by Gores
Under the street two blocks away, Taps Turner was moving cautiously along one of the utility access tunnels by the light of a tiny powerful halogen-bulb flashlight. He set down his electrician's kit in front of a switch box bolted to one wall and used his prybar to break the padlock hasp. Inside the hinged cover were rows of engaged knife switches. He began to compare the interior layout of the box with a wiring diagram, humming a Lionel Ritchie love ballad softly under his breath.
Louise drove the Cougar while Grace wiped the makeup off her face with a wad of kleenex. They both were laughing at her tale of Emery's wandering eyes and bulging pants.
***
In the elevator shaft, Runyan grunted his way upward. The air was close and smelled of hot metal and lubricating oil. The day on Royal Arches had taken a lot out of him, but it had insured his physical confidence, made it possible for him to be here now. His movements were crisp, without hesitation, exact. He had no "protection" in place--he was working without a safety line--so the strength of his grip on the Jumars and the sureness of his feet in the slings were his only insurance against falling as he practiced this mild form of ... what? Masochism? Maybe self-abuse. His body was sure feeling abused as he climbed the cable.
Endlessly.
He rested a moment, panting, tipped his head back to look up into the dimness of the shaft. The big cable wheels still seemed a long way up.
He went into the fugue state he had perfected while practicing gymnastics at Q, trying to pass the endless hours of confinement. One of the prison survival skills you never heard about was infinite patience. He had learned it.
What was Louise doing right now? He checked his watch. Still driving around; she wouldn't park the car near the other condo's underground garage entrance until about five minutes before he was scheduled to be coming out.
He shoved up a Jumar, and it rapped against the rim of the grooved wheel over which the cable passed.
He'd made it!
Runyan grabbed the nearest spoke of the wheel, made sure of his grip, then carefully disengaged his feet from the Jumar slings to swing his legs up and hook them around the wheel rim. Hanging backward under it like a sloth under a branch, he removed the Jumars from the cable with his free hand and clipped them to carabiners threaded on his belt. From there it was a cinch to climb the spokes of the massive wheel and step onto the metal gridwork service platform.
The housing door, as on the diagram he had studied, opened out onto the blacktopped roof of the building. He stopped for a few moments, massaging the tautness from his arms while gulping fresh night air. Still on time. He negotiated the mini obstacle course of capped chimneys and vents to the edge of the building that faced the twin high-rise a hundred feet away. On the inside of the four-foot-high concrete parapet a sign held to the wall with cement screws read: DANGER-HIGH TENSION.
He bent across the top of the low wall to look down. Bingo. A very thick black power cable ran along the outside of the building five feet below, did a right angle through a terminal box, and stretched away into the darkness toward Brother Blood's building. Right where it was supposed to be.
Runyan checked his watch again, unclipped the stuff bag from his belt, set it on the roof, and took out a break-'emshake-'em, cracked and twisted and shook the short rod until it glowed with a soft cool green light like Darth Vader's sword. He bent it into a horseshoe around his neck.
Break-'em-shake'ems left the hands free, a vital factor in rock climbing.
He zipped the bag, clipped it back on the belt, unclipped his Jumars, and put them on the top of the parapet. Then he jumped up so he was sitting between them, facing in. One minute before two a.m. He edged himself back across the top of the wall until his butt was hanging off into space. This was the tricky part. He now was supported only by his hands gripping the outside angle of the top and the outer wall and by his heels hooked over the inside edge of the wall.
Runyan hyperventilated, focusing his energies to that white-hot physical point that perhaps only athletes know, then let his knees slowly bend, arching his body slowly back and down. Now only his heels hooked over that inner edge, and his calves along the top of the wall, supported his body;
he was hanging face-out, upside down above the high tension cable terminal.
He groped above him on top of the parapet for one of the Jumars, found it, brought it slowly down in front of his face. If he should drop it now, everything was over.
In the tunnel, Tap's glowing watch digits read 1:59:58 and :59 and 2:00:00 and his hands, in place on two of the knife switches, pulled them down to disengage them.
