Night Watch

by David C. Taylor

  He led her out around the heat that blew up the stairwell to the elevator doors. Like all the other doors to the shaft except at the first floor, they were closed. He tried to fit his fingers into the seam where they came together, but there was no room. He stepped back and shouldered the rifle. ‘Better stand back. We might get a ricochet.’ She crossed to the other side of the hall. Cassidy aimed the rifle at the join between the two elevator doors. He fired. A hole appeared at the door seam. He shifted his aim and fired again. The second shot caught the right edge of the hole. The third caught the left. The clip popped out with a ping. The rifle was empty.

  He went to look at his work. He could get two fingers into the hole, but it was not enough to move the doors. He jammed the tip of the rifle barrel in and levered. The doors creaked open a few inches and stopped.

  ‘Wait,’ Rhonda said, ‘I’ll find something bigger.’ She went to one of the demolition piles and came back with a five-foot piece of two by four and pushed it into the gap between the two doors. They both put hands on it. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cassidy said, and they leaned into it. The doors scraped open a few more feet.

  Cassidy stepped into the gap between the two doors. The interior walls were burning on the third and fourth floors, and the brick walls of the shaft were beginning to heat up. The air from the shaft was warm, but not yet hot. The shaft was dark. Only the doors on the first floor were open, but the windows on that floor were blocked. Cassidy put his back against one door and shoved hard on the other, and that one gave another foot and then stopped and would not move again.

  ‘How do we get down?’ Rhonda asked.

  Cassidy lit a match and leaned into the shaft. There was enough light to show him the steel rungs of a maintenance ladder fixed to the wall to the left of the doors.

  He pulled back out of the gap. ‘There’s a ladder. The ledge leading to it isn’t very wide, but we can get to it if we’re careful.’

  ‘What happens if he looks up?’

  ‘I shoot him, or he shoots us.’

  ‘This is why my mother didn’t want me going out with a cop.’

  There was a roar from the stairwell, and a tongue of flame reached out into the fifth floor and then withdrew again.

  ‘We’ve got to get off this floor,’ Cassidy said. ‘Stay here. I’ll be right back.’

  ‘Michael,’ she protested.

  ‘Right back.’ He hobbled fast to the room, grabbed the blanket off the bed and the two full jugs of water and hobbled back to where Rhonda waited. The fire roared in the stairwell, and somewhere below them a ceiling collapsed with a crash. Cassidy gave Rhonda the blanket.

  ‘Put it over your head and shoulders.’ When she did, he poured a jug of water on the blanket. She gasped with shock from the cold as it soaked the blanket and her clothes. He handed her the other bottle, and she soaked his head and coat with what was left.

  A piece of the wall at the top of the stairs blew out, and flames surged into the fifth-floor hall.

  ‘We have to go.’ Cassidy turned his back on the shaft, held the edges of the doors and felt for the ledge with his foot. It was narrow and his heel hung over the drop. He released the door edge with one hand and groped to his left until he found a metal brace on the door he could grab. He shuffled left, holding onto the brace with his chest pressed against the door. ‘Rhonda, come on.’ He watched while she backed through the door the way he had. Her high heel caught on the door track, and for a moment he thought she was going to topple backward down the shaft. She caught herself and he could hear her breath blow out in relief. ‘Rhonda, get rid of the shoes.’

  ‘Goddamn it, they cost me fifty bucks.’ She stepped back into the hall and out of sight, and then reappeared crouched down in the door gap. She wedged the heel of one shoe in the slot where the door ran, and levered until the heel broke off. She did the same thing with the second one, stood to put the heelless shoes on, and stepped back into the gap. ‘Someone is going to pay for those.’ She felt gingerly for the ledge, found it, and brought the other foot out to join it.

  ‘Reach out. There’s a metal brace about three feet to your left at shoulder height.’ She reached for it and missed. ‘A little higher. There. There. Come on. No problem now.’

  She edged slowly away from the door. Cassidy shuffled out of her way toward the end of the ledge. He stretched out for the ladder, got a grip on a vertical, reached out with his left foot and found a rung, and pulled himself over. ‘Okay,’ he said to Rhonda, ‘come on.’ The wall in front of him was warm. The longer they waited the hotter the shaft would become. She shuffled toward him on the narrow ledge.

