Nothing Lasts Forever (15 page)

"It's the long way around, but I see what you mean. You call William Gibbs, in Eureka, California. Tell him what's happening and where, and the first two words out of his mouth will be my name."

"Gotcha. Anybody else?"

"A Ms... got that? Mz?.. Kathi Logan." Leland gave him the area code and her number. "Tell her I was wishing her a Merry Christmas when I was cut off. She'll understand."

"I'll do that exactly right. Don't you worry about it. Why don't you get some rest?"

"No, I'm going to tune in on the opposition a while."

"You do that?"

"Channel twenty-six. Don't let them kid you. They all speak English."

"We heard the German, but none of us can handle it. We're getting it on tape. What have they been telling you?"

"Little Tony likes to think he's a seductive, persuasive guy. You've already heard everything I've been able to figure out. Nothing so complicated: he juices my fruit, and I juice his."

More laughter. "I'm going to tune in."

"What the hell — people are dying left and right, but it's all in fun, right?"

"If you say so."

Leland dialed to channel twenty-six. "Are you there, Tony?"

"Yes, Mr. Leland. It took me a moment to adjust my receiver. Mr. Leland, are you listening?"

Yes.
"Yes." He almost didn't say it aloud.

"We have here your colleague, Mr. Ellis."

Leland closed his eyes. "How are you, Ellis?"

"All right, Joe." It was a voice on the edge of terror. Leland couldn't remember Ellis's first name. "Listen to me," he said, echoing Leland's words to Dwayne T. Robinson, Lieutenant, LAPD —
listen to me:
some kind of Mayday into the void: "Listen: they want you to tell them where the detonators are. They know people are listening. They want the detonators, or they're going to kill me, Joe. Joe, I've done you a lot of favors in the recent past. I want you to think of that. I thought you would understand that, Joe. Joe, are you listening?"

Favors?
He was telling Leland that he was shielding Steffie, but was favors the word he thought expressed what he was doing? If Leland didn't turn over the detonators, would he tell them who Stephanie was, to keep himself alive? "Yeah, I hear you."

"Tell them where the detonators are. The police are here. It's their problem now."

"I can't tell them. I'd have to show them. Then what? What happens to me?"

"Mr. Leland." It was Little Tony. "What Mr. Ellis has hesitated to tell you is that we are going to kill him straightaway if you do not yield our equipment at once."

"There are people here, Joe," Ellis said. He meant Steffie. He'd already said that he hadn't identified her. What was he threatening?

Leland closed his eyes.
Goodbye, Ellis.
"I don't believe them," Leland said into the radio.
God forgive me,
he thought.

Through the little radio speaker, the shot sounded like a rush of air, and the screams that followed seemed very far away.

Leland pressed the "Talk" button. "All right. I'll give you what you want."

"We want the detonators," said Little Tony.

"Let me get them and put them where you can find them."

"Excellent. And where will that be?"

"Uh-uh. I'll drop them off first and get clear, then I'll call you."

"You have five minutes."

"I need more time," Leland said. "I've got a long way to go and I'm no longer in the best of shape."

"Ten."

"I can't do it. Not that fast."

A pause; then: "How long will it take you?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour."

"Twenty minutes, then we will shoot someone else, perhaps this time a woman." There was silence. Leland pressed the "Talk" button.

"You guys get all that?"

"Meet us on channel nine," the black officer said flatly.

"Now I know they can hear me, but I want to find out what the fuck you think you're doing up there." It was Dwayne Robinson. "First you tell us that you don't want to give your name, then that punk calls you Leland — is that your name?"

"Yeah. Billy Gibbs will give you the rest of the information."

"We've got somebody talking to him. Why all the bullshit? I want an explanation — now."

Leland stayed silent. Anything he could say would let Little Tony figure it out.

"Now listen to me, you son of a bitch," Robinson snarled. "Everything that went down between you and that punk is on tape down here. You let that man die. I don't give a fuck who your friends are, if there's a way to jam your ass in jail, I'm going to do it."

"Go fuck yourself," Leland said. He turned the radio off.

This was going to kill him, he knew. He did not know what to do but go out and meet them head-on. He was trying to remember that there was no sense in being stupid about it. He hobbled to the southwest staircase, trying to decide if he should go upstairs and fight it out with whoever was there. If he won, he could hold the position.

What time was it? Almost three o'clock, deep into the black hours before dawn, when people died anyway. He didn't want to die. He wasn't ready to die. He wanted a bath first. They hosed you down at the morgue, but an undertaker would clean his head and hands and bury the rest of him dirty.

He did not want to die while Steffie and the children were in this danger. That was why he was on this rampage. He didn't start the killing. Rivers died first. And how bad a job was he doing? He'd bagged five of them before the cops had even arrived. If he had it to do over, he would do it exactly the same way. Goddamn, he couldn't imagine how he could have done it any
other
way.

He knew he was exhausted. "Man, you are beat," he said aloud. He had been awake twenty-two hours, and he knew from experience that the worst was to come — but that with the daylight he would be good for another full day. The body was habituated to sleep, but could easily do without it for one night. He had to manage himself carefully for the next three or four hours, if he lived that long.

He stopped at the elevator banks. If the blast had blown out two floors, the chair must have hit the roof of the car when it was between, or nearly between, them. Leland was wondering what had been done to the east bank. The doors on both floors would have been blown away, but the cars — and more importantly, the cables — had been above the explosion. As long as you stayed above, say, the twentieth floor, just to play it safe, then everything should work perfectly. Naturally, the gang would hear the electric motor humming, unless some other noise masked it.

All right, he knew something. What did he do with it?

It was as if he had been reduced to functioning with only shreds of himself, he felt so drained. He had to make so many new, strange connections to hold himself together.

He switched the radio on. "Tony. Tony, are you there?"

