Felony Murder

by Joseph T. Klempner

  So Dean took stock of his situation. He knew he had two basic options. He could retreat to the windowsill and place an S-hook in the safety eye below him, attach himself to it by several lengths of webbing. That way, if he fell while trying to reach the roof, he’d be caught after a fall of twenty feet or so - if the contraption held. There were several problems with this choice, the first of which was the dangerous climb down to the windowsill, aggravated by the slippery condition of the west brick. After that, there was the unreliability of the safety eye: It was made to hold a stationary body at rest, not catch a falling one already hurtling by a thirty-two feet per second squared.

  The only remaining option was to suck it up and go for it.

  He looked up from his stance atop the seventh-floor window. The roof presented a classic overhang, maybe six feet above his head. He thought of Doug’s Roof, a prototypical overhang route in the Gunks, and tried to remember whether it was a 5.10 or a 5.11. He remembered that wet conditions generally reduced a climber’s ability by at least two full grade points. He looked to his left. Nothing. To his right. Was that a bit of movement in the dark? He blinked hard to clear the water from his eyes and peered into the blackness. There, perhaps eight or ten feet away, was a wire of some sort, a black cable or electric cord running up the side of the building and disappearing above the overhang.

  And in that instant he knew that whatever it was, he had to go for it.

  A traverse is often easier than an ascent, because the traverser, in moving laterally, doesn’t defy gravity to the same extent as the ascender. But the traverser needs nonetheless to cling to the surface every bit as tenaciously as the ascender. With no rope to catch him or to permit him to pendulum back and forth in ever-increasing arcs, Dean knew he’d have to walk across the window cornice and somehow reach the next window over without falling.

  “Here goes nothing,” he muttered under his breath and began the easy part. When he reached the far edge of the cornice, he faced the wall, dug his fingertips into the groove between two rows of brick, and did the same with the toes of his climbing shoes, making certain to place his feet high enough so that his rear end extended well out away from the wall.

  The beginning climber has a natural tendency to want to flatten his body against the vertical surface as much as possible, in an attempt to adhere to it. But such a stance has precisely the opposite effect: His weight is directed straight downward to his feet, forcing him off the cliff. The knowledgeable climber instead assumes a crouched position, butt stuck way out behind him, so that his weight will be transferred at an angle to the vertical surface in front of him.

  Thus positioned, Dean inched to his right, moving only one foot or one hand at any time, leaving him three points of contact with the brick. When he got close enough to reach the next cornice, he used his right foot to step on it. Then he walked across it to its right side, the side closest to the wire.

  Still he couldn’t reach the cable. But by unclipping from his sling a length of webbing with an S-hook attached to it, he was able to snag the wire on the third try and pull it to him.

  He inspected the wire, more by touch than sight. It appeared to be a coaxial cable, the sort used by the television cable companies. It was plastic-coated and slick from the rain, but by looping it twice around his hand Dean was able to get a good grip on it. Then, after a barely audible climbing, he began walking up the brick to the overhang.

  Coaxial cable is, at its best, not made to support weight. Moreover, the coaxial cable that had offered itself to Dean was old and rotten, having long ago been replaced by underground wiring as Hoboken became gentrified and yuppified. By the time it broke, Dean had reached the underside of the overhang. He had just grasped a rounded piece of rough concrete between the thumb and fingers of his left hand, and was in the process of pulling the entire weight of his body upward, sharing the burden equally between his grasp of the concrete with his left hand and his hold on the cable with his right, when the cable tore free. The result was a transfer of all of Dean’s weight to the left-hand grip, accentuated by a sudden and violent swing of his body to the left. He felt his head bang into something hard, and he instantly knew his forehead was cut open, but somehow his fingers held, his arm fully extended, his feet kicking wildly beneath him. He let go of the useless cable in his right hand, and with nothing else within reach, used that hand to seize his own left wrist. The maneuver served to take no weight off Dean’s fingers, but it did cause his body to rotate back toward the building, and he was able to plant first one, then both feet against the brick without slipping. Thus stabilized, he was able to loosen his right hand from his left wrist and grope desperately for a second handhold with it, up and out on the farthest extension of the overhang.

  Some handholds, the learning climber is taught, are characterized in route descriptions as “minimal,” a term one might use in referring to a hairline crack in a rock wall just good enough to contribute to holding the body in place, in conjunction with the efforts of the other hand and both feet; the shallow joints between the bricks afforded an example of just such a hold. Better handholds are classified anywhere from “fair” or “moderate” to “good” or “excellent,” with their dependability increasing in direct proportion to the positive nature of the nomenclature. At the very top of the list is what climbers call the “bombproof” handhold, a term borrowed from the military lexicon to describe a hold so strong and secure that a climber would be justified in supporting his entire weight on it with a single hand, free to use his remaining hand and both feet in any way he wishes.

