The shovel pried at the object and suddenly, out of the earth sprang a grinning death’s head. A human skull, packed with dirt, crawling with centipedes.
“Ah!” Sport cried.
The head rolled off his shovel. Dropped to the ground. It rocked there gently. Then it lay still as the worms burst out from under it.
Up ahead now, Sport spotted a Sunoco station. There was a pay phone at the edge of its open lot, near the street.
Sport pulled the Chevy into the station and parked it beside the phone. He turned off the car and sat still. He stared out through the windshield. There was no expression on his face.
After a moment, he bent forward. He reached down under the car seat and took hold of the safebox there. He brought it up and held it on his lap.
“Jesus Christ,” he said quietly again. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
He had found the safebox just underneath the skull. It was the next thing his shovel hit when, in frustration and anger, he had jabbed it into the earth again. The metallic chink that had answered him from down there had made him let go of the shovel handle as if it were electrified. The tool had pitched over to lay sidewise against the edge of the hole. Sport, almost awestruck, had knelt down and wrestled the box free with his two hands.
They were worth half a million dollars—then. I wouldn’t care to venture an estimate of their value now.
It was a cheap box. Eddie the Screw could’ve bought it in any office supply store. His hands shaking, Sport sprung the lock with the blade of the shovel. He opened it and looked down.
Even in the dark, in only the flashlight’s pale glow, the diamonds glittered. They skittered back and forth across the box’s metal bottom and glittered up into the starless mist. There were so many of them. So many …
Sport had shut the lid quickly. He had stood up quickly and motioned to the machinery man, who was sitting by the roadside on an unused coffin, smoking a cigarette.
“You can fill it up now,” he’d called.
The machinery man had risen wearily and moved to his backhoe without a word.
Now, sitting in his Chevy in the Sunoco parking lot, Sport caressed the box’s metal top with one hand.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered to it, his face expressionless. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
He got out of the car. He carried the box to the back, opened the trunk, and set it in there, hiding it under the flap for the spare tire. Then he walked over to the pay phone.
He dialed the portable cellular. A computer with a woman’s voice told him to feed the phone forty cents for the first five minutes. Sport put the change in, coin by coin. He wiped sweat from his mouth while the phone rang on the other end.
“Yuh.” It was Maxwell.
“Maxie,” said Sport. He had to clear his throat and start again: “Max?”
“Yuh, Sport. Yuh.”
“I got it, buddy.”
There was a pause. Then a single sodden laugh: “Huh. You got it?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Sport wiped the sweat off his mouth again. “Okay,” he said. “Do the kid and get out of there. Okay. Meet me and Dolenko at the Port Authority like we said. And Maxie …”
“Yuh, Sport, yuh.”
“Do her quick and get out of there, all right? Just kill her and blow. This is no time to mess around. Understand.”
There was no answer at first.
“You hear me, big guy?” Sport said. His voice was perilously close to cracking.
After a long moment, Max finally answered, “Yuh, Sport. I hear you. Yuh.”
“Good boy,” said Sport. “Go to it.”
He hung up the phone. He turned around.
A police car had pulled into the gas station behind him.
Stupid Chloroform
Maxwell hung up the phone. His small, square face was taut and tense. Under the deep brow, his eyes shifted back and forth nervously. What was he going to do now? he wondered.
Do the kid. That’s what Sport had said. Do her quick and get out of there.
Maxwell walked over to the mattress against the wall. The girl lay sleeping on it. Maxwell looked down at her. He dragged a big hand across his mouth.
The trouble was, she wouldn’t wake up. That was the trouble right there. He’d been trying to get her to come around for almost an hour now. But she just lay there. She lay on her side. Her legs came naked from the warm flannel of her nightgown. Her hands were taped behind her back. Her mouth was taped over. Her eyes were almost closed. He could see a little bit of eye like dull glass peeking out under the lids. She was breathing very small, shallow breaths.
Maxwell bent down, reached down and poked her shoulder with one thick finger. The girl rocked back and forth a little. But she did not stir, she did not wake up.
Chewing his lip, Maxwell lumbered away from her. He ran his hands up through his hair. He went to the canvas chair in the corner. He sat down, his thick arms hanging heavily between his legs. He sat there, staring at the girl.
Too much of that stupid chloroform, he thought. Stupid, he thought, you gave her too much of that chloroform.
Well, it had been an accident. He couldn’t help it. He had had to move the girl all the way from the Sinclair apartment to here and he had been worried, that’s all. He had had to carry her the whole way in a duffel bag: out past the doorman, all the way downtown in a cab. He had been worried she would wake up on the way. So … he had doused the rag with plenty of the stuff before he’d put it over her mouth. It was just an accident, that was all.
Maxwell rubbed his forehead. He hated it when he got like this, all clogged and confused inside.
The thing was, the problem was, he thought … After he’d poured the chloroform, when he’d come into the bedroom where the little girl was … Well, the way she had looked … She had been lying on the bed curled up on her side. She was sucking her thumb and staring at the television. She looked almost peaceful, almost dreamy. Just like she was watching TV at home, like any little girl. And there were those black bruises on both her cheeks from where Sport had slapped her when she tried to get away. Those looked good too. Maxwell liked those.
