Long afterward, he remembered Lynch's hat sailing through the air, and landing in the center of a struggling mass of policemen. He remembered Lynch saying, "So there you are!" and swinging before he looked.
He remembered the blow on the chin.
And then he remembered falling, and falling, and falling. Somewhere there was a voice: "Where the hell are they? They've disappeared for good."
And then, for long seconds, nothing.
He woke up with a headache, but it wasn't too bad. Surprisingly, not much time had passed; he got up and dusted off his trousers, looking around at the battlefield. Wounded and groaning cops were lying all over. The room was a shambles; the walking wounded—which comprised the rest of the force—were stumbling around in a slow, hopeless sort of fashion.
Lynch was standing next to him. "Malone," he said, "I'm sorry. I hit you, didn't I?"
"Uh-huh," Malone said. "You seemed to be hitting every body."
"I was trying for the kids," Lynch said.
"So was I," Malone said. "I got the cuffs on one and yanked him along, but he disappeared and left me with the cuffs."
"Great," Lynch said. "Hell of a raid."