Brewer was instantly depressed.
Abbott cautiously walked into the building, his shoes cracking on the plaster dust and debris as he stepped carefully around the charred timbers and ash, hopping over the puddles.
“Here they are,” he said loudly.
Brewer followed his steps over to several long doorways and looked in and up. These were the old elevator shafts. The salvage company had removed everything—the heavy metal doors, the elevator cars with their reticulated gates, the cables, the electric motors, various metal tracks and counterweights, even the old copper electrical cable. The brick shafts were just empty square tunnels standing on end. Through the upper doorways of the shafts came slanting falls of evening light. Abbott nodded at Brewer. “This’ll do fine.”
“How are we going to work it?”
“I’ll lash a couple of lines from the top, then we’ll rig the chairs and pulleys. You’ll get the hang of it in no time at all.”
Brewer wanted to run. He was going up against the most implacable adversary he’d ever faced—himself. He was going to have to learn to climb the walls of that semidark elevator shaft while fighting his fear of heights. He felt daunted by the five-story shaft—mismatched. It seemed deliberately and unfairly high.
The running water intimidated him; he wanted to find the faucet and turn it off, that endless gushing flow, falling four or five stories somewhere in the twilight and spewing night and day, day after day, week after week, an insidious leak intent on quietly drowning the unheeding earth.
He told himself that he wouldn’t have to go through with it—that Geller would phone with a new assignment, something more in his line. When and if that happened, he promised himself a monumental drunk.
He gazed up into the shaft again. For the first time in his life that he could remember, Brewer felt deeply sorry for himself. The light was sullen, and something malevolent up there was holding its breath, waiting for him.
Brewer could hear Graybill say it plainly: check, double check, triple check. So he sent Abbott out that evening around nine to find Fatty and make sure delivery was to be as promised. Abbott left whistling, and Brewer went back to his newspaper.
When Abbott returned about twenty minutes later, he had his tan bag with a fresh bottle of Tiger Rose. His eyes had a happy sheen to them, like polished marbles, and he was humming. “How about a couple of racks, Brewer?”
“What about Fatty?”
“Fatty? Oh. Well, he’s in the Lido Tuscany eating something. He says he don’t think he can have the stuff ready.”
“Yeah?”
“He says he ain’t seen our money yet.”
“He’s not supposed to see it until ten tomorrow morning.” Brewer cast his newspaper aside and stepped off the high chair. “It’s a stall. I don’t think you made your point with that fat man, Abbott.”
That night, in the soft evening air, the Lido Tuscany Restaurant had opened its outside patio for the season. Now, at ten, business had slowed, and at a rear table in the patio a group of men noisily played cards by candlelight, slapping down their hands and groaning and laughing. Over their heads the television broadcast the Mets-Phillies game.
Fatty the Fence sat by himself at a center table. He was having his own special—a large brandy snifter filled with a quart and a half of spumoni under a heavy layer of brandied fruit, topped with two inches of whipped cream, layered with slivered almonds. With it, he was having a pot of hot caffé espresso.
Fatty smiled at Brewer. “Here comes the other half of the act.”
Brewer sat down. He watched the rubbery jowls and wattles of Fatty’s jaw masticate, moving up and down, up and down. Fatty looked back at him mirthfully, waiting expectantly for a funny line, a clown’s grimace, perhaps. Up and down, mirthfully waiting.
Brewer extended his index finger and placed it against the stem of the brandy snifter, then slowly moved the glass laterally from the center of the table away from Fatty’s hovering spoon. The fat man looked into Brewer’s eyes and stopped smiling, stopped chewing.
“There seems to be a misunderstanding, fat man. I’m not a partner of Abbott’s in any clown act. I’m not a clown. I don’t even know how to laugh. Abbott gave you an order for some material, and you say you’re not going to have it when you said you would. Now, I’m going to be back here tomorrow at ten with the money. If that stuff isn’t ready, I’m going to make you very unhappy.”
