Impulsively, he peered down to see the mansion roof. As he watched, the drifting fog thinned and showed him the glow of a faraway, far-down streetlight. It seemed to pull at him, to urge him to descend faster—to fall. It turned slowly.
“Dizzy!” His head seemed to want to roll back and tumble him into the night. He felt Abbott’s hand on his back, pushing him at the wall. “Get your head up! Don’t look down!”
They’d stopped. The jam cleats in the blocks had snatched both lines, holding them suspended. Slowly the vertigo ended, but the chairs swayed slightly, the rope creaked with deliberate malevolence, and Brewer was ready to surrender. He yearned to find his hidden adversary and make a deal.
“Okay? I told you never to look down.”
“I’m okay.”
“It’s vertigo. Lot of people get it. I won’t let you fall. Just don’t look down. Let’s go.”
It was war: his conscious will fought panic for control of his limbs. He kept his eyes fixed rigidly on the faint texture of the brick wall.
The seventh-floor window slid into view. His knee bumped the upper glass pane lightly. Then the window opening hove up in front of them. Brewer considered climbing in and fleeing.
“Only twenty, thirty feet more,” said Abbott.
“Shhhhh.”
Down, down, down went the chairs, with a faint rhythmical bobbing as the lines rolled through the muttering blocks and the stretching lines grumbled. The fog baffled all sense of descent. They seemed to be not moving, not getting any lower.
Someone sneezed.
Both chairs stopped.
“What was that?”
“SHHHHHHH!”
Another sneeze sounded. It seemed to be within a few feet of their chairs. Brewer searched the darkness, but he couldn’t see even Abbott distinctly.
A third sneeze sounded.
“Abbott.”
“Yeah?”
“That was the guard down on the street.”
“Christ. I thought he was in the chair next to me.”
“From here on in, we can’t make the slightest sound.”
“Okay.”
The peak of the mansion roof rose up like a growing mushroom.
“Easy,” said Abbott. The jam cleats snatched the lines again and the descent halted. The space between the office building and the mansion was six feet wide. Abbott reached for the roof peak, making the chairs sway.
“Take it easy, Abbott! Goddam!”
“I got to make it swing to reach that roof.”
“Shhhhhh!”
Abbott made the chairs swing again. Brewer shut his eyes and gripped the pulley block fervently.
“Got it,” said Abbott. The seats shuddered. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“On the roof here. See. I’m standing on it.”
Brewer looked. Abbott was an indistinct shadow holding the bosun’s chairs away from the wall.
“Just turn around and stand on the seat; then you can step onto the peak here. You can hold my arm.”
Brewer gathered himself again. He lifted himself by his arms and stood on the seat. He groped for Abbott’s arm and found a shoulder.
“Just step on the edge.”
“Where?”
“Right here. Put your foot out.”
Brewer reached his right foot out into the darkness and struck the edge of the roof. He placed the foot on the peak and tried some weight on it.
“I got you. Step off.” As he stepped both feet on the peak, Abbott gripped him by a shoulder.
“You’re okay. Don’t move. I got to let the chair swing free.” The whole rig clacked softly against the brick wall behind Brewer. He was standing on the edge of the roof. He knew if he stepped back a few inches he’d step into space and fall five stories. The whole side of his face was twitching.
“Now,” whispered Abbott. “When I turn around, you walk on the peak behind me with your hands on my shoulders. The slates are pretty dry.”
When Abbott turned, Brewer walked in lockstep with him, holding onto his shoulders and putting each foot ahead in the darkness. To Brewer, they were two men walking a tightrope over a chasm, blindfolded. The slightest loss of balance and one or both would pitch down the side of the slate roof like a ski jump and plunge to the ground. He couldn’t see his feet. Every step was tentative—a guess. But Abbott never wavered; he walked with assured balance, taking each step with confidence and authority.
A square, faint shape floated toward them out of the fog and blocked their way: the chimney stack in the middle of the roof. Abbott climbed up on it, a square mass with many small flues from various fireplaces inside the old mansion. The center vent was larger and exhaled a brisk flow of hot air, bearing an odor like bus exhaust, probably the flue to the main oil heater.
Abbott removed a coil of line from around his body and set to looping and knotting an end of it to the chimney stack. Behind them, the brick wall of the office building was hidden in the drifting folds of fog. There was nothing visible around them. There was no sound.
“Let’s go,” said Abbott. “Now comes the tough part.” He stepped away from the chimney stack and waited for Brewer. Together they resumed their tightrope walk toward the edge of the roof, the line paying out over Brewer’s shoulder. It seemed to him they had walked the length of five roofs; one step more and they’d fall off the edge.
