Vertical Run (19 page)

Dave shook his head.

“Amazed. Bernie Levy was amazed. You see, Scotty’s father, he was this doctor on MacArthur’s staff. In Japan, I mean, just after the war. He and this Russian and this OSS guy are investigating the war crimes. So they find out something and they bring it to the general and the general says hush it up. But they say no way and so the general fires everyone home and gets himself a new doctor. So—you gotta picture this—so five or six years later, there is this nothing lieutenant lying in his bed with the
most important general in the world—in the world!—pinning the Silver Star on his pajamas, and the photographer is taking pictures, and all of a sudden the lieutenant is telling off the general for firing his father. Oh, Davy, you should have seen it. Such
chutzpah
! Bernie Levy has never seen its like!”

Dave grinned. “That’s a pretty good story, Bernie.”

A small smile flitted across Bernie’s lips. “I know,” he said, looking Dave in the eye and nodding. Suddenly the smile disappeared. Bernie looked weary again. “Okay, okay. So you want to talk, Davy, we talk. Maybe I tell you something, maybe I don’t. A man’s still got his honor, you know. That, they cannot take away from me. So sit down, make yourself comfortable.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Sit, stand, what’s the difference?” Bernie wrapped a pudgy hand around a coffee cup, lifted it to his lips, and took a sip. “You want I should pour you a nice cup of coffee, Davy?”

“That’s my coffee you’re drinking, Bernie.”

Bernie’s face changed. “Your coffee?”

“Yeah. I poured it while I was looking through your files.”

“You’ve been drinking my coffee?” Bernie suddenly leaned back in his chair. The worn expression on his face was replaced by an ironic smile. The smile widened. Bernie laughed. “How wonderful. You drink
my
coffee. Now, I’m drinking
your
coffee. Isn’t that wonderful? Davy, it is so wonderful, you don’t know.”

He laughed harder, the guffaws growing into whoops.

Dave frowned. “I don’t get the joke.”

“The joke? It’s a wonderful joke, Davy! Wonderful! And best of all, the joke’s on Bernie Levy!” Shaking with laughter, Bernie rose and, coffee cup in hand, walked across the office. A circular worktable and four straight-backed chairs sat by the northern window. Bernie put a pudgy hand down on the back of one of the chairs, gripped it tightly, and turned to Dave. “It’s the most wonderful joke in the world!”

Suddenly, with surprising strength, Bernie lifted the chair and hurled it through the window. Glass exploded outward, spinning in the night, wind-whipped and looking for a moment like a jeweled storm, an ice blizzard, white light reflected and refracted and sparkling among diamond shards. A gust spun glass needles back into the office. One splinter opened a surgically straight line of red on Bernie’s left cheek. Dave took a halting step forward. Bernie held up his palm, as if to tell him to come no closer. All the sadness in his face had disappeared, and he seemed as happy as a child. “Bernie Levy has only Bernie Levy to blame. Turnabout is fair play. That’s some fine joke, Davy, that’s the best joke of all. Let me tell you, only God Himself could come up with a joke like that.”

Bernie took one last sip of coffee, and, still clutching his cup, stepped into space.

It takes an object six seconds to fall a thousand feet. Dave reached the window in plenty of time to see Bernie die. In Vietnam he had, of course, observed enough wet death. It had taken him more time than most to become hardened to it, but hardened he became, and hardened he remained. Nonetheless, the sight of Bernie’s end, even from a height, was bad. Very bad.

Poor pudgy Bernie exploded.

Orphaned limbs, pink strings of flesh, slick grey organs burst onto the street. Blood, quite black under the harsh glare of streetlights, splashed streamers. A car speeding east on Fiftieth Street veered up on the sidewalk, laid a trail of sparks as it careened along a building, and rolled steaming on its side. A woman washed in gore collapsed. Her male companion knelt retching where she lay. People farther away screamed. A lump of Bernie Levy the size of a soccer ball tumbled out into the Park Avenue intersection, there to cause brakes to shriek and fenders to crumple.
A dog pulled free of its master’s slackly held leash and trotted eagerly toward the entrancing odor of fresh offal.

