As Larson passed by, one of the other workers approached the man on break and flopped down beside him.
Timmy gasped for air.
Larson paused, giving the boy a chance to catch his breath.
The new worker removed his yellow hard hat to rub sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “What’s the word on that lady jumper?”
The first worker spoke around a mouthful of apple. “Don’t think it’s a lady anymore. They’re saying it’s a real small guy now. And he ain’t maybe jumping. Actually climbed higher, straight up the goddamned wall.”
The other man grunted, scratching at a hairy beer gut beneath his shirt. “Little guy in black and gray crawling up a building? Gotta be a publicity stunt. Some company’s showing off new mountain climbing gear or looking for free advertising.”
Larson froze, images of Taziar rising to his mind, though he knew it was impossible. Still, he eavesdropped, aware that with a Dragonrank sorceress loose in the city, he had to pay attention to any reports of weird happenings.
The first man shrugged. “Yeah, well. That was my thought, too, man. But if they’re looking for publicity, why’s he climbing Sears and Roebuck? Why not the Empire State Building or some real skyscraper in Manhattan? Besides, they’re sayin‘ now they don’t think he understands English. Jabbered back at them in some sort of French or German. What kind of advertising you going to get when the guy can’t even say nothing about no product?”
A short silence fell. Larson ran their conversation repeatedly through his mind, unable to shake the certainty. A little man who doesn’t speak English climbing a twelve-story building. Who the hell else could it be?
“So, you hear anything from your son?”
“Not since last week when they moved him to Mai Lai....”
Larson pressed on, concerned for the climber and not wanting to hear war tales. “Come on.” Seizing Timmy’s hand, he rushed the child across the lot, fumbling in his pocket for a dime. Near St. Raymond’s Parish Cemetery, where the population clustered, he had had no difficulty finding an independent cab. Here, in this section of town empty except for construction, he would need to call for a ride.
Timmy stumbled.
Larson stopped, reached to carry the child, and caught his first clear glimpse of his brother’s features since burning down the house. Tears glazed the freckled, doll-like face. His brown eyes looked hollow and haunted.
Larson had seen the same expression in the visage of a Vietnamese girl after one of his companions raped and killed her mother. He shivered, barraged with pain. Then, he had walked away, sickened. And although he had not participated, his failure to put an end to the torture made him equally guilty by his conscience’s judgment. Since that first time, he had seen the hopeless agony of surrender in the eyes of too many children, had watched innocence die in the split second it took for a blow or bullet to slaughter loved ones, had wondered what the future held for those children and their morality. The comparison ached through him. Not Timmy. Please, not Timmy.
Larson hated the idea of stopping long enough to give Silme a transport site or of delaying his aid to a man who might be Taziar, but both seemed preferable to letting Timmy succumb to despair. He knelt, catching Timmy’s forearms, losing himself in the child’s eyes.
“I want to go home.” Timmy burst into sobs. “I want to be with Mommy and Pam. And Dad. I want to go home.”
Larson clutched Timmy to his chest, waiting for the child to calm down enough to understand his words. Timmy’s grip went convulsively tight around his brother.
Larson whispered soothingly, despising each second that ticked by, yet understanding the need.
The child’s hold loosened, but his face remained buried in Larson’s T-shirt.
Larson stroked his brother’s sandy locks. “Timmy, do you trust me?”
Timmy’s head bobbed beneath Larson’s hand.
“I had to burn the house. The witch can read our minds because she’s met us. I had to get Mom and Pam to leave so we don’t know where they are. Do you understand that?”
Timmy hesitated. His voice was muffled almost to incomprehensibility, but Larson managed to catch the main idea. The boy wanted to know why Larson had not simply told the women to relocate.