In the Cougar, Louise was just turning into the block where the high-rises were when all the lights went out except the street lights. She grabbed Grace's arm in her excitement.
"It's happenin', baby, it's happenin'!" responded Grace in a voice almost guttural with tension.
Hanging upside down by the green glow of his break-'emshake-'em, supported by his calves and heels on the parapet, Runyan jammed the first Jumar into place, squeezing it down so the brake bit into the high-tension core of the cable with its relentless grip. If the power had not been cut, he would just be smoking meat.
He found the second Jumar, fixed it into place. The seconds ticked away in his head. Only 90 of them before Taps reengaged the knife switches.
Gripping the Jumars with iron hands, he kicked off the building. His body swung out and down and around, his arms and hands taking the full shocking jolt of his weight as he jerked up under the cable. He was now hanging from the Jumars only by his grip, which already had loosened the brakes so he was sliding down the cable toward Brother Blood's building.
***
Emery skittered his flashlight beam around a lobby lit only by the streetlights outside. Over by the elevators a second guard's flash danced and probed.
"It isn't just us, Emery," he called.
Emery felt a great weight lift off him. He had been afraid it might somehow have something to do with that black hooker who had showed up. "Okay, then, I'll call Water and Power," he said.
***
Runyan, still lit only by his break-'em-shake-'em, walked the Jumars quickly up the cable toward the junction box on Brother Blood's building, panting with nonstop effort as the seconds exploded in his brain. At the box he reached over, a hand at a time, to grab the bare power cable. Then he kipped himself up into a full pressout. He got a foot up onto the cable, a knee, was balancing on the wire, grabbed the edge of the parapet and jerked his feet up off the cable.
There were crackling bursts of white light as the Jumars, scorched and smoking, fell away. The lights flickered on in the buildings as he muscled himself up onto the wall and dropped over onto the roof.
He ran lightly across a patio landscaped with expensive potted greenery and shrubs to the sliding glass doors of the penthouse. It looked like a lock that might be reasonable about raking. Since the penthouse was supposedly the only way to the roof, he didn't have to worry about alarms.
***
Louise had pulled over to the curb and stopped when the lights had gone out. Now, 90 seconds later, they were back on again. She whirled on Grace.
"Did he make it? Did he?"
"I didn't see no falling bodies," smiled Grace. "Relax, shugah. That man of yours, he's a survivor." She dug an elbow into Louise's ribs. "Let's get moving again, baby. Don't wanta draw no poleece before Taps can get out of that manhole."
***
With a thrust of his powerful shoulders, Taps heaved the manhole cover aside. He grabbed the tool kit from where it was wedged between him and the ladder, set it on the street, then leaped nimbly up on the pavement himself. He kicked the manhole cover, clanging, back into place before running to the sidewalk.
He had taken only half a dozen jaunty and unconcerned steps when a power company truck came rumbling around the corner and stopped beside the manhole. The uniformed workmen who got out never even glanced his way.
***
Runyan slid open
one of the glass doors, entered, shut and locked it carefully behind him, then pushed his way through the drapes into the spacious living room. It was sumptuous and decorator perfect in the dim glow of his break-'em-shake'em.
The study also was a decorator's wet dream: thick carpets, microcomputer and letter-quality printer, massive hardwood desk, overstuffed leather executive's swivel chair that looked ready to fly, waist-to-ceiling bookshelves behind the desk, silver-edged trophy plaques on the walls.
"Coke-Dealer-of-the-Year Award," muttered Runyan. He shut the door and returned his break-'em-shake-'em to the stuff bag after turning on the lights. His time was almost up.
The telephone was a futuristic model with memory; on one side of it was a black oblong box with six buttons on it, on the other a computer modem cradle for the receiver. The phone was the key to the safe, but here Taps's intelligence was vague. Runyan pushed the top button on the black box. The stereo deck started to play. He pushed it again. The stereo stopped.
Second button. The maple doors slid open on the huge console TV and the set switched on. Again. Off.
