Ascending

by Wright, T. M.

  She'd laughed at him. It had been what she considered a typical Ryerson Biergarten comment: slyly self-confident and self-effacing at the same time. "You are not as innocent and virginal and good as you believe you are," she told him.

  He had nodded and grinned. "Yes," he said. "I realize that."

  ~ * ~

  He wrote once: "As poorly as I know myself, as poorly as I know the complexities of the human organism, the mind and the brain, I know even less well what goes on unseen in the atmosphere around us—the stuff that gets into us and shapes us and makes us move. But, and I have to write this nonetheless, it is clear that we're a part of it and it is a part of us. It goes beyond symbiosis—just as the brain itself and the spinal cord do not have a symbiotic relationship, or the thighbone and the knee-cap. They exist because the other exists. They're all a part of the same damned thing!"

  CHICAGO, 1986

  Jack Whitehead said to the cop on South Wacker Drive, "She went in there two hours ago"—he nodded at the 110-story Sears Tower across the street—"and she hasn't come out. Her name's Augusta Mullen." He began to spell it.

  The cop held up his hand. "I can't do nothin' for ya, Mr. Whitehead. Sorry."

  "What are you talking about? She's missing, for God's sake!"

  "Two hours don't add up to missing. Hell, she could be in the can for two hours." The cop nodded at the Sears Tower. "Why don't you go in there and find her?"

  "The doors are locked," Whitehead answered. It was 9:30 in the evening. The vast, smoky gray bulk of the Sears Tower rose into blackness.

  "Right," the cop said and thought a moment. "Then this is what you do." He nodded at a phone booth, half a block away. "You go on over to that phone booth, and you call up whoever your girlfriend went in there to see."

  "She's not my girlfriend," Whitehead protested. "She's my fiancée."

  The cop handed Whitehead a quarter. "Okay, then, you go over to that phone booth and call up whoever your fiancée went in there to see."

  Whitehead gave back the quarter. "I have my own money." He went over to the phone booth, looked up the number of Augusta Mullen's former husband, Wayne Volker—who had law offices on the 95th floor of the Sears Tower—and dialed the number.

  "Wayne Volker here."

  "Wayne, this is Jack. Is Augusta still there?"

  "Is she still here? She never got here."

  "She never got there?"

  "That's what I said."

  "But Wayne, I saw her go into your building more than two hours ago."

  Wayne said nothing.

  Whitehead coaxed, "Did you hear what I said, Wayne?"

  "We have a point of logic here," Wayne said. "If Augusta really did come into this building two hours ago, she would have gotten here by now. So, ipso facto, she did not come into the building. She went somewhere else. She dumped you."

  "That's not funny, Wayne. This is serious business. I saw Augusta go into your building." Whitehead felt someone tapping on his shoulder. He looked. The cop was standing behind him.

  "So?" the cop asked.

  "One second," Whitehead answered.

  The cop nodded.

  "Wayne?" Whitehead said. "You still there? Wayne? I've got a cop here with me. Do you think you could buzz us in?"

  "Buzz you in? Jack, this isn't some east-side apartment house." He sighed. "Okay. I'll come and open the doors for you. Give me five minutes to get down there."

  ~ * ~

  Frenzy was the word that fit. Like being on a merry-go-round that was out of control. Like being in a blender. Like being in a cement mixer.

  A cement mixer?

  "Hey, my man, whatchoo been doin', anyway?"

  "Nothing. I'm a butcher."

  "Yeah, and I'm the prince of fucking Wales. Butcher, my ass! I think you been cuttin' somebody!"

  "Please, leave me alone."

  "Is that whatchoo been doin'? You been cuttin' somebody? Who you been cuttin'? You got some money? Why don'tchoo give old Johnny Miller some money! Share some'a your wealth with us poor folk."

  "I have no money. Please, leave me alone."

  "You think your knife's bigger than my knife?"

  Frenzy! Like being in a blender, like being in a cement mixer. "I asked you to leave me alone!"

  "Don't matter how big it is. All that matters is how you use it, sucker!"

  Whirling about in a cement mixer. Being poured out and set in place. Frenzy!

