sorry I shot you.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“Fuck you. I said almost, asshole. You’re lucky I don’t have my gun or I’d be tempted to shoot you again.”
“You lost it in the water?”
Buck jerked his head toward the hall. “I loaned it to dickhead.”
Marty suddenly remembered the gunshot that woke him up and it all came together. “Jesus Christ, Buck! The guy was suicidal.”
“I know.”
“You knew?”
“Why the fuck do you think I loaned him the gun?”
Marty dropped his pack on the couch, slipped his bare feet into his crusty tennis shoes, and without bothering to tie them, headed down the corridor towards the conference room.
Buck groaned, got up, and lumbered slowly after him.
The conference room was empty. All that was left was a clean table and garbage can, its rim scorched, smoke still pouring from inside it.
Marty came out of the conference room, nearly colliding with Buck, and started moving through the hall, peering into every office.
“How could you give him your gun?” Marty asked.
“He was standing in front of a window but didn’t have the guts to jump. The loser asked me to push him. There was no fucking way I was gonna do that, so I gave him my gun.”
“Which office?”
“The big one in the corner.”
Marty rushed down the hall. Buck trundled after him.
They found Sheldon Lemp sitting in the big, executive chair with the lousy lumbar support, the back of his head blown off. The mud-encrusted gun was still in his hand, his arm loosely hanging off the upholstered arm- rest.
“You could have just walked away, Buck,” Marty said. “He might still be standing at that window if you had.”
“Or not.” Buck walked over to Lemp and examined the back of the chair. “Want to hear something funny Guess what company insured my apartment?”
All the ugly ramifications hit Marty at once. This was getting worse with each second. “You’re telling me you essentially murdered the man.”
“No, I’m telling you why I essentially don’t give a shit that he’s essentially dead.” Buck pried his gun out Lemp’s hand.
“The police might have a different interpretation.”
“You gonna tell them?”
Marty looked Buck in the eye. They both knew Marty wouldn’t.
“This company insured your apartment. This guy squandered all their money. And he was shot with your gun,” Marty said emphatically. “I think they can come up with a pretty convincing motive for murder all by themselves.”
“Not without the gun, Columbo,” Buck jammed it into his holster, “and not without the bullet, which went out the fucking window with most of his brain.”
“What about physical evidence A hair, a fiber, a fingerprint?”
“Oh yeah, right. Have you seen this fucking place?” Buck snorted, walking past him into the corridor. “Is there a kitchen around here?”
Marty took another look at Lemp. Buck was right, no one would care, not after the thousands who’d died in the quake and certainly not after they found out what Lemp had done.
And the truth was, Marty really didn’t care either. He just wasn’t used to people dying. But that was changing.
T hey gorged themselves on a breakfast of potato chips, granola bars, Oreo cookies, Pop Tarts, and five different flavors of warm Snapple.
It was the best meal Marty ever had.
Afterwards, Marty gathered up a bunch of bottled water, some more granola bars, and shoved them into his gym bag, then went looking for skin cream for his sunburned face and neck. He went through the secretaries’ desks and discarded purses. Women always carried skin cream. His faith in female human nature was rewarded. He found some Neutrogena and took it with him to the bathroom.
It looked like someone had shot the place up with an Uzi. The floor was covered with shards of glass and tile which crunched under his feet. He stepped carefully, remembering that scene from Die Hard when Bruce Willis had to pull the broken glass from his bloody, bare feet. Marty was wearing tennis shoes, but he still wasn’t taking any chances.
Marty glanced at the toilet stalls and wished he had the urge to crap. He didn’t know when he’d come across a toilet and a latched door again. Even though there was no running water, Marty pissed in the urinal because that’s what you’re supposed to do, even if it wasn’t working.
Buck felt no such obligation. Right after breakfast he pissed out the window and told Marty how wonderful it felt.
Marty zipped up his fly and went to the sink to apply his skin cream. When he looked at himself in the cracked mirror, he was startled by the face that stared back at him. The boyishness that had always characterized his face, that he had used to his advantage for so long, was completely gone. It wasn’t the gash on his forehead, the dried blood and dirt in his hair, the sunburn, or the stubble that was responsible.
His blue eyes always had a sparkle, even when he was angry, and his face had a relaxed, easy charm that appeared to veil an incipient grin. But now his blue eyes were dulled, as if they’d darkened a shade, and there was a strange tautness to his skin, like setting clay. It scared him.
He didn’t look like a network executive or a writer any more, that softness and sterility that comes from being kept fresh in cool, recirculated air under artificial light was gone. He was unkempt, and dirty, and a bit desperate, like a homeless person, but without the necessary aura of defeat and aimlessness. There was something else, something new and yet familiar.
Marty studied himself closer, his face not quite fitting together, cut into puzzle pieces by the cracked mirror. He recognized it now: it was the face of one of those perspiring submarine sailors in a war movie, waiting for the next depth charge to blow. The sailor feeling so many things all at once: Claustrophobia. Resignation. Fear. Bravery. Uncertainty.
Or was it something else What was that expression That look in the eye Who was he now
Oh, stop it! Your face is fine, he scolded himself. How can you judge yourself in a broken mirror Anybody’s reflection would look strange in dim light and broken glass. It’s just fatigue and sunburn, nothing a little sleep and some cream won’t cure. Don’t worry about it. You’re the same man you always were.
But as Marty rubbed the lotion into his face, he knew that wasn’t true. Something was different.
Marty and Buck met in the lobby a few minutes later as Marty was pulling on his rigid socks.
“Good news,” Buck said. “There’s a fire hose on the floor. I bet every floor has one.”
“So”
“We’re going to need it to get out of here.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Because you aren’t half as smart as I am. Ask yourself how we’re gonna get out of here.”
“The same way we came in,” replied Marty, though he dreaded the prospect.
“The stairwell and lobby are gonna be stuffed with cars, trees, houses, who knows what-the-fuck else. Even if we could climb through it, all that shit has got to be unstable. So we’re gonna go down to the first floor, tie a fire hose off to something solid, and lower ourselves out. Comprendo?”
Marty nodded, tying his shoes. “ Comprendo.”
“So where we going after that?”
“We”
