The window gave onto the narrow triangular airshaft. Conor cautiously put his head out and looked down to the rubbish-strewn area below. A wave of vertigo came over him and he felt as if it were almost physically lifting him up, like a wave in the ocean. What frightened him so much was the urge he felt to throw himself out, as if he wanted to kill himself. He swallowed, and clamped his hand to his sweaty forehead. He couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t do it.
He glanced back and Lacey was dropping her bra on the floor, her big pale breasts swaying as she did so. He almost gave himself an excuse not to climb out of the window. How could he leave her, naked and unprotected with Drew Slyman and his men? But he knew what would happen if he didn’t escape, and he knew that Lacey would never forgive him, every time she put flowers on his grave.
Quaking, he lifted his leg over the sill and found some purchase for his toes on the narrow ledge outside. Then he climbed right out, trying not to think how high up he was, and what would happen to him if he fell. Even though it was dark now, the heat was still overpowering. Sweat rolled down his forehead and stung his eyes. He gripped the windowsill with one hand and swung the window shut with the other. For a split second, he saw Lacey turn toward him, but then he looked away. He had to concentrate on where he was going, and that was all.
He edged his way along the ledge. The concrete was corroded by weather and traffic fumes, and after only two or three feet it began to crumble, so that he almost lost his footing. He managed to get a grip on a stubby overflow pipe, but there was a moment when he felt that he was going to fall backward. However, he managed to stretch out his right leg and find the next section of intact ledge.
Sweating, gasping, he turned his head and looked downward. Seven stories below, the yard was cluttered with trashcans and broken beds and rusty sheets of corrugated iron. He was only four feet away from an old iron ladder which led up to the roof, but in between the ledge and the ladder was a large ventilation pipe, which he would have to climb around.
He reached out and gripped the drainpipe. The black paint was scaly and blistered, but the pipe seemed to be securely anchored. All he had to do was take hold of it in both hands and swing himself around until his feet found the ladder on the opposite side.
‘Come on, Conor,’ he told himself. ‘You’ve done scarier things than this.’ And then he said, ‘No, you haven’t. Who are you kidding?’ He found himself whispering a prayer, ‘Mary, Mother of God don’t let me fall because if I do I’m going to be guillotined by rusty sheets of corrugated iron and I don’t want to die like that.’
He took three deep breaths. He was about to launch himself around the pipe when the bedroom window behind him suddenly racketed open. He looked back and saw one of the police officers waving his gun at him. ‘Freeze!’ he shouted.
‘I’m frozen already,’ Conor told him, trying not to sound calm.
‘Come back here. Make it slow and make it as easy as you like.’
‘I can’t come back. The ledge is broken.’
The officer leaned even further out of the window. He hesitated for a moment, and then he disappeared back into the bedroom.
Conor thought: this is it, this is my only chance. He grabbed the ventilation pipe with his other hand and swung himself around it. He was wrong: it wasn’t fixed securely. As he pulled on it with all his weight, one of the upper brackets was wrenched out of the brickwork with a high-pitched screech and the pipe tilted outward at nearly 45 degrees. He was showered with grit and fragments of mortar.
He hung onto the crazily leaning pipe, trying to locate the iron ladder with his right foot. But every time he tried to swing toward it, the pipe creaked and bent a few inches further outward. He stared at the brick wall in front of him. He didn’t dare to look down.
Lacey had been teaching him to control his breathing; to concentrate his strength. But the ventilation pipe was making a steady tortured noise like ih – ih – ih – ih –’ and he knew that it was only a matter of seconds before it ripped away from the wall completely.
The police officer reappeared at the window.
‘O’Neil!’
He didn’t answer – couldn’t. He had much more critical matters to take care of.
‘O’Neil – you get your ass back in here or else I’m going to have to shoot!’
Conor closed his eyes for a moment. You would. You would shoot. That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? If it frightens you, if you don’t understand it, if it threatens your miniaturized view of the world, you shoot it. If Jesus showed up tomorrow morning, you’d probably shoot Him, too.
