the roof I would have to wait at the edge in hopes of jumping or hitting him as he neared the top. If he followed me, which I doubted. On the other hand, if there was any safe way off the roof, I was eager to take it. The light was off now. I hobbled over about twelve feet to the left of the ladder and peeped over. I didn't want to show my head near it. Jesus, it was a long way down.
Nothing. No visible motion. No sound. I scooted back as fast as the pain would let me, and reached out and down and felt the metal sides of the ladder. I grabbed and held. If he was waiting below and saw my arm, he could take it off with a quick burst. But I risked it; I had to know if he was on the ladder. Nothing. No vibration whatsoever.
Then where was he?
That made me nervous. Very. Because I knew Schilling knew the place well. He had to. If there was another way to the roof, he probably knew about it. Was there another ladder, fire escape, ramp, elevator… anything that would allow him to reach a far edge or corner of the big wide roof and come at me from behind?
I kept my fist wrapped around the steel, and turned and swept my eyes around the flat expanse of gray gravel, growing ever lighter as dawn came. A very big roof indeed. To think there was only one approach to its summit was foolishness. There had to be another. Where?
If I left my spot to roam about, would Schilling then come I up the ladder? If I stayed, would he come up another way? Was he in fact doing that very thing right now?
What if I went back down the ladder?
You've got to be kidding, Adams.
I decided on a test. I pawed the rooftop until I had a small handful of gravel. I held the tiny stones in the exact center of the round cage and let three or four of them fall. After what seemed an eternity, I heard the faint bong of the oil drum. Schilling wasn't on the ladder. This meant, if nothing else, that this approach was safe for at least the time it would take him to make the climb, which was about ninety seconds, maybe more, since he'd been clipped by a slug. I had to risk a brief walk around.
I tried to stand and fell down again. I grabbed at my heel. The rubber sole of the Topsider was blown away, but my heel was intact. The slug had hit me obliquely but obviously caused some internal trauma. Perhaps a broken bone. Certainly a horrendous bruise. I hobbled about until something hit me square in the chest. I lowered my arm to chop at it. It was one of those iron steam pipes, snaking over the roof about four feet high set on concrete supports. I ducked under it, then quickly turned back. If that thing snaked down the side of the building, I was for sliding down it, even though it meant there was a big chance of losing my grip and splattering all over the asphalt six' stories below.
But I was in bad, bad shape; Two gimpy arms (the steam pipe chop had just decommissioned the right one), a shot up heel, busted nuts and guts, not to mention an extraordinary case of general fatigue.
But I needed off that bloody roof.
The pipe wound to the edge, and across a roadway to another roof. Shit. Twenty feet of horizontal, six-inch cast-iron pipe almost eighty feet up.
But if I could get across it I'd be safe. I thought of straddling it, letting my legs hang down both sides while I pumped along the length of it with my arms.
My damaged groin winced at the thought…
And then I noticed something else. I saw some big shiny cables and glass insulators right down next to the pipe. High voltage. Sitting there on the steel I would be connected to a natural ground. One stray swipe with arm or leg and I was gone, fried like a squirrel careless enough to skip the wrong way on a utility pole. I didn't like the look of the high-voltage wires at all.
So I returned to the ladder. I thought I saw a flash of light in the center of the steel cage. I approached the edge cautiously and peered over. The light beam climbed up at me. I drew back my head. Seconds later I heard the mean buzz of bullets in front of me, not two feet from my head, right where my face had been seconds earlier. Unlike a high-velocity rifle bullet, the. 45 slug is a snail amongst hares. The average commercial jetliner can fly faster than this speeding bullet. It kills because it weighs as much as a golf ball and is almost as big… It never breaks the sound barrier, and so does not produce the tell tale crack, the sonic boom that warns the quarry that it is being shot at.
I grabbed the ladder top. It thrummed and trembled. The fish was on the line.
I had company.
