by Les Cohen
Episode 8:
Going Down
Nobody moved. We just stayed there, stuffed in front of the open safe, the spot from my flashlight overcoming the shadows on the scratch marks we had discovered, staring at them as if there had to be something more they could tell us, and then MR was first to speak up. “If that’s gold, just how much do you think this safe weighs?”
“Bobby, my father’s got today’s paper on his desk.” He was up on his feet before I finished, almost running through the backroom door, across the carpet to the other side of the room. He couldn’t miss it, there, folded in half in my father’s in-basket because he hadn’t had time to read it that morning. Bobby opened it up, taking out the business section, laying it flat out on my father’s desk, pulled the chain to turn on the banker’s light to his left, bent over a bit to see better and began turning the pages, not waiting for the first to lie flat before grabbing the next one.
“It took three men to bring it in, and they were struggling. My father said the shipping papers put it at almost five hundred pounds.”
Bobby, his back to us while he was leaning over the paper, spun around. “Geez! It’s over seven hundred dollars an ounce! (Actually, it’s way more now, but remember, this story takes place a few years ago.)
I’d gotten up and grabbed one of the magnets from the side of one of my father’s file cabinets, leaving one of the drawings I’d made for him in elementary school to swing back and forth. Running back to press it against the outside wall of the safe, I paused for a moment before I let go. “Hey, look!” It slid off, again and a third time, in rapid succession. It would have stuck to iron, but gold isn’t magnetic.
“How many ounces is that?” Eleanor wasn’t fooling around this time, and turned right to MR. Whatever she said about MR in public, for other people to hear, she knew how smart he was.
“Sixteen ounces per pound. Sixteen times five hundred pounds is eight thousand ounces, times seven hundred dollars is.. is..”
“IS WHAT?!” we all asked at the same time.
“Five point six.”
“Five point six what?” Bobby was the only one of us, other than MR of course, who wasn’t too excited to talk.
“Million dollars. ..Five million, six hundred thousand dollars.”
We were quiet. For some reason, we all turned around in place and sat on the floor, our backs up against the open safe, each of us looking in a different direction, dumbfounded by the revelation that the safe might be worth millions of dollars. Only Rollo was doing anything, still inside the safe, sniffing at the scratch marks.
“Wait a minute.” Bobby sounded disappointed, but sure of himself. “That’s not gold.”
“Of course not.” MR had just figured it out, too. You could tell from the expression on his face.
“It’s brass, isn’t it?” Eleanor’s voice was flat.
“Of course.” Even I got it. “It’s either brass or brass plated to keep the body of the safe from rusting, painted black to.. to.. Why do suppose they painted it?”
“So how are we sure it isn’t gold?” Eleanor was still clinging to the faint hope that it might have been worth something.
“Because,” I was afraid MR had the answer, “pure gold is a soft metal. You barely scratched off the paint.”
“Got a hammer,” Bobby stood up and started looking around the shelves in the back.”
“Yeah,” I told him, pointing, halfheartedly, toward the corner. “Look in the tool kit underneath the work table.” A moment later and he was back.
“Here,” he said, pushing me gently out of the way. “Watch out,” he warned us, just as he pulled his arm back, and then “Bang! Bang!! Bang!!” Three head-pounding whacks later to the inside of the safe, right on top of the scratches I had made, and nothing. No effect. “The color’s not even right. It’s too dark, as if it’s tarnished. I don’t think gold does that.”
“Okay, so we’re guilty of wishful thinking...” I started to say.
“Not to mention an overactive imagination.” MR was feeling stupid, but it wasn’t the first time for any of us, and certainly not the last.
The fact was, none of us really knew what we were talking about. It had been a long shot at best. “I’ll ask my dad to check it out, just in case,” but we all knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. If we could have figured it out that easily, the bad guys would have too.
“So, if it’s not the safe, and maybe not the papers either, at least not so far as we can tell,” Eleanor was thinking out loud again. “So what are they looking for?”
“Com’on.” Bobby moved to wedge himself between the wall and the back of the safe, one hand on the top, the other on its side. “Let’s move this thing out into the middle of the room and take a better look.” MR was up next, on the other side and, on the count of three, it took everything the four of us had, and some serious wheel screeching, to push it maybe three feet away from the wall.