Third. Lights on and off. Fourth. Window blinds.
When Runyan pushed the fifth button, a panel of the bookshelves, books and all, swung open to reveal a small wall safe of hardened cadmium steel. Runyan tried the swing handle.
Locked. Since there was no visible dial, the box with the buttons on it probably also opened the door of the safe.
He went back to the desk and pushed the final button. Nothing happened. Again. The safe was still locked.
But it had to have something to do with the box and its buttons. How would the mind of a Brother Blood work? Intricate mind. Liked games. Liked gadgets. A sly and tricky dude...
And a dude who played around with a computer. A computer which had a modem for communicating with other computers through the telephone. What if this modem had a different function? He picked up the phone receiver and fitted it into the computer modem. Then he punched the final button again. Nothing.
One last thing to try. He flicked on the black rocker switch on the back of the computer. Tried again. The door of the safe popped open an inch.
Yeah. The games people play. Here's to you, Brother Blood. He switched off the computer and took from the stuff bag the stacks of ornately-scrolled counterfeit bearer bonds which had been forged to Grace's order. Inside the safe were exactly similar stacks of genuine bearer bonds with the same sequenced serial numbers. He put these stacks on the far end of the desk. It would be disastrous to mix them up.
***
Taps cut off from the sidewalk between bushes to the rear wall of Brother Blood's building. He had just put down his electrician's box when a thin nylon cord set down Runyan's black nylon stuff bag a dozen feet away. Taps slashed the cord with his switchblade and walked away with the bag, not glancing back, not bothering with his tool kit.
At the corner was an open pay phone without a booth. He looked quickly, almost guiltily around, then slotted his dimes and tapped out a seven-digit local number.
"Yeah," he said into the phone. "I want to talk with Brother Blood. Tell him Taps Turner is calling."
CHAPTER 27
When Louise turned the corner, she saw Taps talking and gesturing earnestly on the pay phone. Beside her, Grace drew in a sharp breath. "That rotten son of a bitch! Stop the car!"
She was out before it stopped moving, leaving her door hanging open and Louise gaping after her, open-mouthed, as she ran across the grass strip toward the phone where Taps was just saying
"Okay, that be cool ..."
Grace snatched the receiver out of hand and slammed it back onto the hooks. He backhanded her across the face, yelping in astonishment, "You crazy, woman? Wuffo you-"
Grace was yelling, "He saved your life! You owe him!"
He grabbed her by the arms and started shaking her, barely aware of Louise's pale shocked face framed in the open car door a few yards away.
"We got the bonds, all of `em!" Seeing some of the wildness fading from Grace's eyes, he gingerly released his grip on her arms. In a quieter voice, he said, "Wasn't no way we could do that except make sure he couldn't ever come back at us."
"You did it 'cause he saved your ass in prison," said Grace in a low, intense voice. "There ain't a livin' soul in this world you'd do that for, an' you can't stand thinkin' about it." She gave a harsh laugh. "And now Brother Blood's gonna take you down, nigger."
Taps hesitated when, in the background, their car suddenly fishtailed away, so abruptly that Grace's open door slammed shut. He felt sudden fear. Grace wasn't hardly ever wrong, and now the white bitch Runyan had brought along had cut out with their car, stranding them. But he said, "You ... You're crazy, woman."
"Don't you see it yet?" she asked in an almost tired voice. "Brother Blood, he's gonna start wonderin', How that man know to call me at the dealer's unless he was in on it an' just chicken' out at the last minute?" Over his protestations, she continued, "It's what you'd think, was you. Ain't Brother Blood gonna be any different." She shook her head and turned away from him. "I ain't hangin' around to die with no boot dumb as you."
Taps let her get almost to the sidewalk before he called after her, "But I got the bonds, baby!"
She turned to look at him, almost with pity. "You got shit, Taps. You think Runyan didn't know you planned to cross him when you asked he th'ow those bonds down to you?"
