Vertical Run (5 page)

He kicked Ransome in the face.

Same school and same classes? Is that what you said, Mr. Ransome? If so, you weren’t expecting that particular move, were you?

Dave’s heel caught Ransome squarely under the left cheek, snapping his head back and spinning him over, belly-up. Dave cocked his right elbow into a spear, dove forward, came down hard onto—into—Ransome’s solar plexus. Ransome’s face went white. Dave drew his arm back, flattening his palm, aiming a killing stroke at the tip of Ransome’s chin.

He never delivered the blow. Ransome’s face went slack, and his eyes closed.

Dave levered his right arm across Ransome’s neck with choking force. Ransome didn’t move. Dave peeled Ransome’s right eyelid open. Only white showed. Most people can roll their eyeballs back. A trained man can fake unconsciousness persuasively. Dave flicked a finger against the white of Ransome’s eye. There wasn’t the slightest twitch. No one can fake that. Ransome was out cold.

David Elliot wanted a cigarette more than anything else in the world.

According to the contents of his wallet, John Michael Ransome was a vice president with something called The Specialist Consulting Group. The late Mark Carlucci was a senior associate with the same organization. Neither of the two men’s business cards showed an address, only a phone number: area code 703—Virginia. Nor was there a home address on either’s driver’s license, only a post office box number—the same box number for both Ransome and Carlucci.

Now there’s a little coincidence for you
. Dave’s inner voice, at least for the moment, was sounding a little smug.

“Sparrow, this is Partridge. Report.” Carlucci’s radio was miniature, black, and bore no manufacturer’s stamp or other indication of who produced it. Carlucci had worn it clipped on his belt. Now Dave wore it clipped to his.

“Roger. This is Sparrow. There are one goddamn lot of stairs in this sucker.”

“Where are you and what’s your E.T.A.?”

“We’re on thirty-four in the south stairwell, and the men need a breather. Give us three, Partridge.”

“Is three more minutes acceptable to you, Robin?”

Dave answered, trying to mimic Ransome’s soft Appalachian drawl, “Affirmative on that.”

“Roger. Take a break, Sparrow. Partridge out.”

Whew
.

Dave backed away from Ransome. Even though the man was unconscious and bound with his own belt, Dave didn’t want to take his eyes off him—nor the sights of the very odd pistol he had removed from the late Mark Carlucci’s hand.

You gotta give that shootin’ iron some thought
.

Later. Not now.

He lifted the telephone on the receptionist’s desk, punched 9 for an outside line, and dialed the number on Ransome’s business card. There was a pause while the call connected. The phone at the other end of the line rang once before a mechanical voice answered, “Enter authorization code.”

“Hello, I’d like to speak to Mr. Ransome’s secretary.”

“Enter authorization code now.” It was some sort of a robot, a computer telephone operator. Dave pushed a few of the telephone buttons, entering a random number. “Access denied.” Click.

Dave shrugged. If he was going to get answers, he would have to get them somewhere else. In the meantime …

He stepped back to where Ransome lay. The man was still unconscious. Even if he was awake, Dave doubted if he would tell him anything. Ransome was not the kind of
man who could easily be made to talk. It would take hours of interrogation—MACV-SOG-style interrogation—to break him down.

Dave started to drop Ransome’s wallet onto the man’s chest. He stopped, frowned, and opened it. He fingered the bills inside. Eighty-three dollars. He really didn’t like doing this.

Aw, go ahead. How many times can they hang you?

If he was in as much trouble as he thought he was—
what better definition of trouble is there than having a team of bad attitude gunmen on your case?
—then he would need cash. It would be suicide to use his credit cards. Every card transaction in America is captured electronically. Buy something in a store, and the sales clerk slides your card into one of those little grey Verifone terminals to log your purchase into a distant computer. The Verifone box automatically registers the identity of the merchant entering the transaction. If someone wants to know where you are—precisely where you are—all they have to do is tap a few computers. And if you’re stupid enough to use a cash dispensing machine, the job is even easier.

Dave folded Ransome’s bills over twice, and put them in his pants. Then he emptied Carlucci’s wallet. Sixty-seven dollars. He knew he should have picked Bernie Levy’s pocket as well, but it was too late to do it. He’d already been back to his office preparing a little surprise for Ransome’s weapons team. It wouldn’t be a good idea to enter it again.