“MR,” Bobby was in charge for the time being, “you take the back and your side. I’ll take my side and the top. Elizabeth, see if you can find a mirror so we can look underneath, and Eleanor, you check the door, both sides, in and out.” The safe itself was completely empty, with no shelves or compartments.
“I’ll do the inside too,” Eleanor volunteered, knowing she was the smallest.
“I’ll give you my flashlight in a minute.” In the meantime, I needed it to reflect off the mirror my father kept around for when he needed a quick shave before taking my mother out to dinner, which was something they liked to do when one or both of them had been working late. I usually got to go with them. Nothing fancy. Just one of the less expensive restaurants around the dock, or at the other end of West Street, toward the Mall. As long as I had my homework done, or when it was summer and I wasn’t out with my friends.
“And everybody,” Bobby already had his hands on the side where he was standing, “do it slowly, carefully, inch by inch so we don’t miss anything.”
A few minutes later, “Nothing on my side,” MR was the first to speak up. “I’m doing the back now.”
“Bizzzzzz!!”
“Mm!” Wow. I couldn’t believe I actually flinched. It was only the delivery guy with our pizza, trying to get our attention, pressing the buzzer next to our suite number on the panel just outside the front door. It was an old building, set up as if the offices were apartments that might have visitors after hours when the front door was locked.
Eleanor had to see for herself, “I’ll check it out,” and went to the other side of my father’s desk where she leaned up against the window, cupping her hands around her face to block out the reflection of the light coming from behind her. She waved when she recognized Paul, the cute delivery guy that was reason enough to order something even if you weren’t hungry. I think I told you before that Eleanor had this thing for blonde guys with wavy hair. MR had wavy hair, but it was brown. Dark brown. Close enough, if you ask me. “I’ll be right down,” she shouted, but there was no way he could hear her. Rapping on the window was what got his attention.
Bobby knew she had a crush on Paul, a student, a year older, at the other high school for kids who lived a few miles north of town. “I’m going with you.”
“No you’re not.” She smiled and poked Bobby with her index finger in his ribs, just to make him smile, which he did, and I thought to myself, “You can have Paul.”
“Take the money out of my wallet,” I told her. “I owe you guys for saving us.” Then the sound of the office door closing behind her reminded me, “DON’T TAKE THE ELEVATOR!”
“I KNOW, I know, “ she yelled back, getting harder to hear as she walked quickly down the hallway toward the stairs.
MR didn’t even bother to look up. “Thanks, Elizabeth,” he mumbled, preferring to pay attention to something he’d found.
“What’s that?”
“A serial number, I think. Almost seems new, like it was stamped after
they painted the safe. I’m not sure.”
“Hey,” Bobby knelt and then sat down next to me where I was leaning up against the wall across from the open door to the safe, no doubt wondering why I had a sort of glazed look.
“Hey.” I turned, not realizing how close we would be to each other, way inside the personal space people usually reserve for themselves. He smiled, and I returned the favor, mostly with the look in my eyes.
“So tell me..” Bobby was talking, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I could barely smell what was left of the aftershave or cologne he must have put on that morning, but it was enough to pretty much leave me speechless. Bobby and MR seemed to have more hair on their faces than most of the other boys their age. Sometimes I would look at those hairs, when I knew they weren’t watching of course, liking the fact that I was watching them grow into men.
It took me a few seconds to respond. “Tell me what?” Okay, so I meant to say, “Tell you what?” but he got the point.
“Why are we sitting here staring at Rollo’s butt?”
“What?”
“If I’m not mistaken,” Bobby pointed toward the open door to the safe, where Rollo was standing, his tail straight up and curled at the top, “that’s the butt-end of your cat.” To my surprise, Rollo, who is usually sensitive to remarks about his person, had kept his nose glued to the area where he’d been sniffing, come to think about it, for the better part of a few minutes.
“Rollo,” I asked without bothering to get up, “what are you doing? Did you find something?”
“Mrrrrrrk...”
“Meaning what, exactly?” Hanging around me, Bobby had learned to take Rollo seriously.