  ‘I’m not scared. I’m not scared. I’m not scared.’ She said it over and over again as she came. Then she stopped. ‘I can’t reach. Cassidy?’

  ‘I’ll get you. It’s all right. I’ll get you.’ He reached toward her. ‘Don’t take my hand. Go up a little and lock on my wrist. It’s a stronger grip.’ Her hand was too small to go all the way around his wrist, but his went easily around hers. ‘When I say, go, push off and I’ll pull you over. Grab for the ladder with your other hand.’

  ‘I’m not scared. I’m not scared. I’m not scared.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Oh, Christ …’

  When she pushed off, the leather sole of her shoe slipped on the metal of the ledge. She flailed for the ladder with her free hand, but missed and swung like a pendulum over the drop held only by their locked wrists. She let out a cry of fear.

  ‘Grab for the ladder.’ He could feel their hands slipping. ‘Grab it.’ The swing had turned her free hand away, and when she twisted for the ladder, he felt her grip on his wrist slip more. He squeezed hard and swung her toward him and heard her gasp as she banged into the ladder below him, and then the weight on his arm slackened as she got a foot on a rung.

  ‘Okay. Okay. Let me go. I’ve got it.’ For a moment her head rested against his leg, and he could hear her breath rush in and out. She moved lower on the ladder. He leaned his head against the steel rung and tried to banish the vision of her falling.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I think so. Jesus Christ, I don’t want to do that again.’ On the other side of the wall, something went off like a bomb. The propane tank for the heater.

  ‘We can’t stay here. We have to go down. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  When Cassidy felt her move down, he followed.

  ‘The wall is much hotter down here. Ow.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It burned me.’

  ‘Don’t touch it.’

  ‘Good advice, Michael. Thanks.’ She kept going.

  The fire roared outside the fourth-floor elevator doors. Smoke wisped in around the edges, and there was a line of red where the doors did not quite join. The brick wall they passed grumbled and crackled in the heat. The air smelled of burned metal and brick, of wood smoke, and the stench of burning plaster.

  ‘Michael,’ said Rhonda, halfway down to the third floor. ‘I don’t know if I can go any further. The rungs are really hot here. Ow, shit.’ She climbed back up until her head was at Cassidy’s knees. ‘I burned my hand.’

  ‘It’ll be cooler once we’re past the third floor.’

  ‘It was burning through my shoes, too.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Cassidy found his pocketknife. He looped one arm around an iron vertical for support, and opened the knife. ‘I’m going to cut strips off the blanket. We’ll wrap our hands.’ The wet cloth resisted the knife. He had to work the tip of the blade through and saw it until he cut a long strip free. He cut it in shorter lengths. They wrapped their hands and went down.

  The elevator doors at the third floor bulged inward. The fire on the other side had burned a cherry-red patch of metal in the middle of one door. The rungs under their shoes were hot enough to burn their feet through their soles, and the wet blanket strips on their hands steamed. A brick exploded from the wall above the third
-floor elevator doors, then another one, and another. Flames snaked out through the hole into the shaft and then retreated.

  ‘Michael, the whole place is coming down.’ Her voice was harsh with strain.

  The rungs of the ladder were cooler, and the air seemed less dense as they went below the third floor. Rhonda stopped below him opposite the second-floor elevator doors. ‘It’s better here,’ she said. They could see the top of the elevator twenty feet below. ‘Why don’t we go down to the bottom?’ she asked.

  ‘We don’t know where Shaw is. If he thinks we could use the shaft to get down, he may be set up to see into the gap at the top of the elevator. He’d have us before we had a chance at him.’

  ‘He’ll be gone by now. He must think we’re dead. He wouldn’t risk staying.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’re okay here for a while. The firemen are going to show up any minute. People were working up the street. Someone will have called in the alarm. When we hear them, we go. Shaw’s not going to do anything in front of a bunch of firemen.’