She trudged away, her steps tapping out a jaunty staccato in marked contrast to the slump of her shoulders. Taps wanted to run after her, grab her, make it right. But he had to know about this first. He ripped open the black stuff bag with his switchblade in a frenzy of anticipation and dread. It was full of newspapers folded to the approximate size of bearer bonds.
***
Runyan stepped into Brother Blood's private elevator and pushed the GARAGE button next to the LOBBY and PENTHOUSE buttons. Tight security. He touched the bulky oblong under his sweater. If Taps was waiting for him across the street from the garage entrance, then everything was straight; if not, yet another friend had betrayed him. He was running out of people who hadn't tried it, one way or another. Even Louise ...
Ashcan that. It was all in the past. They were together now for the long run.
***
Taps Turner had a terminal case of the stupids, thought Brother Blood. Planning to steal the bond stash--with a white dude, yet!--and then chickening out and thinking he'd be dumb enough to swallow the con about stumbling across the robbery! No, Taps was dog meat right now, he just didn't know it yet.
Brother Blood was a tall lean bald hollow-eyed man, impeccably dressed in a three-piece midnight blue suit and mirrorshined black oxfords. He leaned forward to peer out of the windshield past the beefy shoulder of his bodyguard as the stretch limo whispered down the deserted street beside his apartment building.
They turned the corner. The driver pushed the remote electronic-eye activator. Fifty yards away, the heavy steel mesh gate began rattling upward. As it did, a lean dark-haired white man in black slacks and black sweater emerged from the garage, walking quickly. His hands were empty, but Brother Blood's practiced, suspicious eye could pick out the ex-con.
"That's him," he said to his driver. "Run him down."
***
Much too late, Runyan heard the almost silent rush of the limo coming at him. Even as he hurled himself desperately to the side, he knew he would be dead before he hit the concrete.
That was when Louise, seat-belted in and with the accelerator floored, rammed Grace's car into the rear fender of the limo. The impact knocked it sideways just enough so its nose missed Runyan by the necessary fraction as he landed, tucked, rolled, and came up running.
Not away. At. He was aware with an edge of his consciousness that Louise's car, slewed around by the impact, had spun broadside into a power pole on the other side of the stilldeserted street. No fire, no explosion, and she was trying to open her sprung door: probably unhurt. She had not only saved his life; she h
ad bought him just enough time.
Since the windshield was bullet-proof glass, the bodyguard, a thick-set black gorilla with wary eyes, already had his door open and his head and arm stuck out to fire at Runyan. But Runyan was high in the air; a piston-drive snap of both legs kicked the door shut again.
The bodyguard slumped down halfway out of the car, his skull creased on one side by the edge of the door, on the other by the edge of the frame. Brother Blood, partway out of the back seat, looked up into the black eye of his bodyguard's gun in Runyan's hand. He threw his arms up and wide; Brother Blood was a survivor too. Runyan gestured him away from the car and up against the wall of his building with movements of the heavy-caliber automatic.
"I won't forget this," he said in a soft deadly voice.
"Don't," said Runyan. He swung the gun toward the chauffeur, who was trying to fit himself under the dash like a stereo.
"I ... I just drive, sir," the chauffeur said quickly.
Runyan gestured again. "Not any more. Not tonight."
The chauffeur opened the door on his side and scuttled out on his hands and knees, then came erect and backed away into the center of the street, arms high, face gleaming with an earnest sweat of nonviolent intentions.
Louise had managed to kick open her car door. She ran across the street to the limo. She slid in under the steering wheel. Runyan heaved the unconscious bodyguard out of the way so he could get in beside her.
"I think we probably should leave," he said.
Louise rammed it into reverse and gunned it backwards, bouncing off the curb into the street. The back wheel rubbed on the fender, but would turn. Runyan slammed his door as she put it into drive and shot ahead down the street. He tossed the guard's .45 out into the gutter through the stillhanging-open back door, then slammed that, too.
"Thanks, darling, is sort of inadequate," he said.
"All part of the service." Laughter danced in her eyes; she was having the time of her life. "Burbank airport?"
"You got it."