Vertical Run (10 page)

However, at the age of forty-seven, which is not a good age for such revelations, Dave discovered that there was a kind of despair that was even worse. He discovered it as he watched Helen, his wife, a woman whom he sincerely tried to love, point at him and shout, “That’s him! There! There he is! Get him!”

Later, Dave’s ill-tempered inner voice would berate him for behaving precisely as Ransome unquestionably had hoped.

The shock of Helen’s betrayal immobilized him. He couldn’t handle it, couldn’t move. He saw her standing near the high lobby windows, surrounded by sullen gunmen, and could not believe the evidence of his eyes. She was looking at him, pointing at him, aiming Ransome’s trained killers his way. It was unthinkable. His mind rejected it. Helen would never do such a thing. Dave was hypnotized, a rabbit petrified before a snake.

He would retain only a blurred recollection of what followed. Shoulders jostling him from behind. A nasal voice growling, “Push ahead, youse.” Ransome’s goons wading into the crowd, forcing themselves through a tide of irritated New Yorkers. Someone thumping his back, “Come on, fella, we gotta get outta here.”

His body saved him. His mind had nothing to do with it. A cramp shot through his midriff. He gasped. In the crush of the mob he was unable to bend or turn. His gorge began to rise. He gagged and choked and made a long wet sound.

“Wassamatta, mista?”

Vomit spewed out of his mouth and through his nose. Someone screeched, “Oh shit!” The crowd surged away from him. As the people nearest him shouted and pushed to escape his retching, those nearer the exit doors were crushed forward.

Someone screamed. New Yorkers know that when the screaming starts, it is time to move on. Fast.

The mob in the lobby surged toward the blocked exit. A high plate glass window next to one of the revolving doors shattered outward. A male voice shrieked in pain. Another window burst. People bolted through the falling shards, running for the street. Ransome’s men were washed back; one went down, bellowing; the bellows turned to whimpers; shortly silence.

Dave stumbled away from the pack, into the elevator corridor.

Some few moments later he found himself dazed and shaking, and no longer on the ground floor. He wasn’t quite sure where he was or how he had gotten there. The elevators had been standing open, idle until reactivated by the authorities. Each elevator car had, as mandated by the building code, a trapdoor in its ceiling. All it took to open them was twisting four thumbscrews. He had—he thought he had—he wasn’t sure he had—what …?

Just like the movies, pal. You and Tarzan
.

I didn’t do that.

Oh yeah, take a look at the grease and grunge on your clothes
.

The numbness had begun to fade. He bent over, placed his hands on his knees, and forced himself to take deep, gulping breaths. Jesus! It had been bad. It had been the worst. He hadn’t frozen like that since …

Don’t think about it
.

Helen! Why? How? What could …

Don’t think about that, either. Think about something else. Like maybe how cruddy your mouth tastes
.

He wanted a drink of water. Badly. A little soap and a washcloth wouldn’t hurt either.

He looked around dully. It seemed he was … where? … it didn’t look familiar, but …

The second floor. That had to be it.

What was on the second floor? What the hell occupied the second floor of
any
New York office building? Most Park Avenue high-rises don’t even have second floors. Their elevator lobbies, all marble and modern sculpture, extend up two or three stories. And, as for those few buildings that do make use of their second floors, it is the least desirable office space on the premises—eye level with roofs of buses, sitting atop the cacophony of New York street life, cursed with perpetually dirty windows that have no view. The second floor is an unrentable albatross around every landlord’s neck.

In Dave’s experience,
real
business people didn’t have offices on second floors. They were always higher—up in the aeries where corporate eagles nest. No one would be caught dead with a second-floor address—at least no one who was not engaged in some odd and arcane form of endeavor, wholly alien to normal New York business practices.
DO-do-DO-do DO-do-DO-do. You are traveling in a different dimension.…

Suddenly it came back to him. He
had
been on this floor. New York landlords use their second floors for temporary space, renting offices like rooms in a hot pillow motel to people who need (don’t ask why) an office for an hour or two or a day or two. Or alternatively, the landlords put luncheon clubs on their second floors—private restaurants available on a members-only basis to the elite tenants of the upper floors. Mediocre foods, overpriced wines, but decent service and convenient privacy when you want to impress that out-of-town customer (“I’ve asked Suzy to make us lunch reservations at the club.…”).