Instead he walked to the west fire door, and entered the stairwell. With any luck, he’d find help only three flights away.

Fire stairs—every office tower has them. Usually they’re concrete, but sometimes steel. It all depends on the building code. Dave’s were concrete.

The stairwell reminded him of a prison movie—Cagney and Raft circa 1939. The walls were featureless, uniform, grey. The cold monotony was broken only by insulated pipes and, every five floors, by a red-enameled cabinet containing an emergency fire hose.

The stairs themselves were wide enough for three people to walk side by side; they wound from the top of the building to its ground floor, quite perfect in geometry, a spiral in cement. There was a seven-by-twelve-foot concrete platform at every floor, and another halfway between each floor. Fifty floors, one hundred platforms, and twelve stairs linking each platform to the next. No landmarks but for enameled metal plates announcing the floor number.

At every platform, the stairs turned 180 degrees. Twelve stairs up, turn. Twelve stairs up, turn. Twelve stairs up, turn. If you ran too fast, you’d become dizzy.

Dizzy … If you’ve got a problem with heights, you don’t want to look over the railing and down the stairwell
.

Dave gnawed his lip. The gap between the spiraling stairs was wide enough for a man. If you wanted an easy way to end it all, you need do nothing more than step through a fire door, cross a platform, straddle your legs across a cold iron banister, and …

My, aren’t we in a cheerful frame of mind this morning?

The top five floors of the building housed Howe & Hummel, attorneys-at-law. Harry Halliwell, senior partner and Dave’s lawyer, occupied an oversized corner office on the forty-eighth floor. Like Dave, Harry was an early riser and a committed jogger. The two often arrived at the corner of Fiftieth and Park Avenue at the same time, Harry running north from his Murray Hill townhouse, Dave coming from the opposite direction.

He counted Harry not only as his lawyer, but also as his friend. Five years earlier, when Dave and Helen wed, Harry had been the best man and his wife, Susan, had been matron of honor. At least once a month, and sometimes
more frequently, the two couples went out together for a night on the town. Once they had gone on a vacation to Hawaii together, although Harry had spent most of his time on the beach with a cellular telephone glued to his ear.

If there was anyone who could help Dave now, it was Harry. Shrewdly logical and disarmingly soft-spoken, Harry Halliwell was a lawyer’s lawyer. More than that, he was one of those rare men of unquestioned integrity whom both politicians and corporate potentates term “an honest broker.” He was called upon to arbitrate conflicts between unions and management, between business and government, and sometimes even between nations. No matter how bitter the disagreement, Harry always managed to negotiate a compromise that both sides felt was fair.

Harry seemed to know everybody, and everybody seemed to know him. His clients ranged from Forbes 400 moguls to Mafia chieftains. There was no problem that Harry Halliwell couldn’t handle.

Including, one hopes, counseling a client who suddenly seems to have a contract on his head
.

Dave raced up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, running as he had all his life, and running perfectly. When he reached the forty-eighth floor, he wasn’t even breathing hard.

He pushed the fire door. It didn’t move.

He jogged the handle. It was locked. A fire alarm was supposed to unlock all the building’s doors automatically. Either something had gone wrong, or Ransome’s men knew their business.

The fire doors are one-way only. They open from the inside, but are locked on the outside. In this town there are too many desperadoes to do it any other way
.

No problem. Dave might not be able to use his American Express Platinum Card to buy his way out of trouble, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use it at all. His instructors—not the Special Forces trainers at Fort Bragg, but the
other ones, the ones who never mentioned their last names—had taught him, among other less-than-licit skills, how to shim a lock.

The latch clicked. The fire door swung open.

Moments later he was outside Harry’s office. Harry’s door was cracked. The lights were on. He could hear Harry’s muted voice on the telephone.

Dave tapped on the door and then entered. Harry was stretched out in his chair, still dressed in his running gear. His feet were resting on top of the cluttered, much-scarred Parsons table that he used as a desk. Behind him, his bookcases overflowed with loose paper, bound volumes, and an astonishingly untidy collection of bric-a-brac accumulated, who knows how or why, over the course of his thirty-plus year career.

