Vertical Run (26 page)

“Awww!” He pointed at his high-heeled, shiny patent leather sandals. One of his five inch spikes had snapped. “Now look what you’ve done, you animal! Those cost me forty dollars a pair from Frederick’s! Plus shipping and handling!” He started blubbering.

My, my. Turning into a fag basher now, are we?

Dave winced. What he had just done had been too natural, too instinctual—the same as it was twenty-five years earlier. Got a problem? No problem. Just lock and load, my friend, and shortly all of life’s ambiguous complexities will be simplified. And never forget, anyone who’s a little different, anyone who isn’t just like you, well hell, son, in this man’s Army we call that kind of person “target.”

Dave gritted his teeth and started to frame an apology.

A voice came out of the shadows. “Kimberly, you all right, child?” Another luridly dressed prostitute clattered into view. This one seemed to be a woman (or at least a
more authentic-looking cross-dresser). She was wearing a black ciré skirt that barely hid her panties, a blood red Victorian bustier, and heels that were as high as the fallen Kimberly’s.

Jesus, where are these people coming from?

“Ohhh, Charlene, he hit me.” This from the crying transvestite.

“I did not. All I did …”

Charlene advanced on Dave. “You some sort of rough trade, huh? Beat up on a helpless little faggot? That your thing, ain’t it, whuppin’ up on ’em? Poor boy Kimberly the nicest boy in the life, mister. He don’t need no business from your kind.”

Dave backpedaled. “Now look, lady …”

“I ain’t no lady. I’s a whore.” Something bright and sharp snapped open in her hand. “An’ whores take care of their friends.”

Dave looked around wildly. There wasn’t a cab in sight. No police cars. A lone Toyota sped north on Park Avenue. Its driver glanced in his direction, looked away, and increased his speed. The transvestite named Kimberly was tottering to his feet. His eyes were bright with feral hunger.

Charlene crouched, circling Dave. The thing in her hand was a straight razor, and she held it in a wholly businesslike fashion.

“Now look …”

Kimberly urged her on. “Cut him, Charlene.”

“Yeah, get him!” Another voice. “Take his balls off!” And another.

A pack of them. Seven or eight. Black and white. Dressed to kill, and looking for all the world like a pride of hunting cats.
Meat!

Charlene’s eyes sparkled. Her pupils were wide. Dave guessed she was high on some drug. “White man,
you about to have the worst experience in your faggot life.”

A gun would solve the problem. All he had to do was pull one out from beneath his shirt. Showing it would probably do the trick.

But if it doesn’t …?

If it didn’t, then it would only make matters worse. And if matters became worse, he’d have to use it.

Charlene’s razor sliced the air beside his cheek. He dodged left. She was a little off balance. He could have taken her easily.

Then you’d have all the rest of them to deal with. Let her go. The others will stay back as long as they think she can handle you
.

Charlene hissed. “You move fast for a pussy queer.” She came in again. He felt the wind as the razor flashed past him at eye level.

Not bad, she almost got you that time
.

The woman was good. He was going to have to do something about her.

The razor weaved and flashed. A three inch cut snicked open on his shirt.

He couldn’t risk pulling a gun. If she made him shoot her, he wouldn’t be able to go into the building. The corner of Fiftieth Street and Park Avenue had been the center of too much excitement today—bomb scares, twelfth floor muggings, Bernie’s suicide. One more incident, and the police would be all over the place.

While New York City’s finest are willing to overlook a lot, a bullet-riddled corpse on Park Avenue usually gets their attention
.

Dave edged back, slowly luring Charlene forward. He heard steps shuffle nearby. Someone was getting ready to give her a hand.

Now or never
.

He lurched left, as if trying to flee. Charlene moved in with the grace and speed of a tango dancer. The razor arced down, shining in the streetlights, cutting for his face. He slid under her arm. Her wrist slammed
down on his shoulder. The razor clattered on the sidewalk.

Your next move has to be flashy, a real crowd-pleaser
.