“Meaning that he’s on to something,” and both of us rolled away from the wall onto our knees, taking positions on either side of Rollo so that we could see what he was smelling.
Rollo looked at me, then at Bobby, and back to me. “Meaark,” he barked softly, taking two big sniffs. Was that to tell me that he smelled something suspicious, or that he wasn’t as crazy as I was about Bobby’s cologne? “Mrrrrrr,” he said again, this time reaching out his right forearm to touch the bottom edge of the safe door.
The door itself was as thick, as you’d expect, with three bolts protruding from its vertical edge that turning the handle on the outside would extend and retract, to lock and unlock the safe. “There,” I pointed to the upper left corner on the inside wall of the door. “That’s one of the screws I tried to get out when I was trapped inside. I thought maybe I could take off this back panel and open the door from the inside.”
“You probably could have, if you’d had enough air and light to do it.”
“Hey,” MR had gotten a sheet of typing paper out of my father’s desk. He was thinking he would press it against the safe, and rub a pencil over it to make a crude negative copy of the serial number he’d found, but he held up, taking a moment to wonder out loud, “Shouldn’t Eleanor be back by now?”
“Are you hungry...” Bobby started to ask, knowing full well that wasn’t why he was asking.
“...or do you miss her?” I giggled to finish Bobby’s question for him.
“Trust me,” MR reassured us. “It’s all about the pizza. Cold pizza is disgusting.”
“She’s probably just talking to Paul.” Bobby advised him, turning to look at me as if she might be serious about the guy.
“Paul?” I agreed, in my most matter-of-fact tone, my eyebrows rising for just the right studious look as if I hadn’t noticed. “Sure, I guess, if you like the ‘Surf’s up, Dude’ look.”
Putting his paper and pencil down on top of the safe, MR walked across the office to look down from the window at where Paul would have hit the buzzer. Seeing nothing, he headed out the door. “I’m going to see where she is.” And then, to let us know he knew we were kidding him – He liked Eleanor, but would never admit it. – advised us, pushing his glasses back up all the way onto his nose, “Try not to lock yourselves in the safe while I’m gone,” which was his way of telling us we were helpless without him.
“Let’s get this panel off.” Bobby was right. The inside of the door was the one part of the safe we hadn’t looked at.”
“You get the tool box from the back,” I told him as we both stood up, “while I call to see if my pants are home yet... if my parents are home yet.” (Great. So I was a little off my game. At least Bobby was nice enough not to say anything, although he did start to crack a smile, but held it back because he loves me. ..I didn’t say that out loud, did I? ..No. Thank goodness. Besides, what’s a little faux pas between friends?) “I know I’d left a note, Eleanor left it actually, but I want them to know I could be running later than I thought.”
But Rollo wasn’t letting us get away. “Mrrrrachhh.” He looked up at us and again at the lower center section of the inside of the door. Putting his face up against the paint, he made two dramatic sniffs in the direction of something, and then turned back to us for help.
Without saying anything, we got back down on our knees, bending over to get closer to where Rollo had been sniffing. “Look,” I pointed out to Bobby, my fingers rubbing over the metal, “there’s some kind of plaque that’s been painted over. Picking up my flashlight from where it was lying just inside the safe, I moved it around to help us make out impressions of the lettering under the paint. “Looks like ‘Henry McCombs & Sons.’ Then maybe an address. Something, something, ‘San Francisco.’” I couldn’t make it out, “and then a number.”
“A phone number?” Bobby didn’t have the angle I had, and couldn’t see the lettering as clearly.
“No. I don’t think so. If McCombs is the manufacturer, maybe it’s the serial number we’re looking for.”
“Then what’s the number MR found?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see if we can contact McCombs, and they’ll tell us. ...and give us the combination, while we’re at it.”
“If they’re still in business after all these years.”
“Good work, Rollo. ..I’m calling my father, and telling him what we’re up to.” So I stood up again and walked over to pick up the phone on his desk, while Bobby went to find a screwdriver to take off the inside of the door I couldn’t remove before, when I was trapped inside.
“Hey, Mom.” There was no one there, so I waited for the answering machine to give me a tone. It was my mother’s voice on the recording. “I’m still at the office. Give me a call when you get in,” and I hung up.
