Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken
Page 34
Twin mobile spots flared on, blinding Erlkonig and Rory.
“NOT IN OUR FACES, YOU MORONS!”
The ground crew adjusted the angle of the lights, and the radiant circles dropped to bisect the men on the balcony. As Rory recovered his dazzled vision, he noticed for the first time the polycarbon cable. Solidly guyed and anchored directly to the Brewery chimney at the level of Rory’s chest, it stretched east, taut as a jonesing addict’s nerves, slim as a giant’s hair.
Erlkonig detected Rory’s interest and explained. “It stretches all the way to the Javits Center. The whole length weighs tons, natch, but we have NASA-grade helium-filled weather-balloons attached every few yards, helping support the mass. Otherwise this chimney would be yanked right off, even with the girders.”
Erlkonig’s words were accompanied by a buzzing in Rory’s ears. At first he thought the hum a figment of his diseased nerves. But then he saw that a single honeybee, apparently wakened by the noise and light, was circling around his head.
Erlkonig saw the insect too. “Suckers built a hive up in the penthouse eaves. Haven’t got around to knocking it down yet. Here, take this.”
With his free hand Erlkonig wrestled with a traditional red-and-white-striped balancing pole that had been standing in one corner of the balcony.
Rory took the pole in two hands and hefted it. The fifty-pound weight awakened long dormant proprioceptive memories, as well as more conventional ones. Katie training him in her highwire act. His several credible performances before their breakup. Kerry’s voice recounting her mother’s death.
“Nothing left here for you, moll. You spurned the money, and your girl spurned you. Your only chance now is to break on through to the other side. If you make it, you’ve got my blessings to tell the Feds anything you want.”
Rory thought about the choice Erlkonig had just outlined. The distance to cover: impossible. The ambient conditions: darkness, a brisk wind. His condition: drugged up, out of training, and broken-hearted. Despite everything, though, Erlkonig spoke the truth. There was nothing left for him here. And should he refuse, Erlkonig would probably just push him over the edge.
Rory kicked off his shoes and stood in his socks.
“Good, man, good. That’s the spirit. The crowd loves a daredevil.”
Pole in his hands, Rory climbed a stepladder. Off the last step, he lifted his foot onto the wire. It thrummed like something alive beneath his soles, singing an old circus song, beckoning him on to his destiny: glory or death.
He stepped entirely onto the cable, swaying slightly, old dusty neurons firing to keep him balanced. Katie would be proud of him. Kerry, too.
Erlkonig addressed the spectators through his bullhorn. “AND NOW, AS ADVERTISED, TO MARK THE CONQUEST OF THE OUTER WORLD BY SPONDULIX, THEIR INVENTOR, RORY HONEYMAN, WILL SYMBOLICALLY AND PHYSICALLY TRAVERSE THE WATERY GAP BETWEEN HOBOKEN, THE WORLD’S NEW FINANCIAL CAPITAL, AND MANHATTAN, THE OLD.”
Rory took the first few tentative steps of his half-mile walk through the atmosphere, both spotlights following him, trained now on his back.
“HALF A MILE OF THE THINNEST CABLE, FOLKS, WITH NOTHING BUT TEN STORIES OF OPEN AIR BENEATH HIM—YOW!”
Rory knew somehow that the angry bee had stung Erlkonig. He almost laughed.
Right up to the amazing halfway mark he thought he might make it, rivaling all Wallendas. A calf muscle had kinked, but he had paused and flexed the charleyhorse away. Nothing could halt him if that hadn’t.
But at the midpoint of his passage a racketing Channel Four news helicopter—Jessica, Peter, and an avid cameraman leaning out the cockpit—approached from Manhattan. As it swept closer it churned up crazy downdrafts—or downdrifts.
Rory sensed confidence and balance slipping from him like sand through a net. He swayed left and right, overcompensating, trapped in deadly negative feedback loops. He lost his pole and the long baton flipped over and down into the hungry night beneath his feet.
Then he lost the wire.
The wind whistled past him, chill and curious. For a few seconds he fell formless and free, like a straw man. He swore he heard the roar of Olympic crowds in his ears. Then, without volition, not even thinking of saving himself, he entered into a classic full pike, the dive with which he had traditionally capped off each day’s practice.
