Read Online Manhattan Lockdown by Paul Batista - Free Book Online

streets of Soho, the cozy warmth of the West Village and the vital, alert men striding on Christopher Street, many of them holding hands. And New York was where Jerome had met his squalid death.
    â€œSure you were, Gabe.”
    Before Talbot could go on, Gabriel Hauser hung up. It was an act of courage, defying authority for the first time.
Defiance of authority:
he liked the feeling. He never heard from Talbot again.
    Now, as they listened to the broadcast on CNN describing him as the Angel of Life, Cam asked, “What do you plan to do?”
    â€œSell my memoirs.”
    Cam chuckled. “I’ll write them for you.”
    â€œI’m headed back to the hospital. I came home to catch my breath, remember? I have work to do.”
    Just as he was rising from the sofa, he was riveted by the scene on the television. The police commissioner, a woman whom he and his friends described as the cop who looked like Cher, announced that the police were searching for a man named Silas Nasar, a United States citizen “of Afghan descent.”
    There on the screen was a picture of the man Gabriel knew both as Patient X52 and Silas Nasar: a face with a distinct, seahorse-shaped birthmark. It was a face, too, he had seen before: a grainy image sent from Kabul to his cell phone not long ago and then on the shattered steps of the Met and again in the emergency room at Mount Sinai.
    Gabriel’s cell phone had slipped between the pillows on the sofa where he had been sleeping. As soon as he found it he scrolled to the contacts window and pressed the screen for Vincent Brown, who was still in the hospital. Brown answered on the first ring.
    â€œGabriel, how are you?” Brown’s cell had identified the incoming caller.
    â€œRested. And you? Why are you still there?”
    â€œHey, man, why leave? Where else can I have as much fun as this?”
    â€œI’ll be back soon.”
    Brown could be sardonic, like one of the doctors on
M*A*S*H*
. He said, “Why don’t you stay there and rest? I don’t think any more patients have come through the door since you left. It’s funny, but when there’s something like this all the usual street stuff we get just stops. No beatings, no stabbings, no overdoses. Strange way to get peace on the streets. If we had a big bomb going off every day, there’d be no more muggings.”
    Gabriel asked, “Can you do me a favor?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œThere’s a patient we only know as Patient X52. He’s the first guy I treated and then I saw him again in the ER.”
    Brown had an immediate answer. “You signed him out just before you left.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œA woman claiming to be his sister came in. She talked to you. And that guy X52 walked to the elevator with her.”
    â€œWhere did you get this? Where’s the joke in this?”
    â€œNo joke. I saw it.”
    â€œNot possible, it never happened.”
    â€œSure it did. You said she told you she was a doctor from Los Angeles.”
    â€œThis,” Gabriel said, “is all made up.”
    Brown’s tone of voice never changed: sardonic, determined, almost rehearsed. “You looked at her. You said ‘
Fine
.’ You had one of the nurses bring you the discharge papers. She said her brother couldn’t sign them, his hands were damaged. She signed for him. And then they left.”
    â€œYou’re out of your fucking mind, Brown.” Gabriel was furious. “Or this is a joke.”
    For a long moment Vincent Brown said nothing. “You need to remember, Dr. Hauser, who your friends are.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    I T WAS FINALLY dark. Roland Fortune, exhausted, his senses dulled by the fresh Vicodin that spread through his system, sat alone on a wicker chair on the terrace of Gracie Mansion overlooking Carl Schurz Park and the East River. A cool fragrant breeze blew in from the river. In the distance the long