Forty-five stories aboveground, David Elliot leaned out a broken window, looked away, felt the wind cold and brisk, and was thankful that the air was so fresh. Speaking to the sky rather than the street, he whispered, “Aw Jesus, Bernie, why the hell did you do that? Christ, it can’t have been that bad. Whatever it was, I would have forgiven you. We could have worked it out, Bernie. You didn’t have to …”

Noises.

Not only in the street below, but also in the halls outside Bernie’s office. Feet running on carpet. The chunky metal sound of pump shotgun chambering a shell. A cool voice, an Appalachian voice: “Careful up there.”

Christ almighty! He’s been on this floor the whole time!

Dave wheeled away from the window, raced across the office, flung himself into the closet, cowered in the dark. The door to Bernie’s office flew open. Dave heard a thump and a shuffle. His mind’s eye formed a picture of the scene—standard assault tactics: one man prone in the doorway, his trigger finger tense; another kneeling, drawing a wide arc with a shotgun or automatic rifle as he searched out targets; a third man crouched behind and above, doing the same.

“Clear?” Ransome speaking from outside the office.

“Clear. But we got a problem.”

“What?”

“The Yid’s scragged himself. Done the dive.”

A burst of sirens from the street muffled the first half of Ransome’s answer. All Dave could hear was, “… should have known he couldn’t take the heat.”

“We’ve got minutes before the local law arrives.” Ransome was in the office now, in control, issuing orders with a soft, cool drawl. “Wren, take three men and move our gear down to base. Use the stairs.”

Base? Have they set up a base of operations on another floor?

“Bluejay, get on the horn—use a scrambler—tell pathology I want the subject’s blood sample ASAP. Tell
them to put it in an ambulance and siren it up here double time.”

Blood sample? Where the hell did they get a blood sample? You haven’t had a blood sample taken in months, not since Doc Sandberg … uh-oh. Oh yes you have …

“Sir?”

“DNA fingerprinting, Bluejay. I intend to sprinkle a little of the subject’s blood on that broken glass.”

“I read you, sir. Nice going.”

“Move it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Another voice, duller, older. “I don’t get it, chief.”

“Bluejay and I will arrive a few minutes after the law. It will be suggested that this was not a simple suicide. Who the prime suspect is will also be suggested. Forensics will find two blood types at the scene of the crime. Bingo, it’s murder. And when they autopsy the subject, it will be bingo again.”

Autopsy? Now we know the kind of deal he wanted to offer you
.

Ransome continued, “Greylag, I want you to open the spigot with the media. Maximum exposure. Radio, television, the papers. Lunatic throws boss out window. Maniac murderer on the loose. Mad dog. Shoot to kill. By 8:30 we’ll have every law enforcement officer in New York looking for him.”

“What if he decides to leave the city?”

“Contra-psychological. He’s one of us. He won’t cut and run.”

“Still …”

“Point taken. We’ve got coverage of everybody he knows or might try to contact, correct?”

“Yes, sir. Double teams.”

Jesus! How many regiments does this guy command?

“Okay. How many ways are there off this island?”

Greylag paused to think: “Four auto tunnels. Sixteen or seventeen bridges, I guess. Three heliports. Four or five subway routes, maybe more. The Ferry. Four airports counting Newark and Westchester. Three train lines. Oh
yeah, he could take the cable car to Roosevelt Island and then …”

“Too much. We don’t have the resources to cover it all.”

“I could call Washington.”

Washington? Oh God, are these bastards from the government after all?

“At the moment, that is not a desirable option.” There was a new note in Ransome’s voice—slightly querulous, slightly uneasy. “Not desirable at all. Just put some men on the major arteries and at the airports. That’s the best we can do. The rest of you men, pass the word—if anyone bumps into the local law, keep it cool. These are New York cops, not the kind of Speedy Gonzales greasers you’re used to dealing with. They don’t bribe cheap. Keep your lips zipped and avoid confrontation. Okay, let’s move out.”

“Radio, sir. Incoming message for you. Urgent.”

“Give … Robin here … He what? … Beautiful, just beautiful.… Acknowledged. Robin out. Okay, you men, listen up. Wren is down on the seventeenth floor with a punji stake through his carotid.” His voice was as emotionless as a robot’s.