He thought: what the hell, I’m going to die anyhow. He swung his body to the left, and then to the right. He managed to touch the edge of the iron ladder with the tip of his right shoe, but he wasn’t close enough to get his foot onto the rungs, and he swung away again. The ventilation pipe bent away from the wall even further, and its rusted paint ground even more deeply into the palms of his hands.
Conor heard Lieutenant Slyman’s voice. ‘O’Neil! You’re resisting arrest! If you don’t get back here, I’m going to open fire!’
Conor ignored him. He swung to the left for a second time, and then back to the right, trying to build up as much momentum as possible. He nearly managed to hook his right foot into the iron ladder, but his shoe slipped and he had to swing back again.
Lieutenant Slyman fired a warning shot. It ricocheted from one side of the triangular airwell to the other, and finally hit one of the corrugated-iron sheets with a bang like summer thunder.
‘Next one’s aimed for the head,’ he called out.
‘Mary, Mother of God,’ Conor breathed. He swung himself to the left as forcefully as he could, and then threw himself off to the right, letting go of the ventilation pipe altogether. His foot found the ladder, and slipped, but he grabbed at it, too, and clung on. Lieutenant Slyman fired two more shots in quick succession. His first bullet hit the ventilation pipe and whined off into the darkness: his second broke a window on the opposite side of the airshaft.
Conor climbed die ladder as rapidly as he could, his whole body surging with adrenalin. He heard Lieutenant Slyman shout, ‘Up on the roof! The bastard’s gone up on the roof! Don’t just fucking stand there! Go after him!’
Conor reached the flat, asphalt-covered roof. He ran across it and vaulted the low brick wall which separated it from the roof of the building next door. It was so hot and humid that he could hardly breathe, but he climbed another ladder to the building after that, which was three stories taller, and then down to the next building, which was two stories lower. He was greasy with sweat and his calf muscles were trembling, but he carried on running and jumping across parapets and pipes, dodging behind chimneys and ventilation shafts whenever he could. Eventually he reached the Dane & Bulziger Building, which stood thirty-four stories high, a towering cliff of silvery steel and shining glass, and there was no way round it. Conor could see himself reflected in its windows, hunched up, gasping, like a primitive caveman encountering his mirror-image for the first time.
He turned around. Above the thrumming and parping of the traffic on Third Avenue, he heard a persistent, echoing knock. Lieutenant Slyman’s men were trying to break open the door to the roof.
He took a deep breath and leaned over the railings. He was standing on top of a 1950s office building with Manzi’s Italian restaurant on the first floor: he recognized the red-and-green-striped awning and the bay trees on the sidewalk, seven stories below. He went across and tried the door to the stairs, furiously rattling the handle, but it was locked. He kicked it two or three times, but it still wouldn’t budge. He heard Lieutenant Slyman’s men bursting out of their door and shouting out, ‘Where is he? He can’t have gotten far! You try that way!’
Quickly Conor looked around. There was an old neon sign on the roof, partly dismantled. There were rusty pipes and something that looked like a beehive. On the far side, he saw a window cleaner’s cradle. It must have been abandoned, because
its cables were all wound up around it, and its remote control had lost its innards. But at least it gave him a chance of escape. Ducking down low, so that Lieutenant Slyman’s men couldn’t see him, Conor ran across and picked up one of the cables in both hands. It was thick with dirty oil, but it had a heavy-duty clip on the end and it still seemed to be firmly attached to the cradle itself.
One of the officers had reached the top of the taller building behind him. ‘I see him!’ he shouted. ‘Lieutenant, he’s right over here!’
A shot cracked out, and then another. One of them hit the asphalt close to Conor’s foot: the other starred a window in the Dane & Bulziger Building. Conor knew that it was time to go, no matter what.
Dragging the cable after him, he hurriedly hunched his way to the railings. Another shot, and chips of concrete spattered his cheek.