Brewer pushed the brandy snifter another inch. It stood on the edge of the table, then toppled to the brick patio floor and smashed.
The card players had become silent. Fatty watched Brewer walk out of the patio, then he looked down at his ice-cream treat smashed on the bricks.
She was vaguely restless and wanted a drink, which Brewer poured for her, straight up, no ice. She downed half of it.
“I’m okay. I’m making it. Just one of those days.” She took off her uniform and hung it on the back of the door. “It’s just that some days I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere except lower. This whole place stinks. Everyone’s crashed right through the bottom. These people go around pulling each other down.”
She stared at the floor as though seeing a leper colony where each day the walking dead take grim satisfaction in noting the deterioration of others.
“Why don’t you get out?” said Brewer.
“What do you mean, out?”
“Out out. You’re a good-looking girl. There’s more than a dance or two in you.”
“Tell me about raising chickens in the country.”
“You don’t need chickens.”
“What do you want from me? All I know is dealing dishes off my arms and serving drinks, and I’m the sole support of a lush with borderline diabetes who’s forty pounds underweight and hasn’t performed in bed in five years—and any day, he’s going to go into either a coma or shock and drop dead.” She took off her brassiere. “I should have kicked him out long ago.”
“Why don’t you?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Something dumb?”
“Yes, in your book, something dumb. That’s why I don’t kick him out. Something dumb.”
After they’d finished, she turned on her side and cried.
Brewer slept badly again that night, dangling over a vast globe and periodically falling each time the line parted, waking to the pungent odor of ashes in his room. A bad night, but there was no road back now.
In the morning, Brewer really burned his boat on the beach. The morning’s mail for Charles McMurry contained the plastic credit card that Brewer had ordered. Enclosed with it was a booklet explaining its uses and privileges, which included up to $5,000 cash loan in any bank, since Mr. McMurry, because of his financial standing in the community, was in the company’s exclusive Preferred Risk Group and had been issued the special Gilt Edge Card. Brewer also found the State of New York official business envelope containing the duplicate driver’s license he’d ordered. All the pieces were in now.
He walked over to the postal window and gave Charles McMurry’s name and address. “I want to cancel my post box. It’s too inconvenient. From now on, deliver my mail to my home again, starting with this.” He shoved the morning’s mail through the window, except for the driver’s license and credit card.
Out on the street, he put them in his wallet. He was officially a criminal now, guilty of mail fraud, various crimes against a rich and powerful citizen, and a string of concomitant malfeasances that could easily jail him for life.
Brewer went back to his apartment to set up his next moves. He made a list. First, he would draw $5,000 from a bank; at ten, he’d pay off the smiling fat man; then he’d rent a van and drive with Abbott over to Jersey to pick up the chairs, the barrels of rope and other paraphernalia; two days of practice sessions would follow; he knew where Kotlikoff was, how to get to him and what to do with him when he got him out, and tomorrow he’d check out the lock on Kotlikoff’s window; finally, tomorrow night h
e’d go down that wall to Kotlikoff. Hours, just hours, and he’d be clear of the Complex, never to return.
What had he forgotten? Anything?
He signed the credit card where indicated, then fitted the new pieces of his false identity into his wallet and removed everything else. Now he was Charles McMurry with an unlimited credit card and $5,000 waiting for him. Geller would be overjoyed. This assignment would cost the federal government nothing; it could result in one of the great intelligence coups of the decade; and if anything went wrong, there was absolutely no connection between Geller’s gang and Brewer. Geller could claim that Brewer was a rogue free-lancer, a discredited agent who’d turned to criminal false identity to commit a federal crime against a foreign power—breaking into an embassy building. The United States could cluck its tongue while Brewer, who dangled in a bosun’s chair, could be dropped into an abyss by one stroke of Geller’s knife.
Brewer was a man on a string, trusting everything to Geller.
And Graybill, like a shade, stood in the background and shook his head. “Never.”