Like all Senterex executives, Dave held a membership in his building’s club. He hadn’t used it in years. He wasn’t even sure he remembered what the landlord called the place. It was something British. It was
always
something British. The Churchill Club? The Windsor Club? The Parliament Club?

No matter. There would be water in the club, and a washroom. Dave was grimly eager to visit a washroom. One with soap and hot running water.

He stepped out of the second floor elevator corridor and turned left. The hall was papered with a dark scarlet design and hung with gilt-framed oil paintings of deceased prime ministers, Tories to a man.

Right, the Prime Minister’s Club
.

The entrance was a thick, heavy-looking door, veneered to give the appearance of improbably venerable Tudor oak. A small brass plaque was nailed at eye level:
MEMBERS AND GUESTS ONLY
.

The door swung open to a velvet-lined anteroom and more pictures of dead English politicians. The maître d’s podium, with leather bound reservation book and brass inkwell—
complete with quill pen, for God’s sake
—stood to the left. Heavy plush draperies with ridiculous golden tassels separated the anteroom from the restaurant proper.

The toilets are at the far end of the restaurant
.

The dining room was large, and brightly lit. The tables were covered with snowy linen, laid with gleaming silverware. At a center table, facing the door, a half-empty glass of orange juice resting near his left hand, sat Ransome. His right hand held his gun level and well-aimed at Dave’s chest. The expression on his face was as neutral as ever. He didn’t say a word, but simply pulled the trigger.

The firing pin snapped. A wisp of smoke drifted out of the automatic’s silenced muzzle. The bruise beneath Ransome’s eye—a souvenir of Dave’s shoe—reddened. A look of faint irritation flitted across his face. He lifted his left hand to pull back the slide and chamber another
round. By that time Dave had drawn his own weapon. Ransome dropped his hand back to the table.

The two men looked at one another in silence. Dave felt a small smile grow on his face. Ransome’s expression did not change.

Ransome broke the ice. “Mr. Elliot, you are truly a bird of rare plumage. I am beginning to develop a certain affection for you.”

“Not to be rude, but I feel exactly the opposite.”

“Mr. Elliot, I sympathize with you completely.”

“Thank you.” Dave made a small gesture with his gun hand. “By the way, I’d appreciate it if you would drop your piece. Just let it slide out of your fingers. And then …”

The weapon, a twin of the pistol in Dave’s hand, thumped on the carpet. Ransome spoke before Dave could finish his thought, “Kick it away, Mr. Elliot? That’s traditional, and I am, if nothing else, a believer in the traditional values.” He shot out the toe of his shoe. The pistol skidded three yards forward. Ransome continued, “Just as a matter of curiosity, would you mind telling if you gimmicked all the rounds in the magazine?”

“Only the first one. When you don’t have the right tools, it takes a lot of time to jimmy the slug out of the case and empty the powder.”

“As I well know.” Ransome seemed thoroughly relaxed, a quiet man having a polite chat with a distant friend. “However, given the direction our relationship has taken this morning, I believe I’ll inspect the rest of my bullets when I have the chance.”

His control is amazing. The man must be the coolest dude on the planet
. “What makes you assume that you
will
have a chance?”

Ransome arched an eyebrow at the muzzle of Dave’s pistol, now pointed at the center of his midriff. He shook his head. “You don’t have it in you. Oh, certainly, in the heat of combat you can kill a man. I’ve seen you do it. But in cold blood? I think not.”

Right on schedule Ransome casually began toying with
a table knife. His expression was poker-faced, but his pupils dilated. The muscles in his neck tensed. He was ready to move. “No, Mr. Elliot, you won’t shoot me.”

Dave shot him.

The silenced pistol made a small thump, sounding like a fist punched into a pillow. Ransome howled. He clutched his thigh where, just below the groin, blood welled out. “GODDAMN YOU SONOFABITCH YOU SHOT ME YOU SONOFABITCH RATFUCK BASTARD!”

Dave ignored him. He was on the floor, had begun to drop while squeezing off the shot. He rolled left, once, twice, three times, looking for where Ransome’s backup man should be.

And was.

Dave aimed, breathed, squeezed. Another fist punched the pillow. Twice. Three times. The sound was so soft. The backup man’s face disappeared in a red rain. He never even managed to lift his gun.

