She had been reaching rearward to fondle him. She lost herself and her grip became indecisive. Jonathan did not speak for a few liquid moments, and she mashed downward onto his face a little rougher than she intended.
He felt her trembling.
***
When he could next see her face, it was turned far to his right, her graceful deer's neck arched, mouth open, eyes shut. She paced her breathing. Her eyes glowed like emerald candles, and suddenly she was in a great, urgent hurry, moving and seizing him and before he knew it he had been swiftly guided all the way into her and she was making the sort of noises a thirsty person makes between big gulps of water. She moved fast and it felt too good to last. He tipped over and came his whole life out.
When she reached for her coffee mug she found the contents still tepid. She and Jonathan had accomplished a hell of a lot in very little time.
'Can you be bribed?' She stroked his chest.
'Can't everybody?' He loved best of all the feel of her legs against his, moving idly. 'Everybody has a price tag. On some people you need to find out where it's hidden. On some the price is too high. Most people are too eager to sell their souls when it's buyer's market.' His groin was entirely juiced. 'What do you need done?'
'Besides my back, again?' She drew breath deeply.
'No- you said I could help. Before.'
'I came down here from Cruz's room. Tried you earlier, but you weren't home. Guess you were somewhere else, still busy being a jerk.'
This amused him by now.
'Bauhaus. That asshole. Had Cruz's apartment turned over. Marko probably buzzed over here as soon as Cruz got his first sedation. He slipped his keys to me before we all walked into Bauhaus' place. Upstairs, it's a professional search job, but it's still obvious. Bauhaus is taking potshots at Cruz's story about flushing the dope. To see if it sprouts holes and bleeds.'
'How did you get over here tonight, anyway?' The flesh of her calf was smooth and perfect against the sole of his naked foot. '
'Bosco.'
'Come again?'
'I do have a car. Not much of a car, but it's transportation, they say. One of those little Jap skateboards. I call it Bosco. After…' She furrowed her brow. 'Hm. I don't remember. That's weird.'
Jonathan was from Texas, and had never used Bosco. 'I didn't see a car the first night you were here. The night of the jail stuff.'
'Bosco was in the shop. Maybe he likes it there because it's warmer. Or something. He's spent most of the winter there. I'm always losing a belt or blowing a hose or something. I always remember to put all the fluids and water in, but
'The guys at the repair bay probably sabotage the car so you'll keep coming back, so they can hang around and gawk at you.'
'Bosco is usually fixed by a woman. Adela.'
'Whoops. You're right. Unwarranted sexist assumption. Unless, of course, Adela's gay.'
'No, she… wait.' She actually thought about it for a moment. 'You know, I have no idea. Suppose it's possible. Personally, I think the solution to all this is to get a new car. Quite American, thinking that way. I genuflected to the energy crisis and bought a car, used, that conserved gasoline for the entire country. Now its paintjob is down to the gray. It's full of road dings and there ain't much tread left. It's on Adela's lift most of the time, and nobody worries about gas shortages anymore.'
'We're about due for a new one. Just as soon as everyone cycles back into muscle engines. Then, pow - right in the wallet.'
'Bosco made it over here tonight, though. Whether he'll start, after being buried in snow, is another proposition altogether.'
The storm heaved against the windows as punctuation.
'I just came in out of that,' he said. From ice cakes and carbonized slush to the warm taste of Jamaica lingering on his lips.
Right now Jonathan's recall was scant and fuzzy where their trip to Bauhaus' was concerned. He had overheard many details, but was able to interpret precious few. Cruz's mouth had not been in top form for storytelling.
'You told Bauhaus that Cruz dumped the stuff into the toilet. Two kilos.'
'I lied. File a lawsuit. I didn't mention the gun in the candy box, either. Cruz wrapped it up pretty good. We need to go get it out, now, before Bauhaus invents any more options. Cruz is in no shape to fetch anything; that guy in the jail really did a job on his arms. And Cruz knows this guy in Florida named Rosie. He can translate the dope into cash.'