Larson chewed his lip, trying to decide how to explain. He pictured himself attempting to talk his mother and sister into abandoning their home. Well, you see, Mom, there’s this sorceress who followed me from ancient Norway. I’m an elf there, you see. He shook his head, on the verge of hysterical laughter. They’d think Dad’s death drove me over the edge. They’d probably have me committed, and Silme would have all the time in the world to identify them. “Listen, Timmy. You’re just going to have to believe me. That was the only way to keep Mom and Pam safe.”
Timmy nodded again, still clinging.
“This is kind of like the first ten minutes of a Mission: Impossible episode. Lots of bad things are going to happen over the next few hours or days. If we last that long. He kept the thought to himself. “Silme’s got magic bombs and bazookas and dragons and what-not. I may have to find a gun and shoot her.” Larson shivered at the thought. “People....” His voice cracked, and he paused to gather his composure before continuing. It won’t help Timmy if I get overwrought. “People may die. Even me.”
Timmy looked up, a grimace of horror covering his features.
Larson wanted to support Timmy, but lies and false reassurances would only lead to later betrayals. “If that happens, I want you to run to the nearest policeman as fast as you can. Can you handle that?”
Timmy lowered and raised his head once in an uncertain nod. “I don’t want you to die. Are you going to die?”
“I don’t want to die, either. I’m going to do everything I can to keep that from happening. But I brought Silme here. She’s my responsibility.” He tousled Timmy’s bangs. “We can’t go back to Mom and Pam until Silme’s taken care of.” I wish I could have gotten Timmy elsewhere, too. Larson shook his head in frustration. But Silme’s already entered his mind once. She can find him anywhere. Only one solution came to the forefront of his thoughts. “Timmy, I can try to get the police to put you in protective custody.” God only knows what I’d say. In their place, I sure as hell wouldn’t believe my story.
Timmy went rigid. “I want to stay with you.”
Larson considered, understanding the child’s motives. Having lost his father, sister, and mother, he was clinging desperately to his only remaining family member, the brother he had always emulated as the ideal of masculine cool. “All right. Fine. But there’s going to have to be some rules.”
Timmy whipped his head up and down in a frenzied promise.
“First, you have to trust me. Bad things are going to happen. No matter what, you have to believe I’m doing my best to be the good guy. Second, if I’m killed, you run. Third, you have to do whatever I tell you, no matter how weird it sounds.” Larson rose. Placing an arm across Timmy’s shoulders, he steered the boy across the lot. “I love you, you little turd.”
Timmy stuck out his lip. The hunted look disappeared from his features. “Yah. You big jerk.” He ducked under Larson’s hold.
“Creep,” Larson returned, flipping Timmy’s hair into his eyes.
“Dumbhead.” Timmy shook his locks back.
“Jerkface.”
“Retard.”
Larson laughed, hardly daring to believe he had discussed his death only three breaths back, and now he was exchanging insults with an eight-year-old. He took Timmy’s hand as they came to the lot’s end and crossed the street toward the supermarket. “Listen, this guy who’s climbing the building. If it’s who I think it is, you’ll like him. He’s kind of an Errol Flynn type.”
“Earl who?”
“Robin Hood.” Larson pulled open one of the glass doors. He ushered Timmy through, then followed the boy inside. “You remember that movie where the guy steals from the rich and gives to the poor.”
Timmy d
anced in a circle, waving an imaginary weapon. “You mean he’s real fast and jumps around and people can’t catch him and he fights good with a sword?”
“Not exactly.” Larson approached the pay telephone, grabbing the book dangling from its chain. Only then did it strike him how near Timmy’s description had actually come to the truth. “But real close.” Larson flipped through the yellow pages to the Taxicab section, seeing no reason to tell Timmy that his older brother could beat Taziar in any sword spar, even with one hand tied behind his back.
Finding a number, Larson dropped his dime into the slot and dialed.
When Larson’s cab approached the corner of Webster and Fordham, they discovered a snarl of traffic behind a milling horde of gawking pedestrians. Patting Timmy’s knee reassuringly, Larson leaned over the seat to address the driver. “I’m going to get out here. Take my brother to Marion and 193rd and wait there with the meter running. I’ll be back.”