When Max had come toward her with the chloroform rag, she had started crying. But she hadn’t tried to get away. She just lay there on the bed and her face had gotten all scrunched up. She had cried and she had trembled too. Maxwell had been breathing hard as he sat down on the bed next to her. Then he had grabbed her hair …
Now, Maxwell stirred on the canvas chair. Remembering that—grabbing her—it made his penis start to uncoil in his pants.
He remembered: He’d grabbed her. He’d grabbed her and the little girl had cried and said softly, “No.” Weakly, she had tried to turn her face away from the rag. But Maxwell had held the rag over her mouth. That was very good. He had watched her body, warm and twisting, like a little animal …
He stared now at the bound child on the mattress. His erection pressed up hard against his khaki pants. He put his hand on top of it. He rubbed it with his palm, staring at the girl. He remembered:
He had held the rag over her face. He had held it there and held it there. Too long. That was the problem. Even after she stopped twisting and struggling, he had held it there. He had gripped her hair and felt the weight of her body in his hands and he had kept holding it there. That was why he couldn’t get her to wake up now.
Look at her. Lying there. Her face was practically gray.
Do her. This is no time to mess around.
Maxwell sat in the canvas chair and rubbed his cock and stared at the little girl. He knew he had to do what Sport said. He had to do it soon too. He knew that.
But it wouldn’t be any good if she didn’t wake up for it.
He sat in the canvas chair and watched her.
This is a smelly old place, Maxwell thought after a while. He was sorry he’d had to come back here. It was smelly and it was dirty. And it was dark too. There was just the one old lamp that Dolenko had rigged up. It stood in the corner. It
threw off a weak, yellow glow. In that glow, Maxwell could make out the cracked walls, the old, gray, rotten wood flooring, the two filthy windows on the wall across from the mattress. He could see roaches up near the ceiling and in the corners of the floor. And right under the window, he could see a water bug practically as big as his hand.
After they’d killed the Freak, Sport and Maxwell had hidden all the furniture upstairs. But when Maxwell brought the girl here, he’d dragged down the mattress and the canvas chair and the lamp. He sat in the canvas chair now and looked fretfully at the girl on the mattress. Her face really was a bad color. Kind of gray but chalk white at the same time. And before, when he’d first got her here, she had been breathing very strangely too. She would not breathe at all for a long, long moment. And then her whole body would get stiff and she would take a sudden deep breath. She had to take it through her nose because of the tape on her mouth.
Do her. Just do her and blow.
But Maxwell sat. He watched her. He tapped his foot against the floor. He had to do what Sport said, he thought. He wanted to do what Sport said. Sport was going to give him lots of money so he could do whatever he wanted. He could have boys and girls, Sport said, and he would never have to worry about going to prison again. Maxwell wanted that a lot. He had not liked prison. Not at all. Not one bit. The only good thing that had happened to him in prison was that he’d met Sport.
He tapped his foot rapidly on the floor and he tapped his hand rapidly on his knee. Maybe she would wake up soon, he thought. Maybe he could wait just a little while and she would wake up. She was already breathing better than she had before. She was taking those small breaths now, but at least she didn’t stop and start the way she’d been doing. She was breathing steadily.
Maybe he should take the tape off her mouth, Maxwell thought. Maybe that would help.
But no. He didn’t want to do that. Even though the building was empty, he didn’t want her to start screaming suddenly. Not until it was just the right time.
Maxwell tapped his foot and patted his knee—and then started nodding his head to the same rapid rhythm.
That’s what he would do, he thought. He would wait just a little while. See if she woke up. See if she came around.
He would wait just a little while longer.
PART FOUR
Breakout
There was about a ten-foot drop to the airshaft outside Conrad’s office. From where Conrad stood at the window, he could barely see the pavement below. Light from apartments in his building and the building next door fell down over the little alleyway in isolated patches. The rest was in deep shadow. Some of the first-floor windows—all of them dark—glinted out of the black places.
“All right,” Conrad whispered.
He closed his eyes and shook off the image of his daughter lying dead. He shook off the memory of Elizabeth’s blood on his car seat. He opened his eyes. He unlocked the small window and pushed it up.
He felt the damp air blow in over his face.
What if they’re watching? What if they’re out there?
He shook that off too, shuddered it off. He had to move. It was eleven-ten. If he was wrong, he had to be there and back by midnight. He had to move fast. Now.
He went out the window.
It was tight. He had to snake his way out, first an arm, then his head, then the other arm. There was no room to bring his leg out after. He twisted around until he was facing up. He pushed against the sill. The metal frame scraped his sides as he came through. His hips stuck. He pulled hard, twisting, grunting. Finally, he could sit on the ledge, holding on to the sill, He maneuvered his right leg out until he was straddling the ledge. He tried to work his left leg around …
“Jesus!”
He slipped off. He clung to the sill by the tips of his fingers. His legs dangled beneath him. Then he fell.
The airshaft pavement slanted into the gutter. His feet hit it at an angle. He felt the jolt slice up through his right knee. The knee collapsed and Conrad went down, his hand against the wall.
