“Here goes,” I said, afraid of what I was going to find.
But everything looked the same. I checked the rear seat. My backpack and cell phone were still there.
George zipped up his Windbreaker. “Why do you think they came back?” he asked.
“Maybe Amy left something inside.” It was the only answer I could come up with, but it wasn’t very satisfying. Where was Toon Town? Unless he’d had a miraculous recovery, I couldn’t imagine him walking across the street, let alone through the building. And I sure as hell couldn’t imagine Amy carrying him.
“So what do you want to do?” George enquired, as I closed the cab door. A small smile played around the corners of his mouth. I could tell he knew what I was going to say. I didn’t disappoint him either.
“You have a flashlight in your trunk?” I asked. I would use mine if I had to, but the beam was weak, and I would have preferred something of a better quality.
“We could wait until they come out,” George suggested. “It might be easier.”
“Not for me.” I was cold, I was tired, I was hungry, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my night in a car—even if I were with George.
“I figured.” He walked back to the Taurus.
He returned a minute later carrying two substantial-looking metal flashlights. He handed one to me and we walked across the street. This time I made a full circuit of the building. There were three exits, not two, as I’d previously thought. One in back. One in front. And one on the right side of the building. I checked each of them. The one in the back and the one on the side were locked, but the one in front wasn’t.
“They must have come in this way,” I observed, and pushed the door open with the flashlight handle. Nothing fell down. Amy had missed an opportunity—or maybe she just had something else waiting for us inside. George played the beam of his flashlight up, down, and around. It caught squares of linoleum floor tile, bulletin boards, and a covered radiator, but no trip wires.
We looked at each other and stepped inside. Nothing happened. George made as little noise as possible shutting the door, but the click seemed to reverberate throughout the hall. I sniffed the air. It smelled old, as if it had been there for fifty years or more. I took a step. The linoleum groaned. George took a step. The linoleum groaned louder.
“Forget about trying to surprise them,” he whispered. His breath was hot on my ear.
“I know,” I whispered back.
But just the same, we tried to make as little noise as possible, as we moved across the hall. I’d taken about ten steps, when we came to another door. It was open. I inspected the floor with my flashlight. Its beam picked up drops of something dark. I nudged George to show him. Then I squatted down and touched one of the spots with my finger. It was wet. I brought my finger up to my nose and sniffed.
“Blood.” I wiped my hand on my jeans. If I had to bet, I’d say it was Toon Town’s. I was surprised he’d gotten as far as he had.
George grunted and focused his beam of light in front of him. There seemed to be more spots, but then some of them scuttled away and I realized they were roaches. I repressed a shiver. I hate those things. Probably a holdover from all my years in New York.
“I guess the trick is to follow the spots that stay still,” George said, as he moved ahead.
I didn’t reply. The dark disoriented me, and I was glad that the Windbreaker George was wearing was fluorescent. It stood out in the dark like a beacon, tethering me to him. I kept listening for sounds, but the only noises I heard were rats scuttling out of the way and the sound of my heart beating in my chest. George and I seemed to be in the main reception area now. The space felt bigger. A large kiosk squatted in the center. I caught glimpses of a stairway with a bannister off to the left. Three doors loomed up in front of us.
George and I both stopped. A car roared by outside and the noise made us jump.
“You see any more spots?” George asked. He was still whispering, even though Amy and Toon Town had to have heard us by now.
I fanned my flashlight in a half circle. My beam picked up something I thought might be a spot about three feet in front of me and off to the right a little. I walked over and, when it didn’t move, I squatted down and touched it with the tip of my finger. It was wet. Then I saw more blood splatters. They led to the middle door. I stood up and indicated the path with my flashlight. I caught a whiff of George’s cologne as he brushed by me. I followed. He paused in front of the door. I heard him swallow. I heard him take a deep breath. Then he raised his leg and kicked the door open. I felt a movement in the air, as the door flew back and crashed into the wall. The dark amplified the crash and it reverberated through the room. For a second, before George and I lifted our flashlights, the door framed a rectangle of blackness that seemed absolute, the definition of nothingness. Then I heard a moan.