  "This your car? Nice car. My cousin had a car like this, 'cept it was older. Lots older. What you got under that hood? A four-sixty? My cousin had a four-sixty, and it sure could haul ass. You got some money, then? You drive a car like this, you got to have money! Hey, I'm talkin' to you! We're talkin' to you! Me and my friend here—"

  "I asked you to leave me alone."

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, yours is bigger than mine! But that don't matter. All that matters is how you--)-"

  ~ * ~

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  "And what I want to know is," proclaimed Art Williamson, a paralegal who worked for the firm of Code, Boylan, Brown and Belcher, on the 96th floor of the Sears Tower, "how in the Sam hell can they really do an effective search of one million two hundred thousand three hundred and sixty four square feet of space in just two days? Which is exactly how much space we're talking about here. In this building. Which is, Janet,"—he was holding forth to a young and attractive legal assistant named Janet Weeks—"as you are no doubt aware the tallest building in the world. Bar none. Not even the World Trade Center is taller. We have, as a matter of fact, two more of the tallest buildings in the world here. In Chicago. Those buildings are the John Hancock Center, and the Standard Oil Building, which tops out at just a hair over one thousand, three hundred and twenty six feet. Of course, if you're talking about the CN Tower, in Toronto, that qualifies as the tallest free-standing structure—"

  "What's that smell?" Janet cut in.

  "In the world," Art finished, then asked, "What smell? I've got a cold."

  Janet wrinkled her nose up. "That smell, for God's sake."

  Art sniffed conspicuously, then shook his head. "I think you're imagining things, Janet. It's a not-uncommon phenomenon for women experiencing menstruation."

  "Oh, Good Lord!"

  "However, now that you mention it, there is a very slight odor. Sulfur, I'd say. Could be ozone. At this altitude, it's not uncommon."

  Janet interrupted, nodding at an air-conditioning vent in the hallway ceiling above them. "It's coming from up there, I think."

  ~ * ~

  Jack Whitehead was in his robe and slippers when he answered the knock at his front door. Two men in gray suits showed him badges and asked if they could come in.

  "Sure, of course." Jack stepped away from the door. "Is this about Augusta? Have you found her?"

  The taller of the two men, a homicide detective named Sam Gears, nodded grimly. "Yes, Mr. Whitehead, I believe we have."

  Whitehead smiled. "That's wonderful. Where? When? Is she all right?"

  "Perhaps you'd better sit down, sir," Gears said and nodded at a couch in Whitehead's living room.

  Whitehead sat down abruptly. His smile vanished. He looked at the floor, shook his head, then looked up at Detective Gears. “I don't believe it."

  "Don't believe what, Mr. Whitehead?"

  "That she's dead. She can't be dead. We were going to be married."

  "No one said she was dead."

  "Well, for Christ's sake, you didn't have me sit down here because it looked comfortable, did you?"

  "No, sir."

  Whitehead rose quickly, went into the kitchenette, poured some coffee, and glanced around at the two detectives. He held up the coffeepot. "Want some?" he asked.

  "No, thanks," Gears answered. "Could you come downtown with us, sir? We need you to identify Miss Mullen's body."

  "Identify her? No, I don't think so. But I'll tell you what: I'll describe her, instead. That'll make it easier for both of us. It'll save time, gas, aggrava
tion. I don't like looking at dead bodies any more than you do." He paused, then continued, "So, she's five feet four inches tall, has short, dark-blond hair, a good figure—she always thought she was a little chunky . . ."

  "We know you're upset, sir, but I'm afraid that we must insist."

  There was a mirror-tiled wall opposite Whitehead's small dinette. He threw his cup of coffee at it—the cup shattered on the tiles and sprayed hot coffee and shards of porcelain far into the living area—then fell sobbing to his knees.

  ~ * ~

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, AT THE EIGHTH PRECINCT

  "You think there's a connection, don't you?" Detective George Ripley asked Gears.

  "You don't?" Gears asked.

  "Lots of people cut each other, Sam."

  "I'm aware of that. But keep in mind that the lab said the wounds were made with similar instruments. And both murders happened on the same evening, within a few blocks of each other."

  "Uh-huh. But the Mullen woman was wrapped in plastic and stuck up in the false ceiling. The other victim . . . what's his name?"