“Okay, let’s eat!” It was Eleanor coming through the front door in a hurry, the box of pizza over her head, resting precariously in the palm of her right hand, like the waiter at the Greek diner out on the highway. (Actually, I’ve always been more impressed the way they do it at Clyde’s, with one dinner plate on top of the next, up to five lined up along the waiter’s arm. I need to try that myself at home. Maybe get a job waiting tables next summer when I can drive.) “What’s wrong?” Eleanor stopped just inside the door, seeing that Bobby, holding my dad’s toolbox, and me, just putting the phone down, were both looking at her, and then at each other.
“Where’s Ralph?” I always called him by his proper name when I was serious. It was a little habit I picked up from my mother who always called me “Sugar” or “Honey,” unless, of course, I’d done something she needed to talk about, and suddenly I was her other daughter, ‘Elizabeth.’ I’d thought about having people call me ‘Liza’ or maybe ‘Beth,’ like ‘Bobby’ instead of ‘Robert,’ but nothing shorter than my full name ever seemed to fit. ‘Elizabeth Sarah Coleman’ had a certain sound to it, and I wondered sometimes if what I accomplished in life would live up to its potential.
“What do you mean?”
“When you didn’t come right back, he went down to find you.”
“I was talking to Paul. The building super let him in. He was just sitting there in the lobby, looking so.. so..”
“So what already?” I really w
asn’t that interested in Eleanor’s endless hunt for the perfect boyfriend, and she tended to exaggerate. “What really took so long?”
“Whatever, and then I stopped to go to the bathroom.”
“Com’on.” Bobby cut in. “Put the pizza down on the big table and I’ll go get him. He must have just missed you when you were in the ladies’ room.”
Of course “going to get him” to Bobby meant standing just outside the door and shouting “RALLLLLLPHHHH!!” at the top of his lungs. No answer. “Ralph,” he said again, this time much more softly. “You two stay here.” He said it to both of us, but looked only at me. “I’ll go get him.”
“Try the men’s room,” Eleanor suggested and then turned back to open the pizza box on her way to the smallest slice with pepperoni. “Well,” she mumbled hopefully, “maybe he stopped to go to the bathroom too.”
I listened for Bobby’s footsteps for as long as I could hear them heading down the hall toward the stairwell, while Eleanor wolfed down her first piece of pizza and started on a second.
“Aren’t you going to have any?” Stuffing her face was always something she felt bad about doing alone, so I walked over to help her out, picking up a piece with green peppers on it.
“So how’s Paul?” I asked, savoring the oregano and other spices they had sprinkled over the cheese, not waiting for her response. “Mm. God, this is good pizza.” Either that, or I was way more hungry than I thought.
“He’s okay, but he’s got a girlfriend and it’s not me. Someone he met working on their school paper.”
“Wipe your mouth. You’ve got tomato sauce on your face.”
“Thanks,” Eleanor reached for one of the paper napkins that came with our order, “but I was saving that for later.” Wiping, no, polishing her face with her entire napkin, she opened her eyes and sensed something was wrong. “Why aren’t you eating?”
Without realizing it, I was just standing there, my slightly folded slice of pizza barely holding its own horizontally, waiting patiently for my mouth to do something about it. “Where are the guys? ...The entire building’s empty. All the offices are locked, but ours. They should be back by now.
“You wanna call...”
“I already left my parents a message. They’re not...”
“We could call my parents.”
“No. It’s probably nothing.” I took a large bite of the slice I was holding, for courage, and put the rest of it down on top of the box. “Com’on. Let’s take a look. Rollo!” His huge head spun sharply in my direction. “Up!!” I called for him, patting the center of my chest. From across the room, he ran no more than half the way before his powerful rear legs exploded, propelling him airborne to where I caught him with both hands against my chest, without breaking stride on my way to the door. I was used to the force of his landing and braced myself just before he hit. Holding him with my right forearm up against my shirt, he was almost too heavy for me.
“Should we lock it?” Eleanor asked me just as I got to the door. Turning back toward her, my hand on the knob, I thought, “No, but leave them a note on the floor, where they’re sure to...” Finally, we both heard them coming down the hallway. What a relief. Even Eleanor was virtually hopping across the floor to meet them. Time to get this evening back on track.