“How much more?”
“Almost there.”
“How can you tell?”
They stepped further in the darkness.
“Sit,” Abbott said finally. “Saddle style.”
“Where the hell are we?”
“Right over his window.”
Brewer crouched obediently, then straddled the peak. He could just barely see Abbott remove the other coil from his shoulder and knot it to the chimney line. It was a rope sling that he’d made to fit around both sides of the roof peak and dangle in front of the window like a wide-mouthed rope ladder.
“I’ll go down and hold it so that it can’t slide sideways when you come down.”
“I can’t see a damned thing, Abbott!”
“That’s okay. You won’t be afraid of falling, then.”
Abbott disappeared over the side of the roof so suddenly that Brewer thought he’d fallen. But he felt the tautness of the lines from Abbott’s weight. Brewer lay on his belly and worked his way to the edge. He suddenly realized that he felt exhausted, and he experienced another moment of panic as his legs extended out and down without contacting the rope. Then he felt Abbott’s hand guiding his foot to the rope, and he got both feet on the rigging. Abbott’s breath on his cheek was stale with old booze and coffee: “The window’s right here. What do you want to do now?”
“Pry it open.” Brewer entangled his arms and legs in the rigging and then drew his pry bar from his belt. “Where’s the pencil light?”
“It’s here.”
Brewer took it. He held it thoughtfully before lighting it. Let there not be, he thought, a room full of Russian guards in there. He pressed the button and shone the thin column of light on the window frame. The edge of the paper pasted on the lower frame had been torn open in several places to make peepholes to the street. Inside, an eyebolt was screwed into the wood of the sill. Another eyebolt was screwed into the windowpane, and a lock was passed through both eyes so that the window could not be opened from the inside.
Brewer placed the L-shaped end of the pry bar under the window frame and pulled. The window moved slightly. He moved the tool a few inches and pulled again. The window moved very little. Brewer pulled with all his weight. Feeling the eyebolt tear out of the wooden sill, he heaved on the fulcrum more, and the window slid open several inches. He reached through the rigging with his arm and shoved. The window now opened completely.
Brewer aimed the little light into the room. A man was sitting up in bed with an astonished expression that Brewer vowed to remember for the rest of his life.
“You Kotlikoff?”
&n
bsp; The man nodded.
“Let’s go. Put these on. Hurry up.” Brewer pitched the sneakers onto the bed as Abbott stepped over the sill into the room. In the pale ray of the pencil light, Abbott took a bathrobe and a bath towel and arranged them into a form under the blanket. Kotlikoff struggled hastily into a pair of pants, stuffing in the tail of his pajama top. He pushed his bare feet into the crepe-soled sneakers and laced them.
“Fit?”
“Yes.” Kotlikoff was panting and his hands were trembling.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Go.”
Abbott led the way. He climbed out of the window and through the rigging.
Brewer tapped Kotlikoff on the arm. “You follow right behind him. Don’t make a sound. Go ahead.”
Kotlikoff hesitated on the windowsill. Then he reached out, gripped the rigging and climbed up. Abbott waited for him on the roof, straddling the peak. He pulled Kotlikoff up by his armpits and seated him almost in his lap. He whispered several sentences to Kotlikoff as Brewer shut the window, climbed up and sat down facing them.
The three now stood, with Kotlikoff in the middle, wobbling and off balance. All three were using Abbott’s balance and confidences
“Okay?” asked Abbott.
“Yeah. Go.”
The three of them walked at arm’s length, stepping in unison, like a six-legged animal. Brewer felt Kotlikoff’s bony shoulders trembling and heard his loud breathing. The shock to Kotlikoff must have been tremendous—awakened from sleep and, moments later, terrified, walking on the beam of the roof in a blind dark fog, with two men he’d never seen before, and at all times just a foot-slip away from a rolling fall to his death in the street.
They moved as one, each stride a potential disaster, each step a conquest. The invisible chimney stack seemed miles away. Brewer didn’t see it until after Abbott had reached it and climbed up on it. Kotlikoff, crawling on his hands and knees, followed, breathing like a man who’d run a good race.
“Breathe through your mouth,” Brewer said to Kotlikoff. “Someone might hear you.”
“I understand.”
They began again, walking the peak of the roof, all three utterly dependent on Abbott’s balance and foot placement.
“Sit down,” said Abbott suddenly. Kotlikoff sat down, and Abbott turned to him. “You feeling okay?”