“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU YOU COCKSUCKER YOU BASTARD YOU SHOT ME!”

“Shut up, you’re behaving like a baby.” Dave had rolled one more time, bringing his pistol around toward Ransome.

“FUCK YOU JACK THAT’S WHAT I HAVE TO SAY YOU MOTHERFUCKER!” Ransome was doubled over, pressing both hands against the wound. His face was turned up, and his lips were drawn back. His eyes rolled, and he looked like a Doberman gone berserk.

Dave blew through his lips with no little disgust. “Come off it, Ransome. It’s a flesh wound. I doubt if I nicked more than a millimeter of meat. If I’d wanted to do you any real damage, you know I could have.”

“JUST FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU MAN HOW DARE YOU FUCKING SHOOT ME!”

Three tables—four counting Ransome’s—were set for breakfast. Someone had been having a morning conference when Dave called in his bomb threat. Dave snatched a beaker of ice water off one of the tables and flung its contents in Ransome’s face. “Ransome, take a table napkin,
hold it up against your thigh, and shut the hell up. The way you’re acting, you’ll die of a heart attack before you die of that wound.”

The ice water plastered down Ransome’s hair. Rivulets dripped down his cheeks. The look on his face made Dave shiver. It was First Sergeant Mullins’s face, just before the end. In a voice low and very, very cold, Ransome hissed, “Elliot, you lousy shit, you could have blown my balls off.”

“Risks of the game, my friend. Besides, you said you read my 201 file. You should remember my marksmanship rating.”

“I’m going to kill you for this.”

Dave sighed with exasperation. “So what else is new?”

“How I do it, asshole. How much it hurts and how long it takes. That’s what’s new.”

“Thank you for defining our relationship. Meanwhile, don’t sit there like a jerk dripping blood all over the place. Put a piece of ice up against the cut. It’ll ease the pain and slow the bleeding.”

Ransome snarled, pursed his lips, and swiveled to fumble an ice cube out of a water glass. As he turned, Dave whipped the gun against the back of his skull. Ransome sprawled across the table and slid gently to the floor.

A caesura of the clock. Time at full stop. He had
(hello, old friend)
a loaded firearm in his hand. His enemy was unconscious at his feet. Merely out of curiosity, no malice in his heart, Dave aimed the muzzle at the base of Ransome’s skull. The gesture felt comfortable, felt right. He thumbed back the hammer. That felt even better.

It would be a very, very easy thing to do.

It is the easy things that damn you, not the hard.

Twenty-five years earlier, David Elliot, not entirely sane at the time, stood in the heart of horror and promised God that he would never,
never
, again fire a gun in anger. I will, he prayed, hurt no one, never again,
no act of anger, no deed of violence, oh God, I will war no more.…

Now, in the course of a single morning, he had killed two men. It had been easy—easy as it ever was—and quite automatic. He hadn’t felt a thing.

However, now, at just this moment, a pistol in his hand and a worthy target in his sights, he
was
feeling something—feeling a sense of accomplishment, the comfortable emotion of a skilled man who has exercised his skills with perfection. With two fresh deaths on his hands and the perfume of cordite on his fingers, he knew he was at no small risk of feeling fine, quite fine, and feeling better every minute.

Never again, he thought. Never. He’d almost lost. They’d almost won. Now it was happening again. If he let it. But he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, let himself be turned back into the kind of man they once had wanted him to be.

Ransome expected otherwise. Ransome and his people. They’d think they knew what he’d do. Take a civilian hostage or two. Set up an ambush. Build up the body count. Start a firefight. Try to shoot his way out of the building.

Dave smiled grimly. He lifted the pistol’s sights from Ransome’s head, flicked on the safety, uncocked the hammer, and slid the weapon beneath his belt. Although he knew his enemy could not hear him, he spoke to Ransome anyway: “How many people have you got watching the exits, buddy? Twenty? Thirty? More? Whatever the number is, I’m not going to get by them, am I?” Dave glanced down at his trousers, torn and thick with grease. “Nope, I’m a real eye-catcher. Hell, looking the way I do, they’d shoot me on general principle. But I will get out, Ransome. Count on it. Also count on me doing it
my
way, not
your
way. I’d sooner take a gun to my head than do anything
that
way.”