George turned back to me. “Did you hear that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
We heard the moan again. It was fainter this time. And it was coming from inside the room. Our lights picked up desks and chairs, a piece of crumpled paper on the floor, a blackboard with writing still on it, and then a figure huddled on the floor in the far right corner. George checked the doorway for traps. There weren’t any, and we went through. The air smelled of chalk dust and fresh urine.
“Toon Town?” I asked, as I walked towards the figure in the corner. I was positive it would be him.
He groaned, then answered yes in a voice so low I wouldn’t have heard it if I weren’t almost next to him.
George and I squatted down beside him. He turned towards us and I heard the intake of George’s breath as he looked at Toon Town’s ruined face. His eye and his mouth had swollen even more since I’d seen him last. In the light, his injuries seemed grotesque. He was barely recognizable.
His mouth moved. He was forming words, but they were garbled, and I couldn’t understand what he was saying. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Can you say that again.”
He tried. I could see his face contorting with the effort. “I’m shot,” he finally managed to get out.
George played his flashlight’s beam over Toon Town. The midsection of his shirt was saturated with blood. George picked up its edge, looked, then put it back down.
“He’s been shot in the stomach,” he said. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. It was too dark. Then he rested a finger on the side of Toon Town’s neck. “His pulse is low.” He unzipped his Windbreaker and draped it over Toon Town. I did the same with my jacket. I touched his hand. It was cold and clammy. I wondered if he would live.
George bent over Toon Town. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to call someone to help you right away, but I have to know: is Amy hurt, too?”
Toon Town groaned. “I don’t know. They took her.”
“Who is they?”
Toon Town closed his good eye.
“Please tell us,” I begged. “I know you don’t want anything to happen to her.”
A spasm crossed Toon Town’s face. “I don’t know where they took her,” he said, when it had passed. “I didn’t see. They shot me. Then they left.”
George sighed. “I’m going to call for an ambulance now.”
Toon Town said something I couldn’t catch.
“They’ll be right here. You’ll be fine.” George patted Toon Town’s hand, trying to reassure him. But I could hear the lie in George’s voice. I wondered if Toon Town heard it too. Then George stood up. “I’ll be back as soon as I make the call,” he said to me. He started walking towards the main entrance. I could hear his footsteps echoing through the room as he went.
Toon Town pulled on my sleeve. I leaned down. He pulled some more. I leaned closer. My ear was just a couple of inches away from his mouth. His breath was sour. “I didn’t mean for it to happen this way,” he told me. He made a strange mewling sound. It took me a few seconds to realize he was crying. “I thought Amy would be all rig
ht. I wouldn’t have called if I didn’t. You believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I just wanted a little candy. That wasn’t so wrong, was it?” Toon Town made a rasping sound and grabbed my hand with his. It felt as if I were shaking hands with the iceman. A few seconds later, he slackened his grip. His hand fell back down. He began to ramble. “Families. You can’t trust them at all. You think you can, but you can’t.”
I leaned closer. “Are you talking about Amy’s family?”
“Worse than mine,” Toon Town mumbled. “Mine might hit me, but at least you know where you stand. Not like hers. Double-dealing sons-of-bitches.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“I was gonna go down to Mexico and live on the beach. Why should they have all the fun just because they were born better than me?”
“Do you mean her brother? Her cousin? Her uncle? Her mother? Who?”
But Toon Town didn’t answer my question. I don’t think he even heard it. “I’m smarter than they are. Just because I couldn’t afford no college education.” And then he stopped talking.
“Come on,” I said. “Tell me.” I leaned even closer.