'The bag is really at the bottom of the airshaft, right?'
'Gun, dope and all. If the bag didn't break.'
'You want me to fish out the bag?' He was surprised to discover himself postcoitally overprotective. No one had been inside Jamaica as recently as Jonathan. He was randified, territorial and hot to maintain his front-running position. He supposed it was all grandly primitive. Some hormonal imperative.
'Cruz dropped that bag from the third floor, and there's a damned good chance it got punctured when it hit bottom.' The longer they waited around, the greater was the likelihood that their potential freedom egg had decomposed into worthless white goo. 'Do you know if there's some way to get into the airshaft from the basement?'
'No. Not that I've seen.'
Jonathan had made a single sortie down to the icebound laundry room. There were many heavily hasped doors, some with bolted steel fascia, and a few grotty basement studios. Occupancy was full. Cold water dripped to pool near the center of the cement floor. The severity of the winter had rendered the 'washer and dryer useless; the winter itself would soon jeopardize the incumbent mayor's tenure. There was no earthly reason, Jonathan saw, for the airshafts to have below ground access. The floorplan was confusing enough that, down there, he lacked any idea of which direction he was pointed. Each floor seemed skewed, its halls and doors and stairs in slightly variant positions.
He thought it out. 'If I ask Fergus, he'll just ask questions. Boolsheet sunvahitch, he'll say. It might be better, quicker and easier to just climb down the shaft and get it.'
'What? You mean like mountaineering?'
'From the second floor it's only one story down. The bathroom windows looking out onto the shaft are all soaped up or boarded over. Up. And down. And nobody suspects anything. Might be better. Safer.'
She stared as though his forehead had just sprouted a finger. 'You can do that?'
He clenched both fists tight, to pop the hamstrings. 'I've always had more strength in my arms than my legs. Did some flat rock scrambling in Texas and some caving in Arizona. With the right kind of rope it's just a bit more strenuous than going up and down stairs. Besides, if I can shimmy down there and hook goodies on to the line for you to pull up, we don't risk anybody catching us in the hallways with, how you say, incriminating evidence. We can Mission Control the whole recovery from behind my own locked door - two locked doors - and nobody has to know. Even if Bauhaus has somebody keeping an eye on Cruz's place, he still won't suspect. Yes?'
He savored this sudden feeling of control. He was steering, for a change.
Jamaica was not about to question a windfall. 'When could we do this?'
He saw it coming. 'Why not right now, tonight?' He was well-fucked and giddy with potential. He could impress her with forthright action. 'You're here, I'm here. I even stole a flashlight from work today so I could take a peek down there myself. We've got magic fairie dust for those critical energy boosts. All we need is a rope.'
'Any ideas about that?' Her expression said dumb question, I'll wager.
'I thought you'd never ask.'
'Wait.' She stayed sly. 'Who says I'm done with you yet?'
He moved his hand up the curve of her flank, caressing the roundness of her ass, cupping one breast to thumb the nipple, and gathered her hand in his, lacing the fingers and bringing it up to his mouth for a kiss. 'That's nice. You can be my reward, so I'll have incentive.'
He was off the bed and moving. Time again for him to do something, as opposed to his standard operating procedure. In an eyeblink he felt his l
ife hit the groove and accelerate. This was a streak that could alter all that was bad, and it insisted on being played out.
'So what about the rope?' She beat him to the bathroom.
He pulled on a pair of layabout fatigue pants. Where the hell had those been when she'd denuded him? He thought of her sitting on the toilet and hoped not all of him went down the drain. 'I need to hop downstairs for that. Is there anything you need while I'm…?'
'Mmm.' Her voice resonated against the tilework. 'Maybe just you, inside me, again.'
That dried up his throat in a hurry. It couldn't have been that good for her. 'Give me a break,' he said, warily.
'Jonathan.' Again that chastizing tone. 'You made me come, babe. Half the men in the world don't even know what a clitoris is, let alone where it is.'