Never, never.
Brewer and Abbott arrived from Jersey around two in the afternoon and backed the van up to the old loading platform at the rear of the building.
Damp air flowed out through the broken door, bearing with it the acrid smell of char. Abbott put a barrel of one-inch rope on the hand truck, tilted it back and walked into the building. Like a brilliant spotlight, the midday sun lit just the center of the dark interior. Somewhere in a shadowed corner the water still dripped.
Brewer dreaded the next few hours. Resolutely he licked his dry lips and entered.
Abbott busily wheeled in all the other equipment on the hand truck. He was humming happily when he broke out the chairs and the pulleys from their cartons. He rigged them with chain and half-inch line, making knots , with quick authority around the cheeks of the blocks and neatly tucking the ends away. He rigged all three chairs that way.
Then he reeved a few feet of one-inch line from its barrel through the blocks of one of the chairs. He checked the intricate course of the line through the several blocks; then, satisfied, he drew sixty feet of line from the barrel and through the pulleys. This he coiled smartly on the floor. When he’d reeved the other one-inch line through the second chair, he coiled off a matching sixty feet.
Then, carrying a coil of lightweight line, he went up the old fire stairs to the top floor and called down the elevator shaft to Brewer. The end of the lightweight line he paid out to Brewer, who tied the ends of the two one-inch lines to it. Abbott drew them up hand over hand. He lashed and knotted the two lines to a cast-iron sewer pipe on the top floor near the shaft. “Okay,” he called down to Brewer. “California, here I come.” Brewer looked up and saw him wrap one of the lines around his waist and step into the shaft. He rappelled his way down the shaft in short falls, feeding the line around his waist and through his gloved hands. Brewer was trembling with fear by the time Abbott reached the bottom.
“See? Nothing to it.” Abbott examined his gloves. “New line. Kind of splintery, so keep those gloves on, Brewer.”
He turned and hoisted one of the chairs several feet off the ground. He stepped into it and sat down. “See? It don’t make no difference whether you’re five feet or five hundred feet off the ground, it’s all the same. Put your feet against the wall so you don’t get scraped, and you walk up while your hands pull the line through the pulleys. See? The pulleys do all the work.”
Brewer looked and nodded. When he regarded the upper part of the shaft he felt so tired he could have lain down on the ashes. He yawned. His tongue was gluey.
“Okay,” said Abbott. “This is up. This is down. To go up, you pull the line through these pulleys. There’s a snatch track here—see? A rope jamb so that the pulleys can’t kick free and drop you. Okay? Now to go down you just feed the line through the pulley nice and easy. If it starts to run away with you, the rope jamb snatches it and stops everything. See? Nothing to it. Now, you get in this seat and try it.”
Brewer stepped in. That he would get this far had never seemed probable. He’d been able in his mind to keep it in the distant future. But future had become present: he felt like a chutist about to step from the plane. He looked at the one-inch line in his hand; ordinary, homely, it seemed thin as a thread.
Brewer pulled on it. The bosun’s seat lifted him firmly by the buttocks. He pulled again and felt his feet leave the floor. His knees rubbed against the rough brick wall. He braced the tips of his sneakers against the wall and pulled. He rose six inches. He pulled again. Then lowered the chair a few inches.
“That’s it,” said Abbott. “That’s the whole thing. Up and down.”
Brewer raised himself about six feet and sat, waiting. The seat felt comfortable enough. He raised himself twenty feet and felt confident still. At thirty feet the new line creaked dangerously, and he paused to look down. Fear seized him. He felt paralyzed, afraid to move lest he fall. A sudden heavy sweat covered his skin. The base of the shaft seemed to pull like a magnet against the frail rope. He was sure it was being stretched beyond endurance. It was going to part at any moment. It creaked and stretched in the blocks. His sweat was sour, like vinegar, and it burst in droplets on his skull and face and neck. His shirt was quickly soaked.