There was no choice now. I had to either find another way down or risk the pipe and the electric wires. I swung my head over the side two feet to the left of the ladderway, then moved it slowly to the side of the cage, with only my eyes peeping over the edge. I could see a vague glimmering down there. Far, far away. I grabbed the ladder top again. The vibration didn't feel any stronger. Then l noticed a pattern to the vibrations, a regular heartbeat of motion through the vertical steel. It was fairly slow. Schilling was indeed wounded-otherwise a man with his strength and vigor could dash up the rungs as fast as or faster than I had done.
I scurried back to the roof edge where the big pipe dove over the side and straight out to the next building. I swung cautiously over the tile, grabbing the inside edge of the big slick slabs with the tenacity of Beowulf, and poked my feet down. I felt them touch the pipe. I then stood on it, and was almost ready to release my grip, when I felt the sickening loss of resistance from below as the pipe sagged. I clung, and drew my feet up in a fetal position, then hunch-crawled back over the tile like a wounded spider all balled up.
The clock was ticking. I could now hear the faint fring fring fring of scraping feet on the metal ladder. He had that Ingram slung over his shoulder, his flashlight ready too. I remembered-in a tenth of a second at the longest- scoffing at a fish trap in northern Minnesota when I was a kid. I couldn't believe all that seething protein behind the wooden slats in the river could be so dumb. Now I knew exactly how those poor fish felt. Like me, they'd made a mistake. They'd made a wrong tum. That's all it took. I turned fast to go to the far side of the roof. I would cry one last quick search for a way down before lying in wait at the ladder's top, ready to lunge at the murderer with my hands and teeth.
I bumped into the metal pipe again, and heard it groan. I wiggled it. It gave some. Then I ran along its length for perhaps sixty feet before I found what I wanted: a completely crumpled section of the old steam pipe. Three sections of pipe lay scattered on the gravel roof. I grabbed the nearest one and heaved it up. It was black iron, three feet long, and very heavy. One end of the six-inch pipe had a flange, with holes around it for bolts. I dug the fingers of my right hand into this handle and tugged it back to the ladder. The light was again playing along its upper terminus. Then it went off. I hefted the pipe in both hands. I could scarcely lift it. I rested the smooth end of it on the shiny hard tile. As it rolled a bit it made a heavy grating sound, like sand in a mortar and pestle. I reached over and grabbed the ladder sides. There was a heavy vibration, and speeded up too. I chanced it; I looked over. I could see Schilling scurrying up the ladder to kill me. He wasn't looking up. I moved my head way over to the edge of the steel cage-the left side-so I could peer at him with my right eye. He glanced up once. I saw the white face outlined by the dark beard. The wispy-thread line of the puka shell necklace against the tanned neck.
I hated him.
He didn't see me apparently, even in the soft light of full dawn. His head lowered again as he resumed climbing. I saw now the dark line along his back, wide, cylindrical, like a black man's arm with the hand cut off. The Ingram. I hooked my fingers around the flange of the pipe and slid, it over off the tile. The weight of it pulled down hard on my arms and drew my chest down tight on the tile so it ached. My left wrist burned. I walked forward two steps on my knees-felt my kneecaps digging into the loose stones that covered the asphalt roof. Schilling was about three stories below me. All the lines of the metal ladder cage seemed to converge upon him, the small winking figure in the center of the vertical tunnel.
I peered through the section of iron pipe. It had a wide bore, like a stovepipe. Through it I could see very clearly. I moved the pipe to and fro, from side to side, by shifting my weary body and shoulders. Soon I looked straight down the bore-as if down a telescopic sight-and could see nothing but the climbing figure far below.
I couldn't do it. Much as I hated him, I could not get myself to drop the pipe on him.
Considering the great weight of the pipe, the sharp, spadelike edge of the male end of it, and most especially the long distance it would travel, at thirty-two feet per second squared, it was deadly as a bazooka shell. It would slice him in half, pulverize him.
But I couldn't.
It's pretty hard to go to school for over twelve years learning to make bodies whole again after illness and trauma, and then decide to dissect one instantly by way of gravity. But the dark side of me-of Homo sapiens-was