Dave dropped into a crouch. The woman’s momentum carried her over his shoulder. He cocked his right leg behind her ankle, kicking it forward while he thrust his body upward. Charlene’s feet left the ground. She began to tumble. Dave snatched her arm and twisted, adding velocity.

It was perfect. It was spectacular. She spun like a propeller, turned 270 degrees in the air, and smashed facedown on the sidewalk. She lifted her head, spitting blood.

Dave ran. The gang behind him howled.

He sprinted across Park Avenue, reaching the median before Charlene’s friends worked up the courage to follow. Someone hurled a can at him. It bounced off his hip and clattered on the asphalt. Dave kept running.

To the disgust of the construction industry and the irritation of the developers, New York City requires that high-rises have ample outdoor public space. For this reason, and this reason only, Dave’s building was fronted by an open plaza. The plaza was surrounded by marble-faced planters. Every now and then the landlord tried to grow shrubbery in them. The plants died, poisoned by the air and choked by trash.

Dave vaulted a planter and dashed toward the entrance.

There were—or rather had been—a pair of fountains on either side of the plaza. However, by the end of the eighties, the city’s homeless population had begun treating such decorative amenities as open-air bathrooms. The building management drained them, and erected chain-link fences around their borders.

Behind him someone stumbled into the fence. Dave sprinted toward the steps, cleared them in one leap, and bounced off a window. He saw the night guard inside look up at the sound. The man started to rise from his desk.

Two glass panes had been shattered during the morning’s evacuation. They’d been replaced with plywood. Dave ran by them. There were revolving doors ahead. The first one was closed, a yellow-striped safety barricade set in front of it. Dave flung himself into the second.

He pushed. Nothing happened. There was a sign on the glass:
USE CENTER DOORS FOR ENTRY AFTER
9:00
P.M
.

Dave darted out. The pack was close. One woman was out ahead of the others. She brandished a broken bottle, and was shrieking like a banshee.

Dave threw the center door open. The guard was up. He had a radio in his hand. It was one of Ransome’s radios, and the guard was one of Ransome’s men.

Dave let his voice rise in fear. It wasn’t difficult. “Help! I’m being …” He ran toward the guard station.

He glanced over his shoulder. There were more than a dozen of them now. They boiled into the lobby behind him.

Dave fumbled for his wallet, flinging it open in front of the guard.
“Please!
I work here! I’m supposed to be on duty! These
animals
want to kill me!”

The guard’s eyes flitted from Dave’s face to the approaching mob. When he looked at Dave, he didn’t like what he saw. When he looked at the mob, he liked it even less. He reached beneath the desk. His hands came out holding a shotgun, an autoloader with an oddly shaped choke.

Ithaca model 37. Complete with duckbill choke. Long time no see, old friend
.

A popular weapon in Vietnam. Fully automatic. Loads and ejects through the same underside port. The duckbill spreads the shot horizontally, in a nice wide arc. If there’s somebody hiding in the bushes, all you have to do is point in their general direction. A charge of number 4 shot does the rest. The grunts who carry the guns call them “Hamburger helpers.”

Of course if there was a camera crew in the neighborhood, you made sure that your Ithaca was out of sight. Couldn’t have the folks back home know that their baby boys were toting around great big nasty meat shredders
.

The guard leveled the shotgun on the crowd. Things went quiet.

“Street-sweeper,” someone muttered, using the Tactical Police Force’s nickname for a duckbilled 12-gauge.

Dave’s inner voice urged him,
Ham it up, pal. Ham it up
.

He took the advice. “My
God!
Thank you,
officer!
Those
creatures
were going to tear me apart!”

The guard glared at Dave, his face a mask of homophobic loathing. All at once, and for the first time in his life, David Elliot knew what it was to be hated not as an individual, but rather as a member of a class.

“Don’t you listen to that faggot!” A tall Hispanic woman stepped forward.

The guard growled, “What’s your gripe, lady?”

“He beatin’ up on people. He just whupped the hell out of my frien’ Charlene and a poor transvestite boy.”

The guard gave Dave a malevolent stare, his eyes hot with abhorrence of homosexuals. Dave played to the man’s repugnance; it was the only thing to do. “They tried to take my
wallet
! I
pushed
her away. I didn’t want to hurt
anybody
! Do I look like some sort of
brute
?” He fumbled his cigarettes out of his jacket and nervously lit one.

