Watching the guy over there, running the count again, double-checking himself, he began to think of other possibilities. He was safe where he’d been, or so it seemed. They hadn’t been able to find him. What if he just stayed there, just sat it out until they finally gave up and went away?
That was a nice thought, and he was tempted. It was an easy way to handle it. But it wouldn’t work. In the first place, that old man Lozini wasn’t going to give up very soon. He’d be capable of staying in this park for days, for a week or more, and how long could Parker cling to that grid of pipes up there, without food or sleep? If he fell asleep he would probably also fall out of the grid. And in the second place, if Lozini became convinced he was nowhere else in the park, he’d have the theater searched again, he might bring in more lights, it might occur to him to look under the roof. It might even occur to him to set the place on fire, burn it down and see what came out. Parker would put nothing past Lozini, an old man bent on revenge.
So he couldn’t wait it out, he had to keep in motion. Already he was in much worse shape physically than he’d been when he came in here. The longer he stayed, the worse shape he’d be in, and sooner or later he’d no longer be able to handle the situation properly, he’d start making stupid mistakes, bumbling physically, thinking sloppily, and then they could just walk over and step on him and be done with it.
He watched the guy over there, moving around and around, and he knew which circuit he was going to move on, and braced himself, and when the instant came he got his knees under himself, and came up, one hand on the top of the wall. He stood, in profile to his target, left arm up in front for balance, knife held back behind his right ear. He knew the spot in the air he was going to throw the knife at, he knew how long it would take that guy’s head to reach that spot, he knew how much ahead of time he should throw.
He had a couple of seconds to spare. He stood cocked on the theater roof, waiting, all his attention concentrated on that moving head over there, four yards away. The second came, he threw, and at the end of the motion, dropped flat again behind the wall.
There was no shout, no yell, no scream, no sound at all. Nothing happened.
Parker raised his head, he looked across the way.
Nobody there.
He came up on his knees again, and there was still no one in sight. It was as though the pot was empty over there.
He’d hit him, and the guy had dropped inside. Had he hit him full on, just under the ear, just behind the jaw, the spot he was aiming for, or had it been a glancing blow, was the guy just knocked out for a while? Maybe only for a few seconds.
Parker looked away to his right, and far away across the park was the other airborne sentinel, watching the ground. Too far away to have noticed anything happening over here. Too far away to use the other knife on, but also too far away to be a menace right now.
He pulled his right glove back on, got to his feet, brushed the snow off his jacket and trousers. Then he trotted across the roof and pulled the black metal door open and went down the stairs.
Three
LOOKING DOWN at the stage from the rear of the balcony, Parker saw the body still lying there under the canvas and pipes. The other one, the wounded one, had been carried away early on in the search. If nothing else, Parker was keeping them all occupied.
Behind the balcony was a small projectionist’s booth, containing two large old movie projectors looking like robots built by ants. There was also a closet full of cleaning supplies, and a pair of rest rooms, and in a carton in a corner a pile of True Detective magazines.
The staircase down from the balcony was wide and carpeted. Downstairs there was an office, and in a small colorful carton on top of a filing cabinet in the office a dozen candy bars: chocolate with peanuts. Parker ate two of the candy bars and stuffed the rest into his jacket pockets.
There was a window in the office opening out onto the front of the theater, but the Venetian blinds were closed. Parker stood against the wall beside the window, moved the blinds slightly, and looked out through a narrow slit at an angle over toward the entrance. He watched, and after a minute a guy walked into sight, ambling along in a slow and bored manner. He stopped, he looked around, he turned and walked slowly back the way he’d come.
The guard. One guy, apparently, all alone. But there’d be other guards at the side exits, and one holler from this one would bring the others running.
Parker searched the office, hoping to find a gun, but there wasn’t one. There was nothing helpful at all. He left the office and walked down the center aisle of the theater and went up onstage and searched the corpse there, but he didn’t have a gun either. If he’d had one, somebody had taken it with him. The corpse had no weapons at all.
Now what? There were three exits from the theater, the main one up at the head of the aisle, in front of which he’d seen the bored guard walking, plus one on either side wall, down near the stage. Both of these were metal double doors, with push bars to .open them, and on the other side of each set there would be at least one guy on guard duty, armed and ready to make a noise. There were no other ways out of the building except a couple of windows flanking the main entrance, right in view of the guy on duty there.
Well, no. There was another way out. Maybe.
Besides the canvas and pipes and corpse, the stage was also littered with ropes, all the long thick brown ropes that had held up the backdrops before Parker had turned them into weapons. He now took one of these ropes, with a length of about sixty feet, and untied it from the pipe to which it was still attached. He coiled it, and the result was loosely the shape and weight of an automobile tire. He hooked it over his left shoulder and went down from the stage and walked up the aisle to the rear of the theater, and then back up the stairs all the way to the roof. He walked across the roof to the back wall and looked over the edge. There was no exit on this side, and there was no guard down there. There was no one down there at all.
Looking out from here, he could see straight ahead of him the outer wall of the park. In fact, from up here he could see over the wall, see another parking lot beyond it, empty and snow-covered. Outside, free and clear. He could see it, but he couldn’t get to it.
To the right from here he could see the spot where the Island in the Sky pot ride started, and beyond it New York Island, with the Coney Island amusement-ride section. Nobody in sight over there, no buildings of any size for him to be hiding in.
