Vertical Run (25 page)

“All I got is styrofoam.”

“Whatever.” Styrofoam would be as easy to get rid of as paper. All he had to do was tear it into tiny shreds.

The counterman slapped two stiff-looking pastries on a chipped plate and filled a large styrofoam cup with coffee. “Four-fifty with the tax.”

The first danish and coffee Dave had ever purchased in New York City had cost him a quarter.

Dave handed him a five dollar bill. “Keep it.” He slid his wallet into his rear pocket.

Someone bumped into his back. Dave knifed his elbow backward. It drove into something soft. There was a gasp of pain. Dave turned. The pickpocket was doubled over, clutching his chest. Dave retrieved his wallet from the man’s fingers and smiled. “Thanks, I guess I dropped it.”

The pickpocket muttered, “No problem, man.” He backed away.

One or two people looked at Dave. Their eyes were expressionless.

He took a table by the window, wolfed down his pastries, and savored his coffee. The pastries tasted dry but good. You can’t get a bad danish in New York. Dave went to the counter for a second serving.

When he returned to his table, he glanced out the window. His jaw dropped. The rental car had disappeared. How long had it taken for someone to steal it? Ninety seconds at the outside.

Africa, he thought. It’s like a tourist leaving the safety of his truck and stepping out onto the veldt.…

Three giggly black women were sitting at the next table. One tapped a cigarette from a pack of Virginia Slims. As Dave watched her, hungrily remembering all the pleasure that tobacco brings, an idea came to mind. Virginia Slims …

He leaned across the aisle. “Excuse me, miss, might I ask you for a smoke?” The woman’s eyes widened. Dave added, “I’ll pay. In fact, I’ll give you a buck for a pack.”

“Chil’, coffin nails cost two-fifty a pack in this city, an’ what planet do you come from?”

Dave handed her a five. She reached in her purse and removed a fresh pack of Virginia Slims. “Profit’s profit, honey, and you don’t look like anyone I can make money off of the usual way”

The other women at her table found her comment hilarious. They dissolved into gales of laughter. “Here. Best take these matches, too.”

Dave broke open the pack, drew out a cigarette, and, for the first time in twelve years, lit up a smoke.

What the hell, pal. You’re going to die anyway
.

Grand Central Station spooked him. At this late hour it was another place entirely—eerie, almost eldritch. The building was almost empty, and that alone was both unnatural and unnerving.

No more than five people were in sight … a teenage boy and girl slumped sleeping on their backpacks … a lone patrolman circling the perimeter of the main floor … a tired-looking mechanic, greasy in grey-and-blue-striped overalls, tramping wearily out from one of the platforms. Only one of the ticket booths seemed to be manned. The lights above the Off Track Betting windows were dark. The news kiosks were closed and shuttered.

Spookiest of all, the floors were clean.

Dave’s shoes clicked hollowly on the marble. No one seemed to be paying attention to him. Nonetheless, he felt eyes watching. Not hostile. Not even curious. Just watchful.

Cave dwellers. They say this part of town is riddled with tunnels and underground passageways. People live in them, keeping guard through holes and grilles, only coming out when there’s no one around
.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled. New York is strange. Deep in the night, it is stranger still.

Dave turned east. There was, he recollected, an instant photo booth not far from the Lexington Avenue exit.

He studied the instructions. “PHOTOGRAPHS. Four pictures for $1. Adjust seat height. Insert $1 bill in tray, face up. Push in. No change returned. Green light illuminates when ready. Red light illuminates when complete. Wait 1 minute. Remove pictures from slot.”

Dave fed a dollar into the machine. The red light winked green. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Whirrrrrr
. The light turned red again. He counted off sixty seconds, and withdrew a strip of photographs that made his eyebrows arch querulously.

Jesus, pal, that hairdo makes you look queer as a plaid rabbit. Let’s not talk to any strangers, huh?

Dave held the strip of photographs between his fingers, blowing softly until it was completely dry. Then he drew a small pocketknife out of his slacks, using it to trim one of the photographs to the size of the picture on the stolen ID card: “American Interdyne Worldwide. M. F. Cohen, Computer Systems Analyst.” He spoiled the first photo. The second was a perfect fit, precisely the same size and dimensions as Marge’s picture.

