He slung a leg over the sill and put his foot on the top rung of the ladder. It bent under his shoe. He took more weight on his hands and moved his foot down a rung. It seemed more solid. He went down a few more rungs, testing each before giving it weight, and then reached up and pulled the doors closed. Now he was in darkness. A rung near the bottom gave way under his foot, but he caught himself. He eased himself down, taking his weight on his hands, until his right foot touched the cellar floor. He let go of the ladder and turned away from it. At his first step his left foot came down awkwardly on something, and he rolled his ankle and went down hard.
He lay on the concrete floor of the basement and took stock. A bruised elbow, a scraped knee, and the ankle. He tested the ankle. Tender, still useful if he was careful, but not good. He found matches in his coat pocket and lit one. It made a small circle of warm light in the darkness. He used the bottom of the ladder to pull himself up. The match burned out. He lit another match. There was enough light to see the floor in front of him was strewn with junk, pieces of coal, bricks, scrap wood. He limped toward where he thought the stairs up might be and used his good foot to kick things out of his path. When a match burned low, he lit another. Claws scraped on the concrete as something skittered away from him. Rats. He didn’t like rats. He found the bottom of a flight of rough wooden stairs. At the top of the stairs a line of dim light showed through the bad join at the bottom of the door. He lit another match and went up step by step. He could not afford another fall. The door at the top of the stairs opened to a broad hall. Light filtered down the stairs from the windows above, and he no longer needed the matches. The front door was twenty feet down to his right. The floor was made of concrete to support the weight of trucks. Oil stains showed where they had parked.
The stairs to the floors above were near the front of the hall. On the way to them, Cassidy passed a freight elevator. The doors were open a couple of feet. The elevator had come to rest on its last ride with its roof four feet below floor level.
The second floor was made up of big rooms fronted by a corridor. The ceilings were made of patterned pressed tin. There was nothing in the rooms that hinted at what the building had been used for. The elevator doors were closed. The third floor was identical, a big, empty echoing space. The doors to the elevator shaft were closed there too. Cassidy limped up the stairs to the next floor.
Building demolition starts at the top and works down. Gravity speeds the process. The wrecking crew had been at work on the fourth floor. They had torn the floors up from the south wall to the closed elevator, leaving the big joists and cross beams. Cassidy could see the pressed tin of the third-floor ceiling still nailed below. They had ripped down many of the walls, and there was a big pile of broken plaster and wood near the elevator. The destruction was even greater on the fifth floor. The rooms here were smaller and had probably been used as offices. The walls had been stripped to their studs, and Cassidy could see through, room to room to room, all the way to the front of the building.
One room remained intact. It was at the back of the building, and it looked south over low roofs to the front of Cassidy’s building a block away. A mattress covered by a couple of wool blankets was pushed against one wall. A squat propane tank held a big heating element. Near it were three one-gallon jugs of water. Two were full; the other was half empty. Blackout curtains were pinned back from the window. A Garand M-1 rifle was propped in a corner. Its butt rested on a green canvas beanbag. There was nothing personal in the room. Shaw was living somewhere else. This was his observation post.
Cassidy went over the room to make sure he had left no trace of his visit. He could be at the Ninth Precinct in fifteen minutes. All he would need is a couple of cops to throw a loose surveillance net on the building. As soon as the padlock came off the front door, they would know Shaw was inside. Then they could tighten the net. Teams front and back. They could wait him out until he left the building and take him on the street, or they could take him in the building. Better to take him on the street. Surprise and overwhelming force. If they tried to take him in the building and he didn’t go easily, they’d have to fight their way up five floors. Shaw had the rifle. Maybe he had other weapons. People could get hurt. Cassidy thought about jamming the M-1, but if Shaw was meticulous about his weapons, he might check it. If he found it jammed, he would know someone had been there. Be patient. Go get some cops. Take him outside.
