Rampage

by Justin Scott

  “You’re drunk,” she said unsteadily.

  He brought his mouth to hers again, kissed her deeply, and when he stopped they were both shaking. “Drunks can’t kiss. Am I drunk?”

  Helen pulled away and sat up. “You’re scaring the hell out of me.”

  “You’ve scared the hell out of me since the day I first saw you.”

  “Chris, you can’t believe that. It was ten years ago. I was sixteen.”

  “I make things real by wanting them.”

  “You re crazy.”

  “Since my father was killed, I haven’t done a thing that people didn’t say was crazy. But if I’m crazy, then we’re floating here with no floor under us. There’s no Taggart Spire, just air over some old wreck of a building I had to knock down to build this one. So if I’m crazy, I don’t know how we got up here, but we’re falling fast.”

  She looked at the prize sparkling beneath them. “Hold me.”

  “I can’t. We’re falling.”

  “I have a parachute.” In a swift, graceful motion, she unzipped her gown, slid out of it, and raised it over her head.

  Taggart stared. The city glow penetrated the floor and spread soft light on her breasts, which were small, round, and tipped with dusky nipples. Her legs unfolding beside him were long, slim, and shapely. She wore stockings, a garter belt through which her strong thighs flashed like neon, and lace panties taut about her hips. She looked back, a little defiant, a little proud.

  “You’re not real. We’re still falling.”

  They came together gently at first, almost tentatively, as Taggart, awkwardly aware of his size, held himself in check because he was afraid to crush her in his excitement. Then dream and reality merged and in the heat of reality, the dream evaporated. She was suddenly and totally three-dimensional, her mouth sure, her breasts soft and warm, her legs strong, engulfing.

  Eddie Berger wore black under the army jacket, which he jettisoned in a subcellar—black high-top sneakers, black socks, black sweatsuit, black watch cap, and black makeup base on his face. Nearly invisible in the shadows of the concrete stairs but for the narrow whites of his slitted eyes, and silent on rubber soles, he climbed ninety-six flights to the top of the Taggart Spire. He had jogged thirty miles a week to prepare for jobs like this, and he consequently scaled the last flight still breathing lightly.

  The top level was a plank floor, apparently destined to become the roof, and there he waited, still as a wall, while his eyes adjusted to the dark. Gradually he became aware of the construction derricks looming overhead and a glow on the south side of the building. When his eyes could distinguish the girders scattered about, he moved silently among them, heading for the glow. At the edge of the plank floor he found the top of the glass cube jutting from the side of the building—Taggart’s cantilevered living room.

  It puzzled him at first; he knew they’d come up here, but he hadn’t realized that the incomplete building was habitable. Expecting to find Helen Rizzolo holding hands with her playboy boyfriend on the roof, he had discovered instead a luxurious apartment floating in the sky. It took a moment to realize he was looking down at them through a glass roof. Just then the lights dimmed and went out and the glow disappeared. He was left staring at the dark.

  Again he waited until his eyes adjusted. Finally he saw the stars reflected in black glass, like lights on a river. Moving cautiously, careful not to make a sound, he worked his way to the edge of the glass and looked down.

  His gut wrenched and he felt his balance going. Beneath the glass, where he least expected it, was the city. He gradually figured out what he was looking at: a cube-shaped room, perhaps thirty feet square, with a glass roof, three glass sides, and a glass floor. He could make out dark clumps of furniture here and there. In the center was movement. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw them in silhouette over the city lights—Helen Rizzolo and the playboy-builder, making love on the floor.

  Eddie Berger lowered himself to the glass, found it strong, and inched across it. They were little more than outlines in motion, but there was something profoundly erotic about the way they floated in the sky, twenty feet under his perch, as if they and he were the last three people in the world. He watched for a long time, fascinated by the slowness of their movements and the balletic exchanges of position, as if they were indeed floating, adrift in a warm, buoyant liquid. He wished he could hear them, and he was surprised at how much he loved them.