The guard scowled at the pack. Virginia Slims. That settled it for him. “No, mister …” He glanced at Dave’s doctored ID card. “… Mister Cohen, you most certainly do not.” He turned to the mob. “You people get the hell out of here. Go back on the street where you belong.”

The Hispanic woman looked over her shoulder. Several of her cohorts nodded encouragement. She rounded on the guard, screaming: “We gonna kill you, prick! You and your faggot boyfriend!”

The guard’s face went bright red. He put the shotgun to his shoulder. “People like you don’t call people like me queer.”

Oh Christ! He’s another goddamn Mullins
.

The late First Shirt had once broken the jaw of a buck
sergeant who had jokingly called him a “homo.” Too many career military men were the same way.

We definitely do not need a midnight shotgun massacre
.

“Queer lover! Pansy boy!” The mob wasn’t helping things.

Dave forced his voice into a high-pitched giggle—Norman Bates sharing a joke with his mother. “Kill them! Nasty
whores
!” He strutted two steps toward the pack. “He’s going to turn you into Gaines Burger, you
bitches
!” The Hispanic woman stopped short, let her hands fall, and shook her head. Dave whirled to face the guard. He opened his eyes wide, hoping they glittered with appropriate insanity. “Well,
do it
!”

The guard’s eyes flicked left and right between Dave and the crowd. Dave swiped at his lips, as if brushing away a fleck of saliva. He jiggled on his feet impatiently, turned and stepped back to the guard desk.

Someone behind him muttered, “Aw, shit. This ain’t worth it.”

The guard’s posture changed slightly. Just enough. He was calming down. “I’m counting to ten.”

Now, while he’s distracted …

Dave drew back another step, moving out of the guard’s field of vision, stretching his hand to where the man’s radio lay.

“Can’t count to twenty-one. Ain’t got enough digits.” The whores began to laugh. The guard snorted. The trouble was over.

Nope. The trouble’s just begun
.

Dave was back in the American Interdyne computer room. He had been tempted to make his first stop the thirty-first floor, the place where all the lights were on and the curtains were drawn. If Ransome really had taken Marge Cohen prisoner, that would be where he’d keep her.

But Ransome didn’t have Marge. Dave was sure of it.

Almost sure.

Besides, if the thirty-first floor was Ransome’s base of operations, there would be guards at the elevator and watchers by every stairwell. Trying to break in was too risky, and it would buy him nothing.

And anyway, he had work to do at American Interdyne. He remembered he had seen an old Mead Data Services Nexis terminal sitting right next to AIW’s mainframe. It might be just what he needed.

Mead, like Dow Jones and a handful of others, maintains a massive on-line database of articles, extracts, and facts assembled from a legion of sources. For a price, anyone can dial in and retrieve information on almost any subject. All you need is the phone number, an ID, and a password.

Consistent with the highest standards of corporate
computer security, someone from American Interdyne had Scotch-taped a TymeNet dial-up number, user ID code, and password to the Nexis terminal’s keyboard.

Dave flexed his fingers over the keys, and logged on. He’d never used any of the news retrieval services himself. That was a job he delegated to his aides. Nonetheless, he didn’t think it would be difficult.

A line of characters printed slowly across the screen. Running at 1200 baud, a glacial speed, the terminal was, like everything else in AIW’s computer room, an antiquity. Dave scanned the instructions as they appeared, entering the American Interdyne ID and password in the proper places.

The system menu appeared. It offered him a choice of topics—general news, business news, scientific databases, financial statistics, and a half dozen other categories. The last menu choice read, “
ALL.
” That was the one he wanted.

Next, the terminal asked how far back in time he wanted to search. Dave pecked in
“20 YEARS.”

“INVALID PARAMETER. TRY AGAIN.”

“ID YEARS.”
That worked.

The system asked:
“KEYWORD OR SEARCH ARGUMENT?”

Dave typed,
“LOCKYEAR,”
and hit the “enter” key.