  It was such a hold that Dean’s right hand found on the overhang, and he knew it instantly. Despite the fact that he couldn’t see it, the sheer pleasure of feeling it in his hand caused him to almost laugh out loud. With a whispered “Oh, yeah!” he grasped both hands around it and pulled his body out and away from the brick wall and up over the protrusion. With the rain meeting him like a welcoming party, Dean swung first one foot over and onto the roof, then the other, until he lay facedown at the very edge. Then, by lifting the upper portion of his body as though to begin a push-up, he worked his way away from the edge and toward the center of the rooftop. He kissed the wet asphalt surface, surprised at its warmth and salty taste, until he remembered his forehead. He wiped it with the back of his hand; it was wet and warm and stung to the touch, and he knew he was probably bleeding pretty freely.

  But he had made it.

  Knowing the rooftop was also the ceiling of the seventh floor, Dean realized he couldn’t afford to make a sound. He stood up, got his bearings, and tiptoed to the airspace that separated the building he had climbed from the center building he needed to get to. He judged the gap to be about ten feet, a distance he knew he could clear with a running jump, but not without landing heavily - and therefore noisily - on the center roof. So he slipped his sling off one should and his rope off the other. Uncoiling thirty feet or rope, he fashioned a large, double-stranded lasso, using a mariner’s square knot, which would permit the lasso to slip tight and then hold. For extra precaution, he fashioned a knot at the very tip of the rope so that the aptly named “bitter end” couldn’t slip through the square knot.

  He might have been good at knots, but he would have made one lousy cowboy, Dean decided. It took him a full dozen tosses - time enough for a whole herd to scatter - before the loop of his lasso found the small brick chimney that was his target. He pulled the doubled rope tight, replaced the unused portion over his shoulder, covered that with his sling, and moved to the edge of the roof. By wrapping the doubled rope around his back belay-style, he created a rappel system that would permit him to jump from his roof and land, not noisily on top of the center roof, but silently against the side of the center building.

  He made the move almost flawlessly, rotating only slightly in midair, but managing nonetheless to break the impact with the soles of his shoes and the flex of his knees. Then, cheating a bit by using the rope as a climbing aid, he pulled himself up and on
to the roof of the center building.

  Dean untied his lasso and tiptoed to the front of the building, knowing that any sound could give him away. By leaning over the edge, he could just about make out the small frosted window beneath him and to his right.

  He found another chimney, also brick, but more centrally located than the first. He uncoiled the full length of his rope, knowing he’d need its full length to fashion a double-stranded rappel that would reach the ground. Afraid to use his flashlight to locate the midpoint of the rope by sight, he instead placed the two ends together and, by running the two strands through a fist as one, eventually reached what had to be the midpoint. Marking that point by tying a short piece of webbing there, he repeated the process in reverse, this time working from the marked spot back to the ends. Satisfied, he knotted the ends together, providing a crude braking device in case he ran out of rope on the way down. Better to know it by being brought to a stop at a point close enough to the bottom to permit a careful drop the rest of the way than to unwittingly rappel beyond the rope, a sure prescription for a bone-crushing landing.

  He knew it would be an easy matter to rappel down to the seventh floor. There would be a slight traverse to get to the correct window, but that would be simple enough to pendulum to. He had no idea how long it would take Janet to squeeze through the window - he knew it would have been physically impossible for him to do it with his larger frame, but she was considerably smaller, and he had no doubts about her determination to accomplish the impossible. The rest of the rappel down should take less than a minute, with the danger being a too-rapid descent due to the combination of Janet’s additional weight and the reduction in friction that the wetness would have on the rope. Anticipating these problems, Dean had hooked up a figure eight as a braking device, and had brought along an old pair of ski gloves to protect his hands from burning on the rope on the way down. For this was going to be no slow, rope-protecting rappel: Dean knew the window could be alarmed, and they might have only seconds to get down and away.

  He attached a carabiner with a brake-bar to the system, just in case they needed additional friction to slow them on the way down. But he couldn’t engage the device yet. Too much friction in the system would prevent him from descending to the window.

  He put on his gloves. Once again he worried about the possibility of an alarm. He hoped that the sheer narrowness of the window would have caused Janet’s guards to deem it unnecessary. He cursed himself silently for not having looked for wires when he’d had a chance to inspect it from inside.

  He lowered the knotted ends of the rope down the building toward the pavement below. He felt them go slack, the way a fisherman feels his line go slack when his sinker has reached the bottom of a lake. He had no way of knowing in the darkness if his knot had found the sidewalk or snagged on some obstacle above it. But he was reluctant to shake the rope, for fear of the noise it could make slapping against something. He tested the portion of the rope above him, eliminating any slack between himself and the chimney. He tried to think if he’d missed anything. He mopped his forehead with the back of his hand. It came away warm and slippery, and he knew he must still be bleeding.

  He moved to the edge of the building, then stepped up onto an overhang identical to the one he had scaled before. He placed his empty duffel bag underneath the rope where it met the overhang, to protect the rope from abrasion. Leaning his full weight against the doubled rope in front of him and securely holding the portion that ran around his body tightly against his chest, he backed to the very edge of the overhang. Felt the moment of terror run through his body as he leaned back into a stance virtually perpendicular to the side of the building. Opened his arm away from his chest until the decrease in friction allowed the rope to begin slipping. And started walking down like a human fly.