But he didn’t. He shoulders arched up. He made a gargling noise. Then his head fell to one side. I realized I couldn’t feel his breath on my face anymore. I sat back and rested one of my fingers on his neck. I couldn’t feel any pulse at all. Nothing. Toon Town was dead. I closed his eyes and stood up, wishing that I felt sorrier about his death than I did and wondering who it was that Toon Town had been talking about.
I gave him one last look and headed for the door. There was no point in sticking around. Toon Town didn’t need me now. I held the flashlight to my watch. George had been gone five minutes at the most. It seemed like fifteen, though. I walked through the room quickly. I wanted to get out as soon as possible. I didn’t like this place. I wouldn’t have liked it in the daylight, and I sure as hell didn’t like it now in the dark. I was walking through the reception area when I thought I heard something. I stopped and listened. There it was again. It was a song. I made out the first stanza to “Three Blind Mice.” Then I heard a giggle. The sound seemed to drift out of nowhere. I wondered if that was because the dark had affected my spatial perception, or because the acoustics in the building were strange.
Then the same person—it sounded liked a young girl—started singing “Old MacDonald Had A Farm.” She was slurring the words as though she were either very drunk or very stoned.
Amy?
But that didn’t make any sense.
Given what Toon Town had said before he died and the way he looked, I would have expected her to be dead, not stoned or drunk off her ass.
But if it wasn’t her, who the hell else was it?
By now, whoever was singing had gone on to “London Bridge.” She’d gotten to “take a key and lock her up,” when I realized the sounds were coming from the direction of the stairs.
I briefly entertained the notion of going out and getting George, but I decided against it. If the person singing was Amy, I wasn’t going to need him and, if it were someone else, I didn’t want them slipping out the side or back doors while I went out the front. As a possible witness to what had happened here, I wanted to make sure they didn’t go away.
I walked towards the stairs, aimed the beam up, grabbed the bannister, and started to climb. I’d gotten to the fourth step when I heard a crunch. I’d stepped on something. I hoped it wasn’t a giant roach. I lowered the beam and looked. I’d stepped on a small bone. The roach would have been better. I shone the beam up the next couple of stairs and saw more bones. Little ones. A small pile of them. I swallowed. My heart was pounding, as I went up to inspect them. I lifted one up and the others came with it. They were all attached.
I saw the clasp and started to laugh. I was holding Amy’s bracelet. So it was Amy upstairs. The girl was amazing. Nothing seemed to touch her. As I slipped her bracelet in my pocket, I wondered who her guardian angel was and if maybe he could care for me, too.
I redoubled my pace. Amy was singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” when I got to the second floor. By the time I got to the third floor, she’d just finished. I swung my flashlight around. There was nowhere else to go. I couldn’t go any higher. Amy had stopped singing now. I couldn’t hear anything. Everything was quiet. I stood absolutely still and listened as hard as I could. Then I heard footsteps.
Above me.
Amy was on the roof.
Jesus, I thought, as I walked from room to room swinging my flashlight this way and that to make sure there were no booby traps, this girl doesn’t make anything easy for anyone. I was in too much of a hurry to watch where I was going, and I kept crashing into things. Rats scurried out of the way. I started shouting out Amy’s name. I don’t know if she heard me or not, but she started singing again. Finally, in the fourth room, I found the way up to the roof. It was one of those pull-down metal staircases that you could raise and lower. As I climbed up, I realized that even though it was night, it was lighter outside than it had been inside.
The first thing I did when I clambered out onto the roof was to take a deep breath of fresh air. God, it was good to be outside, away from the must and the mold. The sky was still grey, although the clouds had thinned enough for me to see the moon behind them.
The roof looked bigger than I thought it would. Enclosed by a small wall that was a couple of feet high and maybe six inches wide, the roof’s surface was tarred, just like the one on my old apartment building in New York City. A smokestack stood in one corner.
“Amy,” I yelled, while I looked around.
“Yes?” Her voice was high and light.
I turned towards it.
I gasped when I saw where she was.