Dave, crouching in the closet, gnawed his lip.
Thought those letter openers weren’t lethal, did you, pal?

Ransome’s frosty monotone continued, “Gentlemen, this is slovenly. I asked for a full sweep of those stairwells after this afternoon’s incompetent attempt to lure the subject into a firefight. I am disappointed in the results. Let us try to behave a bit more professionally from now on. Given our subject’s uncooperative attitude, caution is called for.”

“Sir, are we going to get him?”

“Affirmative, Greylag. If we don’t get him on the streets, we’ll get him when he comes back here. He
will
come back, you know.”

Like hell!

“Good. I’d like a little private time with Mr. Elliot.”

“Negative. I’m first on the chow line. There won’t be any leftovers.”

Admit it, pal, you’ve always wanted to do this
.

Absolutely.

More fun than you’ve ever had in your entire life
.

Close. Very close.

The guy in the BMW isn’t taking you seriously. Flash him
.

Dave hit his high beams. The BMW’s driver had his ear glued to a cellular telephone. He refused to move, straddling two lanes, and blocking Dave’s passage. Dave snatched the microphone off the dashboard, flicked a toggle switch, and angrily growled. “You in the Beemer, this is a police emergency. Either you get out of the road or you go to jail.”

The amplified sound of his voice echoed through the crowded streets. The BMW’s driver glanced over his shoulder, gave a disgusted look, and pulled to the side. Dave stepped on the accelerator. Accompanied solely by his sardonic guardian angel, he roared through the Manhattan night in a stolen police car.

Yeah!

The keys had been in the policeman’s pocket. They were conveniently tagged with the number and license plate of the vehicle to which they belonged. Dave had glanced at
them warily, and was prepared to drop them on the tiled men’s room floor when his inner voice whispered,
Hey, pal, you’ve just flattened a uniformed law officer during the performance of his duties—or at least whilst taking a bladder break—and duct-taped him to the handicapped toilet. Add to that the fact that you have stolen his clothes, his badge, his sidearm, and his hat
.

But not his shoes.

Only because they didn’t fit. Plus you’ve killed five, maybe six guys who just might be federal agents, stolen money from everyone you’ve met, phoned in a bomb threat, placed life-endangering traps on the fire stairs of a Park Avenue office tower, perpetrated countless aggravated assaults and felonious breakings and enterings, cooked up a batch of home brew explosive, and boosted telephone company property. Oh yeah, also you are wanted for the murder of Bernie Levy. So what are they going to do to you if you steal a police car too? Worst case, maybe they add another few centuries to what’s already going to be ten thousand years in Sing Sing
.

Dave shrugged and pocketed the keys. He strolled out of the forty-fifth floor lavatory just as another officer was entering. Dave nodded at him.

“Whadadeal,” the policeman grumbled. “Guy’s got his own private can and he turns leaper. Kee-rist, can ya believe it?”

Dave replied, “So I tell the lieutenant I wanna take a dump, just once in my life, in a private Park Avenue can, and he says no, there might be evidence in it.”

“Said the same to me. Kee-rist, can ya believe it?”

Five minutes later Dave was on the ground floor, pushing his way through the crowd of police and camera crews in the lobby. No one so much as looked at him. As he’d expected, the patrolman’s blues made him even more invisible than his telephone repairman’s disguise.

The patrol car was right by the curb. Dave slipped in, started the ignition, grinned broadly, and drove into the night.

• • •

At Eighty-seventh Street and Broadway, Dave yanked the wheel left, gleefully sending the police car into a four-wheel drift, and gunning his way west. In the middle of the next block he switched off the siren and flasher. He slowed, pulled right, and eased the vehicle up to the curb. There was just enough space for it next to a fire hydrant.

There may not be a law on the books you haven’t broken today
.

Marge Cohen said she lived on Ninety-fourth Street. Dave planned to walk the rest of the way. Keeping the patrol car—or even being near it—was too risky. Someone would be noticing its absence soon.

With a paper-wrapped bundle containing Greg’s clothes beneath his arm, Dave began walking back east on Eighty-seventh. The sight of a cop on foot was sufficiently uncommon that some few people glanced at him. Most didn’t.