working too. I wanted him dead, and I knew it. Admitted it. Mostly because it was fairly obvious by now that he wanted me dead. And he would do it. He'd more than proven that. I had to wait. I needed a sign… a signal…
Then he looked up. I peeped at him through the lowered pipe. He was too far away, the light too faint, to read his expression. But I thought I saw in the growing light, his eyes widen. He stopped climbing, and his slow, startled stare gazed up in wonder, and the beginnings of fear. Was it the I fear that Allan Hart had felt? That Walter Kincaid and Danny Murdock felt?
He was halfway up the ladder. The network of steel rods surrounding him was a little over two feet wide; There just i wasn't any place the poor bastard could go. I saw a broad swirl of light-flicker, a Fourth of July whirligig of dancing light beam and flash, and then a distant dry clatter. He'd turned on the flashlight and dropped it. My fingers and wrists ached now with the holding of the big steam pipe. I saw a great flurry of motion below-saw Schilling's big form sway back and forth, one arm moving quickly, then the other. Then I got my sign. l received the signal, loud and clear. I heard the cocking of the Ingram's bolt, and knew he was about to send a fatal burst of slugs up to take my head apart.
I had drawn up my arms six inches as I saw him squirm around, my fingers still curled around the one-inch flange of iron… When I heard him jerk back the bolt, I let my arms drop in perfect unison, letting my tired hands flow outward with the descent of the heavy pipe. Because I knew I had to release it smoothly, on a very straight path, or it might hang itself up and bind. in the cage. It fell straight as an arrow, a finned bomb, a mortar shell down its own tube. The last vision I had of it was curious: I could still peer down its ever-diminishing bore. And even more curiously, in the milli-second before I drew my head back from fear of its being blown off, I noticed that in that pipe bore, Jim Schilling's head and shoulders loomed larger and larger-geometrically-awfully fast.
I had drawn my head back and down, like a mortarman, and waited for the bullets to sing up toward me. They spanged off the steel cage and rocketed drunkenly off the old brick wall.
But they didn't catch me.
Jim Schilling screamed. It was fitting that he should see his own death coming, and scream in terror.
He shouted, 'NO!'
Only the scream was cut off in the middle. A dull clacking sound interrupted it, like a melon being opened with a swipe from a machete-the blunt edge down. It was the sound of his skull being cut in half.
Then silence.
I looked over the edge after half a minute of catching my breath. I saw a big black shiny thing askew in the ladder cage, tilted at a crazy angle, wedged into the iron bars. And then I made out a pair of twisted. legs and knees intertwined in the ladder rungs, They were doubled up, almost pointing up at me. Schilling was underneath the pipe; he hadn't fallen down the cage to the ground. That meant I had to go down there and kick him loose in order to get past him to the ground.
I didn't relish it.
Yet the alternatives were clear: either attempt the crossing on the wilted pipe (something I wasn't even remotely considering) or else climb down the six stories on the outside of the cage. Again: no way. So like it or not, to return to earth I had to haul myself back down that barred steel tunnel, and somehow dislodge the corpse I had just created.
The corpse I had just created.
I had never killed a human being before in my life. No matter how vile, how evil and cruel Schilling had been, the thought struck home.
I climbed back down. It was scary. It was now light. enough to make me realize how danm high the ladder was. But I kept my eyes stoically glued to the brick wall in front of me, watching the rows slide smoothly upward a foot in front of my face.
Then I felt the pipe with my foot. I looked down, and wished I hadn't. I wished instead I'd simply waited up on top of the roof for a reasonable period (like three years) until somebody came and took me off. Jim Schilling, that big and brawny bully, was doubled over, compressed against both sides of the cage by the force of the death blow. His knees pointed up, bottoms of feet resting on the ladder rungs and against the wall behind them. His body was bent, as if in Moslem prayer, except he was facing straight up, toward the Pole Star, rather than toward Mecca. His back was pressed tight against the far end of the cage. His head was facing the pipe that had terminated his nasty life. But his face, and the entire front portion of his head, was curious by its absence. The pipe's lip had caught him as he jerked back, plowing down through the skull at midpoint, removing the front half, face, and mandible. What stared at the jammed pipe was a superbly cross-sectioned head, revealing much of the brain stem, soft palate, throat cavity, and larynx.
I placed my instep underneath the pipe and drew it up with all my remaining strength, which wasn't much. I worked the free end of the pipe around until I could once again grab the flange. Then I lifted it up and dropped it to the side of Schilling's body; It rattled around in the cage a bit on the way down, then thunked sideways into the asphalt of the courtyard.
There remained Schilling. Even in death, he would be a pain. It shall spare the gruesome and clinical anatomical details of removing him from his death perch. My feet, and 175 pounds, finally dislodged his corpse from its weird Yoga stance by thumping down on the blood-soaked shoulders until he straightened out enough to slide down the tunnel cage and thump onto the ground with a sound like a sack of wet laundry. I then reached the ground, took a quick look around, and promptly toted myself over to a dark corner of the courtyard where I proceeded to throw up.
Copiously and repeatedly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
As soon as I could stagger upright, I lurched around the corner and stumbled toward O'Shaughnessey. I wanted to pay him my respects, especially since I was the indirect cause of his death. Every part of my body hurt. But the fun and games still weren't over.
I stumbled along until my foot thumped an oil drum. Up ahead of me I heard the metallic clacking of a big hammer being pulled back. God Almighty I was sick of that sound. I fell forward as the big pistol boomed. There was a long, drawn-out whine. The slug had ricocheted off a wall and was now heading over to Duxbury.
'For Christ's sake!' I shouted.
'My Jesus, is it you?' `
'I thought you'd been killed-'
'Hmmmph. Not bloody likely. I was certain you'd been killed. I thought you were Marlowe.'
'No. I killed him with a bomb. How are you?'
'Fine,' said the Irishman: Then he slid over into a heap on the ground, the revolver clattering after him.
I raised his legs, putting them up on a concrete ledge, then covered him with my sweater. He needed help, and fast. Then I heard the breee-om breee-ow of the first police wagon. I saw I them stop at the outer gate just long enough for one of them to cut through the chain with a pair of giant cable cutters. In two seconds they'd skidded to a stop in front of me, their rack of blue and white lights swirling and winking. I saw a big pair of shiny black boots approaching me as I bent over the fallen man. They, grated and crunched on the gravel that covered the asphalt. The trooper stared down at me, bewildered. He reached down and picked up the big gun that was lying seven feet from me. His partner, gun drawn, was moving in a fast crouch around to my side.
'Get an ambulance here fast,' I said. 'Do you have an oxygen bottle? If so, get it over here on the double.'
They did.
I pointed to the remains of Thug Number Two, the kid who had been so deadly accurate with the pistol, that lay almost invisible in the dark shadows of the wall.
'There's another dead man up in the far courtyard. Seems he went and lost his head. There are at least two more dead people in the big building on the pier. One of them you won't find because she took a dip. Be careful of that building; there may be some nasty people still inside it, though I doubt it highly.'
'What happened? Tell us everything,' said the older officer. But I didn't have time because just then two more cruisers came in, followed by the ambulance. I helped place O'Shaughnessey on the litter. We got a plasma