There was water in the gutter, old rain. He felt it seep through the leg of his pants as he knelt in it. Breathing hard, his breath rasping, he worked his way up, pushing against the wall with his palm.
He looked up. He looked up and all around him. And he let out a sobbing laugh.
Nice going, shithead. You lost us the game.
His own window was high above him. The other windows were all dark, all shut. Could he even reach them, could he even reach any of them?
Nice going, shithead.
He sobbed again but the laughter seized in his throat. An old nausea swept over him, an old panic. Like being nine years old again, cowering in left field, praying for an easy end to the game. And then seeing the long fly ball sailing out to him; hearing the shouts of “Move back, go back,” and being washed by the claustrophobic nausea of being trapped inside this stoop-shouldered, stumbling body that was sure to reach the ball only to feel it strike his mitt and plop weakly into the grass.
Nice going, shithead. You lost us the game.
Good Christ, he was going to spend the rest of the night stuck here. Trapped in the fucking airshaft. Wandering back and forth in it like a rat in a cage while his daughter …
Nice going, Daddy.
“Oh, God …” It was a low moan. He raised his hand and wiped the miserable sound of it off his mouth. He forced himself to move away from the wall. He looked up at the windows of the neighboring building.
All dark, all shut. All at least ten feet off the ground, barely within reach of his fingers. Grimacing with pain, he limped across the alley until he was standing underneath one of them. He reached up, grabbed hold of the ledge. Stood on tiptoe. Working his fingers under the frame, he pushed up. The window only rattled against its lock. He moved down along the alley and tried another. It was also locked. Well, what else? These were offices; doctors’ offices, dentists’, other shrinks’. They would all be locked. Conrad leaned against the wall, his cheek pressed to the cold stone. His lips were trembling. The dim light in the alleyway blurred before him.
Nice going, shithead.
He thought: Something. He had to do something. Anything. He looked up at the window just above his head. He cursed.
He bent down, lifted his foot and took off his shoe. He made a face as he lowered his stockinged foot into the cold gutter water.
He slipped the shoe over his hand. He reached up as high as he could.
He thrust his arm up and pushed the shoe through the window.
Until that moment, he had just been thinking about getting through the window. No one, he’d thought, would hear the breaking glass. This was New York: no one who did hear the breaking glass would care.
Until the moment he actually shoved the shoe through the pane, he never even considered the possibility of an alarm.
There was, after all, no alarm in his own office. He didn’t need one: there was nothing of value there except maybe his prescription forms. But other doctors, of course, kept drugs around and expensive equipment. He hadn’t even considered that until the moment the glass shattered.
Then the thought was like a thing exploding. The world was like a thing exploding inside his mind. There was the glass, the glass shattering with a kind of violent music; there were the shards flashing dangerously in the half-light as they tumbled down around him in a daggerlike rain; and at the same moment, there was that explosion of thought: My God, an alarm, what if there’s, my God, there must be, alarm, alarm!
And then the alarm started ringing.
The bell pounded into him like a shrill jackhammer. The night shook with it. His mind, his thoughts, were shivered to pieces and he stood in the alley below, gaping up, thinking: Bell! Alarm! Alarm!
Lights went on in the windows above him. Windows already lighted started to rumble open.
Alarm! Christ! Oh, Christ!
The air kept bursting with the sound.
Quickly, Conrad wrestled his shoe back
onto his foot. Then he crouched down, staring at the window above. Jagged shards of glass stabbed up from the sill, out from the jambs. Conrad leapt toward them.
He sprang toward them, grabbed hold of the window frame. The glass stabbed into his palms. The bell, the ceaseless bell, screamed and screamed into his ears.
He dragged himself up. His teeth were gritted, his eyes were closed against a pain in his hands like fire. He threw his arm over the sill, felt the glass snagging at the soft upper flesh. He dragged himself up, pulled his torso through, struggled into the dark on the other side. The glass was clawing at him, snagging his shirt, his flesh. He felt the hot blood on his arms, on his belly. The bell shrieked and shrieked at him.
And then he was through. Tumbling headfirst into the blackness. Hitting the floor blind, his hands out in front of him, his feet dropping in after. His body ached and bled. The pain in his knee screwed deeper into him. He lay on the floor, the red flashes bursting before his eyes, the sound of his heart drowning out everything.
And then the bell again. The bell rose through it, over his heart. He had to move. The bell screamed it at him. He had to get up, get out, move now before they came.
He reached up into the blackness. Felt something—a countertop. He took hold of it. Grunting, he hauled himself to his feet. He clutched his side, felt the damp blood through his shirt. Tilted over toward the pain, he staggered forward, one hand on his belly, one hand stretched out, feeling his way.
He stumbled through the room. Touched one wall, moved away from it. Bumped into an equipment tray and heard it rattle as it rolled back. He felt his way through a door, into a hallway. Squinting against his scintillating vision, he saw the door—the light from the outside hall etching the rectangle of the door. He hobbled toward it, reached out for it.
The bell kept hammering at him. Conrad neared the door. And now, under the sound of the bell, he heard other sounds. A bass voice, calling out. A jingle of keys. The doorknob rattling.