Time collapsed, flattening now with then. He was living a day from his past, the last day he had felt completely certain about anything, the day when, full of a serene spiritual and moral strength, he had taken the silver in Mexico City.
He pierced the water cleanly. Celestial judges flashed high scores. But despite his grace, the impact was still tremendous. The transition from air to water felt like passing through a mile-thick wall of freshly poured concrete instantaneously. He surely abandoned consciousness for a short time. When he came to and opened his eyes, everything was black. He didn’t know which direction was up! He had not lost the water on this dive, he had lost the air! Was he still plummeting? He seemed to sense the musty, car-hulk-littered river bottom just ahead of his face.
Unbroken black watery vacuum. Just give it up. So easy to breathe water, become sodden and sink like a human log to lie peacefully among all the other wrecks.
A greenly luminescent face was staring at him. The face belonged to Jacky Ray, Pantechnicon contortionist. He still occupied the cramped bottle he had ridden over Niagara Falls. His expression conveyed solemn sympathy and camaraderie. Fellow suicide, he seemed to be saying, join us, join us.
Other beings distracted Rory’s attention from this pickled figure out of his past. Two shining nonhuman forms were fast approaching out of the blind depths. Bigger, bigger, glowing silver—
Two horses. The Baroness. And Axel. No, not the originals, but their ghosts. Except that these spirits had undergone a post-death mutation into seahorses, with powerful scaled flukes in place of traditional hindquarters.
Rory opened his mouth to call out to the heavenly marine steeds. River water filled his throat and he began to choke.
The horses nipped Rory’s shirt and pants between their big blunt teeth. He could feel the bubbles of their breath. They began to surge upward, through the murky waters.
Rory’s head broke the surface right next to a Coast Guard cruiser. Spluttering, he looked around for his savior steeds. But naught remained save dwindling silver blots far below his feet.
A boat-hook snagged his collar and drew him forward. Hands reached down for him, gripped him under the armpits and hauled him aboard.
Lying flat on his back, head cradled in a soft familiar lap, he knew he hadn’t survived, but had died and passed straight to paradise.
Addie was looking down at him, sobbing and stroking his forehead.
“Oh, Rory, don’t die, please don’t die.”
A man’s voice said, “That’ll be enough coddling of the perp, Agent Swinburne.”
“Yes, Mister Caesar.”
Mister Caesar? Addie’s boss?
A case-hardened bulldog male face thrust itself into his line of sight. “Mister Honeyman, it is my duty to inform you that you’re under arrest.”
Mister Caesar read him his rights while Rory threw up Hudson-flavored bile.
* * *
The mirror reflected a stranger.
Rory stared at his face. No beard or mustache obscured it. His upper cheeks were sun-darkened, his lower face pale. He ran his hand speculatively along his jaw, as if to confirm by touch that the flesh really belonged to him. He hadn’t seen this portion of his anatomy bare for thirty years. He couldn’t stop feeling like a teenager. He expected his mother to call him down for breakfast any minute.
Instead a nurse entered his private hospital room.
“Mister Honeyman, the discharge papers are complete. You’re free to go. Just remember to keep taking those antibiotics.”
“I will. Thank you.”
The nurse left. Rory tossed a few personal items into a vinyl shaving kit. He wore the clothes in which he had
taken the Big Dive, except for replacement shoes which some charitable organization had donated to him. The shoes were battered penny-loafers, their penny slots empty.
The authorities had confiscated Honeyman’s Heroes and all its appurtenances. Had moved like gangbusters against him even while he was walking the wire. He had no idea what had happened to the contents of his sealed apartment. Held as evidence in some warehouse, no doubt. As far as he knew for sure, all he owned in the world fitted into this shaving kit.
The prospect, rather than dismaying him, exhilarated him. Like starting a job way above your qualifications, like trying a new dive, like falling in love.
Rory paused at the outer doors of the hospital, then pushed on through.
No other October had ever been this spectacular. An overnight shower had washed the streets of Hoboken clean. The air smelled like that at an Alpine campsite, country odors with an overlay of brewing coffee.
A maple sapling planted in a sidewalk plot flamed with colored leaves. Addie stood beneath it. She carried a heavy leather valise—an accordion-sided affair—big as a carpetbagger’s satchel.