Timmy opened his mouth to protest, but Larson cut him short.
“I’ll return as soon as I can. Hopefully with Taz. Remember what I told you about listening to me.” Freeing his wallet from his pants pocket, Larson fished through the bill section, finding only a ten and four ones remaining. Though only two dollars and change showed on the meter, he handed over the ten. Then he opened the door and charged out onto the sidewalk.
Behind him, the cab backed into the jam.
Larson hated leaving Timmy with no protection other than a strange cabby, yet he knew the boy’s presence would make rescuing Taziar even more impossible than it already seemed. If it’s even Shadow doing the climbing. This is crazy. There’s no possible way he could have gotten here. Still, the description fit too well. Despite logic’s contradiction, Larson’s intuition told him the climber could be no one else.
The crowd pressed in on Larson. Panic clutched him, with a claustrophobia he had never experienced before Vietnam. Every instinct told him to flee, and the resolve he raised to combat impulse also brought determined rage. He elbowed through the masses, ignoring curses, shouts, and jabs.
A man grabbed Larson by the front of his shirt. Larson glared into a pair of eyes recessed in a fat, red face. The stranger’s gaze traveled up Larson’s brawny, six foot frame to his hard, ice-blue eyes. Backing down, the man faded into the crowd.
Larson scarcely hesitated. He rushed and shoved the spectators, clearing a path like a bulldozer through a herd of sheep. He saw police and fire vehicles and the flashing lights of Emergency Rescue Teams. Uniformed men perched atop the cars with binoculars. Police on foot or horseback cordoned the sidewalk, some ushering people leaving the building to safety beyond the barricades. A patrol supervisor with a bullhorn peered upward, his head cocked, listening to the radio at his belt. Other officers waited nearby. One elderly man in civilian clothes talked urgently with the supervisor.
Larson glanced upward. Men hung out most of the fifth floor windows, hurriedly trying to assemble a net. Several stories above them, a lone figure clung to the bricks with one hand. He used the other to shield his eyes from the sun as he scanned the crowd.
“Jump!” someone yelled nearby, his voice snapping clear over the hubbub. “Jump!”
Larson was seized by a sudden urge to rip out the stranger’s lungs without benefit of anesthesia. Instead, he rammed through the crowd with a violence and determination that many cursed but no one challenged.
As Larson reached the edge of the cordoned boundary, Taziar Medakan’s familiar voice wafted from beneath a blast of radio static. A louder voice followed in a Brooklyn accent so thick it sounded like a parody. “Did the translator get that, Captain?”
The supervisor glanced at the aging civilian, who wrung his manicured hands. “It’s gibberish. The accent’s German, but the words don’t mean a damned thing.”
“Gibberish my ass!” Larson shouted. “I heard him clear as day.”
The translator and the supervisor whirled. The elderly man flushed. The policeman looked skeptical and frustrated, but hopeful.
“Listen, young man.” The translator jabbed a finger at Larson. “I speak six languages....”
Larson ignored the translator, locking an urgent, sincere expression on his face and addressing the policeman directly. “The jumper said ‘I’m sorry ...’” He left out the expletive. “‘... but I don’t speak your language.’”
The translator snorted.
The supervisor shifted from foot to foot. A tense, crowd-drawing situation always dragged out the crazies, and he had to suspect Larson was fabricating. Yet the police officer seemed near his wits’ end. “What language is he speaking?”
Larson opened his mouth, instantly realizing archaic German would not work for an answer. Inadvertently, he hesitated just long enough to put his integrity into question. “He’s speaking perfect Perkanian.”
“Perkanian?” The translator threw up his hands. “What kind of nonsense... ? There’s no place called ...”
“Perkania.” Larson continued to hold the policeman’s gaze, trying to sound confident and matter-of-fact. “It’s a tiny country near Estonia.” The lie came easily.