He climbed over the railings and wound the cable around them. He glanced down and saw tiny people walking up and down the street and miniature taxis drawing in to the front of the restaurant. The wave came again, and that sickening urge to throw himself into the street. He heard Lieutenant Slyman yell, ‘Hold it, O’Neil! Hold it right there!’ He wound the cable around his waist and fastened the clip to form a loop. He didn’t even have time for a prayer: he just dropped down the side of the building, colliding with windowsills and architraves. The cable made a furious zizzing noise against the railings as he fell. But he had only gone down three stories before it abruptly snagged. The jolt almost cut him in half, and he couldn’t stop himself from letting out a shout of pain. He hung there, twisting around and around, winded, bruised, grazed and a dangling target for Lieutenant Slyman and his men.
But even Lieutenant Slyman couldn’t justify shooting a man hanging helplessly suspended on the end of a cable. He shouted down, ‘We’re pulling you up! Do you hear me, O’Neil? We’re pulling you back up!’
The cable had kinked itself into a knot. The two officers leaned over the railings and took hold of it, trying to take the strain of Conor’s weight so that Lieutenant Slyman could ease the knot free.
Conor put out one foot and managed to stop himself from twisting around. Then he put out the other foot, and braced it flat against the building. Gripping the cable tight, he began to walk up the wall.
He wasn’t as fit as he used to be, and he grunted with effort. But he managed to walk up six or seven steps, until he reached the fifth story. His hands kept sliding on the oily cable and its coarse wire strands sliced his skin. Blood ran down his wrists and dripped off his elbows.
‘What are you trying to do?’ called one of the officers. ‘Keep still, will you, for Christ’s sake – we’ll haul you back up!’
Conor reached out with his left hand and pulled himself toward one of the fifth-story windows. He climbed unsteadily onto the narrow stone ledge, and clung there. ‘OK, that’s better,’ said the officer, with relief, and the cable relaxed.
Conor craned his head right back so that he could see what Lieutenant Slyman was doing. The knot had caught tight between the cable and the railing, but Slyman was gradually forcing it off the pipe with a length of TV antenna he had found on the roof.
At last, he managed to release it. Conor saw him stand up, toss the length of metal aside, and say, ‘That’s it. Pull the bastard up.’
At that instant Conor jumped backward off the window ledge. It was marginally less horrifying than jumping forward, because he couldn’t see where he was going. All the same, there was a heart-stopping millisecond of free fall when he was sure that he was going to die. But then the cable tightened with a crack and a boom and a twang. ‘Shit!’ shouted one of the policemen. ‘He’s almost cut off my fucking fingers!’ Lieutenant Slyman called out, ‘Hold him! Hold him!’ but they could only keep their grip on the cable a few moments longer before they both swore loudly and let go. Conor plunged downward again, kicking at the wall and dragging his feet on the brickwork to slow his helter-skelter rush toward the red-and-green awning below.
He had almost reached it when he was jolted to another violent stop, and swung from side to side like a human pendulum. Badly winded, he was breathing in high-pitched screams, but he was so close to the top of the awning that with every swing of the cable his shoes were actually scraping the canvas.
Conor looked up. He could see Lieutenant Slyman’s pale face staring down at him with malicious glee. He could also see what had stopped him from falling any further. As he fell, he had dragged the cradle clear across the roof, and it was now precariously tilted sideways against the railings.
‘Hey! O’Neil!’ Lieutenant Slyman shouted down to him. ‘Don’t you know it’s against the law to hang around the streets?’
Conor didn’t have the breath to answer. He gripped the cable in his left hand and tried to heave himself up. That last jolt had yanked the cable right up underneath his armpits and tightened it so much that he found it impossible to release the clip. Lieutenant Slyman and his men had already left the roof and it was only going to be minutes before they made their way down.
He looked up again. The window cleaner’s cradle was lying on its side. The railings were very low, so there might be a chance he could pull it over. The only trouble was he would then be directly beneath it as it fell. It wasn’t much more than a collection of planks and scaffolding guard-rails, but it would be quite enough to kill him.
All the same, he reckoned that pulling down that cradle would at least give him a chance of survival, which was more than Lieutenant Slyman would.
Seven or eight people had gathered on the sidewalk and were watching him. One of them called out, ‘Hey, man, do you need some help? Are you advertising something, or what?’