Cassidy went down the stairs favoring his sprained ankle. He had just reached the third floor when he heard a car stop on the street in front of the building. Moments later he heard the rattle of the padlock and hasp, and then the creaking as someone shoved the big doors open. He hobbled to the window at the end of the hall. A four-year-old Studebaker was parked outside the double doors. As he watched, a man came out of the building and got back in the car. For a moment Cassidy did not recognize him, and then he realized that Shaw had dyed his bright, distinctive hair dark brown. Shaw pulled out, swung the car around, and then backed into the building. Cassidy went back to the stairs. He heard the car door open as Shaw got out to close the garage doors, then the thump as they slammed together, and the rattle as Shaw bolted the doors shut.
Take him now.
Cassidy pulled the .38 from under his arm and went down the stairs. He reached the second floor and limped into a room opposite the stairway. When Shaw started up toward the third floor, his back would be turned for a moment. Cassidy would take a couple of steps into the hall. Speed wasn’t necessary. The ankle would not matter. Shaw would be no more than ten feet away, back turned, surprised. What happened next would be up to Shaw. He heard the car door slam two floors below. Footsteps on the stairs, and then Shaw’s voice.
‘You’ve got a great ass, honey. I’d be happy to follow that ass anywhere.’
‘This is stupid. He won’t come for me. We broke up.’ Rhonda’s voice, angry and scared.
‘He’ll come for you. He won’t be able to resist.’
‘He’ll bring cops. You’ll either end up dead or back in prison.’
‘You know what? Women never know who the fuck their men really are. They make up who they want them to be, and then try to squeeze the guy into the mold. You think Cassidy’s some sort of pragmatic guy? Bullshit. He wants to be the hero. Why else would a rich guy’s son become a street cop?’
Cassidy found a crack in the wall where a piece of plaster had been knocked off. Through it he could see the stair landing fifteen feet away. He was confident of putting a bullet in a two-inch circle at that distance. All he needed was a clean shot. Rhonda rose into view on the stairs. Shaw was close to her, shielded from him by her body. She stopped on the landing.
‘Keep going,’ Shaw said. ‘We’re going all the way to the top.’
When they turned, Shaw would be exposed. Cassidy would take the shot then.
Rhonda turned to go up the next flight. Shaw went with her. When he turned, Cassidy saw the gun Shaw held. It was pointed at Rhonda’s back. The muzzle wandered with Shaw’s movements. Sometimes it pointed at her spine, sometimes at her leg. Once it wandered off to the side. Cassidy took up the trigger slack and let his breath out slowly. Now.
Rhonda stopped on the stairs, and Shaw bumped into her. They were too close together now to risk the shot. ‘Move it.’
‘No.’
He jabbed her hard in the back with the pistol. ‘Don’t be a pain in the ass. I’ll shoot you and send him your ear. He’ll come running. Move.’ He poked her with the gun again, and they went up the stairs together and disappeared.
Cassidy pulled the gun back from the crack and eased the hammer down. He could be out the door and at the Ninth Precinct in minutes, even walking on a bad ankle. They could have the building covered and sealed off in half an hour. Then what? Wait Shaw out. There was no electricity in the building. He would have to leave to call Cassidy. There’d be no reason to risk taking Rhonda with him. He could leave her tied down upstairs. He’d go alone, and they’d take him in the street
. Cassidy looked it over from a couple of angles. He did not want to leave her here, but it was the smart move.
Cassidy listened for a moment. No footsteps on the stairs. Shaw and Rhonda must have reached the top floor. Cassidy left the shelter of the room on the second floor and headed for the stairs.
In the room at the top of the building, Rhonda screamed.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Cassidy climbed the stairs as fast as his bad ankle let him. Rhonda screamed again. The sound was muffled. Shaw must have closed the door to the room. Cassidy stopped on the fourth floor. A thumping, banging came from the floor above. Shaw yelled something Cassidy did not understand, and then Rhonda cried out in pain.
Walls of the fourth floor had been ripped out and was little cover. The fifth floor was worse. Only Shaw’s room had walls. There was no cover up there. He could go up quietly, and kick open the door to the room, but he did not know where Rhonda was. Close to Shaw? He could not risk gunplay without knowing that.