She knew this would send him off just brimming over with himself. She needed to keep him high-spirited and energized right now… but not merely to play pawn and retrieve Cruz's stash. His friction and pressure had been filling and good. She could feel her pussy throbbing with each heartbeat. Jonathan had been considerate and capable. Her orgasms had been genuine, though distanced and slightly out of true. She could bring herself off harder and more furiously; still, this had been pleasant. The part she liked the best had been a couple of nights ago when they had just snuggled and slept, even though she could feel his erection and sense the discomfort rolling off him in psychic waves. He was in no hurry. With most clients it had been strip now, fuck now, leave now. Jonathan had been willing to wait, so hesitant that she'd finally had to seduce him, now there was a switcheroo. With tutoring, he had the raw chops to become a hurricane of a bed partner. It might be fun to teach him.
She heard the apartment doors unbolt, open and close in sequence. Another hot bath might be just the tonic now. The bruises she had acquired were on the wane. She was glad Bauhaus had not chosen to punch her around, as he sometimes enjoyed as part of his humiliation scenarios.
As she got the hot water going, the bathroom door was nudged open behind her. The skinny black cat slinked in, leaving a wandering line of small, bloody footprints.
***
Even before he got to the basement stairwell Jonathan could see his breath in the air as he moved. He suspected that Fergus the super was not a resident of one of Kenilworth's subterranean cubicles, which were probably too clean for him. He did, however, maintain a seedy downstairs office where Jonathan had put his signature to a one-year lease. The commitment made sense in a metaphysical way: If you stayed here for more than a year, you were trapped; if you were smart, you used that year to better yourself, and escape.
Jonathan noticed the lights still on in 107, the apartment below his. That would be the old guy who was forever railing against the Jews. Maybe he hit the bottle and hurled junk around once he got sufficiently lubricated. The noise, earlier, had been that sort of disturbance. Now the ruckus had run full course and it was time for sleeping off the injustices of the rotten world at large. Jonathan heard no television going as he passed the door, downward-bound.
On the first floor someone had put masking tape across the nonworking elevator doors, like a low budget movie's version of a police line.
The steps turned to stone and the wallboard fell away to the crumbling strata of the building's foundations. Down here were inadequate bare bulbs and more sealed doors embalmed in paint. These latter were chipped, gouged and scored as though some clawed monster had attempted forcible entry. Another door that led who knew where was blocked by warped lumber stacked to one side of the corridor. These smells included paint, solvents, wet rug, mold, sewage, all forming a toxic industrial mulch.
Jonathan knew Fergus' eyrie to be a crowded junkyard of building maintenance - buckets, tools, boxes of greasy plumbing knicknacks, bags of plaster and patch. He'd had to move a power saw off the desk to sign his papers. The desk was a military job in battle green, all metal and no nonsense. Weighing down the honeycomb of shelves on three sides were cartons of dusty lightbulbs, jars of screws and bolts, a drain snake, paint-clogged trays and rollers, more power tools… and maybe, just maybe something Jonathan could press into service as a climbing line. The weirdest item he had noticed in the office before were two huge twenty-five pound sacks of dog kibble sagging together in one corner. A staple of Fergus' diet, from his aroma.
The office might also have a secret hatch of some sort, leading to the airshaft. The possibility was enticing but Jonathan was not going to invest too much hope there.
Far away, but forever ambient, was the noise of Kenilworth. The heartbeat. The ghost. Whatever.
Jonathan scanned the rest of the corridor, peering around corners as though expecting to be shot at. Nothing.
He pulled the roll of drafting tape from the pocket of his parka and rapidly smoothed out a crosshatch pattern on the window of Fergus' office door. Then he checked the passage again. More nothing. He planted his elbow sharply into the double-X of tape, dead center. The glass snapped and the tape web sagged quietly into his grasp, laden with trapped fragments. Three more seconds and he was inside.
Three minutes more, and he was out.