He needed something to fasten the photo to the card. His options were few. Indeed, he had no choice in the matter.

Oh no! Yecch! Ugh! Gross me out!

He felt around beneath the seat in the photo booth. Sure enough, there were several pieces of chewing gum stuck to it.

Typhoid! Herpes! Gingivitis!

He pried one loose, tried not to think about what he was going to do, and popped it in his mouth.

You are a truly disgusting individual
.

The flavor was gone. No matter. He chewed it soft, stretched out a thin strand, and used it to glue his photograph over Marge’s. He slid the result into a plastic window in his wallet, formerly the home of a driver’s license now as useless as his credit cards.

And now, he needed to make one last phone call.

Well, not needed.

Wanted.

Marge Cohen was on his mind. Marigold Fields Cohen. He liked “Marigold” better than “Marge.” And he needed to be sure she was safe.

Just a quick call, just to make sure she’d left. She had to be gone, long gone, by now.

But still, he wanted to check one more time.

There were five pay phones in a row, right next to the photo booth. Four of them were out of order. One of them worked. Dave dialed. One ring, two rings.

She has her answering machine set to answer after five rings
.

Three rings, but not a fourth. “Hi, you’ve reached 555-6503. We can’t com—I’ve got her, Mr. Elliot, and if you want her, you know where to find her.”

There were now five out of order phones next to the photo booth.

Dave gripped the handset, torn from its wire, though he didn’t entirely remember doing so. He turned it over, studied it with an empty mind, and placed it back on its now useless cradle.

It was a lie, of course. Ransome up to his goddamned tricks again. Psychological warfare. Mindfucking his prey. Trying to weaken him, frighten him, make him act rashly; it is eminently more useful to destroy an enemy’s spirit …

It could not be true. Dave had called earlier. Marge’s regular message, a single woman’s thoughtful message, was on the machine then. That could mean only one thing. Marge had made it. She’d gotten free and fled. Then Ransome’s men had returned. They found her gone.

Dave cursed himself for wrecking the phone. If he hadn’t he could call back, call Marge’s number again. There was something to the way Ransome’s voice sounded … as if it had been coming from too far away. Through a radio? Yes, almost certainly. That’s what had happened. Ransome’s little friends had found Marge missing and radioed for instructions. Ransome, cunning Ransome, had used the radio link to record the message.

That was it. It had to be.

It was a shot in the dark. Ransome did not know, could not possibly know, that Dave felt … felt what? … felt something that men should not feel about women who are twenty years their junior. Ransome was just guessing, hoping that Dave was foolish enough to feel some sense of obligation to a woman he’d only met twice, and
whom, if the ugly truth were told, he’d exploited on both occasions.

Yeah, a shot in the dark, and a long shot at that. The act of a man who was running out of time, running out of ideas, and getting desperate. It was just a cheap trick.

But if it wasn’t …

If it wasn’t, he was going back to Senterex anyway. The secret locked in Bernie’s credenza was reason enough. And if Ransome really did have Marge … well, he’d have to do something about that, wouldn’t he?

Escalators led out of Grand Central and into the old Pan Am building, newly renamed for its current owner, Metropolitan Life Insurance, but more commonly known to cynical New Yorkers as the Snoopy Building—a sarcastic tribute to Met Life’s advertising spokes-beagle. At this late hour the escalators had been turned off. Dave climbed them anyway, then walked swiftly through a darkened lobby and out onto Forty-fifth Street.

Park Avenue was above him, an elevated roadway that left ground level a block north at Forty-sixth Street. Two dark pedestrian tunnels led from where Dave stood to the corner of Forty-sixth and Park, and Dave could see sleeping bodies stretched out in their shadows. He needed to get to Park Avenue. He didn’t need any incidents.

Disturbing the homeless, annoying the crazies, caused incidents.

Maybe you ought to think about moving to a safer city. You know, Sarajevo, Beirut …

Dave chose the tunnel that looked emptiest, and tried to walk as softly as he could.

He almost made it, but not quite. Just short of Forty-sixth Street something plucked at his foot. Adrenaline spiked his heart. He kicked hard, simultaneously snatching a pistol from his belt. “I’ll fucking blow you away!” The loudness of his own voice scared him.