He had to get Shaw out of the room.
Metal garbage cans filled with broken plaster and wood scraps stood near the closed elevator doors. He carried them to the stair landing and threw one down toward the third floor. It crashed and banged down the stairs and clattered out into the hall. Cassidy heard Shaw shout on the floor above. He threw the second can to follow the first, and then limped as fast he could down the hall, his footsteps covered by the crash of the garbage can. He went into a room where a partial wall would give him cover.
Shaw’s footsteps pounded across what was left of the fifth floor and stopped at the head of the stairs. From his angle, Cassidy could see part way up the stairs. Shaw’s feet showed. They came down another step and then stopped. A hand carrying a black automatic appeared, followed by Shaw’s torso as he crouched to look down toward the landing. Cassidy drew back behind the wall. A footstep on the stairs. The brush of Shaw’s jacket back against the wall as he moved down slowly. Cassidy needed Shaw on the landing. If he tried to take him while he was on the stairs, he might miss, might hit the banister or one of the newel posts, and he could not let Shaw get back upstairs to Rhonda.
The quality of the footsteps changed. He was on the landing. Cassidy risked a quick glimpse and jerked back. Shaw was crouched at the top of the stairs looking down toward the third floor.
Cassidy stepped out of the room, gun up. ‘Freeze, Shaw.’
Shaw was snake quick. He twisted and fired two shots toward where he thought Cassidy might be. One of them blew chips of plaster into Cassidy’s face as he fired. Shaw went over backward and clattered down the stair. Did he hit him? Cassidy hobbled to the stair landing. Shaw was crawling for the doorway at the bottom of the flight. Cassidy fired once as he disappeared, but he knew he had missed.
If he went down, he’d be walking into Shaw’s gun. He went up. As he reached the top of the stairs, a shot blasted wood out of the wall, and then he was through and in cover. He went flat on the floor, rolled over, peeked around the doorframe. Shaw fired two quick shots that went high. Cassidy fired once, and missed, and Shaw was gone.
Cassidy rolled over on his back and reloaded his gun. Then he pushed himself up against the wall and limped to the room at the end of the hall. When he opened the door, Rhonda stared at him wide-eyed from the mattress against one wall. Her hands were tied to the radiator behind her. Her skirt was bunched around her waist, and her blouse was torn.
‘Michael?’ Disbelief. ‘Michael. Michael.’
‘It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.’ He holstered his gun and crouched down to work on the knots.
‘How did you get here? How did you know?’ Her voice rasped with shock and fear.
‘I was here when he brought you. I was looking for him.’ He found his pocketknife and sawed through the clothesline Shaw had used to tie her.
‘He’s supposed to be in prison.’
‘I know. Hold on for a second.’
‘Where are you going? Don’t go.’ She pulled at his sleeve.
‘I’ll be right back.’ He got up and went out in the hall and listened. The stairs were covered with grit and dirt, and he did not think Shaw could sneak up quietly. He heard nothing. He went back into the room. Rhonda had straightened her skirt and had done the best she could with her blouse. ‘How do we get out of here?’ she asked.
‘I’m working on it.’ He grabbed the M-1 and went back into the hall. He took a quick peek around the doorway to the stairs. Shaw was out of sight two flights down. Cassidy checked the safety at the front of the trigger guard and then fired three shots spaced along the wall where Shaw might be hiding. The .30 caliber ammunition was powerful enough to blow through the plaster. Maybe he’d get a lucky hit, but at least it would remind Shaw that they had more fire power than just his .38. He went back into the room and propped the rifle near the door.
‘He was in prison,’ Rhonda said. ‘I didn’t have to think about him anymore. I ran across the street to get some cigarettes, and he grabbed me when I came out of the store. He had a gun.’ She took a deep breath and let it out. ‘He was going to rape me. He acted like he was going to do me a favor.’
‘Stay here. I’m going to talk to him.’
‘I’m not staying here. I’m going with you.’