Another policeman trotted to the supervisor’s side. “Captain, I’ve got Bellevue on the line.”
The captain waved his subordinate silent, but the translator seized the moment. “Captain, this man is wasting your time. Anyone could make up what the jumper might have said. And there’s no country called Perkania.”
Larson could no longer control his temper. “Look,” he snapped. “If you never learned your geography, that’s your own fucking problem. There’s a man up there who might slip and fall twelve stories if we don’t get him down. If you can’t talk him in, then move your fat butt aside and let someone do it who can.” Larson softened his tone, his focus returning to the captain. “May I try, sir?” He extended a hand for the radio.
Taziar’s voice crackled through the static again. “I’m looking for an elf named Allerum, or rather a man named Allerum.”
Oh, my God. Realization smacked Larson. He climbed the freaking building hoping to pick me out of seven and a half million people. Larson choked back a laugh, turning it into a feigned sneeze. In tenth-century Germany, the strategy made sense. From the roof of the tallest building in Cullinsb-erg, Shadow could probably view his city end to end.
Taziar hesitated in frustration, then finished in English so heavily accented, Larson felt certain he alone recognized the words. “Team player. Buddy Allerum. Stupid son of a bitch.”
Larson thumbed the button. “Shadow,” he said in the tongue of Cullinsberg’s barony. “It’s me. Allerum.”
“Mardain’s mercy.” Taziar swung around so suddenly, the crowd loosed a collective gasp. “How come I can hear you, but I can’t see you? Where are you?”
“I’m on the ground. I’ll explain later.”
“I’m coming down.”
“No, wait. Stay there. Whatever you do, don’t move.”
The supervisor made a gesture of impatience. “What’s he saying?”
Larson addressed Taziar first. “Hang on, buddy.” He turned to the policeman, suddenly recognizing the unintentional pun of his own words. He returned to English, knowing he could not relay the actual conversation without cornering himself into an unbelievable story. I’ve got to get Shadow down and out of here without committing either of us to the loony bin. “He said his name is Taz, and he has some demands. First, he wants me up there to talk to him directly. Through the window.”
The supervisor frowned. “Are you willing to do that?”
“Yes. Of course. A man’s life is at stake.” Larson handed back the radio, then ducked beneath the barricade.
The translator waved his hands wildly. “I can’t believe you’re wasting time with this imposter.”
The Brooklyn accent came over the radio again. “Captain?”
“Hang on Dixson,” the patrol supervisor said. He looked at Larson. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Al,” Larson start
ed. Then, recognizing the danger of his mother hearing his name on television or radio news, he caught himself. “Smith. Al Smith.” Oh, good going, Larson. Why didn’t you just say John Doe? He changed the subject immediately. “And if it’ll make him feel better ...” He jerked a thumb at the translator. “... I can prove I’m really talking with this climber.” He reached for the speaker again.
The captain passed the radio.
Larson thumbed it on. “Dixson?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to tell your jumper to nod twice. Tell us when he does.”
“All right.”
Larson switched to archaic, dialectal German. “Shadow, listen. You can’t come down because the place is crawling with ...” The word “police” had no translation, so Larson used the closest one he could find. “... city guardsmen. Climbing buildings is illegal here. They’ll arrest you if you come down. Don’t do anything elusive, or I’ll never find you again. Just hold tight, and I’ll be up to get you.” Somehow. “Now, don’t ask any questions. Just nod your head two times.”
“He’s nodding,” Dixson confirmed. “Twice.”
The translator fell silent, utterly speechless.
“Come on.” The captain placed an arm around Larson’s shoulders and steered him across the concrete. “You got any experience talking down jumpers?”
None whatsoever, but I won’t need any. Larson thought it better to lie. “Used to work a suicide hotline in high school.”
The patrol supervisor glanced upward, past Taziar’s clinging form, and silently mouthed, “Praise the Lord.”
Mickey Zucker Reichert - By Chaos Cursed Page 22