“You’re doing fine,” said Abbott.
“You sure this line will hold?”
“Yeah, it’ll take ten times your weight.”
Brewer sat in the chair, consciously trying to reason away his fear. He took a deep breath and pulled the line. He was now level with the third-floor opening. He stepped onto the floor, then slipped free of the seat. He vowed he would never get back into it again.
“Here I go,” called Abbott. He quickly drew himself up to the third floor and looked at Brewer. “Get back in, buddy. You’ll never get the hang of it in there.” His chair quickly rose into the upper shadows.
Brewer sat down weakly on the filthy floor, panting with fear. Distantly sounded the spattering water.
“Hey,” called Abbott, “where are you?”
Brewer didn’t answer. He told himself he could walk down the stairs, out on the loading platform and stroll away from there. He could go sell encyclopedias.
The chair hung in the weak light of the shaft like a stallion that’s just thrown its rider.
From the sunny workaday world of the streets, he heard a car horn call. He felt the desire to pray, to beg off, to demand a fair contest, justice, to submit. He couldn’t go through with it. His throbbing heart mocked him: Never. Never. Never.
“Hey, Brewer.”
Brewer stood up. The sweat was drying in the draft on his face and it itched. “Here! I’m here!”
“Where?”
“Here.” Forcing himself, Brewer leaned into the shaft and looked up. Two floors above, Abbott was hanging by his feet and flapping his arms. A moment later silver coins sped past Brewer’s face and tinkled faintly on the floor of the shaft.
For two hours Abbott drilled them on working in tandem, with the third chair between them. By four Brewer was weary. His arms and shoulders were tired. At all times, fear below, trying to get his attention, daring him to look down. He’d learned not to by fixing his eyes firmly on the bricks before his eyes. He was dehydrated from sweating and felt thirsty. His legs would barely support him, and he had a great desire to lie down.
“That’s enough,” said Abbott. “You’ll get cramps in your arms.”
“How about a beer?” Brewer asked. “Get a couple of six packs while I massage my leg muscle.”
As soon as Abbott was through the door, Brewer lay down on spread newspapers. He fell asleep immediately.
“The roofs the rough part,” said Abbott, draining his third beer. “We have to walk along the top of that roof, and that means you either walk with your feet right on the edge or you walk duck-footed with one foot on one slope and the other foot on the other slope. It’s slate. We got to be very careful, and we ha
ve to walk back with this other guy—if he’s not scared to death of heights, if he doesn’t have vertigo, if he doesn’t fight you all the way.”
“If he’s got vertigo, the game’s over,” said Brewer.
“Nah. You blindfold him and carry him piggyback.”
“Abbott, you’re out of your mind. If I can walk that roof by myself, it’ll be a miracle. With someone on my back—you have to be out of your mind.”
Abbott got up and walked around the interior of the building, seeking. He found a long section of fallen sewer pipe. He stepped up on it and walked along its length. “This’ll give you the feel of it, although there’s too much light.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going to walk that roof in the dark, ain’t we?” Abbott strolled along the pipe, head tilted up, drinking from his beer can.
Brewer stepped up behind him and struggled to maintain his balance. His only hope was that Geller would call off the assignment and give him something more in his line.
He lost his balance and stepped wildly off the pipe.
They smelled it.
No one told the wise guys around the Sports Complex that Brewer had something going. No one asked Abbott if he had a piece of it. No one got a word out of Fatty. But they knew.
Brewer sensed the change in them. They had become not more friendly but more relaxed, less wary. He got more faint nods of greeting now, the first touch of recognition they’d given him. For now they expected Brewer to declare himself by his actions—to show them exactly where he fitted into their rating scale. They all watched and waited with interest. They’d never swallowed that story about the early pension and the CIA; it had given them a sort of mental indigestion. Now he was behaving in a more creditable fashion, one they understood: he was working on a deal.
Catch Me: Kill Me Page 17