‘Rhonda—’
‘I’m going with you. I’m not going to stay here alone.’
She followed him back out into the ruined hall. Cassidy stood where he could be heard but not seen and called down the stairway. ‘Shaw. Hey, Shaw.’
‘Yeah?’ From his voice, he was somewhere near the third-floor door.
‘The best thing you can do is get in your car and take off. With a little lead time, you might get away.’
‘Don’t worry about me getting away. I’ll be out of the country by this evening. I can’t leave yet. I built a whole plan to get you here, and here you are.’
‘It’s a stalemate. You can’t come up, and we can’t come down. I told my partner what I was doing. He knows you’re out of prison. When I don’t show up for my shift, he’ll come looking.’ Rhonda looked at him with hope.
Silence while Shaw thought it over.
‘I don’t think so. If you’d told him, he would have come with you. No, no. You came looking for me alone. That’s how you want it to end – you and me. Nobody to interfere.’
The hope went out of Rhonda’s eyes.
‘Hey, Cassidy, how’d you do the thing with my wallet?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I figure it was that couple with the dogs. The blond with great ass.’
‘What couple?’
‘Sure. Sure. I didn’t kill the Brandts. Did you? This is the time for truth telling, Cassidy. You’re not getting out of here.’
‘I didn’t kill them.’
‘Maybe, but you know I didn’t. You set me up. You framed me.’ There was a shuffling, scraping below, and Cassidy fired two more shots through the wall hoping to get lucky.
Shaw laughed. ‘Hey, Cassidy, I’ll tell you what. If you come down, I’ll let the woman go.’
Rhonda shook her head violently. She knew the lie.
‘She says, no,’ Cassidy yelled.
‘All right. She’s on your head. I gave you the chance. I have a solution. It’s not perfect. I wanted to watch you die. But this’ll work for me. At least I’ll hear you scream.’
Rhonda touched him, her face tight with alarm. ‘What does he mean?’
‘I don’t know. Nothing. He’s making a noise.’ He wished he believed it. He led her back into the room and inventoried what was there – the mattress, the propane tank with the heater attached. Was there something he could do with that? If there was, it escaped him. The jugs of water, useful for a long siege. Could they wait Shaw out? Maybe. He could not think of another choice.
‘Michael,’ Rhonda was standing in the open door. ‘He’s doing something.’
They could hear scraping sounds and occasional thumps and cla
tter rising from the stairwell. Cassidy, carrying the rifle, edged around the stair door and looked down. A pile of demolition debris was growing on the third-floor landing. As Cassidy watched, pieces of broken wood flew through the doorway and landed on the pile. A moment later, a large wad of torn wallpaper followed. Cassidy leveled the rifle at the wall near the doorway and fired two shots. For a moment it was quiet below, and then Shaw threw more wood on the pile from a different angle.
‘What’s he doing?’ Rhonda asked. ‘Is he trying to block us from getting down there?’
She had her answer a moment later. A line of fire crept along a ribbon of wallpaper and disappeared into the pile. For a few seconds Cassidy thought the pile had smothered the flame, but then fire began to flicker deep in the pile. Something dry and volatile caught, and a tongue of flame rose and licked the wall of the landing. The material that covered the plaster began to burn.
‘What do we do?’ She was scared, but her voice was steady.
‘There has to be another way out.’
‘The roof?’
‘There’s an alley between us and the next building. It’s too far to jump.’
‘Maybe we’ll find something on the roof, a plank or something. Maybe we can make a bridge.’
It did not take them long to search the fifth floor. There was no trapdoor to the roof.
By the time they got back to the stairs, the fire was raging. The stairwell acted like a chimney, and the blast of heat coming up the stairs drove them back from the door.
‘Well, at least we don’t have to worry about him sneaking up,’ Cassidy said.
It got no smile from Rhonda. ‘Someone on the block has to have noticed. Someone will call the Fire Department.’
‘They don’t know we’re in here. The firemen’ll try to keep the fire from spreading to the next building. That won’t do us any good.’
Night Watch Page 32