jumps from his chair, but even before he’s anywhere near the door he hears a key turning in the lock.
He grabs the handle and tries turning it. Realizes that he’s well and truly imprisoned.
He reaches into the basket, removes his Glock and the envelope. He stuffs the unopened envelope into his pocket, points his gun at the door-locking mechanism. .
What the fuck? he thinks. What am I going to do? Blast the door open, and then what? With all those human tanks out there, I won’t even get down the first flight of steps before someone blasts me out of my shoes.
Shit!
He lowers his gun and begins to pace the office. He glances at the mutilated figures of Bruno and Kurt, leaking their bodily fluids all over the polished floor. He can still smell the acrid odor of gunpowder in the air.
Why the fuck couldn’t you speak a little faster, Kurt?
It makes sense now. Sonny in his big heavy overcoat to hide his armory. His gloves to avoid putting fingerprints on the gun he used for the hit. And let’s not forget his demeanor. His cheerfulness tonight. His little speech about red-letter days, the start of a new life. He wasn’t talking about me, Doyle realizes now; he was talking about himself.
Doyle moves back to the door. How the hell am I going to do this?
He knows he can’t stay here for much longer. Any second now, someone could come through that door. Maybe even Lucas Bartok, and my, won’t he be in a good mood when he sees what happened here? How am I going to explain that one? Me locked in a room with his dead brother and his dead bodyguard, and oh yes, that murder weapon in the trashcan — that’s nothing to do with me. How long is Lucas or one of his heavies going to stand there and listen while I try to wriggle my way out of that one?
He paces again. Takes another look at Bartok. He had the name, goddamnit! He was on the verge of giving it to me. The only man walking this earth who. .
Well, that’s not quite true. Sonny Rocca knows the name, doesn’t he? Sonny Rocca, who is probably right now heading for a flight to Rio if he has any brains, knows who the sonofabitch is.
Doyle leaps over Bartok and stands at the window behind his desk. Straight ahead is the uniform blackness of a featureless wall. Below, he can just make out the dimly lit alley in which they parked.
Doyle holsters his gun and flips off the catch on the window, which looks old and covered in a million layers of paint. Please let this open, he thinks.
He manages to force the window up an inch, then slips his hands through the gap. The ice-cold air from outside almost freezes his hands to the frame as he strains to pull the window upwards. Eventually, he raises it by about a foot or so — just enough, he hopes, to squeeze through.
He pushes his head outside, feels the sting of an icy blast of wind. It looks one hell of a long way down. He has never thought of himself as a sufferer of vertigo, but his head swims at the thought of putting his center of gravity any closer to that sheer drop. He turns his head and sees that the nearest fire escape runs under the adjoining office. The only thing that will take him anywhere near it is a drainpipe that runs from above his window and gently angles down toward the front corner of the building. It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but there’s a slight gleam on the pipe that makes it look as though it’s been recently painted. What lurks beneath the paint is another matter. As escape routes go, dangling from a length of decades-old rusty pipe two floors above the ground would not be high on his list of preferred options.
Not that you got all that many options here, Doyle.
He swings his right leg up and slides it onto the narrow outer ledge. Slowly, cautiously, he edges his torso sideways through the window. Keeping his left arm hooked under the window, he starts to pull his outer leg under his body. Inch by jittery inch, he transfers his weight onto that single leg, as he brings his other leg out and twists himself to face the building. He eventually gets into a standing position, his face pressed hard against the freezing glass as he tries to stop his knees wobbling. Remind me not to become a window cleaner when they throw me off the job, he thinks.
He slides his hands upwards along the window and brings them above his head. He feels them hit the brickwork, and continues to push them over the rough surface. He flexes his fingers, searching for the drainpipe.
Nothing.
Reluctantly, he unpeels his face from the glass and leans his head back as much as he dares, then rolls his eyes upwards. He sees that the pipe is inches above his fingertips. He straightens up again. Begins to raise his heels from the ledge. When he is on his tiptoes he stretches his arms until it seems they’re about to leave their sockets.
He feels like an Olympic diver about to do a backward jump into the pool. He has never been in such a precarious position. One gust of wind is all it’ll take to knock him from his perch. Despite the cold, he starts to perspire.
He extends himself another couple of millimeters. Feels his fingernails just scrape the lower surface of the pipe. But it’s not enough. He comes down onto his heels again, relaxes his muscles, allows his joints to click back into place. There’s nothing for it, he thinks. I’m gonna have to jump.
He looks up again, fixes his gaze on the drainpipe, flexes all his fingers. Another couple inches — that’s all I need. If I don’t make it, or I do make it and the pipe doesn’t hold. .
He casts such thoughts out of his mind. There is no time to debate this. It has to be done now, and it has to be done with utter conviction.
He brings his arms up again, then starts to bend at the knees. There’s no room to take his knees forward, and so he has to bow them out to the sides, like he’s a ballet dancer.
He gives himself a three-count:
It’s a lot lower than the basketball hoop in high school, he tells himself, and you could reach that.
Except I was a lot younger then. And fitter. And I weighed less.
And it was always a running jump, never from a fucking bandylegged nutcracker position like this.
He hears a starting pistol go off in his head, and suddenly he’s shooting up like a rocket, willing himself up and up. He imagines himself back at school, stretching for that basket, seconds left to win the trophy for his team. At the apex of his jump he gives a loud grunt of exertion. .
His hands snap into position around the pipe. He hears the metal groan at the sudden burden, but it doesn’t give way.
The pipe is so cold it burns Doyle’s hands. He knows he can’t stay in this position for very long. Not that that was ever his desire.
He slides his left hand along the metal, feeling as though he’s leaving a layer of frozen flesh behind, then follows it with his right hand. His legs dangle and swing freely below him, cold air fluttering up the inside of his pants. He continues his motion sideways and slowly downwards, trying to ignore the pain in his hands, his arms, his shoulders. You’re okay, he tells himself. Focus and keep going. We’re gonna do this.
He moves again, and hears more squeals of complaint from the drainpipe. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he hisses at it. ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’
He keeps going. Another couple of feet, then another. How come that damned fire escape doesn’t seem to be getting any closer?
There is a sudden outpouring of noise from below. He stops moving and looks past his armpit to the alley that still appears a thousand miles down. Light spills out from an open doorway, and the night is filled with voices and throbbing music. Some kind of side entrance to the club, Doyle realizes.
A lone figure exits the club and closes the door behind him. He is tall, with dark hair and a
Rocca heads toward his Lexus, almost directly below Doyle. Don’t look up, Doyle thinks. He hangs there in space, praying that his arms don’t pop out of their sockets. His hands burn like they’re on fire, like they’re becoming fused with the drainpipe.