  Light from Park Avenue below and the heavens above revealed tantalizing glimpses—her thighs flickering as she rolled over, his golden hair, her teeth suddenly agleam in passion, as if a single star were lighting her gasping mouth. Suddenly, they went rigid. He thought they had seen him. A scream pierced the thick glass, another, a long silence, then laughter, and they collapsed, spilling over each other.

  He laid his face on the cold glass roof and caught his own breath. But he had watched too long and now discovered to his horror that in his own excitement he had edged out until he was almost on top of them. When they looked up at the stars, as surely they would in such a room, they would see his silhouette, as he had seen theirs.

  He froze, afraid to breathe, waiting in terrible anticipation for them to gaze upward and open their eyes. He grew cold. He prayed they’d get up and find a drink or something. But they stayed where they were. They moved closer; slowly they touched and merged, blended, and embraced. Eddie Berger smiled again, his fear evaporating; he wished he could join them. And in a way, he thought, as he slithered off the glass, he would.

  He scouted his prospects on the roof. Steel beams were stacked helter-skelter, and his mind conjured a vivid image of one of those twenty-foot, multi-ton monsters falling through Taggart’s glass roof, through the room, and through the floor— racing their bodies to the street.

  The steel-raising derricks projected dark, lopsided Vs against the sky. He approached the nearest derrick, which was poised temptingly close to Taggart’s apartment. It was close enough to hook around a steel beam, lift the I-beam over the edge, and drop it through Christopher Taggart’s glass house. But he had no partner to run the machinery on the ground, for the operating cable that raised and lowered the boom and its hook stretched the full height of the building and played off a drum at the bottom of the hole. He would have to improvise.

  The vast boom was slanting east and Taggart’s living room was to the south. A huge iron bullwheel circled the base of the derrick. Eddie Berger gripped the bullwheel, heaved his weight against it, and felt the finely balanced derrick begin to turn. There were rope falls attached to assist turning a heavy load, but the unburdened boom moved easily despite its many tons of weight.

  He looked up. The shadowy form of the slanting boom was swinging past the stars. It was much longer than the distance between the foot of the derrick and Taggart’s apartment. He kept turning the bullwheel until the boom was leaning over the glass roof.

  Then he went to the stairs to search for some sort of cable cutter. Three floors down he broke into a well-stocked toolshed and found a hacksaw. The blade looked pretty ground up, so he hunted some more until he found a new carbide blade still in its wrapper.

  Somewhere in the silence, Taggart became aware of a grinding when Eddie Berger turned the bullwheel, less sound than feeling, and he did not consciously connect it with the derrick on the roof. He strained a moment, halfheartedly trying to make sense of it; then Helen touched him and the impression dissolved like perfume on a breeze.

  “It’s so quiet,” she whispered. “I can hear our hearts.”

  Street noise did not penetrate the thick, air-locked glass. Nor did they hear the ordinarily half-noticed building sounds, because the apartment was serviced by temporary mains; the unfinished Spire was deathly still without the normal flow of air, gas, electricity, and water circulating through its ducts, lines, pipes, and wires.

  Memory of the intrusion returned, and with it Taggart’s vague feeling of disquiet. They were side by side now, touching finge
rs, returning slowly from far away. He raised his head and listened hard. But by then Eddie Berger had crept down to the toolshed, and Taggart heard only Helen’s breathing. He lay back on the warm floor and lifted her onto him. She whispered, “Beautiful, beautiful,” and then, with a luxurious smile in her voice, “Oh, look at us!”

  Like magic, the barely perceptible light reflected their bodies in the nearby glass wall. Overhead their images glowed in the ceiling; Helen crouched among the stars. The shadow of a derrick nodded over her like a curious dragon.

  The cable that supported the derrick boom was five-eighths-inch braided wire. Shortly after Eddie Berger started sawing, it occurred to him he had better stand clear in case the cable end whipped around when it snapped. Since the boom probably weighed five tons, all hell would break loose when he cut the final cable strands and the boom fell into Taggart’s apartment. So he stood way back from the shaft through which the cable traveled up the mast, and he sawed at the end of his reach with short, jerky strokes. He had no real knowledge of the forces involved, but some instinct, keyed perhaps by enormous tension in the cable, made him raise his other hand to protect his face.