Rory walked over to her. She held out her hand tentatively. He took it and they began to stroll. Addie lugged her satchel uncomplainingly, after refusing Rory’s automatic attempt to carry it for her.
After a few blocks of silence, Addie said, “Earl took the whole rap for you, Rory. He fingered Sterling, but exonerated you completely. So we never needed your testimony at all. The government took your shop only because you had signed it over way back at the start to Hoboken S & L.”
Rory expected to feel his familiar anger blooming at the mention of Erlkonig and all the damage he had wrought. Surprisingly, his emotions remained on an even keel. Instead of a red haze he saw the splendid figures of the twin seahorses swimming though the black river.
Still, he shouldn’t look like too much of a pussycat.
“So I guess I’m just supposed to forgive everyone now, and forget all the harm and many injustices I endured.”
“That’s entirely up to you. I don’t see where it’s such a bad idea. The quality of mercy and all that. I admit Earl did act like a real bastard at the end. But basically I think he was just running scared. I’ve had many chances to talk with him since his arrest. He really does like and admire you.”
“He sure had a funny way of showing it.”
“Well, your own dismal attitude at the time just brought out the worst in him. He thought he was helping you get what you wanted—your own destruction.”
“He should have seen I was in no condition to make any radical decisions about my life. I was hurting too bad.”
“I know. I know, and I’m really, truly sorry, Rory. But I had no choice. I wasn’t free to follow my own heart. Duty called.”
Rory withheld comment. After a few moment Addie resumed her account of the latest developments.
“Anyway, Earl’s going to be sentenced only on charges connected with running an unauthorized tightrope across the river. Public nuisance, property damage, obstructing air traffic, those kind of minor things. The matter of spondulix has been officially quashed, now that the mint is closed down and the plates melted. Of course Sponco is out of business, too. Although all the subsidiaries they spun off remain untouched behind a thicket of attorneys.”
“So all the Nuts still have their private businesses? Cat obedience school, restaurant, everything?”
“Yup.”
Rory laughed. “After all those years when Earl bossed them around, he’s in jail and they’re on easy street. I guess I see some justice after all.”
“Oh, Earl won’t be in jail for too long. Not that the Treasury Secretary is happy about that prospect. But we just couldn’t find many relevant statutes to prosecute under. A whole squad of lawyers spent hundreds of man-hours trying to unearth something, but couldn’t. There’s just no legislation against what you guys were doing. And even if there had been, the publicity connected with a trial would have inspired copycat crimes. In that half of the populace that hadn’t heard about spondulix already. No, my bosses didn’t have much trouble deciding that the best policy was to ignore all the spondulix currently in circulation. Just so long as they’re relatively confident that no more new ones are being made. They figure that without leaders the whole para-economy will fade away sooner or later.”
“So I’m completely free myself ? You’re not here in some official capacity to escort me to Federal prison?”
“Yes to the first question, no to the second.”
“So I can go back to running a sandwich shop in Hoboken?”
“If you want to.”
“Well now, that depends.”
“On me?”
“Yes.”
Addie smiled. “Suppose I told you that I don’t work for the Secret Service anymore? Resignation tendered last week.”
“I might believe you, and say please continue.”
“And suppose I told you I was never acting when I fell in love with you, and that I still love you very much with all my heart and just want to spend my whole life with you trying to atone for ever lying about anything?”
“I might say I love you, too.”
They stopped to kiss then, and strangers smiled.
Resuming their walk, Rory said, “You wouldn’t mind living on the proceeds of a little sandwich shop?”
“Oh,” said Addie, “I don’t think it’ll ever come to that.”
They were approaching a park bench now. Addie set her satchel down on the slats of the seat and cracked the satchel’s purse-like top.
Rory looked inside.
The bag held enough high-denomination spondulix to choke a horse.
Or two.
Table of Contents
Chapter One - Beer Nuts
Chapter Two - Honey and the Rock
Chapter Three - Cinderella in Swimtrunks
Chapter Four - Days in the Pantechnicon
Chapter Five - Higher Economics
Chapter Six - Overlooking Sinatra
Chapter Seven - “I Don’t Care if I Never Come Back!”
Chapter Eight - Seven with One Blow
Chapter Nine - Bretton Woods
Chapter Ten Taking the Big Dive