He kicked at the wall two or three times and managed to stop himself from swinging. He could have used some help but he knew that he didn’t have the time to wait for somebody to bring him a ladder. He braced his feet against the metal bracket on top of the awning. Then he took hold of the cable in his bloodied hands and yanked at it. By now the skin on the palms of his hands was in ribbons, and he blasphemed under his breath. But he managed to pull himself up a few inches and then let himself drop. He did it again, and again. The cradle banged against the railings every time he tugged it, but it didn’t seem to show any signs of budging.
Trembling, soaked in sweat, he heaved himself up as far as he could manage. An even bigger crowd of onlookers had gathered now, including the restaurant manager in a white shirt and a fancy red vest.
‘Hey! You! What the hell do you think you’re doing up there? You damage my blind, you moron, you’re going to have to pay.’
Conor let himself go one more time, and this time the window cleaner’s cradle toppled right over the railing. He heard a woman scream, and then he dropped onto the awning and rolled to the edge. He managed to swing himself over and jump down onto the sidewalk, just as the cradle crashed and clattered onto the canvas, ripping it away from its framework. Scaffolding poles and planks bounced everywhere, and the cable came snaking down like a bullwhip, lashing the leaves off one of the bay trees.
‘Looka my blind!’ screamed the restaurant manager. ‘Looka my fucking tree!’
Conor shakily climbed to his feet. He loosened the cable clip and freed himself.
‘Who’sa going to pay for this?’ the restaurant manager demanded. ‘You know what this is going to cost?’
Conor slapped him on the shoulder, leaving a greasy, bloody handprint on his crisp white shirt. ‘Charge it to the NYPD,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here in a couple of minutes. But meanwhile, sorry, I really have to run.’
Chapter 7
He rang the bell twice and Sebastian quickly opened the door for him, ‘Lacey called me,’ he said, as he ushered Conor into the hallway. ‘She told me you’d probably come over.’ He glanced left and right and said, ‘Nobody followed you, did they?’
Conor shook his head. ‘I checked the street before I came in here. Trust me, I’m an expert.’
Sebastian closed and bolted the d
oor. He was tall, willowy and black. His head was shaved and he was wearing a gold braided headband and dangly gold earrings in the shape of leopards. His features were Abyssinian: high cheekbones, hooked nose and heavily lidded eyes. He was wearing a flappy white silk shirt and pants that could have been pajamas. He flowed along the hallway as if he were modeling them.
‘My God, Conor, you look like a vagrant. What’s happened to your hands? Look, come into the bathroom and wash them. You’re going to drip blood all over the carpet.’
The carpet was snowy white, so Conor could understand his anxiety. He went to the bathroom basin and Sebastian ran the faucets for him. The bathroom was white, too, with gilded fittings, and a spray of gilded ostrich plumes in a mock-Etruscan vase. Matching white bathrobes hung from gilded hooks and there was a large print of a sulky Grecian athlete holding a discus where it mattered.
Conor looked at himself in the brightly lit mirror. His face was swollen and covered in big crimson bruises. He had split his lower lip so that he sported a little goatee beard of dried blood. One shirt-sleeve was torn and there were cross-cross streaks of grease all over his pants.
Sebastian held his head as if he were a child and washed his face with a large soft cloth. Then he gently took Conor’s hands and sponged out as much of the dirt as he could. ‘We’d better put some iodine on these. You don’t want to get some disgusting infection.’
Conor said, ‘Mother of God,’ when Sebastian poured on the iodine. But he waited patiently while Sebastian wrapped his hands with surgical gauze.
‘So … am I allowed to know how you ended up like this?’ Sebastian asked.
‘Of course. But I could use a drink first.’
Sebastian led him into the living room. He had completely remodeled it since Conor had last been here. The walls were painted in a faded, distressed pink and the limed-oak furniture looked as if it had come from an old French farmhouse. On one of the couches lolled a handsome bare-chested boy of 18 or 19 with golden curls and a dark blue sarong wrapped around his waist, reading a copy of Variety.
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