Rough Justice (19 page)

“That woman in Accounting with the legs, I'll bet. I thought she'd been hanging around the door. Well, I did what I could. But, Wells …” She had to force herself to say it. “It's out of my hands now.”

I felt something drop inside me. Like the elevator had gone down too fast. I listened to the siren wailing as Emma tried to speak again.

I managed to speak first. “So you mean I'm suspended?”

I heard her take a deep breath. I heard her let it out in a long sigh.

“No. No, it's not that. Christ, I wish it were that …. Oh, hell, John, I'm so sorry. It just came over the scanner.” She paused. Then: “It's Watts. He's issued a warrant for your arrest. You've been charged with murder.”

Outside, the siren wailed louder.

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In another second, the sound peaked. I saw the red light of the police flasher dance over my windowpane. The siren wound down, died.

“Wells?” It was Emma. “Are you still there?”

I laid the receiver on the desk. Stood up. Went to the window. I looked down in the street.

“Wells.” Emma's voice came, tinny, from the receiver. “Listen to me. We're going to stick by you all the way.”

There were two of them out there. An unmarked car and a cruiser. They pulled up to the curb outside my apartment and parked.

“We're gonna get you a good lawyer,” said Emma. “Raise hell. Get bail. You won't have to wait out at Rikers, that's for certain.”

I
worry about you, Wells
.

The door to the unmarked car swung open and out stepped Lieutenant Tom Watts. The cruiser doors popped on either side. Two uniformed patrolmen rolled out.

You could be blown away resisting arrest
.

Even in the early dark, I recognized the enormous shape of one of the patrolmen. A slug named Rankin, Watts's hired troll. It was a good guess the other one wasn't Saint Francis either.

Emma's mechanical voice kept coming to me. “We're going to make this our crusade, John, I promise you. We won't let them get away with it. No bargaining, nothing. We're going to make them prove this thing in a court of law …”

You could hang yourself in a holding cell. Or Rikers
—
oh, that bad, bad
.

Watts paused on the sidewalk to speak to his two patrolmen. Then he and the third cop came marching into my building. Rankin stayed outside. He leaned against his cruiser. He hooked his thumbs in his belt. He lifted his eyes. He gazed directly up at me. He smiled.

“I may have to use up the last of my goodwill,” Emma was saying. “But as long as I'm with the paper, at least, you can count on …”

And under her voice, like a sort of static, the other voice continued:
I worry, Wells. Really. I worry
.

I picked up the receiver. I held it to my ear. I felt the vibration of it as my hand shook violently.

“Good-bye, Emma,” I said.

“Wells? Wells?”

I hung up on her. I headed for the door.

I figured I didn't have much time. The buzzer in my apartment hadn't rung, but that didn't mean much. Watts could've buzzed the super downstairs. Or just slipped a credit card in the latch, for that matter. Sure enough, when I stuck my head out the door, I could already hear his voice coming from the foyer.

“You take the elevator. I'm going up the stairs.”

The other cop answered: “Okay, Lieutenant.”

Then I heard the elevator door rattle back four stories below me. And I heard Watts's footstep creak on the bottom rise.

I came out into the hall, closing my door behind me quietly. I hurried across the hall to the only other apartment on my floor. Mrs. Hooterman. An old lady. I didn't know her very well, but I'd grunted a good-morning to her in the hall once or twice. I was sure she'd recognize me, anyway. I rang her doorbell.

There was no answer. Watts's footsteps sounded on the second-floor landing. Started coming up the next flight of stairs. Behind me, the low hum of the elevator grew louder. I rang the doorbell again.

A trembling, cranky voice came through the heavy wood: “I'm comink. Hold your horses.”

“Come on, come on,” I muttered to the door.

I heard Watts on the third landing, one flight below me. I heard the elevator nearing the fourth floor.

“Ooo is eet?” squeaked Mrs. Hooterman.

“John Wells,” I whispered.

“Vat?”

“Wells. Your neighbor. John Wells.”

The door opened a crack. I saw sallow eyes in hounddog wrinkles, a cap of blue-white hair. I heard Watts start up the last flight. I heard the elevator ease to a stop behind me.

“Oh, Meester Veils, vat …?”

“I need to borrow a cup of sugar,” I said. I pushed the door in with my shoulder. I nearly bowled Mrs. Hooterman over as I shoved past her into the room.

“Va … Va … Vere's your cup?” she said.

“I need to borrow a cup, too.” I saw the top of Watts's head crest the stairs. I heard the elevator door open. I shut Mrs. Hooterman's door.

I turned around. There she was. A shivering squib of a woman, leaning on a cane. Those eyes regarded me cautiously.

“You need a cup?”

“A cup and sugar. A cup of sugar, in the cup. Right.”

I looked around quickly. The layout was pretty much the same as mine. A broad room with the windows on the far wall. Those windows looked out on an alley. Across the alley—about six feet across—was another building: windows in a flat wall of brick.

Mrs. Hooterman had begun vibrating slowly toward the kitchenette.

“Are you bakink a cake?” she called back over her shoulder.

Outside, down the hall, there was pounding on my door.

“Open up, Wells. It's the police.”

Mrs. Hooterman paused, turned. “Vat?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, a cake. Cookies. I'm making cookies. You need sugar for cookies, right?”

“Did ju say somethink about the poleese?”

“Grease. You need grease. Greased sugar cookies. Kids love 'em.”

More pounding. “Come on, Wells. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Mrs. Hooterman narrowed her eyes at the door. She frowned.

I rushed across the room to the window.

“Come on, Wells,” Watts shouted. “Open up. You're covered everywhere.”

