Nothing Lasts Forever (16 page)

He held it out for her. She dropped it in her kit bag. "Now tell me where on the roof."

"You have to go around to the right. There's a staircase up to the elevator tower and an aluminum box opposite..."

She waggled the pistol. "Show me."

He opened the door. She stayed behind him as they went up the stairs. All but a few of the fluorescent bulbs were gone. Mistake number one. He didn't know what the hell he was going to do when they got to Skeezix's gun. She was being too careful. He wasn't going to get anywhere near it.

"This is really too bad," she said. "You seemed to enjoy killing so much. But you are really only a trained dog. You destroy the building in order to save it."

"Honey, I don't give a flying fuck about the building." He was at the top of the stairs. "I have to open the door."

"Just a moment." He heard the click of her radio switch. She spoke at some length in German. Little Tony answered and then she said, "Nein, nein," like a woman telling a man she didn't need his help. Leland was beginning to think of something else. "Now open the door," she said.

The wind was stronger than ever, a warm, roiling gale out of the hills. The sky was clear in all directions.

"You didn't ask me why I didn't care about the building."

"Are you trying to tell me something, old man? Go on, keep moving."

"You people aren't thinking. Why didn't I just work my way down and out of the building?"

"I want to hear this. I want you to tell me everything. Now, with nothing remaining, you want to justify yourself."

"The detonators are on the other side of that box, Ursula."

"What? That's not my name..." He threw himself at her, and she shot him, once, in the left thigh. But then he was falling on her, and when the gun discharged the second time, the muzzle blast scalded his arm. She was falling, with nothing to absorb the shock. He was afraid that the gun would go off again, and he rolled to the left, away. He punched her in the face, but she tried to get the gun around, and he punched her again. She got his thumb in her mouth and bit down hard. She was trying to knee him in the groin. He grabbed her hair with his other hand and slammed her head down on the roof. She opened her mouth. He punched her again. His leg wasn't broken, thank God. He punched her three more times, and when the fight was out of her, he twisted the gun from her hand and got to his feet and shot her in the right eye. He was shaking with rage and relief and the exultation of victory. He pulled the trigger again. When the gun was empty he pulled the trigger three more times, and the last thing to pass through his mind was the notion of throwing her body off the roof, too, just to let Tony know he still had his store open. And then Leland fainted.

He didn't know how long he had been out, and the time on his watch, 3:38, wasn't much help. The bullet wound was in the flesh on the outside of his thigh, two small holes five inches apart, the exit wound almost as neat as the entry. A patch of blood the size of a pie plate glistened in the reflective light. He crawled behind the aluminum box and set up Skeezix's gun. He had the strap of his kit bag for a tourniquet, but he didn't think he would need it. More gunfire from the street.

Maybe he had been out less than a minute. This time he wasn't going to announce his continued presence. He had another thought: these people weren't getting tired. In addition to their own amphetamines, maybe they had found Ellis's cocaine, too. Assholes — they deserved each other. He had a clear view of the staircase door as well as the door leading into the elevator tower. He watched both. No surprises.

"Hannah?" someone called.

The man was coming up the stairs. He could have been close enough to hear the shots. This one would be number eight. The door was hinged to swing Leland's way.

"Hannah?"

The door started to open. Leland got down low.

"Hannah?"

The door was wide open, but no one appeared. The door started to close again, and Leland fired, slamming the door shut. He waited.

"We're going to leave you up here for now," Little Tony called. "But don't worry, we'll be back in the daylight, and then we will kill you. I will kill you myself — believe me, it will be better that way."

There was another long burst of automatic rifle fire from the street.

"Hey, Hollenbeck."

"Hey, my man! How are ya?"

"I'm on the roof. I think they've locked the door. I took one in the leg, but it's no big thing. Oh, yeah, scratch one more."

"You're kidding me!"

"She's lying right here beside me. Name of Hannah."

"Ah, shit."

"This is the third woman. I'm almost getting used to it. What's going on down there?"

"Our German ace showed up and he's been giving us their play-by-play. We've got so many radios going down here that I didn't hear anything about women. That's really disgusting."

"Stop being old-fashioned."

"He told us that they were after you, and Robinson tried to get a diversion going. Two things: are you sure about the total number? We are very definitely on hold down here."

"It's what I heard them say. What made Robinson see the light?"

"Well, now we know who you are, man! He's still cursing you out; but at least he knows — we all do — that he's dealing with somebody who knows what he's doing. That's the second question. The German ace picked up something about you wearing a badge. What's that about?"

"It's just something I had. I put it on so you'll know me when I walk put of here."

"Well, that's what they're for. You go on wearing it. Now we got a deputy chief on the site, fully briefed and in charge. Billy Gibbs says he wishes he was covering you, by the way. Hang on." He had the "Talk" button still depressed, for Leland heard him say, "He got another one. That's seven."

"Son of a bitch." The radio went dead a moment. "Joe? Vince Crane here. We met two years ago in New Orleans."

"How are ya?" He'd been in New Orleans two years ago, but he couldn't place Crane in the huge Los Angeles delegation at that conference.

"I'm okay. I think we're going to be okay with this, thanks to you. I wouldn't want to face twelve of them. Now listen, for now, we think it a good idea to let them speak their piece. We want you to hold tight, if you can. We understand the problem, and we're taking all due care, believe me. Are you going to be all right?"

"When you send out for food, put me down for coffee and a jelly doughnut."

He laughed. "Well, you take it easy for a while. I'll give you back to Sergeant Powell."

"Hey, partner," Leland said.

"That's right, and I'm honored. You have the scam now don't you? More news for you. I was talking with Kathi Logan. She doesn't remember you
at all!"