  "Miller."

  "Yeah. Miller. He was just. . . stuck." Ripley grinned.

  Gears sipped a can of Diet Sprite, grimaced because it was warm, then dropped it in the wastebasket. "What have you got on those tire tracks?"

  Ripley checked a computer printout on his desk. "Pirelli's. GR78-15s. A big, expensive tire, Sam, but there are several thousand of them in use in the county."

  "And the plastic the Mullen woman was wrapped in?"

  Ripley checked the same printout. "Twenty-gauge stuff. A polypropylene derivative . . . Painters use it, apparently. And car-repair shops. You can get it at four-teen or fifteen outlets in the city. My guess is that no one keeps records on who buys it, though."

  "Look into it, anyway, George. It's possible this guy used a credit card, or a check—"

  "You think he'd be that stupid, Sam?"

  "We can live in hope."

  JUNE 1989 THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY, 8:30 P.M.

  They look like ants," a man said.

  "It makes you feel so ... insignificant, somehow," said his wife.

  A young man nearby said, "If you dropped a penny from this high up, it would go right through someone's head."

  "If it actually hit someone's head," said a young man with him. "The odds are pretty slim that it would even reach the street."

  "Yeah," said the first young man, "and if you threw a paper airplane from up here, the chances are it would end up in the East River."

  "It's the updrafts," said his friend.

  "What's really neat," said the man with his wife, "is looking up. Go ahead, honey. Look up. It's like… looking into eternity."

  "God, no," she said. "I have trouble enough looking down!"

  ~ *~

  INSIDE, ON THE 89TH FLOOR

  Janet Dwyer had made plans to be married on July 14. She'd picked that date because it was the day, two years earlier, that she and her fiancée had met. She had been working as a volunteer for an organization distributing food to the needy. He was working as a fledgling reporter for the Times and was doing a story on the-plight-of-the - poverty - stricken - and - the - homeless - in - one - of- the-world's-largest-and-most-diverse-of-cities. She had liked him immediately because he cared so much about other people, and he had liked her, too, not only because she cared so much about other people, but because she was very good looking—in a girl-next-door kind of way—and had a quick, dry sense of humor.

  Janet had counted on that sense of humor to carry her through the empty, harshly lit corridors and back to her office on the eighty-ninth floor, but it was failing her, and she wasn't sure why. Some new apprehension had all but snuffed it out.

  She had never liked these corridors at night. They seemed unreal, as if she couldn't count on the walls staying put, or the floors holding her up. It was the altitude, she knew—the mere fact of how far she was from the ground. It gnawed at her sense of reality and security.

  "Ever feel the building sway in the wind?" her coworker, Sandy, was fond of asking.

  "Oh, hell," her boss had assured her time and again, "the damned thing's built on bedrock, for God's sake. It'll be here for ten thousand years."

  "But Manhattan's built on a swamp," she'd tell him, to which he could only sputter and wave her away.

  Thirty feet ahead, the corridor branched to the left and right. The overhead lights were out where the corridors met, so the bright white fluorescents in the false ceiling above her caused very black, hard-edged shadows to form. These shadows in turn converged to form a V of light against the far wall; it gave the whole area a starkly symmetrical look. Janet thought that such hard, bright symmetry should not exist at a thousand feet above the ground, where the stars began. It was unreal; it was unnerving, as if she had stumbled upon another dimension.

  Something moved where the corridors met. Janet stopped walking.

  "Hello?" she called. "Who's there, please? Al"—the security guard—"is that you?" She got no reply. She took a deep, ragged breath. This, she decided, was the source of her new apprehension. This strange knowledge that something else was up here with her on the eighty-ninth floor. Something large and fast moving.

  It appeared at the end of the corridor, within the harsh, bright V of light. Like a sprinting fullback, it moved nimbly and quickly toward her down the starkly lit corridor. It reached out. She heard something tear at her chest. She felt a moment of sharp, searing pain.

  Then the corridor was empty.

  She heard a deep choking sound. She saw the floor come up to her, felt her chin hit it, her nose. She turned over on her back, her arms wide. The choking sound continued, and she realized that it was coming from her own throat, and that blood was pooling around her, bright and red under the fluorescents.

