Billingsgate Shoal (38 page)

I grabbed an oil drum and placed it underneath the
ladder and set it down quietly. Tired as I was I knew that a quick
start spelled all the difference. In less than three seconds I was on
the drum, then in contact with the rung, then climbing. I think that
after about five seconds I was past the second row of windows, and
heading for the third story. Please God. . .please give me one more
minute—forty-five seconds—I almost stopped and fell back down the
vertical cage when I heard the popping and grinding of the old wall
coming apart. Silence. Then another short burst. Schilling was
scouring out the far reaches of the old brick court, using the
machine pistol as a water hose. He spat another burst, and I heard
the deep timpani boom of metal. He'd hit the dumpster and some of the
oil drums. With luck he'd also knocked over my stepping stone, the
drum I'd placed underneath the ladder. But I climbed as fast as my
cast let me. The ground, what was faintly visible of it, seemed a
long way down.

"Adams!" '

Fourth floor. I thought. Please God please. . . just
twenty more seconds.

I climbed by feel; it allowed me to go faster. I was
panting hard now but keeping my mouth wide open. I looked down. Oh
Christ. Christ Almighty: a light.

There it was, a pale yellow pencil beam snaking
around on the asphalt far below. I heard the sound of an oil drum
kicked over, and then a curse.

"Adams! Adams, you're dead!"

I could see the rooftop now against the pale gray
sky. I could see the big tiles that lined the top of the brickwork. I
looked down, the light was now snaking around the corner of the yard,
right beneath me. Good God, don't point it up. Don't point it up-

Ten more feet. My body ached in every muscle. Eight
feet. Seven. I think during the last three seconds of my climb my
body slowed a wee bit, thinking the goal was reached.

And the next second I was flooded with light, just as
I'd been in the old barn when climbing on another ladder. I didn't
stop. I redoubled the effort and the pain. I thought I heard a grunt
or bellow come from far, far below me. I had grabbed the smooth,
slick tiling on top of the brickwork when the wall around me burst
apart in a shattering roar. Bits of mortar and brick stung my face
and eyes. I kicked my feet desperately, spastically, climbing up,
like getting out of a swimming pool. As I fell over the tile I felt a
monstrous kick on my heel, and then a deep burning.

I lay on the tar and gravel of the flat factory roof
and breathed deeply for a few seconds, then crept to the edge. I
could see without even leaning over that the light beam was shining
up the ladderway. But at this height the beam was pretty faint. There
wasn't much he could see from down there. I glanced around. If there
was no way off the roof I would have to wait at the edge in hopes of
jumping or hitting him as he neared the top. If he followed me, which
I doubted. On the other hand, if there was any safe way off the roof,
I was eager to take it. The light was off now. I hobbled over about
twelve feet to the left of the ladder and peeped over. I didn't want
to show my head near it. Jesus, it was a long way down.

Nothing. No visible motion. No sound. I scooted back
as fast as the pain would let me, and reached out and down and felt
the metal sides of the ladder. I grabbed and held. If he was waiting
below and saw my arm, he could take it off with a quick burst. But I
risked it; I had to know if he was on the ladder. Nothing. No
vibration whatsoever.

Then where was he?

That made me nervous. Very. Because I knew Schilling
knew the place well. He had to. If there was another way to the roof,
he probably knew about it. Was there another ladder, fire escape,
ramp, elevator. . .anything that would allow him to reach a far edge
or corner of the big wide roof and come at me from behind?

I kept my fist wrapped around the steel, and turned
and swept my eyes around the flat expanse of gray gravel, growing
ever lighter as dawn came. A very big roof indeed. To think there was
only one approach to its summit was foolishness. There had to be
another. Where?

If I left my spot to roam about, would Schilling then
come I up the ladder? If I stayed, would he come up another way? Was
he in fact doing that very thing right now?

What if I went back down the ladder?

You've got to be kidding, Adams.