  It was slow work. He stopped repeatedly to listen in case they heard the noise, but the fresh blade cut smoothly and made a lot less noise than sawing wood. After ten minutes of the difficult extended strokes, he felt the cut with his fingers and slashed his thumb on the jagged shavings. He cursed and sucked the blood. Despite the cold, he was perspiring, and the cut felt as if he hadn’t done more than nick the outer strands.

  What if the girl had left after all this time? He ran to the edge and looked down on the glass roof. They were still on the floor, still at it, he thought irritably. His thumb hurt, and their endless pleasure was making him angry. There was something unfair about their enjoying themselves while he was stuck out in the cold. He hurried back to the cable with new resolve, stepped a little closer, still guarding his face, and sawed with all his might.

  Suddenly the tension felt different. He could feel the cable getting ready to part. He sawed harder, watching the top of the boom so he’d know to get out of the way the second it moved.

  He heard a rifle-shot bang. The hacksaw blew out of his hand. The strands unfurled faster than the eye. Spinning like a gigantic Cuisinart blade, they lopped off the hand he had raised to protect his face and swiftly ground his head and shoulders into a fine, red mist.

  The great boom crashed toward the roof, pivoting from the foot of the mast and gathering speed as it fell.

  They were sitting face to face, Helen with her knees tucked up to her chin, Taggart holding her within his crossed legs and laughing. “What are you laughing about?” Helen demanded.

  “I’m so damned happy, my bones feel happy.”

  “I never knew a guy who laughed.”

  “Hey, you know what I’m thinking? You want to sell everything we got, buy a castle in Europe? Make love till—”

  She touched his mouth and murmured languidly, “You mean that, don’t you? You mean, get out of the business.”

  Taggart kissed her fingers. “Maybe we should talk when this is over.”

  “What’s that!”

  The loud bang sounded like a gunshot. Taggart shoved her toward the furniture. She sprawled backward and screamed. An enormous shadow slashed across the stars and filled the sky. Taggart looked up and knew too late the meaning of the warnings he had ignored—the grinding he had felt and the sight of the derrick leaning where it hadn’t been before.

  A seventy-foot construction boom was plummeting down on the glass cube. The warnings might have gained him a vital fraction of a second. But his mind screamed empty questions: How had the derrick moved? Why was it falling?

  He dragged Helen across the cantilevered room, toward the distant shelter of the hallway in the main building. The boom hit the outer wall first, thundering against the steel header. For an instant it was suspended between the Spire’s roof and the outer wall of the glass cube. Then, screeching as welds tore and rivets sheared, the boom buckled and collapsed inward, shattering the ceiling.

  Broken glass rained down around them. The collapsing boom plummeted like a spear and smashed the floor. Chairs, couches, and scattered clothing dropped into the night. Taggart and Helen Rizzolo were scrambling a few feet short of the safety of the entrance hall when the heater wires blew with a white flash. And then, like skaters falling through thin ice, they saw the glass floor disappear beneath their feet.

  21

  CHAPTER

  Taggart pitched forward, pulling Helen with one hand and reaching toward the lighted hall with the other. She tried to jump, but the floor separated from the side of the building and fell away, growing small and glinting as it tumbled on its thousand-foot journey to the street. The hall appeared to rise as they fell. The cold city roared below.

  Lengths of electrical cables, ripped from the falling glass, hung from the subfloor. Taggart clutched one and dangled from it as sections of broken glass hurtled past like guillotines, clanging against the side of the building and drifting into the dark.

  They caught the hardwood floor with flailing hands. Taggart got his fingers around the doorjamb, rammed his other hand between Helen’s legs, and heaved her up onto the floor. He lost his grip and felt himself falling backward, flailing in the dark for the cable. But she was on him in an instant, grabbing his arm with both hands even as his far greater weight started to drag her off.