  Just under the fourth floor a section of shaft wall blew out. Shards of brick, plaster, and burning wood rained down on them. Cassidy leaned out to shelter Rhonda below him. A piece of flaming wood landed on his shoulder. He brushed it off as another part of the shaft wall exploded above them. Cinders and flaming bits of wood rained down on them. They burned through Cassidy’s wet hair and coat before he could slap them off.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Spencer Shaw stood at the bottom of the stairway on the first floor and listened to the roar of the fire and the explosion of bricks as the building destroyed itself above him. Goddamn, he liked this. He’d never done anything as goddamn much fun as this. He’d done a lot of fun shit in his life, but he’d never burned a whole goddamn building down. Flaming debris blocked the stairs from the second floor up, and the walls along the stairs were burning. A few minutes earlier he had gone part way up the stairs in time to watch sections of the third-floor ceiling collapse. When the second floor caught fire, he retreated to the first floor. It would not be long before the ceiling above him collapsed. The first floor was concrete, but the walls would catch. Cassidy and the broad had to be dead. It pissed him off that he had not seen Cassidy die, but what the fuck? Into each life a little rain must fall. It was time to go.

  He started the Studebaker and then went to unbolt the big front doors. He could hear fire engine sirens as they crowded into the street. When he shoved the doors wide, cold wind rushed in. The staircase acted like a chimney, and the new air fed the fire to a higher rage. Shaw got into the car, put it in reverse, and rolled it toward the door. Idlewild Airport in an hour. TWA to Los Angeles. Pan Am tomorrow out to Hawaii and then Guam, Hong Kong, and then finally Saigon. Saigon was going to be fun. Shit was happening there.

  A tornado of fresh air swirled up the elevator shaft sandblasting Cassidy and Rhonda with dust and dirt from below. The air was almost too thick to breath, but the wind drove the rain of flaming embers back up the shaft. That was the good part, but the new air fueled the fire higher and hotter. Parts of the walls at the top of the shaft collapsed inwards, and pieces of the shaft ceiling crashed down in flames to the top of the elevator.

  ‘Go. Go,’ Cassidy shouted over the roar. ‘He opened the doors. He’s gone.’

  Rhonda climbed quickly down the last twenty feet to the roof of the elevator. Cassidy was right behind her. He kicked flaming pieces of wood out of the way and led her to the gap between the elevator roof and the first floor. He stirrupped his hands. She put a foot in and scrambled out onto the floor. He levered himself up and rolled out after her. Shaw’s car was gone, and the doors were open. A piece of the ceiling at the back of the first-floor hall fell in a shower of sparks. They ran for the open door and out onto the street that was now flickering with the red lights of fire engines and alive with the shouts of firemen dragging hoses toward the building.

  ‘Where the hell did you come from?’ one of them yelled in surprise. He did not wait for an answer. His hose bucked tight with water. He unblocked the nozzle and walked the stream up the wall and into a second-floor window. Flames bannered from all the windows from the second floor to the top of the building.

  Cassidy pulled Rhonda out of the way of the firemen. She limped alongside him. ‘I’ve got to sit down, Michael. My feet are burned.’

  ‘Hey,’ Cassidy called to a fireman, ‘we need a medic. She’s got some burns.’

  ‘Jesus, you sure do. There’s an ambulance on the other side of that pumper,’ the man said.

  Cassidy realized what they looked like – black with soot, singed, limping.

  ‘Come on.’ He put an arm around Rhonda’s waist and walked her around the back of a fire truck. A paramedic saw them and left the ambulance to put an arm around Rhonda from the other side to guide her to sit on the back bumper under the open doors. ‘Her feet are burned,’ Cassidy said.

  ‘That’s not all of it,’ the medic said. ‘She’s got a couple of nasty burns on her arm, and one on her cheek.’

  ‘I didn’t feel those,’ Rhonda said.

  ‘Let’s get those shoes off,’ the medic said, and went down on one knee to help her. He glanced up at Cassidy. ‘What about you? You’re limping.’

  ‘Just a sprain. I’ll be okay.’

  ‘You’ve got burns that need attention.’

  ‘Take care of her. I’ll be right back.’