I decided on a test. I pawed the rooftop until I had
a small handful of gravel. I held the tiny stones in the exact center
of the round cage and let three or four of them fall. After what
seemed an eternity, I heard the faint bong of the oil drum. Schilling
wasn't on the ladder. This meant, if nothing else, that this approach
was safe for at least the time it would take him to make the climb,
which was about ninety seconds, maybe more, since he'd been clipped
by a slug. I had to risk a brief walk around.

I tried to stand and fell down again. I grabbed at my
heel. The rubber sole of the Topsider was blown away, but my heel was
intact. The slug had hit me obliquely but obviously caused some
internal trauma. Perhaps a broken bone. Certainly a horrendous
bruise. I hobbled about until something hit me square in the chest. I
lowered my arm to chop at it. It was one of those iron steam pipes,
snaking over the roof about four feet high set on concrete supports.
I ducked under it, then quickly turned back. If that thing snaked
down the side of the building, I was for sliding down it, even though
it meant there was a big chance of losing my grip and splattering all
over the asphalt six' stories below.

But I was in bad, bad shape; Two gimpy arms (the
steam pipe chop had just decommissioned the right one), a shot up
heel, busted nuts and guts, not to mention an extraordinary case of
general fatigue.

But I needed off that bloody roof.

The pipe wound to the edge, and across a roadway to
another roof. Shit. Twenty feet of horizontal, six-inch cast-iron
pipe almost eighty feet up.

But if I could get across it I'd be safe. I thought
of straddling it, letting my legs hang down both sides while I pumped
along the length of it with my arms.

My damaged groin winced at the thought. . .

And then I noticed something else. I saw some big
shiny cables and glass insulators right down next to the pipe. High
voltage. Sitting there on the steel I would be connected to a natural
ground. One stray swipe with arm or leg and I was gone, fried like a
squirrel careless enough to skip the wrong way on a utility pole. I
didn't like the look of the high-voltage wires at all.

So I returned to the ladder. I thought I saw a flash
of light in the center of the steel cage. I approached the edge
cautiously and peered over. The light beam climbed up at me. I drew
back my head. Seconds later I heard the mean buzz of bullets in front
of me, not two feet from my head, right where my face had been
seconds earlier. Unlike a high-velocity rifle bullet, the .45 slug is
a snail amongst hares. The average commercial jetliner can fly faster
than this speeding bullet. It kills because it weighs as much as a
golf ball and is almost as big. . . It never breaks the sound
barrier, and so does not produce the tell tale crack, the sonic boom
that warns the quarry that it is being shot at.

I grabbed the ladder top. It thrummed and trembled.
The fish was on the line.

I had company.

There was no choice now. I had to either find another
way down or risk the pipe and the electric wires. I swung my head
over the side two feet to the left of the ladderway, then moved it
slowly to the side of the cage, with only my eyes peeping over the
edge. I could see a vague glimmering down there. Far, far away. I
grabbed the ladder top again. The vibration didn't feel any stronger.
Then l noticed a pattern to the vibrations, a regular heartbeat of
motion through the vertical steel. It was fairly slow. Schilling was
indeed wounded—otherwise a man with his strength and vigor could
dash up the rungs as fast as or faster than I had done.

I scurried back to the roof edge where the big pipe
dove over the side and straight out to the next building. I swung
cautiously over the tile, grabbing the inside edge of the big slick
slabs with the tenacity of Beowulf, and poked my feet down. I felt
them touch the pipe. I then stood on it, and was almost ready to
release my grip, when I felt the sickening loss of resistance from
below as the pipe sagged. I clung, and drew my feet up in a fetal
position, then hunch-crawled back over the tile like a wounded spider
all balled up.

The clock was ticking. I could now hear the faint
fring fring fring
of
scraping feet on the metal ladder. He had that Ingram slung over his
shoulder, his flashlight ready too. I remembered—in a tenth of a
second at the longest—scoffing at a fish trap in northern Minnesota
when I was a kid. I couldn't believe all that seething protein behind
the wooden slats in the river could be so dumb. Now I knew exactly
how those poor fish felt. Like me, they'd made a mistake. They'd made
a wrong tum. That's all it took. I turned fast to go to the far side
of the roof. I would cry one last quick search for a way down before
lying in wait at the ladder's top, ready to lunge at the murderer
with my hands and teeth.