“Yes.”
“I can feel you’re in trouble. Can your legs carry you?”
“I’m okay.”
“Just a few more yards.”
“You need glycogen?” asked Brewer.
“You have some?”
“Yes. But I can’t give it to you here. They can see the flashlight. We have to go up a wall about twenty feet, and then you can have it. Okay? Can you last that long?”
“Yes.”
“Go.”
They all stood again and continued to walk. Kotlikoff’s shoulders were trembling and his footsteps were erratic. His walk was weaving. He was verging constantly on a foot-slip, and Brewer felt panic rising again. If Kotlikoff went, it was inescapable: he’d go too. He felt Kotlikoff’s shoulders sag. Abbott stopped again. He said: “Sit.” When they were both straddling the roof beam, Abbott turned and jumped into the fog.
“Jesus Christ,” murmured Brewer. He heard the chairs swaying and the blocks scraping the wall; then Abbott’s legs swung out of the fog onto the edge of the roof. He crouched and spoke to Kotlikoff, then stepped over him, the three chairs dangling right at the peak’s edge. Kotlikoff put his legs into the middle bosun’s chair and slipped into it.
Abbott tapped Brewer on the head. Brewer humped himself to the edge and stepped into the chair next to Kotlikoff. The man was shaking the whole rig with his trembling.
“Ready?” whispered Abbott.
“Yeah.”
They swung a few feet and bumped into the wall.
“Now,” whispered Abbott. He whispered a cadence as they pulled. “Heave and heave and heave.”
The weight was terrific, and the whole rig rose only a few inches with each pull. The shivering continued.
Abbott was panting, a loud, windy whooze. Oh God, thought Brewer, don’t have a heart attack, Abbott. The dead weight of the three chairs hung there, resisting; though their arms pulled hard, the chairs moved slowly, rose just three bricks with each pull.
“Time out,” called Abbott.
“How much farther?”
“Twelve, fifteen feet.”
They rested, hanging as though disconnected from the rest of the substantial world. Abbott’s breath was labored and fast, almost a squeal. So close. It was so close. Twelve tantalizing feet above his head an open window and safety—success! Brewer was almost frenzied; the waiting was unbearable.
“Let’s go,” whispered Abbott.
The chairs rose three more bricks.
They hauled and they hauled. Brewer lost all sense of time and space. His world had shrunk to the height of three bricks faintly before his eyes. His left arm muscle began to pull and complain. But the window couldn’t be much higher. He persisted. And at last the muscle cramped. He had to lower it straight down and pull with his right arm only.
“What’s going on?” said Abbott. “What’d you stop for?”
“Nothing. Pull.” Slow became more slow—two bricks. Kotlikoff had stopped panting, stopped shaking. They hauled and they hauled, in a fuzzy world of no time and no space.
Abruptly the window appeared, climbing down the wall to meet them, just above his head, then at eye level. It was barely visible.
“It’s here,” said Abbott.
“Yeah. Pull.”
Their knees at last bumped against the ledge.
“Kotlikoff. You go first.”
Kotlikoff was silent. Brewer reached out and touched his head. It was hanging down.
“Pull him in, Abbott. He’s passed out.”
Abbott climbed out of his chair and onto the windowsill. They both struggled with Kotlikoff to turn him. At last, Abbott got him under the arms and heaved. Kotlikoff slid across the sill, his new white sneakers the last to go in.
The rig swung in a sidewise arc away from the window. Brewer tried to pull himself up by the arms. Then his left arm cramped again. He dangled by one hand. The pain was as sharp as a knife blade through the muscle. The whole rig swung back. Urgently, his arm weakening, he kicked and swung and got a toe on the ledge. He stumbled into the room, reaching for the box of glycogen.
“Is he awake?”
“Geez, Brewer. I think he’s dead.”
Brewer pressed his ear to Kotlikoff’s bony chest. He listened. All he could hear was his own veins throbbing in his ears. He adjusted his head and listened again. “No, no.” He moved his head a third time and listened. Then he heard it: a beat and another and another.
About the Author
William H. Hallahan (1925–2018) was an American novelist of popular literature. He worked as a journalist before embarking on writing in 1970, covering a variety of popular genres: detective fiction, fantasy, thrillers, and spy novels. His 1977 spy novel, Catch Me: Kill Me, won the Edgar Award. Hallahan also published essays on the US military and history.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1977 by the Estate of William H. Hallahan
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5901-5
This edition published in 2019 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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WILLIAM H. HALLAHAN
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Catch Me: Kill Me Page 26