The lawyer looked up at Dave, raised an eyebrow, and spoke into the telephone. “Yes. Yes. I do understand. Really. Don’t worry, Congress will come around. I’ve spoken to Bob, and I think we can find a common ground. No, I think not. Really. Indeed. Well, now I have another appointment I must move on to. Certainly. Oh, and sorry I missed Chelsea’s birthday party. I trust she got my gift. Good. Of course. Think nothing of it. Yes, good-bye.”

Harry sighed as he set the telephone down on the cradle. “Ahh, me.” First he frowned, then he looked up smiling. “It’s that time of year again. Appropriations hearings. One would think that after two hundred years of practice the executive and legislative branches would have learned how to reach accommodation.” He gestured at a silver Tiffany decanter. “Coffee, David?”

“Thanks. I need it.”

“Have a seat, and tell me what brings you to my chambers at this unholy hour?” Harry hefted the decanter. He looked at it and grimaced.

Dave pulled up a chair. He tried to frame some appropriate way to say what had to be said. He couldn’t. Instead, he blurted out, “Harry, this is nuts, but Bernie just tried to kill me.”

Halliwell’s eyebrow shot up again. He removed the decanter’s lid and peered inside. “You are joking of course.”

“No joke. And he wasn’t alone. There were these two other guys—gunmen, Harry.”

Halliwell shook the coffee pitcher and frowned. “Hmpf. I seem to have emptied this in rather less than a half hour’s time. No good for your heart drinking that much coffee. Gunmen, you say? Well, they couldn’t have been very competent, could they? Not if you’re …” He stopped, holding the decanter in mid-air, and studied Dave’s face.

Dave nodded. “It’s not a joke, Harry. There’s a dead body on the forty-fifth floor. Maybe two. I’m in trouble.”

Harry pulled his feet off the desk. He stood and whispered, “You
are
serious, aren’t you?”

Dave nodded again.

“How did you, ahh, manage to … well …”

“Good luck, Harry. Old reflexes and good luck. And if I wasn’t in the kind of shape I’m in, I think I’d be dead.”

Harry’s eyebrows reached their ultimate height, hovered for some few seconds, and then fell into a frown. “Uh … well. My, my, my …”

“I need help.”

Harry smiled his most practiced and professional smile, the one that made his clients feel better. “And you shall have it. But first you shall have some coffee. As shall I.” He walked out from behind his desk. “Whatever this … well … problem is, Dave, it strikes me as one that shall involve the consumption of rather more caffeine than is good for either of us. I will go fetch a fresh pot.”

So saying, he walked past Dave and toward the door. He didn’t time his next act correctly. If he had, Dave would not have caught the arc of heavy silver out of the corner of his eye.

Dave lurched left. The coffee pitcher smashed down on the back of his chair, missing his skull by less than an inch. It tumbled from Harry’s hand and rolled across the carpet.

“Harry! What the hell …?” Dave was on his feet. Harry, his face contorted and red, was backing toward the door.

“You’re a dead man, Elliot! A dead man!”

Dave stood stunned, his mouth open. Something made of acid and ice uncoiled in his stomach. “Harry …”

But Harry turned and ran.

So far, he had been operating on intuition and no small amount of luck. Now he needed a plan.

Ransome was a professional, and so were his people. There would be men in the lobby watching the elevators and fire stairs. Ransome had told them what Dave looked like and how he was dressed. At this time of day, the lobby was empty. Ransome’s people would spot him in a second if he tried to escape from the building.

Nor was there any question of finding a phone and calling for help. He couldn’t call a friend, call his wife, call his brother. He couldn’t even call the police. At least not right away. Not until he knew why—why, why, why—his boss, his best friend, and several people he didn’t even know seemed to want him dead.

Because if they wanted him dead, they might want some other people dead too. And David Elliot had no intention of putting anyone he cared for in harm’s way.

Besides, he could make it on his own. At least for a little while. Maybe longer than that. After all, in the old days they’d trained him well—gratifyingly well. It seemed his body had not forgotten the lessons that his mind had long rejected.