A surprised rat spun through the air, collided with a wall, and squeaked with indignation. Dave stood, breathing
hard, sweating, cursing himself. The rat trotted back toward Forty-fifth Street.

Getting a little hyper, aren’t we, pal?

He slipped the pistol back beneath his shirt, and jogged out to Park Avenue.

The sight stunned him. He had never seen Park Avenue so beautiful, had never thought that it could be. By night, the traffic gone, the sidewalks empty, it possessed a certain peace, a gentleness. Noisily frenetic by day, it now seemed to him to be a woman, dark-haired, napping lightly, and wearing the faintest of slumbering smiles.

He stood momentarily transfixed, wondering how it was that he had never noticed how heartbreakingly gorgeous this city could be.

The central median, dividing the northbound and southbound lanes, sparkled with flowers—not the tulips of spring, but the asters of fall. The colors were muted by the streetlights, turned to soft pastels. To the north the traffic lights changed, blinking their circuit from green to yellow to red and back to green. The buildings were mosaics of light and dark, indigo blue and deep sea green dominating.

Green …

Emerald green … green as a green bottle … green as a small, perfect lake nestled in a high Sierra valley … in the magic evening of a hot summer day … Taffy Weiler wearing a loopy grin … horses standing bowed as if praying to an equine God … David Elliot, his heart near enough to bursting, knowing that no matter how sour his later life might turn …

In the dark behind him someone cursed. A bottle arced out of the shadows and exploded at his feet.

The moment was gone. The Sierras disappeared. The city returned, and night.

In New York, only imbeciles stand still after sundown
.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled again. Someone was watching him, sizing him up, wondering about the contents of his wallet. It was time to move on.

Dave trotted north. Four more blocks would bring him to the corner of Fiftieth Street.

The nightowls had long since departed the Avenue, the workaholics left for home at last. Some few random office windows were still lit—largely, Dave thought, the offices of people who had not gone home until after the janitors were through with their chores.

Nonetheless, there were still people in every building, including his own.

He stood across the street, studying its windows floor by floor. On the eleventh floor most of the lights were lit. That particular floor was occupied by the mergers and acquisitions department of Lee, Bach & Wachutt, one of the city’s most notoriously predatory investment bankers. Up higher, on floors 34 to 39, many of McKinley-Allan’s lights were still on. Doubtless, legions of eager young management consultants were toiling the night away, striving to satisfy the perfectionist partners who had long since gone home to bed.

Elsewhere the building was a checkerboard of light and dark, albeit mostly dark. No one floor seemed to be showing more …

Thirty-one
.

Dave squinted. The thirty-first floor’s windows were neither bright nor dark. They were merely dim. The curtains had been drawn closed on every window facing Park Avenue.

What’s on thirty-one?

Dave didn’t remember. A reinsurance company? No, that wasn’t right. A trading company? That was it. A trading company with the word “Trans” in its name. Trans-Pacific? Trans-Oceanic? Trans- … something or another.

Promising, very promising. Just the kind of anonymous enterprise the intelligence crowd likes
.

“Hi. Wanna date?”

Dave spun, his fist drawn for a punch.

“Whoa, honey! I ain’t no trouble.”

She—he?—was the most improbable transvestite Dave
had ever seen. Too tall, too thin, dressed in a silvered Chinese cheongsam, and dripping with rhinestone jewelry.

Dave growled, “Two things. One, don’t sneak up behind people. Two, go away.”

He—she?—the creature cocked its head, placed an electric pink fingernail against its cheek, and smirked. “Aw, don’t be that way, baby. I can tell from just lookin’ at you, you like what I got to offer.”

See, I warned you about your new hairdo
.

Dave felt himself blush. He didn’t like the experience. “Get out of my face.”

“Lighten up, hon. Tell you what, seein’ as you gonna be my last customer of the business day, I give you a special price.”

Dave bit his words, one by one: “I. Am. Going. To. Say. This. Only. Once.
Go! Away!”

“Oooh. A rough one. Don’t look so rough, but I guess appearances can …”

Dave took a step forward, put his flattened palm against the man’s chest, and pushed. The transvestite stumbled back over the curb and sat down hard.