“Hey,” I couldn’t help smiling, I was so relieved, “where were...” I started to talk even as I turned the knob to beat them to the punch, seeing their silhouettes through the frosted glass door. “...you guys?” It wasn’t Bobby and MR. No. Standing there in front of us, just inside the hallway, were the two men who’d kidnapped Rollo and me, the two Russian guys. It was the first time I had a chance to look at them carefully. You know how, sometimes when you’re startled by something dangerous, like losing control on your bike riding over wet leaves, things seem to be happening in slow motion? Well, this was another one those times. I wasn’t nervous. No heart pounding in my chest. No panic, but I could barely hear Eleanor shouting behind me.
“Close the door! ELIZABETH!!” Eleanor had been shouting in a loud whisper, but not any more. “CLOSE THE DOOORRRRR!!!” she screamed, her fists clenched, her arms waving up and down by her sides.
Standing there in front of these two, I seemed to have all the time in the world to study their faces. Rollo and I just stood there and stared. The one on my left was maybe six one, taller than my father by an inch or two, and clean shaven. I had to look up into his unusually dark brown eyes. The skin on his face, from what I could see of it above and through his short, scraggly beard, was smooth and unwrinkled, probably that of a man in his twenties. Big body, thick brown hair, unevenly cut, almost as if he’d done it himself in the mirror. The bottom of his face was completely relaxed. No smile or any other expression, for that matter. He was wearing a short-sleeve shirt, dark blue. I looked at him first, probably because he was the biggest of the two, but then allowed my eyes to take the lead, my head turning slowly to face his partner standing next to him, to my right.
What was he smiling about, the shorter, thin one, wearing the yellow t-shirt, some creepy chest hair just showing at the bottom of his neck? He had red hair on his head that hadn’t been combed coming out of the shower, last time he took one, and a close, perfectly cut moustache that came around to the slightly darker beard on his chin. He might have actually been handsome, if there hadn’t been something so sinister about the slight curl of his lips. What could have been cool, had turned out to be creepy. A simple smile would have made all the difference in the world. Odd, I thought to myself, that I would be thinking in these terms under the circumstances. Fair, but weathered skin, as if he’d spent too much time out in the sun, and he was definitely the older one of the two. His eyes were blue, like Bobby’s, but lighter and without the brightness. His face seemed to be trying to fake it, but wasn’t really the least bit friendly. “..What was that?” I began thinking to myself. “What’s that nois...”
“ELIZABETH!! CLOSE THE DOOR!!!” The intensity of Eleanor’s no longer whispered shouting was finally getting through to me.
“Right.” I said with calm determination and a slight, almost imperceptible nod of my head. Dropping Rollo to the floor, “Whammm!” I slammed the door and turned the deadbolt latch above the knob in almost a single motion. “Out the back,” and we started running, past the safe toward the emergency exit in the rear of the office, through the storage room. On the way, I closed the door to the storeroom behind me, and stuffed my father’s oversized doorstop hard under it, thinking it might buy us the time we needed to make it out the back and down the stairs – just as the two men got tired of fooling around with the outer office door and kicked it open.
Rollo had been on the ground ever since we started running, his ears back to listen for whatever might be coming after us and head down, as usual, to reduce wind resistance. Even losing traction on the tile floor when he turned the corner around the metal shelves, he was still the first to get to the exit, but with enough sense to wait for us on the right so he wouldn’t be in the way when we opened the door. I’d only gone out this back door a couple of times. It led to a narrow interior hallway perpendicular to the main one where the elevator was located in the middle of the building. Past the elevator, at the front of the building, was the stairwell that would take us down to the street. That’s where we were going, to the stairwell – even if though it meant running past the door to my father’s office. With luck, the Russians would still be inside, preoccupied with the safe and its secrets that had alluded them so far.
At the back door to my father’s office, it took two hands for me to turn the bolt and the knob, but we were outside into the hallway in a second, and there were no sounds of anyone coming behind us. They must have decided not to, follow us that is. Good news, or bad news? I wasn’t sure yet.
