Dead Birmingham (16 page)

 
Above him, he heard the vague scurrying of feet, as they prepared their defense against him. There would be one boy, and the three girls. Ah, yes, the girls. The Asian. And perhaps the others were just as beautiful? He couldn't wait to see.

Twenty-odd floors above him, there was a fight going on. Dextra and Yim had made it to the penthouse, and Dextra was boiling mad. Angel was shouting in her own defense.

“None of you should have left! Scott wanted us all to stay here until he got back!”

“It's all Scott's fault!” Dextra answered her. Don't think that I don't know! Mule left me note that tells everything. He caught Scott red-handed trying to hide it.”

“You're not making any sense—hide? Hide what?”

Dextra fished in her bag and brought out a note. “Here! Read it.”

Angel read the crumpled note, which Dextra had obviously read many times already:

Dex, I have to go try to get something for Scott. The other night I accidentally walked up on him and I found out that he's been hiding something from us. I demanded that he cut us in. He pleaded with me not to tell you all yet because he says this might be the big score, and then again it might not, so he didn't want to disappoint you all. Well what's needed is a key, so I am going to try to get it. I am going back to that antique shop we boosted a couple weeks back. I am going to leave this note where I know you will find it, in my stuff, so if anything happens you will know what's going on.
 

Love, Mule

Angel sank to the floor, tears coming to her eyes. Scott had lied to her, and then he had gone away, after sending Mule into danger.

Dextra was fairly shaking with rage. “Mule is dead.”

Angel looked up, her eyes wide in disbelief. “Oh, my God.How?”

“He went to get this key for Scott, and somebody—somebody—” And she buried her face in her hands.
 

“I didn't know, any of it, Dextra, I swear I didn't know.”

“Where are the others?” Dextra asked in a low voice. “We should tell them.”

“Bone and Yim left to go boost some stuff and fence it so we could get out of here. I begged them not to go. I've been alone here ever since. I thought maybe they'd come back today.”

“Okay.” Dextra wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. “Someone was following Yim, okay? If he's the one who killed Mule, then we need to get out of here, because that means he's looking for us, too. The cops think this guy is after this—whatever it is Scott took.”

“All right. We'll give them until dark. They know that's as long as they're supposed to take. Then we'll . . . we'll go somewhere. Until dark.”

Angel walked to the window and looked out across the city. She was hoping in her heart that Scott would show up by then, too.

 

Chapter 32

 

Broom, Mack and me were all squeezed into Broom's car and rocketing across town. From the back, Mack was reminiscing. “I remember my Uncle Brendan saying he and his wife stayed at the Cabana Hotel on their honeymoon. Place used to be really ritzy. Lots of music stars stayed there when they were in town. Sinatra, even. Imagine, a bunch of shoplifters holed up in there.”

Broom shrugged. “Just another victim of some past recession. Our fair city has had its ups and downs. Guess it must be quite a flop for these kids.”

“At least now we know that last piece of the puzzle. All this time, they were right in the middle of town.” I shook my head. “Now that we know, though, maybe we can talk reason to those kids, get them somewhere safe. They have to be scared out of their minds. Even if they don't know about the murders, a couple of their friends have disappeared. Maybe that will work in our favor.”
 

Broom, driving, was doubtful. “If Scott LaRue gets there before we do, we might not be so lucky. He must have some kind of sway over these kids, if he's led them this far. None of them is exactly destined to be a future captain of industry at this point.”

“If they leave the Cabana, odds are our killer is waiting on them. They wouldn't stand a chance.”

We came up to the front of the building and piled out. I went up to the front doors. “Locked up tight, of course. How do we get in?”

“Must be a back way. Let's fan out and see what we can find,” Broom said. As he walked off toward the alley, he said to Mack, “Look around to the other side.”

I nodded toward the theater. “I think I'll see if I can get in over there.”

I walked to the theater and tried the door. It was also locked. But theaters always had back doors, sometimes big ones, for props and so forth to be moved in and out of. Somehow, I figured the kids used the theater for access to the building. I walked around to the back and looked down the alley. A dead end. Maybe there was a fire escape. I walked slowly down to the end of the alley.
 

No dice. As I turned to go back, a gust of wind blew down the alley, and I heard a creaking sound. I stopped and began searching, feeling my way along the wall, the need to hurry urging me on. Then I saw it. What appeared to be a patch job on the wall to the right was actually a makeshift door. I pushed against it and felt it give. My heart started to thud.
 

This is it.

I ran back out to the street. “Broom! Mack! I got something over here!”

Hallelujah,
I sang to himself.
We might just make it, yet.

 

Chapter 33

 

The Foreigner nodded to himself.
These urchins certainly are clever
. He had almost missed it. Concealed in the ceiling of a broom closet, there it was, the secret way to the upper floors. The tiles in the ceiling had been carefully removed and replaced as the covering of a trap door. A rope tied to the knob on the inside allowed whoever entered to pull the door shut behind them. Ingenious. Well, almost.
 

It was dark as pitch in the room above. Did he risk using his light? There might easily be another trap waiting on him in the darkness, and this one might be something a tad more dangerous.

* * *

Across the street, Scott LaRue watched the three men go down the back alley. They had beaten him there. They were cops, no doubt about that. He saw the state plates on the car, and the blue light on the dashboard.
 

