CHAPTER TWENTY NINE


Falling four floors doesn’t take long, but even so, it was too long, and then he landed and sank deep into a pile of foam mixed up with fragments of sheetrock and wallboard. It knocked the breath out of him, he heard it leave with a big whoosh, and if he’d anything in his stomach he’d have lost that too. But there wasn’t the sharper pain of broken bones. Something had cut him, he felt that, but his legs weren’t broken, and that was crucial.

So he was trapped there, half buried in insulation and fragments of wallboard, going in and out of consciousness with a chaser of nausea for a while.

Breath came back with a weird little whoop of air returning to his lungs, then a cough, then a lot more of those. That made it hard to move, and he was tempted to just rest where he was and recover a bit, but far above his head he heard excited voices, then shouts, and he had a good idea what they might be saying. It was time to get out of there.

Which, he soon realized was easier thought of than actually accomplished. He was in deep, and there wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver.

He found he still had his own gun in his right hand, so he shoved that one inside his shirt and under his waistband. Then he reached out with both hands. The walls of the tube were right above his head and the dumpster was pretty well full. So he had to pull stuff away from one side and make a space. He worked away at that for a minute or so and was rewarded with a view of a brick wall about eight feet away. The next job was getting his feet out of the deep holes in the foam they’d made, while retaining his shoes.

It was hard work. A lot harder than he would’ve imagined if presented with this in an abstract way. But after wriggling and heaving and dragging his body across the compacted debris, he got his head out from under the edge of the tube. It was still light, but wouldn’t be for long, he could sense that the day was drawing to a close.

A piece of wood, or sheetrock was lodged against his belt, preventing him from moving and it took a little while to pry himself loose from it. But then he made better progress and after another half minute or so he was out of the dumpster and standing on his own two legs.

He looked down and winced. His pants were torn, and filthy with sheetrock dust. He was bleeding as well, especially the left leg. A total mess, but, he was still alive and he didn’t seem to have broken any bones.

Loud voices broke through the background hum of the city. It was definitely time to go.

Providentially, he found a steel door that opened when he pushed on it, giving access to a space full of office dumpsters. Around a corner and he found an entrance and steps that ran down to an underground car park. He went down some steps. The place was full, and he thought about taking a car, but discarded the thought because one, these were all high priced rides and would be security tight, and two, such an effort would be bound to bring down police action in a hurry. He went through the parking level, climbed a ramp, and passed a startled attendant who looked him up and down and said “You okay? What the hell happened to you?”

And then he was on the street. Not the avenue, but about two hundred feet from the corner. People were hurrying past, as was the usual pattern in Manhattan. A taxi was out of the question. Even if one would stop for someone as filthy as himself, any cabby would remember him and since he’d just shot someone pretty important, the cops would have an all points out any moment now.

The goddamned nausea came back. It was bad this time, and there was nothing more he could do than lean against a lamp post and concentrate on just standing up. Anything else meant going face down and drawing even more attention to himself. Bad timing. He needed to be on the move, getting away from here.

Seconds crawled by as the sickness spasmed through him and then departed once more, the slow train to oblivion. He raised his head. Looked back the way he’d come. There were two men on the corner looking around.

Not good.

Rook ducked down behind a vendor of mexican street food. The smell coming from inside the cart wasn’t enticing in the current situation. He tried to ignore it and concentrate.

“Hoy, Chew a Chulapa!” said the smart-ad cartoon on the side of the cart in New York accented Spanglish, while the embossed cartoon Chupa-guy winked and chewed so that his cheeks bulged and his little mustache shook. The guy working the cart looked briefly Rook’s way, then turned to serve a customer. Rook looked back the way he’d come, the guys on the corner were starting up the street, but they hadn’t seen him.

The street traffic was the usual crazy mess of cars, limos, small trucks and pedal powered stuff. He got to his feet, prepared to plunge in and take his chances of getting across. Put the traffic between himself and Gaines’s men, it wasn’t much, but it was the best option he had.

But halfway across the street was blocked by a limo big enough to have his and hers bathrooms onboard. He spun away from that and his eyes met those of a pedicab man. The guy’s box seat was empty.

“Hey!” Rook stepped around the far side, keeping the box between himself and those two men coming down the block.

“The Village, 10th Street,” he said, handing the guy a twenty and swinging himself up into the seat.

The pedi-cab man pocketed the bill and started pedalling into an opening in the traffic. Rook didn’t look back, but kept his hand on the gun inside his shirt while he shook and shivered again, and more cold sweat ran down his back. They rounded the corner onto the avenue and turned south. He glanced back, there was no sign of pursuit. The next light was green and the pedi-cab guy knew his stuff and they were away and Rook was out of danger.