He took time to stow the taped mass of busted glass in one of the trash dumpsters, which were stationed beyond the laundry room at the far west end of the lot. To get there you used an exterior door that let onto a trench-like breezeway. At about eye-level there was a gap of two feet that permitted a mole's eye view of what Jonathan supposed was a small backyard. Right now the open space between the bottom of the first floor and the excavation of the basement level was plugged up by snow. It was like the inside of a glacier, a frozen tunnel iced solid with leakage and polluted stalactites. It reminded Jonathan of a circular chute in a cave, but of glass, not rock. Light rainbowed off the tessellated, curving veneer of ice. With his shadow blocking one end it would make a great poster for a journey to the center of the earth movie.
The illusion was spoiled by the crudely lettered sign Fergus had posted on the laundry room door, proclaiming the obvious.
Jonathan reconsidered all the locked doors down here. No time to jimmy them all in hopes of chancing across a grate or lid leading to the airshaft. Hell, down here he might waste an hour burgling his way into the wrong shaft. Knocking on doors to request neighborly egress had never struck him as an option, let alone an intelligent idea. This was something no one should know about.
Besides - the climb would impress Jamaica.
The prize from Fergus' rathole was a pair of figure-eight coils of heavy duty electrical extension cable, 25-footers with grounded plugmold outlets every eight feet. Both were sheathed in groove-textured, bright orange insulation that made the wire more durable and bulked it out to a diameter of half an inch. It had been the strongest, most practical stuff to be stolen from the super's lair.
The best way to test it would be to unreel it out his window and go outside to hang on it for a moment. This would additionally help him determine whether the lines should be linked end-to-end or braided together. Twenty-five feet, plus his own height, should be the right length unless the shaft was much deeper than the basement floor, which wasn't likely. Some of the length would be used up by knots, anchoring, and play over the bathroom sill. One of these cords were surely adequate to the task of holding his weight.
***
When he re-entered 207 he felt the heat buffet and knew Jamaica had drawn herself a hot bath. He liked the role-reversal. This time, he was clothed and she would be clad in the towel…
The spoiler he had not foreseen was the amount of blood that would be soaking her towel when he walked in, smiling.
Blood on her hands.
When she showed him, the cat on the towel in her lap tried to break, displeased with all this undignified probing and wiping.
'Jonathan, he walked right into the bathroom; he was just covered in blood…'
At least one towel was a goner. Jonathan was about to ask if the blood was real; another puerile Jonathan-type question. In such amounts
blood looked bogus. A half-tub of hot water steamed, unused. Jamaica would need it; there were even smudges of blood on her face.
It ain't my fault. I'm innocent, I tell you.
'Is he hurt?'
'Not that I can see. But look here.' She released the animal; at least its paws were clean now. She and Jonathan backtracked along the trail of sticky crimson pawprints to a place four feet from the steam heater.
There was a vertical slit in the wall near floor level. Semi-coagulated droplets oozed from it.
'Ho… lee…'
'Shit. That's what I said.'
It was as though a careless butcher had carved an arm-sized hole in a side of beef with a dull cleaver. The edges of the cut folded inward. Layers of paint had broken to reveal deeper layers still flexible enough to cling to the folds, curving with them back into darkness.
Jamaica extended a hand.
'Don't touch it!' She recoiled before he could smack her hand away. From his drafting box Jonathan got a steel ruler, a cork-backed job that would make a nasty offensive weapon if correctly brandished. He poked the outer edges of the slit. They flinched, shrinking back, splitting new hairlines in the paint and liberating fresher, redder drops of blood.
The anodized steel sank eight inches before he withdrew it, red now.
They interrupted each other with assorted biblical and scatological expletives. The hole stayed. The cat rejoined them. Warmer with the humans. It poked its snubbed triangular nose forward to sniff the bloodstuff.
Jonathan batted it away, angry. Control had been his until this ugliness had reared. He had to say something, mark this anomaly with commentary, to reassure both himself and Jamaica that they weren't hallucinating.
'Cat showed up bloody the other night, too. Just as bewildered.' He said this in an outpouring of breath more like the admission of some guilty secret. 'I couldn't figure out how he got into the room. The doors were closed. You sure he wasn't in here when I left?'
The Shaft Page 23