In the hallway, our momentum carried into the wall across from the door, pushing off of it with our hands as we went
to our left toward the center. There was a small window at the end of the hallway to our right, but no fire escape and we were three stories up, so going right was our only choice. We stopped at the opening to the main hallway and peeked around the corner. “All clear,” I whispered. The elevator was ahead on the right, the door to my father’s office, what was left of it, farther down the hall on the left and the stairway way at the end. Checking again, just to make sure, we started walking quickly down the hallway toward the stairs. We should have been running, but for some reason, I don’t know why, walking is what we did, Eleanor, Rollo and me.
So far, so good. We were already almost at the elevator and the two men were nowhere in sight, and that was because? ..Whoops. Perhaps my estimates of our good fortunate were a tad premature because, just when I was beginning to feel good about our chances of making it to the stairs, the two Russians walked out of my father’s office, the sound of broken glass crunching under their feet, laughing to each other, the red headed one pushing the big one in fun, saying something in Russian to each other. They were playing with us.
“Geez,” Eleanor said, “it’s always something. ...What now?”
“Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.”
“We could go back?”
“What good would that do?” I asked her without taking my eyes off the Russians. Nowadays, I’d have used my cell phone to call for help. Four years ago, when I was 15 and fresh out of Middle School, I didn’t have one and neither did Eleanor.
“Buy us some time?” Eleanor wasn’t looking at me either.
Meanwhile, Rollo was on the ground in front of us, taking his wolf-like defensive stance, showing his large Saber-Tooth Tiger teeth, but he was too small to intimidate either of them. Thing is, they’d never really seen this cat in action – except that one time when our wagon went into the water – and should have been a lot more worried.
“Time for what?” I asked, thinking it was better for us to hold our ground, maybe talk to them, try to negotiate something that didn’t involve them hitting us, or worse, but then the red haired one, who was obviously in charge, said something and they both started walking toward us. “You know,” I reconsidered as the two of us started to back up, “maybe that buying us some time thing you suggested isn’t all that bad an ide..” But then they stopped, the expressions on their faces suddenly worried about something. Was it Rollo? No. I didn’t think so, and I was right. Taking advantage of the moment, we turned to run toward the back of the building, to what end we had no idea, but confronting these men physically, even with Rollo, wasn’t an option. The thing is, we didn’t take a first step in that direction before we saw someone else, a man coming into the glare of the overhead light at the end of the hall. He was old and dragging one leg. It was the man I’d seen on the boat.
“Where did he come from?” Eleanor was asking for both of us.
“He must have been hiding out in one of the other offices.”
He had been strong once, you could tell, but his age had made him no match for the much younger men behind us, although the baseball bat he held in his right hand looked determined to make up the difference. He had good hair, white, uncombed, but plenty of it for a man that old. He had to be in his late sixties, maybe even seventy, his eyes deep set, well protected beneath plush white brows. I don’t think he’d shaved for the past few days. This was definitely the old man from the boat, and from the parking lot – of course! – in front of the grocery store when Rollo and I were kidnapped. His skin, what I could make out on his forehead and through the white stubble on his face, was smooth, but reddened recently from having been outside in the sun. This was the one all right, the man who pushed me into the safe, so why wasn’t I afraid?
“You two,” his strong, clear voice called out to us? “You girls, you’re coming with me.”
“And exactly where would we be going?” I thought to myself.
“They’re in no danger, old man,” the red haired Russian spoke up, his smugness unmistakable even through his heavy accent. “It’s been you we’re after all along.” And the two Russians, their bravado back, took a quick look at each other and then started walking toward us, and so did the old man coming from the other direction.
“What’s going on?!” Eleanor was sounding frantic.
“I haven’t the slightest... Rollo, get back here!!” For some reason, Rollo had run down to meet the old man, who was looking down at him, wondering why Rollo was walking around his legs, rubbing up against him as he started walking down the hallway. “ROLLO!!!” I shouted again, wondering what he knew that I didn’t, but instead of coming, he tensed his frame, walked ahead of the old man by a few feet, stopped and assumed his attack stance, one forearm (his left) extended and centered in front of him, the other (his right) back and bent slightly on his right, his powerful rear legs tensed and poised to move in a hurry. (Battle stations!) Head down, ears flat, Rollo was ready for a fight, but why?