"I'll get you for that, fella."

"No, she said a whole lot of nice things about you, man. All she knows is that you're stuck in a building with some bad people. Now something else: the media are showing up and that's in a big way. They want to patch the two of you in, when they can. You lose your privacy, but it's something."

"I don't want a circus."

"It's a little late for that,
kimosabe."

"I'll catch you later, Hollenbeck."

"Call me Al."

"Joe. Later."

"You bet. Take care now."

Pain awakened him. He knew where he was before he opened his eyes, but it took another moment before he remembered it all, or his memory caught up with the rest of him. He wasn't even sure he could move, he was hurting so badly in so many places. Even his thumb was cut, where Hannah had bitten him. The temperature had dropped or, more likely under the circumstances, his resistance had lowered just that much. Before he had fallen asleep, he had figured he had lost about a pint of blood, or the amount you gave at the blood bank, which was a hell of a lot of blood to lose. The sky was still black. At this time of year, there would be another hour and a half of total darkness.

He wanted to try standing up again. He had walked here, to the spot on the Wilshire Boulevard side where he had squeezed out of the ventilator. His left foot was so bad that he wanted to cry out. His thigh burned. He had been grazed by a bullet in his youth, and it had felt the same. He could walk, but he could see it was going to take five minutes to get around to the other side of the roof where Hannah's body lay. He stopped — why the hell did he want to go there? He was going to have to calculate every step. He got out the radio, but he waited a moment before he turned it on.

Something was bothering him. Al — Hollenbeck — had asked him about the number in the gang. Why? Leland had heard the same gunfire. These kids had studied this stuff in guerilla camps throughout the Middle East. They could set up a field of fire as well as the U.S. Marines. Al might not know that; his work kept him occupied around the clock.

Leland had decided that he was only going to listen. Twenty-six was quiet. On nineteen, a woman was speaking German, reciting words and numbers. Nothing on nine. The police had their own frequencies, but that did not mean that the gang could not listen to them, too, with the right equipment.

He was going to have to get ready for them. It would be more than an hour before they came for him. They would want to wait until the sun was up over the mountains. The worst of it for him was not knowing about Stephanie. He did not want to outlive her. He hadn't wanted to outlive Karen, either. He did not want to go through that grief again. He didn't think he could.

He shook his head. People were coming to kill him in an hour, and he was worrying about living too long. He made his way to the edge of the roof, but his leg made it impossible for him to get up on the sign to look down onto Wilshire Boulevard. He was wondering again about the wisdom of not getting on the air. The police could have something to tell him.

It seemed that there were many, many more lights on all around the city. He'd bought the 310 after the divorce. He'd known it was going to be his last plane, and toward the end he didn't even use it much. There was a time in your life to quit certain things. For the past six or seven years he'd devoted himself almost completely to his work. Good, interesting work, too.

He had been on the team that had devised the first antiterrorist, antikidnapping driving course. He'd designed the security system in the first of the new ball parks, and it had been copied, or adhered to, ever since. And something he had learned not to tell people, that he'd been the one to advise the national retailers to force manufacturers of small items like ballpoint pens to mount them on cards too big for people to slip into their pockets. People hated having to gouge their way through the cardboard and plastic so much that it did no good to tell them that it had to be done because shoplifting the world over was so bad that it threatened the retailing business.

What was going out of the world was the understanding that it was worthwhile to care about other people. Few people lived in a neighborhood any more. Life was being organized to keep people distant from one another. Human beings were beginning to feel like guests on their own planet. The designers of this building were more interested in glorifying a bunch of oil pirates with an impressive raised plaza than in providing a few trees and benches where people could sit and talk to each other. He turned the radio on again.

"Al?"

"Hold on. He's awake."

"Joe? Are you all right?"

"What is this, 'He's awake,' crap? I've been up here writing letters and rinsing out a few things."

"Fella was spelling me on the monitoring, that's all. Try to stay loose."

"I'm loose, you're the one who sounds tired. Listen, they're going to come up for me..."

"We've been working on that. You're going to get air support."

Leland was silent. If the police could control the roof, they could lower men onto it. They needed Leland to get that close. Support, hell: they wanted him to cover their landing. As far as they were concerned, he was expendable. They had even managed to get a public-relations face on it, calling it "air support." Now the gang had another reason to want him dead. So much time had passed since they had locked him up here that it was possible they had stopped monitoring channel eleven.

"Look, I'm not sure that will work. This roof is covered with structures that will give them damned good cover. They came to stay. It's odds-on that they have rockets."

"Only one way to find out, right, brother?"

Now they were brothers, Leland thought. Hell, he could hear the con in Al's voice! "Look, kid, we can talk about his honestly, but don't bullshit me, please."

"Something I should have told you, Joe. The networks are here, and they're picking up and sending out everything we're saying."

Leland sighed. "Am I getting paid?"

"I don't think so."

"They'll have to take their fucking chances with the rest of us."

He voice was controlled. "It's Christmas morning back east, Joe. Little kids are watching."

"They should be in church. Sure — if anybody out there wants to do something for me, he can go to church."

"There you go. Everybody knows you've been through hell — now you've got me doing it. Merry Christmas, everybody! Joe, we're not kidding you. With first light, we'll have helicopters overhead constantly. They're going to cover you."

"Listen to me. Listen carefully and
think!
The only reason I'm still alive is because they know they have the situation under control. They
want
to shoot down a helicopter."

"No, Joe, they want air time. They want to patch into the networks. They want to hook up to the satellite and talk to the whole world."

"And?"

"The people we've been able to talk to so far say that it's difficult, if not impossible, to give them what they want. We're trying to talk to them about it."