  The Studebaker was fifty feet away. It was blocked by a fire engine. Spencer Shaw stood next to the open door arguing with a fireman. Cassidy took his gun out from under his arm.

  ‘Hey,’ the medic said in alarm.

  ‘I’m a cop,’ Cassidy said. He limped away. As he got closer he could hear Shaw arguing with the fireman. Their voices were thin under the racket of the fire, the shouts of the firemen, and the liquid hiss of the hoses.

  ‘I’m on government business,’ Shaw said. ‘I’m going to miss my plane.’

  ‘Sorry,’ the fireman said. ‘I can’t help you. I can’t move the truck till my captain gives me the okay.’ The fireman walked away.

  ‘Shaw,’ Cassidy said to Shaw’s back.

  Shaw stiffened without turning. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘what do I have to do, put a stake through your heart?’ He turned slowly. His right hand was under his jacket.

  ‘Don’t,’ Cassidy said.

  Shaw smiled like a wolf and fired through his jacket. The bullet hit Cassidy low in the side and rocked him back a step. Cassidy shot Shaw in the chest. Shaw banged back against the Studebaker and brought his gun up. Cassidy shot him again. Shaw’s legs gave way and he slid down the car and sat with his legs sprawled out and his back against the door. He tried to raise the gun but didn’t have the strength. He looked down at the blood on his chest and then up at Cassidy. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.’ He toppled over sideways, dead before his head hit the street.

  Cassidy touched his side. His hand came away sticky with blood. The gun was heavy in his other hand, and it took an effort to get it back in the holster. He started back toward Rhonda and the medic. After a few steps, it seemed too far. One knee crumpled, and he sank to the street. He managed to break his fall with one hand and as he lay there on his back, he saw the building give up and cascade in on itself with a crackling roar. Flames and sparks flared into the sky.

  Cassidy blacked out.

  FORTY

  Cassidy swam up through layers of drugs to a vague understanding that he was in a hospital room. His sister, Leah, leaned over him and asked, ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and swam back down.

  When he awoke again, she was sitting in a chair by the window reading a book. ‘Still here?’ he asked.

  ‘That was yesterday.’ She put the book aside and came to the bed.

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘Three days.’ She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’m going to go tell the
doctor you’re awake.’

  The doctor arrived with a nurse named Valerie. Doctor Farrow was a short, harried man in his forties with the distracted air of someone with many things to do and not enough time. ‘How are you, Mr Cassidy?’ He picked up the clipboard at the end of the bed and checked the nurses’ notations.

  ‘I was going to ask you that.’

  ‘Not too bad, I think, considering. Valerie’s going to help you and we’ll take a look.’

  The nurse helped Cassidy roll to his side.

  Farrow cut the bandage with scissors and peeled it from the wound. He had gentle hands. ‘The bullet hit a rib and came out your back, just missing the spine. Lucky that,’ Farrow said. ‘You had some internal bleeding and lost a good bit of blood, but nothing vital damaged. Except for your left shoulder, the burns aren’t too bad. We’ll keep an eye on that one for the rest of the week. You have a sprained ankle, but that’s going to take care of itself. All and all not too bad, I’d say.’ He straightened up. ‘Nurse, let’s get a fresh dressing on the wound.’

  ‘What about Miss Raskin?’ Cassidy asked.

  ‘We saw to the burns, kept her overnight for observation, and discharged her in the morning. Her feet will be tender for a while. I’ve asked her to stay off them as much as possible, but it’s up to her what that means.’ He patted Cassidy on the shoulder and left the room.

  Cassidy was sitting up against the elevated head of the bed when his brother, Brian, came into the room. Leah had gone home. Brian pulled a chair up next to the bed. ‘Are you all right? You look like crap.’

  ‘Nothing better than family sympathy.’

  ‘Dad was here, but he had to go to rehearsal. He wants you to come stay with him and Megan when they let you out. He insists.’

  Brian stayed for a few more minutes. ‘The papers’ stories are pretty much all the same: rogue CIA officer escapes from prison, returns to New York for revenge. Hero cop saves the newspaper reporter. A wild west finish with gunplay in the street.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I think there’s more to it than that. Am I right?’