So, the cops were on the scene. That was good news, anyway, but they were in the way. He couldn't risk coming clean with them about the whole thing. They would take him into custody to sort out the details, and that would never do.
 

Scott knew that he could still beat them to the top, and get Angel and the others out. He knew a better way in, and another way down. He could go right around the police, and whoever else might be there, as they would have a very difficult climb, and it was dark and there were many obstructions in their path. And besides, he also had to get the box back; it couldn't fall into their hands. Forget his mission to the antique shop. He had to keep it. If they got it back . . . then all of this would have been for nothing, and he wasn't going to let that happen.

Up the fire escape and across the roof of the old theater he sped, to a balcony beneath a glassless window. A barely visible cord hung down; he grabbed it now and gave it a tug. Down slid a knotted rope. Though tired, fear had given him the adrenaline rush that it took to climb: tense, nightmarish strength. He shinnied up the rope in seconds and was through the window and running across the darkened floor. He knew the way by heart, and he had personally removed every obstruction that might slow him, if he ever had to make it down in a hurry, and in total darkness. Now he was going up, an eventuality he had never foreseen. With any luck, they would all soon be coming down the same way.

He took the western stairwell, because it was closer. He was now on the sixth floor. Soon, he would have to start using the special ways that he and the others had made, and the police would be slowed down, maybe even stopped altogether by the blocked doors and other obstructions that Scott and the others had put into place against just this kind of day. With luck, he could reach the others, get that infernal box—the source of all his troubles—and get the others out via the theater roof, while the cops were still climbing blindly inside the building. But he would have to hurry, for time was almost gone.

As he climbed, he listened to the little voice in his head:
I know what's in that box, now—my own goddamned ruination.

* * *

“It looks like this is a service entrance of some kind. Comes right up behind the stage.” Broom, Mack and I all had flashlights out, and their bright beams scanned over the disintegrating interior of the Cabana Theater.

“Looks like the fat lady sang in here quite a while back,” Broom wisecracked. He directed his light up the aisle and toward the lobby. “The hotel is over there. Let's go.”

We reached the lobby and the wide stair. We took in the layout of the lobby.

Mack and Broom pulled their guns in unison, sensing that they were about to cross some line. Broom glanced at me.

“Don't tell me you didn't bring a weapon.”

“I've got my old forty-five. I was hoping I wouldn't need it.” I shrugged and pulled the gun from my shoulder holster. “If you can't beat 'em,” I said, my voice echoing faintly in that big, dead place.

“That's my old partner,” Broom said. Then he nodded toward the concierge's desk. “There are stairs up there, and another stairwell across the lobby. We'll need to sweep the place. Roland, if you will assist Mack with one side, I'll take the other. That way, we each have radios. The first one to make contact with the kids radios the other immediately.”

“Will do.” I started across the lobby for the far stairs, Mack right behind me.

“You guys be careful,” Broom called after us. Then, he stepped into the darkness of the stairwell. “Let's all be careful.”

 

Chapter 34

 

The hunt. The resistance. Acts in a play. The final act is swiftly approaching.
 

The Foreigner had climbed to the next floor, only to discover that his quarry was not there, either. He would have to search the twenty-first floor for a hidden way up, also; and, of course, the twenty-second.
 

But then, my darlings, what then?
 

He wondered if any of them were armed. In America, everyone seemed to possess a firearm. He should use caution. If they fired on him in one of the cramped passages, they might get lucky. But something told them such an event was unlikely. They lived by their wits, these children, not by force.

He had a second pistol strapped to his body, besides the Walther PPK that he now carried in his right hand. In a web belt beneath his tasteful cobalt gray suit coat, he had fifty rounds of ammunition in spare clips. Of course, he also carried a couple of knives. He would need those, and soon. He had grown more brazen in his search, now, because time was pressing. He pointed his flashlight directly into the opening, and he could see the ceiling of the room above. He braced his foot against the wall and hoisted himself up, into the space. Another floor lay between him and his quarry. And that was all.

* * *

Mack and I stood in the wide corridor, listening. About the only thing we heard was each other's breath.
 

“How many more floors, Roland?”

“Just two.” We stood in front of the locked doors of the west staircase.

Mack tested the doors. “Looks like they're barred from the inside.”

I nodded. “They would be. It makes sense that these kids probably made themselves some ways in and out that others wouldn't know about. Makes it hard for them to get surprised by unwanted company.”

“Well, let's just hope that saves their bacon,” Mack grunted. “Of course, that isn't going to make it any easier for us to find the way up. My bet is, they would be in the ceilings. Maybe a hole with a rope dangling down, something like that. You want we should split up?”

I thought for a second. I had no radio, so I would have no way to notify Mack and Broom if I found the kids first. “Okay, but if you find it, don't leave the floor without me. I'll search the west side, you search the east. We'll meet back here, by the elevators in say, fifteen minutes.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Mack crept slowly down the hall to the double doors that separated the east side of the floor from the west. “Good luck.”

I stood alone in the empty hallway. I am a big man, and I have been called brave, but as Mack disappeared into the darkness, I suddenly felt awfully alone.

* * *

The man they called The Foreigner had made it up into the opening when he heard several things. It took him a few seconds to separate and identify the sounds. First, he heard scampering above him. Perhaps on the floor above, or the very top floor, which was where he expected the children to be. Also, however, because of his unique vantage point of squatting between floors, he also heard the sound of a door being forced open in the western stairwell.