“I don’t like it, chief, if I ever saw a guy who was planning on beating it with all the money, that’s him.”
“You’re out of your mind. Give Lex Hughes a chance and he’ll quote the Bible at you until it’s running out of your ears; he’s a member in good standing at one of those revivalist churches.”
“They’re not above passing the plate in church, are they?”
“If Hughes saw you drop a penny on the sidewalk, he’d run a mile to give it back and you better believe it. I made the mistake of showing him the screens once and he turned white; probably thinks it’s the eye of God watching him and every once in a while he can’t resist watching back. The time to worry is when he starts talking to it. Not a bad guy otherwise; poor bastard’s stuck with a wife who’s forty and thinks she’s still sixteen.”
Shea smiled. “What’ve you got against women, chief?”
“Nothing-I was married to one once, wasn’t I?” Garfunkel glanced at his watch. It was close to seven o’clock and in a few minutes the electrical locks would be activated on the stairwell doors and the whole building would be buttoned up. If he wanted to, he could head for home after that; Arnie could handle the scopes and Jernigan the residential floors and he had three other men scattered throughout the building, which should be enough to cover everything. And it would sure as hell be nice to be able to take his shoes off; physically, as well as professionally, he had become the complete flatfoot.
Shea was Yawning. “These things can really hypnotize you. I’ve damned near fallen asleep a dozen times; it’s different when you’ve got somebody here to talk to.”
The bastard had read his mind, Garfunkel groaned to himself. It was part of a plot, anything to keep him from being able to wriggle his toes in the privacy of his own apartment. He couldn’t trust Shea to last until the next shift, let alone be sure that the next shift would even show up.
“I don’t know,” Shea said thoughtfully, back at the screen again.
“I tell you, Dan, that guy’s got the South America look in his eyes.”
“He’s probably thinking of the Virgin Mother Mary,” Garfunkel grunted.
“I told you, he’s the most honest guy in the building-with the exception of myself.” He sat down on a nearby chair and glanced through the tenant lists again, matching’them up with the Promenade Room reservations. Quite a few were eating upstairs, including Lisolette Mueller and Harlee Claiborne-now there was a deadbeat for you. But he couldn’t blame them; it would be nice to eat out on Thanksgiving Eve but not with the kind of weather that was blowing up outside.
Shea suddenly tensed. “Hey!”
Garfunkel was immediately at his shoulder. “what’s up?”
Shea was relaxing now but still obviously uneasy. “The lobby screen-thought I saw somebody running across the far corridor. Just caught it out of the corner of my eye.” They both watched the screen for several sweeps of the lobby camera. Only tourists, Sue, and the guard. “It was probably nothing,” Shea said. “Maybe a phantom image, something like that. Or maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me.”
Maybe they were and maybe they weren’t, Garfunkel thought, but that settled it for sure-he wasn’t going home. They were too shorthanded for one thing. And for another … With Quantrell’s broadcasts, it would be just like some nut to pick this evening to try and torch the building.
CHAPTER 9
The lobby of the Glass House was more crowded than Jesus Obligatio could ever remember. He breathed a silent prayer of thanks as he pushed through the revolving doors. For-a moment he just stood inside, absorbing the warmth and shaking some of the water off his thin windbreaker. It was a real bitch outside, he thought, no kind of weather for his Levis and light jacket. But he had sold his heavy leather one weeks ago, along with the watch that his father had left him when he died and the color TV set that he had told his mother had been stolen.
He started to shiver again; sweat coated his forehead.
The cramps and the vomiting would start next and the lobby was no place to be when that happened. As it was, if he hung around very long it wouldn’t be more than a few minutes before the guard would spot him among all the women with their fur coats and their husbands all dressed up for the night. There were a few kids with their parents but nobody his age. The only ones allowed in the lobby after six were people who worked in the building or those going to the restaurant at the top and who the hell his age had enough money for that?
The guard was standing by the reservations desk, paying no attention at all to who came through the doors, and Jesus felt a little of the tension drain out of him.
It wouldn’t be easy but given a little luck, he could make it; he had before. He looked around for the camera at the far end of the lobby, near the doors of Surely National, and spotted it panning slowly over the crowd, working its way toward him. He was too obvious, standing by the doors. He loped forward a few feet to mingle with the crowd and then worked his way toward the door leading to the stairwell.
He had to be on the second floor before seven, when the electric locks activated and the floors were sealed to anybody who might come up the stairwell.
He glanced at the clock on the marble wall near the bank entrance; he had a few minutes but not very many.
The people in the lobby crowded toward the reservations desk and the guard was momentarily preoccupied trying to form them into a line.
If he was fast enough, Jesus thought, he could make it. The camera was now at the far limit of its scan. He edged quickly around the perrifery of the crowd; people were too intent trying to push their way to the head of the line to pay much attention to him. Finally he was Out in the open, a good twenty feet from the door. The guard was still issuing instructions and trying to handle the crowd, but the camera had started on its way back. Jesus chanced it and half ran toward the door. The guard was busy with an elderly couple who seemed lost and confused in the lobby turmoil. Jesus wasn’t sure if the camera had spotted him or not.
Then he had tugged open the metal door and slipped through, hearing the automatic door closer sigh above him as it pulled the panel shut.
He was in the bare concrete stairwell now, its walls showing the imprint of the plywood forms into which the concrete had been poured.
He leaned against the wall for a moment, the gray steps rising silently above him. He was going to be sick; he could feel the contents of his stomach start to pump and then the taste of bile in his mouth. He wouldn’t, he thought -he couldn’t. He didn’t have the time.
He kept his mouth clamped shut and fought it down, the sweat dripping down the stubble on his chin. When the cramps came, he wouldn’t be able to help himself then; there wouldn’t be anything he could do.
They were unpredictable but it wouldn’t be more than an hour. He had to find his mother, get the money, and then reach his connection before they started.
Oh God, he thought, feeling his knees start to sag, he was going to be sick. He gagged, caught it in time, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Spinner, his connection, was a sonuvabitch; he wouldn’t wait in the alley for more than ten minutes past the agreed time. The bastard had drained him dry the past month, but he wouldn’t wait an extra ten minutes even if there was a full grand in it for him.
Spinner had been busted twice for pushing and the narcs had told him the next time he came back, they would throw away the key if they didn’t find a way to kill him first.
His mother, Jesus suddenly thought in panic. She worked on floors seventeen through twenty, but he was never sure where she might start or how long it would take her to work through the various floors. The only thing to do was go through them all and when he found her, try and borrow a twenty. She’d have her wallet with her. She never left it in the lockers, none of the cleaning ladies did. Otherwise, he wouldn’t bother looking her up at all. Twenty would get him through the night and tomorrow would have to take care of itself.
Right now, tomorrow was a hundred years away.
He didn’t have much time, he thought frantically. He had to get through the second-floor stairwell door before seven and it must be close to that now, if not past it. But no, he hadn’t heard the electric door locks click. He scrambled up the steps to the landing, had to stop again to fight down the urge to vomit, and then he was up to the second floor and pushing through the door. He was halfway through when he heard the slight buzz that meant the electric locks had just been activated. Another second and he would have,been locked out.
He’d have no money and that meant puking his guts out in some alley or shivering with nausea and the cramps on his stinking cot back home or maybe over at Maria’s house.
