His footsteps battered in rapid succession against crackling, cracked concrete. Streetlamps spread his swift-flowing outline across the pavement and into the caverns of tenable black alleyways.

A darker duo of shadows hurriedly followed the first. The clamoring of their clattering increased in intense incidence until their separate poundings compounded into one, and abruptly stopped. – The game was no longer afoot.

Splashes of puddles, mumbling muttering and shuffling circles ensued. “Which way’d he go?”

He lay silent, around the corner and perched upon a fire escape’s grated, lower landing; listening. The night’s obscurity hid him from their view. “We lost him.”

“We’ve got to call it in.” He heard them say.

Cautiously he listened; the click of a button pressed and a faint dial-tone. The pulsating beeps of an electronic rotary, the quick and stirring ring; and at last the augmented answer of the cell-phone on the other side.

“Did you get him?” He heard an all-too-familiar voice ask.

“No, he got away."