Chapter 31
Amy was standing on the wall of the building. Her head was cocked. The wind was ruffling her hair. She was watching me as if I were some odd, wonderous thing. Then she spread her arms and picked up one leg holding it out into the air, as she balanced on the other. “ ’Bet you can’t do this,” she cried, a little girl again, walking a fence in the country. Only this wasn’t the country and she wasn’t on a fence.
“I bet you’re right.” She was teetering now. Any mistake on her part would send her plunging over the edge and, while a fall from a three story building might not kill her—if she were lucky—it sure wasn’t something she’d walk away from unscathed. “Just stay right there,” I told her.
“You want to see what else I can do?” She giggled again.
“You’ll show me in a minute.” I walked towards her quickly. I didn’t want to run. I was afraid I might scare her. “Put your leg down.”
She pouted, but she did what I asked.
“How about getting back on the roof?”
“No.” She stamped her foot. “I like it up here.”
“That’s okay.” I did soothing.
“It’s fun.” Then she went into her pocket and took out a small piece of bunched up tin foil. “You wanna hit? I have lots.”
Well, Toon Town had apparently been telling the truth about the acid. “When we get downstairs.”
I was almost next to her. “But I’m not giving any to Wally.” It took me a minute to realize Amy was talking about Toon Town. “Because he did a bad thing.”
“What was that?”
“He told Shep where I was. He promised he wouldn’t, but he did.”
“Who is Shep?” I asked, as I closed my hand around Amy’s wrist. It was tiny. I hadn’t realized how fragile Amy was. I was pulling her towards me, when I picked up a faint sound in back of me. It was, I realized, the sound of someone running, someone running towards me. Amy was staring behind me.
I heard her say, “oh oh,” as I told myself to move to the side. But it was too late to do anything except brace myself. A second later I felt a hand between my shoulder blades, I smelled a strong whiff of cologne, and then I was being propelled forward. I bumped into Amy. She yelled
, tottered, and fell off the roof.
Because I still had one hand around her wrist, I began to go over too. I fell to my knees and leaned backwards, while I tightened my grip on Amy. I was dragged another foot before I stopped moving. I turned to look and see if whoever had pushed me were still there, but the roof was empty. He’d gone back down the stairs. I was aware of the pain in my shoulder, as I turned back. I had to get Amy on the roof now, because I couldn’t hold her this way for long. I knew she couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds, but right now she felt like a thousand.
I leaned forward. “Give me your other hand,” I yelled, as I reached for it. My left shoulder felt as though it was about to be wrenched out of its socket.
Amy began to laugh.
“Give it to me now,” I screamed.
“I’m Peter Pan,” she cried. “Let’s fly off to Never-Never Land.”
Oh God. From what I could see, we were already there. As I bent over the wall and grabbed Amy’s jacket collar, my eyes fastened on the ground below. I hadn’t realized that three stories was so high off the ground. My stomach turned over. Just don’t look down, I told myself. I closed my eyes, braced myself, and yanked. Sweat was pouring down my face. My arms felt as if they were on fire. They were beginning to shake from the strain. I could feel the veins in the side of my neck twitching and my face flushing. I pulled harder. Now I could see the top of Amy’s head above the wall. Her laughter floated around me, surrounding me with its sound. I moved back a little, worked myself to a standing position, gritted my teeth, and pulled harder. I heard the sound of ripping material, but the top part of her chest appeared above the roof wall. I pulled some more. She was halfway up.
“Help me,” I pleaded.
She giggled.
I moved back two steps and pulled with all the remaining strength that I had left. Amy flopped onto the roof, as if she were a fish I’d just landed.
She got on to her hands and knees, then sat up and crossed her legs. “That was fun,” she said. “Let’s do it again.”
“Let’s not.” Even though my hands were shaking, I managed to take off my belt, which I’d doubled up because it was too long, put it through one of Amy’s belt loops, and wound the end around my hand. It was something I did when I couldn’t find Zsa Zsa’s leash. I figured the principle was the same. Then I collapsed.
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