  As always, the fear vanished immediately. The figure eight supplied him all the friction he needed, and he lowered himself easily to the seventh floor. He located the only small window and tied himself fast to his rappel rope so that he would descend no farther.

  He rapped on the window three times, trying his best to do it just hard enough to be heard inside, but nowhere else. He waited a bit. He realized the noise had probably been insufficient to wake Janet if she was asleep, but he was afraid to do it any louder. He rapped again, and again he waited. Still no sign of Janet. He checked his bearings. This was the only small window on the entire seventh floor; it had to be the right one. He rapped once more. Still nothing.

  Moving on to Plan B, Dean reached into his pocket and withdrew a glass cutter, one of the items he’d put on David Leung’s shopping list. He’d earlier tied a length of cord onto it, and now he clipped one end of that onto his belt so that he wouldn’t lose it if he dropped it.

  Back in his college days Dean had worked one summer for a picture-framing and matting store and had become fairly proficient with a glass cutter. It was a simple enough tool, a rigid metal handle that held a tiny wheel made of industrial-quality diamond. By running the wheel crisply and cleanly across the surface of glass, he’d learned how to score the glass so that subsequent pressure would cause it to break cleanly along the score line. The trick was that you had to score the glass properly on the first try. There was no margin of error, no such thing as a “do over,” because you could never duplicate the score line exactly.

  Of course, all that had been many years ago, and Dean had no idea if he still had his touch. He hoped it was like riding a bicycle. But even if it was, the score he needed to make now was a circular one, something he’d done no more than two or three times.

  With a small ice pick, also courtesy of David Leung, Dean gouged a tiny indentation into the center of the windowpane. Next, he unclipped the glass cutter and looped its cord over the shaft of the ice pick. The device he’d thus created crudely resembled the sort of a geometry compass a draftsman used to draw a circle. Keeping the cord taut and the glass cutter perpendicular to the window, Dean traced a 360-degree arc, all the while exerting even pressure against the glass. The tiny diamond wheel seemed to end up pretty much where it had begun, leaving a circle some seven or eight inches in diameter.

  Dean pocketed his equipment, changing it for two large rubber suction cups. These were the items that had kept David out shopping until late the previous afternoon, until finally he’d located them as part of a toddler’s toy set. Gently Dean now attached them to the glass, just inside the circle he’d scored. When he pressed them firmly against the already wet glass, they held tightly. Then, by alternately pulling on one while pushing on the other, he worked the circle of glass until it made a barely perceptible crunch and came free from the rest of the pane.

  He moved his face to the hole he’d created in the window.

  “Pssst,” he hissed.

  And waited.

  Almost immediately, he heard movement inside. After a moment, Janet’s face filled the hole.

  “Window service,” he said.

  “What time is it?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “I risk my life to save you and all you want to know is what time it is?”

  “Sorry,” she said, smiling. “I was asleep.”

  “I know. Open the window,” he told her. “And be careful, that round edge is razor sharp.”

  She pushed the window up. He handed her the circle of glass, and she disappeared with it. She was back a moment later.

  “My God,” she whispered. “What happened to your head?”

  “Shhh. I’m okay. But you’re never going to fit through this.”

  And it was true. The opening was absurdly small, high enough now with the cut-out window pushed all the way up and out of the way, but perhaps only nine or ten inches wide. Dean fought off a feeling of panic that his effort had been for nothing: There was absolutely no way a person could fit through it. But she seemed ready to give it her best.

  He watched helplessly as she tried, first one way and then another, to push herself through the impossibly narrow frame.
First a shoulder would refuse to fit through, then an elbow wouldn’t bend the proper way. Just when it seemed she might finally manage to squeeze her upper half through, her sweatshirt bunched up and she had to give up, twisting her body and pulling it back inside and out of sight.

  When he next saw her, it was her head and one hand that emerged first. She pointed directly at Dean, then used her hand to cover her eyes, an unmistakable signal that Dean should close his. Then, without waiting for him to comply, she began squirming out of the window as before. This time, however, every inch of progress gradually revealed that she was totally naked and that in place of her clothing she had rubbed some sort of oily substance over the entire length of her body.

  And it worked. Where before she had fought against the bulk and friction of her clothes, now Janet eased through the opening. As Dean lowered himself to catch her, she locked her arms around his neck and rotated herself to permit him to pull her hips through the window by pushing his feet against the building on either side. As she came free, he wrapped his own arms tightly around her back, while she scissored his body with her legs, both of them holding on as tightly as possible to avoid her slippng through his grasp. Face to face, Dean could see the fright in her eyes as he freed one hand to lower them on the rappel. Knowing he had to try to calm her to keep her from panicking, he could think of nothing to whisper to her but “I love you.”

  “Then please don’t let me die,” came her return whisper.

  The effect of the rain on Janet’s body seemed to make it even more slippery, but she held on with a death grip. They were halfway down when he whispered to her, “What is this stuff?”

  “Soap.”

  But as slippery as Janet’s body was, it was also light, and her grip never relaxed on the way down, enabling Dean to concentrate on controlling the descent on the rappel line. They touched bottom without running out of rope, and Janet released him.