back to him. He sat forward a little, groaning with the effort, grabbed my wrist, and held it tight.
“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing?”
He grabbed the razor, placing the edge along my scar, and made a shallow cut just shallow enough to draw blood.
“Oh, my God!” I yelped, trying to pull my hand away.
He tossed the towel aside with his other hand, then brought my bleeding thumb to his side and pressed it into the wound.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“The Sword has the power to heal as well as to rend,” he said. After a few minutes he let go of my wrist. I picked up the towel and put it back on the wound, but already the bleeding had slowed.
Bennacio closed his eyes. His breathing became easier, and for a second I thought he had fallen asleep.
“Who were those men, Bennacio?” I asked, clutching my throbbing thumb.
“Servants of the enemy . . . following me since my return to America.”
Which meant he got stabbed because of me. Why had Mr. Samson sent him to me? Like telling Alfred Kropp about it was going to help them get the Sword back.
I sat beside him and felt like crying, but I didn’t want to cry in front of Bennacio. Everybody around me lately was dying. All because I took something I shouldn’t have. I was like some lumbering, awkward, big-headed Angel of Death.