He went back to the office and pulled on his shoes. He kept on the three pairs of socks, making the shoes a painfully tight fit, but at least the coldness and the dampness didn’t penetrate through to his skin. Then he put on his jacket, over the summer jacket and the shirts he was wearing, another tight fit. He felt the damp cold of the jacket against his wrists and the back of his neck, and was immediately colder all over, but there was nothing to be done about that.
He put the two knives in his hip pockets, then put on the gloves he’d taken from the night watchman’s office. They were only slightly damp, they’d dried better than the shoes and jacket.
Now he was ready. He went downstairs, moved the chair and wastebasket out of the way, cautiously opened the mirror-door. Nobody around. He stepped out and shut the mirror-door behind him.
There was no one in the fake cobblestone street. He went out of the dress shop and stood in the doorway a minute. The sun was bright without warmth. He could faintly hear noises, starting up and then stopping, and then starting up again and stopping again. It took him a minute to figure out what was going on, and then he understood. They were turning on the electricity everywhere, going from building to building, from ride to ride, from exhibit to exhibit, switching on the power and then turning off whatever records or tapes would start to play. Light, but no sound. If he survived until tonight, but failed by then to get out of here, there would be no respite. The park would be brightly lighted tonight, from end to end. And now, in the daytime, the interiors of all the buildings would be lit up. No dark corners, or very few.
It was getting tougher.
Down to his right was the fountain, the center of the park. Up to his left was the rest of New York town, and past that a Coney Island amusement-ride section and an outdoor turnpike auto ride.
He turned to the left. After a couple of steps, he began to trot.
PART FOUR
One
PARKER WAS coming down out of the Coney Island amusement area, crossing the line between New York island and Voodoo Island, intending to circle around the theater building, when a sudden voice cried, “There he is! Back of the snake house, back of the Voodoo theater!”
Parker stopped, in the open, looking around, seeing no one. Then he heard a shot, and something small and angry shattered itself into the snowy blacktop near his right foot, and he looked up.
Cables stretched over his head. From these cables were suspended potlike conveyances, big enough to carry four people. The pots started at ground-level back behind the theater, at the rear of the Voodoo Island section, lifted high into the air on the cables, and swung out over the park, high over the fountain, and came down over on the far side, at the rear of the Hawaii section.
What they’d done, they’d turned on the electricity for the pots and sent two guys up to be lookouts, one over this side of the park and one over the other side. When both pots were in the right position they’d turned the electricity off again, and now they were both up there, watching over the side. Aerial surveillance, like in the Army.
Parker looked up, and the guy was outlined against the sky up there, leaning over the edge of the pot, pointing a gun down at him. But shooting downward at a target is the toughest kind of shooting there is, and his second bullet thudded into the ground good two feet away.
The guy was too excited, he was completely exposing himself.
If Parker had a gun of his own, that bastard would be dead now. A silhouette against the sky, showing himself from the middle of the chest upward. As easy as a shooting gallery, for anyone with a gun.
The third bullet was closer. Parker turned and ran, heading for the theater.
Above him the voice was calling again: “He’s headed for the theater! He’s goin’ into the theater!”
There was nothing else to do. Wherever he went he could be seen by the guy in the pot. Inside the building, maybe eventually he could get out again on the far side, where the bulk of the theater would be between him and the observer. After that, who knew what would be possible? Maybe nothing.
He yanked open a side exit door he’d left an inch ajar yesterday afternoon. All those preparations he’d made were going to come in handy now. If anything would save him, it would be the fact he’d been given an afternoon to get everything ready in here.
The place was in darkness, they hadn’t reached this one yet in their passion for turning everything on. Parker used his flashlight, made his way up on the stage, then went up the iron ladder to the catwalk along the left wall. The ropes holding the backdrops were still tied to the railing, as he’d left them, the weights lined up along the outer edge of the catwalk.
Moving around had eased some of the stiffness in his joints, but he still wasn’t as limber as he should be. He was having trouble making himself move as quickly or with as much agility as he needed, as much as he would normally be able to give. He stretched and bent and moved around on the catwalk, trying to work the rest of the stiffness out while waiting for them to get here.
Doors crashed open. A long thin rectangle of daylight lay halfway down the center aisle of the theater. Men came in, hustling, breathing hard, shouting to one another. Somebody shouted to others outside, “Watch all the doors, watch them all!” Somebody else shouted, “Get the lights on! Where the hell do you switch the lights on?”
“Up on stage,” somebody called. “Left side of the stage, there’s a big control panel there.”
Flashlights came bobbing, the men vague shapes behind them. Half a dozen, maybe more. They came up and milled around onstage, shouting to each other to get the damn lights on, somebody shouting he was on his way to do it.
Parker raced along the catwalk, kicking off the iron weights and yanking the slipknots on the ropes. He didn’t know if anybody was directly under the catwalk or not, but if they were, a twenty-pound weight dropping on their heads would put them out of action for a while. In any case, there were three or tour of them standing around onstage, and the backdrops with their weighted bottoms to keep them straight weighed hundreds of pounds, and they were dropping toward the stage like huge guillotines, one after the other, from the front to the rear, slicing down through the air with loud shushes, the weighted bottoms crashing onto the stage, the drops continuing to fall, the canvas piling up like starched laundry, finally the metal pipes, as long as the stage was wide and very heavy, i budding down, the ropes whistling through the pulleys under i lie theater roof, the rope ends released from the