“Oh mein Gott!” said Mrs. Hooterman.

I threw her window open. Stuck my head out. The air, the city noise, washed over me. There was no fire escape. Just a four-story drop. Across from me—those long six feet away—another window was open to the spring. There was a light on in the apartment, but no one visible.

“Oh mein Gott!” said Mrs. Hooterman again. She started shuffling toward the door.

I climbed out onto the window ledge.

My mouth went suddenly dry as bone. The wind sighed all around me. My throat closed. I breathed in little gasps. I tried not to look down but I sensed the hard pavement of the alleyway below. I sensed it swaying up and down like a ship in a storm.

Behind me, I heard Mrs. Hooterman fumbling with the doorknob. I heard her thin, cracking whine raised in a kind of shout.

“Help! Help, poleese! Oh mein Gott, he's in here, dis creeminal.”

I jumped.

There wasn't much push. I could only bend my knees a little, then push off quickly before I lost my balance. After that, for one moment, I was floating through a kind of whirling peacefulness. Only the air surrounded me. The pavement passed by below. The wall of the building ahead drew closer. There was no noise but the city whisper. That single second seemed to stretch out and out and out forever.

Then I slapped into the wall. My cheek crunched against brick. My hand scrabbled blindly for purchase where I thought the open window was. I knew I was about to fall and die. And then I grabbed hold. I wrapped my fingers around the sill, clung until the wood cut my flesh. I hung in the air above the alley, my muscles stretched, my teeth gritted, a steady groan forced out of me in the effort to hold on.

Sobbing, I began to pull myself up. Up the wall toward the window, inch by inch. With a gasp, I threw my arm over the sill. Dragged the lower half of my body up after it.

“Wells!” The patrolman's shout came from across the way. “Stop or I'll shoot!”

Then there was Watts: “For shit's sake. He's getting away. Take him out!”

Another aching effort and I hauled myself over the windowsill. I tumbled into the apartment beyond.

A woman shrieked. I rolled on the floor and looked up in time to see a frying pan come spinning at me through the air. I crossed my arms before my face. The pan struck my wrist. I let out a shout as the pain jolted up and down my arm.

The shriek sounded again. “Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me, please!” A pretty young woman in a blue jogging suit came hurtling through a doorway at me, a butcher knife clutched in both hands. “Don't hurt me, don't hurt me,” she screamed. She raised the knife over her head as she barreled toward me.

There was the short snap of a gunshot. The wall between us exploded in a cloud of white plaster as a bullet tore a hole in it. The woman pulled up short, reared back, still shrieking.

I drove off the floor, flew into her. Tackled her, brought her to the ground as a second shot snapped off, a second cloud of plaster exploded—just where she'd been standing.

“God damn you!” the woman screamed. She tried to drive the butcher knife down into me as we rolled together on the floor. The blade slit the edges of my thumb. I grappled with her, grabbed her wrists, pushed her hands back away from me.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

The woman shrieked: “Simon!”

I raised my head and saw him. A chunky two-year-old waddling through the doorway at full speed, his face contorted with fear.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

“Simon, stay away!” She tried to yank her wrists free.

“Simon stay away!” the child cried. He kept on waddling toward us.

Now I started shrieking, too, babbling as I shrieked: “Tom! Don't shoot, it's a kid, Tom, Tom, Jesus, Tom!” I let the woman go and somersaulted across the room at little Simon. There was another shot. I grabbed the kid. I felt a hot wind burn across the back of my neck. I knocked the kid to the floor and threw my body over him. The wall exploded once again. Chunks of plaster tumbled down from the ceiling.

The woman shrieked: “Who the fuck are the good guys here? I need to know the good guys!” The woman was half off the floor. She was tearing at her hair in panic, her face mottled.

“Get down!” I screamed. “I've got him! Get down!”

The child writhed and shouted in my arms. The mother dropped to the floor. She curled up, her hands to her hair, the knife falling away from her.

For a long moment, we stared at each other, our eyes at floor level, our breath heavy. The shooting had stopped. The quiet was bizarre.

“Mommy?”

“Hush. It's all right,” she whispered. She stared at me. “Who's shooting at us?”

“The police.”

“Oh no.”

“Maa-meeee.”

“Hush, sweetie.” She choked back her tears.

“It's all right,” I told her. “I'm innocent.”

“Please don't hurt him, don't hurt my boy,” she said.

“I swear. I'm sorry.”

“I'll do anything you want.”

“Just help me get out of here.”

“Don't hurt him, please.”

“They'll be coming soon.”

“Please.”

“Please,” I said.

My whole body was shaking. I couldn't stop it. I was gasping for breath. The woman looked desperately at me, at the child squirming and crying in my arms.

I took the kid out from under me, but kept my grip on him. He squirmed, trying to reach his mother. I held him close to the floor. Pushed him across it to her. She reached out, grabbed hold of him, pulled him close. She buried her face in his hair, sobbing.

“Help me,” I said. “Please.”

She glanced up at me through her tears. “How will they come?”

“The stairs. The elevator. I don't know.”

“The door is through there, down the hall.” She lifted her chin at the doorway through which she'd entered. “The stairwell goes all the way down to the basement. There's a door down there that leads out to the alley.” She held the boy close.

“I'm sorry,” I said again.

The woman took a few more breaths. Then she blurted: “The door to the alley is locked. The smallest key on my chain opens it. It's in my purse, hanging on the door.”

“Christ,” I said. “Thanks, lady.”

“You better be the fucking good guy. And drop the keys in the basement when you leave.”

“Right. I'm sorry,” I said again. She didn't answer.

I started crawling on my belly toward the door.

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