“Need a ride, ladies?”
“Bobby?!!” Huddled together, facing different problems at opposite ends of the hallway, neither of us noticed the door to the elevator opening behind us. It was Bobby and MR. Before we could move, or even think about it, two arms – one was Bobby’s, the other MR’s – reached out and grabbed ours, dragging us off our feet and onto the elevator.
“ROLLLOOO!!! Get in here!!” I shouted, poking my head out the door just as MR pressed the “Close” button. “What are you doing?!”
“I’m closing the door. What do think I’m doing?”
“ROLLLOOO!!” I reached out to push the edge of the elevator door to keep it open for him, but he didn’t budge or even look in my direction, his eyes riveted on the two men at the other end of the hallway. His back to the old man with the one bad leg.
“Gotcha!” Now that expression can be kind of cute, but said with a Russian accent when there’s some strange hairy hand under your armpit pulling you back into the hallway? Well, that’s another story altogether. Bobby grabbed me around the waist, just in the nick of time, pulling me back into the elevator, while MR and Eleanor tried to pry the Russian’s hand lose, only to find all three of us being dragged back into the hallway with me. This guy was strong! Bobby was the only one of us he hadn’t managed to grab.
“ROLLO!! I need...” But this time, before I could say it, he was up on the big Russian’s shoulder, biting for real into the back of his neck. And when his hands let loose while he reached back to pull Rollo off, the door, which had been banging against us, trying to shut, finally closed and the elevator dropped slowly to the floor below us.
“We made it!” MR was ecstatic, but only for a moment while I pinned him to the elevator wall, my hands grabbing his shirt close under his neck.
“We left Rollo up there, you nincompoop!!” And then I calmed down, a bit, realizing it wasn’t really anyone’s fault. “We left my cat up there with two goons and an old man with a baseball bat! Bobby, press the ‘Stop’ button. We’re going back up!”
“He’ll be okay, Elizabeth.”
“Bobby,” I let go of MR and turned to face him, standing between me and the elevator door. “He’s only a cat, Bobby. He’s big, smart and plenty tough, but he’s still only a cat. Please, Bobby... That guy was huge. We’ve got to go back for him.”
“What?!” Eleanor must have thought I’d lost my mind.
“...besides,” I looked her right in the eye, “I think the old man may have been trying to help us. He’s no match for the other two.”
“We can go for help.”
“There’s no time, MR.” Bobby was on my side now. “She’s right,” he told MR, turning quickly to reach past Eleanor to press the emergency “Stop” button. And that’s is exactly what we did, with a jerk that almost knocked us to the floor.
“Press the up button,” I shouted to Eleanor who was standing, playing with the control panel.
“I am! I am!!”
“Nuts. Mr. Cavanaugh told us not to take the elevator! Something about the motor overheating and circuits shutting it down. ..Keep trying.”
“What’s that?”
“What?
“That smell!”
“Oh, God. Look at the vents by the floor. It’s smoke!!”
To be continued…
“Wow, Rollo, I’m beat.” It was 2 AM and I was tired. “Rollo?” I clicked on the save icon and closed the lid to my laptop. Turning around, there was “The Rollo,” sacked out like no other cat in the world. Most cats curl up to sleep, or stretch out on their sides. My Rollo liked to lay flat on his stomach, face down in the pillow, his arms and legs stretched out left and right, like he’d done a really bad belly whopper that knocked him unconscious.
I got up and sat next to him, my back up against my pillow and the painted cinder block wall under the window at the head of my bed. I stroked his head, rubbed his neck while I started to fade. “So, what do you think, Rollo?” I wondered out loud, my eyes too heavy to keep open. “Will our hero – That would be me, of course. – and her friends, not to mention her faithful feline companion, survive? Will they come to your rescue and, maybe, the old man’s too?”
I laid the back of my hand on his back. “You’ve saved me so many times. ..’Night, buddy. Sleep tight, and may the fur be with you ..wherever you go in your dreams. I took a deep breath, more like a sigh actually. “..Me too,” and I was done for the night.
* * *