"I'm going to kill ya', ya' thieving, good-for-nothing son of a bitch!" yelled the man as he pounded on the door from the other side.

Santiago threw another shirt into his bag before reaching for his shaving kit on the nightstand. "All in good time, sir," he responded through harried breaths, stowing the final items away just as wood began to splinter against the weight of a shoulder or boot.

A loud cracking sound followed as the jamb gave way and the door burst open. Santiago already had a leg across the windowsill as a burly gent in a one-size-too-small vest and dusty bowler teetered into his rented room, losing his balance from having forced his way inside.

"Oh, no you don't," said the newcomer, seeing Santiago flee. Weaving around the neatly-made bed, he bumped into a still-open dresser drawer. After yelling out in pain, he hopped on one foot for a few paces before throwing himself toward the window.

But Santiago had already ducked out, his feet hitting the iron fire escape with a clank as two, gorilla-shaped hands reached out in vain to seize him.

"Tell your boss he will get his money, I swear it," Santiago yelled as he bounded down the steps, bag in hand.

"Why don't ya' tell him yourself?" grumbled his pursuer from just a half story up.

Santiago quickened his pace. Passing an open window on the fourth floor—why did he pick a room in a boarding house with so many levels—he smiled at a kid playing with a wooden horse. "Mama!" wailed the little boy, making Santiago speed up even more.

"See what you've done?" He tossed the accusation at the unrelenting man still behind him as he rounded another corner in his seemingly endless descent on the clanking stairs.

"We wouldn't be here . . . if you had paid . . . your debts on time," huffed the heavy as he struggled to keep up.

Santiago grimaced. Firstly, the debts weren't even his. And while this thug didn't need to know that, the fact that he was now running for his life because of his father's ill-luck at the racetrack didn't escape Santiago's attention. Secondly, well . . . secondly wasn't as important. Because secondly was only that he actually felt awful for not having the money. He truly did. And not just because he could've ended up sleeping with the fishes if his legs didn't work fast enough. But if he had the funds to cover what his Pops owed, Billy "The Hatchet" Butler would have already gotten his payment.

Being barely out of medical school at a time when the country was flooded with battlefront-hardened physicians made finding a good-paying job almost impossible. Fainting like a school girl at the smallest sight—and occasionally at even the smell—of blood further disqualified him on the rare chance he'd managed to get his foot in the door. It was the main (and frankly, only) reason he took the personal physician position for that rail tycoon's wife that was now having him high-tail it to the dockyard for a waiting steam ship to England. 

Ducking under a clothesline full of socks and brassieres, Santiago reached the final landing. After hoisting the bag over his shoulder, he tried to unlatch the ladder that went down the sidewalk below. Above him, the metal risers thunk-thunked as his pursuer neared.

The latch wouldn't budge.

"Come on, dammit," he cursed under his breath, feeling his already narrow lead slipping away.

Still nothing.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

"Aargh," Santiago grunted, looking at the eight—or even ten—foot drop to below. He could jump, but one wrong move and he'd end up as a patient in the hospital with a broken ankle. Or worse.

Thunk, thunk. There was a pause as the man became entangled in the drying laundry, emerging with a lady's undergarment wrapped around his neck.

"I got ya' now, boy," he sneered, the grin on his face highlighting a missing canine tooth.

Beep, beep. A car below honked at a bicycle in its way, slowing it enough to put it right next to Santiago.

He got an idea and without further debate, he acted. Abandoning the ladder, Santiago jumped over the railing and took aim at the wide, leather seat of the convertible roadster. With his eyes squeezed shut—he had no intention of witnessing his own death—he prayed that the car wouldn't budge before his landing. Only when his knees safely buckled under him with the assistance of the spring-loaded seat did he breathe a sigh of relief.

"What the—?" asked the driver with surprise as he stared at the man who'd fallen from the heavens into the spot next to him.

"Drive, man. Drive!" Santiago urged, seeing that the road had cleared, but that his pursuer was now also fiddling with the ladder.

As the car lurched forward, the thug on the fire escape raised his fist toward the sky. "That's right. Go back to Italy where ya' belong, ya' stinkin' wop!" he yelled after him.

Santiago chuckled and called over his shoulder. "I was born in Brooklyn, you blockhead!"

ONC running wordcount: 5,147