  Kicking the side of the building, he used his other hand to pull himself up to the solid floor beside her. They lay gasping for breath and staring in disbelief at the tangled steel draped over the naked headers of the living room.

  “You okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you cut?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Taggart felt her body in the near dark. They were naked, their clothes scattered to the wind. She started.

  “Hurt?”

  “No,” she laughed, half in barely controlled hysterics, half giggling with sheer joy to be alive. “I don’t believe it, but something’s turning me on again.”

  Looking over the raw edge as Helen reached for him, he felt the same disbelief that he still had eyes to see and hands to feel. The high-pitched sounds of police and fire sirens rose on the wind. They sank to the cold floor.

  “If I know Reggie, he’s going to be here any minute.”

  “Tell him to come back when he finds out who did it.”

  Wrapped naked in her mink, which she had dropped in the foyer along with her heels, Helen waited in the car while Taggart dealt with the police. Reggie had spirited them down a freight elevator, and their story was that no one was in the apartment when the boom fell. Reggie had found a hacksaw beside a mutilated body on the top deck, which confirmed that the falling boom was no accident. By the simple expedient of removing the hacksaw, he had left the police with nothing more than speculation that an unknown person beheaded during the accident might have tampered with the cable that parted.

  As soon as the cops confirmed that no one had been killed on the ground, and his own superintendents had reported to assess and deal with the damage, Taggart asked the senior officer, a one-time protégé of Uncle Eamon’s, if he minded if he went home. When the officer said he didn’t, Taggart walked to the Rolls and told his chauffeur to head for Canarsie. Reggie followed in a gypsy cab loaded with selected members of one of his street gangs.

  “I’m still shaking,” said Helen.

  “Me, too.” Holding her in one arm, he poured a brandy, which they shared.

  “Want to hear something weird?” Helen asked.

  “What?”

  “I had a fabulous time tonight. I mean, I haven’t been on a date like this ever.”

  “Want to go out again?”

  “When?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Jeez, I wish I lived alone. I’d love to take you home and sleep all day with you.”

  “How about a hotel?”
r />   “It wouldn’t be the same. I’ll see you tonight?”

  “What would you like to do? Go to a fire? See a plane crash?”

  “Boring,” she said with an uncertain smile. “Maybe we should try something really dangerous.... ”

  “Like what?” He couldn’t read her. Suddenly she seemed frightened.

  “Like talking about that castle.”

  Taggart answered very carefully, “As soon as we finish the Cirillos.”

  Helen held his gaze a moment. “Before you came along, I thought about getting out. I was getting driven out. Now that we’re strong, it’s my choice, and it’s getting harder. Tonight you’re making me really happy.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Tell me.”

  “You’re the first guy I ever went to bed with who didn’t act like he was stealing something.”

  “Give me a list. I’ll make my brother arrest them.”

  “They don’t stick in my head.”

  It was a solid answer and banished his small thoughts of Tony and her together. She seemed poised to say more, and he waited in turmoil, fearing her mood would move her to say, Let’s get out now. But to his relief—and confused disappointment, for that was what he wanted, but couldn’t have—she turned her face instead to the bronzed window. Outside, the city streets were beginning to stir with the earliest joggers, janitors, and coffee-shop cooks, “Can they see in?”

  “Nope.”

  She touched him. “Do you think you could—?”

  Taggart reached inside her coat. “I would love to try...

  “Cops,” Taggart’s driver said in the intercom, as the Rolls turned into Helen’s block, and Reggie’s car beeped a warning.

  Helen pulled away from Taggart and pressed urgently against the glass. Half a dozen police cars were parked in front of her house, their lights revolving red and yellow reflections upon the two-story houses, their radios loud in the first silvery light of dawn. Riflemen patrolled the sidewalk. She spotted a couple of federal cars, too, unmarked but for winking red lights suction-cupped to their roofs. Uniformed officers stopped the Rolls-Royce and motioned for them to lower the windows, but Helen’s attention was riveted to an ambulance, which was pulling out of the driveway, with its lights off and its siren quiet as death.