For now. He put his head back and did his best not to give in to the urge to vomit. Everything was spinning in an unpleasant way, and he noticed that his right hand was gripping the rail with white-knuckled intensity, as if it would stop him falling out onto the street. Once again the nausea retreated, ebbing away like a bile green tide of depression.

He pulled out the Nokia. Checked it for damage from the fall. There was a chip of yellow plastic knocked away on one side and some white dust had gotten on the screen, but other than that it seemed okay. It responded to the pressure on the side stud with the usual happy vibration.

“I have questions,” he said, “but for now just one for you to analyze. Where would the pleasure model be?”

“Analysis has begun.”

“Thanks.”

As he rode down the avenue, Rook dusted himself off. The bleeding from his leg came from a slashing cut, about two inches long. The blood was coagulating now, drying, the bleeding had stopped, but the trouser leg was a ruin. Still, he knew he’d been incredibly lucky. An inch the other way and whatever that sharp object had been would have gone right up between his legs and impaled him. He could be back in that dumpster bleeding to death.

He took stock. His life had been destroyed, along with his house.

But, he’d had a real education in the battle for control of the state. And he’d scored a victory of some kind, shooting that bastard and Doctor Berryman and getting away. He had two guns, and his Nokia.

And more than anything he had a mission.

Whatever this case was really about, civil war in the ruling family, a coup d’etat, or just plain old murder, he didn’t care. He was going to find Plesur, and take her and himself to California. Start over. This was all above his pay grade. Let the Ranch sort it out. This was their business, Freddy, the invisible killers, Buck Marion, it was nothing to do with him.

The pedi-cab rolled south on Sixth Avenue with giant towers on either side all the way. Rook tried to relax, tried to think, neither came easily. They crossed 14th Street and were in Greenwich Village. The towers were suddenly gone and the street scene was one where money clearly ruled. Restaurants cheek by jowl lined every block with an occasional high end clothing boutique or a wine store to break up the gastronomic monotony. The rides parked on the street were all high end electrics. The people out strolling, walking the dogs, chatting, were dressed fashionably and well. He knew he’d stick out like a sore thumb the moment he dismounted from his ride.

The phone vibrated in his hand.

“Yes?”

“Analysis of known information regarding Plesur as follows. She was not captured by the group that held you prisoner. Ergo, they did not know where she was. This gives strong indication that they did not know of General Sangacha’s apartment until they got that information from you under questioning.”

“I didn’t tell them that.”

“Not consciously, no.”

Rook realized with a shudder that someone like Doctor Berryman could pry anything out of any human mind with her nasty little control programs.

“That they subsequently did not capture her provides very strong indication that she, and the others escaped and are still at large. This gives a reasonably high probability that she has found shelter. The options open to her there are hard to analyze, though it is possible that she made contact with the owner of the club, with whom you had arranged the upgrade operation. In that case, she may not be in the city at all, and she may have had the operation. Or, some other unknown line of action was followed. There are too many unknowns to

achieve a reasonable degree of probability there.”

Rook nodded vaguely. That confirmed what he’d been thinking, pretty much.

“I am sorry that I cannot do better. There are just too many unknowns.”

“Never mind. Doesn’t change what I have to do.”

The pedi-cab left the avenue, headed down a street, took a left and suddenly, Rook realized he’d been here before. This was where he and the others had walked to Herb’s house. There, he saw the little 24 hour stop-an’-shop, Herb’s house was another block down the street, but they weren’t going there. Instead they went around the corner, down another block and came to a halt outside Pipo Haman’s apartment building.

Rook paid the fare, tipped no more than adequately, since he’d already dropped a twenty on the guy and was left standing there in the ruins of his clothes, with sheetrock dust on his shoes and probably in his hair.

Get off the street, said his instincts. Anyone might take one look at him, decide that he was either a vagrant or mentally defective and call a cop to check him out. He slipped down an alley beside Pipo’s building and hid in the shadows.

It seemed like an age since he had last been on the streets here. And, in fact, he had no idea how long it had been. He withdrew the Nokia from his pocket again.

“What’s the date? How long has it been?”

“Twelve days.”

“Christ almighty, twelve days?”

“Yes.”

“So I was only awake for a few hours and the rest of the time...?”

“I don’t know. I tried to call you, but you were not receiving.”

Warehoused. Kept alive with intravenous feeding while his brain was switched off by Dr. Berryman and her nasty little control program.

A sudden spasm of nausea came and went, leaving him with cold sweat and shivers running down his spine. His legs felt weak all of a sudden. He had to sit down, there was no choice in the matter, either he sat or he was going to topple over.

Sitting on the concrete with his back to the wall he felt a little better, but still weak and shaky. He thought he should call Jenni, let her know he was alive. He was about to do that when he felt oddly light, fluttery, his thoughts chasing away towards a grey horizon. And then he was out cold, lying in the alley, helpless.