"It is a matter of more than passing curiosity to me, Mr. Leland, how you happen to know my name — and so much about us."

"You just happened to run into exactly the wrong guy." Leland knew it was a mistake as soon as it was out of his mouth: it contained no hint of the capitulation implicit in turning over the detonators. Silence. It was as if Leland could hear the bastard's wheels grinding.

"Tell me,
Mr.
Leland, why were you so interested in concealing your name from us?"

"I know so much about you that I couldn't be sure that you didn't know something about me."

"What difference would that have made?"

"You would have taken me a lot more seriously than you have."

"Yes, that's true. Very good. You're a wily opponent..."

"Look, I only called to tell you that I'm doing what I said."

"I know," the voice purred. "The reception is of a different quality, and I have to point the antenna in a different direction."

You son of a bitch.
Leland was thinking of the kid who was giving his father the big screen television set. How did he know that story? Yes, the chauffeur. Asleep in his bed, bless him. Unless he had been awakened by the explosion. "Why did you kill Ellis?"

"Why did you let him die?"

Leland was moving toward the stairs again, thinking that it was what Gruber wanted: only in the stairwells did they have a chance of hearing Leland's voice — and not on the radio, either. "That won't wash, Tony. I saw you kill Rivers. You had no reason to do that. You wanted him to open the safe, but you were prepared to do it yourself. You killed him because you felt like killing somebody, but you did it on the fortieth floor, where the hostages wouldn't see it. All evening you've been trying to keep them calm, and now suddenly you've changed your act."

"Well, that was your doing, Mr. Leland. Surely you understand that. The explosion set off a panic down here. You seem to be such a warrior, you must know that you left us with no choice but to show them that we have the capacity to realize our aims."

Leland was in the stairwell. "You really know how to lay it on, Tony. The people you had to convince were your own. You're not doing so well, kid. Karl wants action, doesn't he? You made a mistake. You let Karl pressure you. When you have to start showing people how tough you are, you're already finished. You're a walking corpse, Tony. Start getting used to the idea of being dead."

"Like to have a word with you, Mr. Leland." It was Hollenbeck, with his nice, easy way of talking.

"I planned to go off the air."

"Good plan. We're picking up an awful lot of traffic in German on channel thirty..."

Leland switched off and went back up the stairs.

He continued going up. Karl had prevailed and they were after him in earnest. With Leland dead, they had control. His leg muscles were cramping from the effort of compensating for his feet. He was trying to keep himself pumped up. A cop did it automatically, just trying to remember what he'd been taught, but when the fun was into its eighth hour, the problem became more complicated. Wisecracking didn't work when you had to keep your mouth shut. He'd already thought of the 310. In the twentieth century, when relationships fail, you console yourself with things. It never went anywhere, but he wanted to think about Karen again. He wanted to remember her. One small part of him refused to understand that she would have died anyway, even if they had been able to find a way to live together successfully.

He was going to try to get to the roof — if he could get there before they cut him in half. He wanted to think they were going slowly out of caution, but there was little reason for it. They knew he was hurt. If he could get to the roof, he would tell Hollenbeck. Maybe the police would be able to take advantage of the situation and get into the building.

He heard a door open below him, not too far down, either. He was between the thirty-ninth and fortieth floors, and he still had to get around to the staircase to the roof.
Wait a minute!
Hollenbeck on the radio? Maybe Robinson was somewhere else because the police were planning another assault. They had picked up the German transmissions and somehow understood their meanings. Maybe he was going to get a break! Hey!
Hey!
He wanted to shout it out loud.

He could hear footsteps, shoes on the gritty concrete. He couldn't be sure if he could be heard in return. He was even trying to breathe quietly. If the guy got much closer, Leland was going to shoot down the stairs and try to get him on the ricochet. They had almost gotten him that way when he'd dropped the chair-bomb into the elevator shaft.

He was beginning to lose track of what he'd done. Skeezix making a hit on Wilshire Boulevard. The girl at the safe. The one he'd mailed back to them, sitting in the elevator. That was the first. And the guy at the window, who didn't fall for the gobble-gobble trick, but fell for it anyway, and told Leland something about the explosive. A long night. And nobody to bill for overtime.

Leland remembered that he had an arms cache on the roof — Skeezix's automatic rifle and his kit bag of ammunition. Sure, altogether, almost one hundred and thirty rounds. In the right position, it was enough to hold them off indefinitely.

He hurried out onto the fortieth floor, using the wall for support. The latch clicked audibly when he released the knob. He had to hurry. He couldn't be sure that the other person would understand the sound or accept it for what it was, instead of a trap. He had another advantage: he knew the route around to the roof staircase. They had shot up this area, too. He had to be ready. He had come this far. He wanted to go the rest of the way. He had made a hell of a contribution already. When the sun came up, the world would see that they weren't as clever, or invincible, as they were trying to tell themselves and anyone who would listen. One human being had stood up to them. That's all it took. That's what they always said. He was one human being, and everything was different because of him.

The staircase door slammed behind him. He had to run — he started skipping, lost his balance, and fell against a desk. Somebody squeezed off single shots, and he could hear glass breaking. Returning the fire would only give away his position. How many more offices did he have to go through before he reached the hall to the staircase? Two, three? Now two.

From very far below came the sound of more gunfire, the heavy automatic weapons of the gang. Good! The lights of the hall were on, but he had to take the chance. As he headed down the hall, he heard a girl giggling behind him. He stopped.

"Drop the gun, please."

He did.

"Now turn around."

It was a little blonde girl in fatigues too big for her, holding an automatic with both hands. Her eyes widened when she saw the badge. "You are a policeman? Where are the detonators? Quick, tell me."

"On the roof."

"Ah, yes, I see. With two fingers only, please, remove the pistol."