I bumped into the metal pipe again, and heard it
groan. I wiggled it. It gave some. Then I ran along its length for
perhaps sixty feet before I found what I wanted: a completely
crumpled section of the old steam pipe. Three sections of pipe lay
scattered on the gravel roof. I grabbed the nearest one and heaved it
up. It was black iron, three feet long, and very heavy. One end of
the six-inch pipe had a flange, with holes around it for bolts. I dug
the fingers of my right hand into this handle and tugged it back to
the ladder. The light was again playing along its upper terminus.
Then it went off. I hefted the pipe in both hands. I could scarcely
lift it. I rested the smooth end of it on the shiny hard tile. As it
rolled a bit it made a heavy grating sound, like sand in a mortar and
pestle. I reached over and grabbed the ladder sides. There was a
heavy vibration, and speeded up too. I chanced it; I looked over. I
could see Schilling scurrying up the ladder to kill me. He wasn't
looking up. I moved my head way over to the edge of the steel
cage—the left side—so I could peer at him with my right eye. He
glanced up once. I saw the white face outlined by the dark beard. The
wispy-thread line of the puka shell necklace against the tanned neck.

I hated him.

He didn't see me apparently, even in the soft light
of full dawn. His head lowered again as he resumed climbing. I saw
now the dark line along his back, wide, cylindrical, like a black
man's arm with the hand cut off. The Ingram. I hooked my fingers
around the flange of the pipe and slid, it over off the tile. The
weight of it pulled down hard on my arms and drew my chest down tight
on the tile so it ached. My left wrist burned. I walked forward two
steps on my knees—felt my kneecaps digging into the loose stones
that covered the asphalt roof. Schilling was about three stories
below me. All the lines of the metal ladder cage seemed to converge
upon him, the small winking figure in the center of the vertical
tunnel.

I peered through the section of iron pipe. It had a
wide bore, like a stovepipe. Through it I could see very clearly. I
moved the pipe to and fro, from side to side, by shifting my weary
body and shoulders. Soon I looked straight down the bore—as if down
a telescopic sight—and could see nothing but the climbing figure
far below.

I couldn't do it. Much as I hated him, I could not
get myself to drop the pipe on him.

Considering the great weight of the pipe, the sharp,
spadelike edge of the male end of it, and most especially the long
distance it would travel, at thirty-two feet per second squared, it
was deadly as a bazooka shell. It would slice him in half, pulverize
him.

But I couldn't.

It's pretty hard to go to school for over twelve
years learning to make bodies whole again after illness and trauma,
and then decide to dissect one instantly by way of gravity. But the
dark side of me—of Homo sapiens—was working too. I wanted him
dead, and I knew it. Admitted it. Mostly because it was fairly
obvious by now that he wanted me dead. And he would do it. He'd more
than proven that. I had to wait. I needed a sign. . .a signal. . .

Then he looked up. I peeped at him through the
lowered pipe. He was too far away, the light too faint, to read his
expression. But I thought I saw in the growing light, his eyes widen.
He stopped climbing, and his slow, startled stare gazed up in wonder,
and the beginnings of fear. Was it the I fear that Allan Hart had
felt? That Walter Kincaid and Danny Murdock felt?

He was halfway up the ladder. The network of steel
rods surrounding him was a little over two feet wide; There just i
wasn't any place the poor bastard could go. I saw a broad swirl of
light-flicker, a Fourth of July whirligig of dancing light beam and
flash, and then a distant dry clatter. He'd turned on the flashlight
and dropped it. My fingers and wrists ached now with the holding of
the big steam pipe. I saw a great flurry of motion below—saw
Schilling's big form sway back and forth, one arm moving quickly,
then the other. Then I got my sign. l received the signal, loud and
clear. I heard the cocking of the Ingram's bolt, and knew he was
about to send a fatal burst of slugs up to take my head apart.