  She closed her eyes and murmured her pain and disbelief.

  She felt hands on her. Felt herself being wrapped up in something smooth and cold. Then the air was gone and she was dead.

  THREE

  APRIL 1994-PETER RESTAURANT, TORONTO

  “No," Ryerson Biergarten said to the chunky, round-faced man of twenty or so who sat down across from him. "I work alone. I'm sorry." The young man, who had introduced himself as Lenny Baker, took a breadstick from a basket in the middle of the table and popped half of it into his mouth. He said as he chewed, "I don't need to tell you, Mr. Biergarten," --he paused, swallowed, went on—"hey, can I call you Rye? Is that all right?"

  "Sure," Ryerson answered, though "Rye" was usually reserved only for his close friends.

  "Thanks, Rye," Lenny said, smiling hugely, as if surprised. "I'll bet you're wondering how I knew some people called you that."

  "No," Ryerson said, because Rye seemed to be an appropriate nickname for Ryerson.

  "Well," said Lenny, "I'll tell you." He popped the rest of the breadstick into his mouth. "I'm psychic. Just like you."

  "Oh?" Ryerson sipped his glass of ice water.

  "For instance, I'll bet I know why you're in Toronto."

  "That's public knowledge," Ryerson said.

  Lenny looked crestfallen. "It is? How?"

  "Through the newspapers," Ryerson answered. A waiter came over.

  Lenny said, "Bring me a pasta salad, would you?" then turned questioningly to Ryerson. "And you, Rye? My treat."

  Ryerson sighed. "Listen, Mr. Baker, I really don't mean to sound rude, but I've had a long and very tiring day."

  "Call me Lenny. Please."

  The waiter said to Ryerson, "A cocktail, sir?"

  Lenny said, "Yes, a tutti-frutti."

  "A tutti-frutti?" said the waiter.

  "Sure, vodka, lemonade—"

  "Sir," the waiter interrupted, addressing Ryerson now, "is that a dog at your feet?"

  Ryerson looked down at Creosote, his Boston Bull terrier, who was curled up asleep near his right foot. He smiled apologetically at the waiter. "Yes," he said.

  "Sir," said the waiter, "I
don't know how you managed to get him in here, but I'm afraid that the sanitation laws do not permit—"

  "But he's not doing anything," Ryerson protested.

  "That's not the point, sir. The law clearly states—"

  "Okay," Ryerson cut in, bent over, scooped up the sleeping Creosote, and stood. "Thanks, anyway." The waiter looked stunned. Ryerson looked at Lenny, said, "Have a good meal," and started for the door. After a moment, Lenny fell in behind him.

  "The bastard," Lenny whispered.

  Ryerson stopped and said firmly, "Please don't think you're going to be my shadow, Mr. Baker."

  Lenny nodded enthusiastically at Creosote. "That's a Boston Bull terrier, isn't it? Ask me how I know."

  Ryerson sighed.

  "Because I'm psychic, just like you," Lenny said.

  "Yes," Ryerson said, "you've told me that."

  They were standing in the middle of the crowded restaurant. Another waiter came over, tapped Ryerson on the shoulder, and said, "Sir, I'm afraid we cannot allow dogs in this establishment."

  "Oh, for Pete's sake!" Ryerson whispered.

  "There," Lenny chirped. "I knew you were going to say that!"

  Ryerson strode quickly to the exit, pulled on a door marked Push, murmured, "Oh, for Pete's sake!" again, pushed on the door, and left the restaurant.

  It was raining.

  Lenny was right at his heels.

  "I've got an umbrella, Rye," he said.

  Ryerson hailed a passing taxi, which kept going. "Here," Lenny said, opened his umbrella, and held it over both of them.

  Ryerson glanced at him and stepped out from under the umbrella. Lenny sidestepped to stay close to him. "You're going to get wet, Rye."

  "I don't mind getting wet, Mr. Baker. I like it, in fact."

  "No, you don't. Ask me how I know that."

  Ryerson hailed another taxi, which pulled up to the curb. Ryerson yanked the rear door open and hopped in. Lenny hopped in beside him, causing the taxi to lean.