Eight feet is a very long way to jump if you’re a little plump and a little out of shape, like the king, or over fifty with the coordination not what it once was, like Emory Scales, or a sedentary creature of slothful habits whose conception of giddy height is a four-foot bar stool—like me.
It was a typical Padillo plan, devoid of frippery, stark in its simplicity, and commendable for its cunning, but if no one seemed much inclined to talk about its risk, that was understandable, too. I wasn’t quite sure that the danger was evenly distributed. Kassim, Scales and I had to summon up some heretofore untapped and probably nonexistent reserves of nerve and strength to leap across a chasm that would have given pause to a mountain goat. All Padillo had to do was get shot at.
There was only a scattering of pedestrians on the sidewalk and traffic on Avenue A was light. Across the street the park looked ominous and forbidding, the way most city parks look now when the sun goes down.
A light blue two-door, the kind that they used to call a club coupe, rolled slowly down Avenue A from the left. It was one of those cars that have big engines, anywhere from 350 to 425 cubic inches, and are named after some reptile or fish, and are just the thing for heavy city traffic if you need the reassurance of a speedometer that goes all the way up to 160 miles per hour.
The car came slowly down the avenue as if its driver was looking for either a place to park or a girl to pick up. It was going to be a matter of timing and luck. “If he’s sober,” Padillo had said, “and if he’s got normal reactions and if he’s not daydreaming, it should work out okay.”
“That doesn’t leave much room for improvisation,” I’d said.
“Not much at all,” Padillo had said.
The car was about forty feet from the entrance of the apartment building and I judged its speed to be around twenty miles per hour. A dark figure, moving almost too fast to be human, darted into the street lamp’s pool of yellow light for less than a second, and then he was in the street directly in the path of the oncoming car. The driver was awake. He slammed on his brakes and the wheels grabbed at the asphalt and the front end dipped until the heavy chrome bumper was almost at the level of the man’s ankles.
The man was momentarily caught in the car’s lights, fully illuminated, unable to move until he was sure the car could stop without striking him. It must have been much less than a second, but it was long enough for whoever was in the park across the street to get off two shots, but by then Padillo was moving again, ducking low, as he scuttled around to the right-hand side of the car and jerked at its handle. The door was locked and the driver was starting off again slowly, apparently not yet quite sure what was happening, only that he wanted no part of it. Padillo smashed the right window with his automatic and I could see the driver’s hand come over and raise the catch. Then Padillo was inside and the car was frantically spinning its rear wheels when I said, “Let’s go,” to Kassim and Scales.
I heard two more shots, apparently from the park, but I didn’t look. Instead, I backed up twenty feet, paused and started my run. The eight feet of blackness that separated the two buildings assumed Olympic proportions and I kept trying to remember to take off with my right foot but by the time I got to the edge of the building it was too late and I had to use my left one and then I was in the air for a couple of hours and finally landed hard on the gritty roof with a good six feet to spare.
I turned and hurried back to the edge of the building, ready to grab for Kassim or Scales if their feet slipped and they started to teeter on the edge after they landed. There was just enough light so that I could make them out. But neither of them was down in a sprinter’s crouch. They were standing and one of them was whimpering. It was the king. He didn’t want to try the leap and he was telling Scales why in English, and when he got tired of that, in French. I saw Scales’s right arm go back and then the figures blurred together. But if I couldn’t see it, I could hear it all right. It was the sound of a hard slap and I wondered who was the more surprised, the king who got slapped or the royal adviser who delivered the blow.
The whimpering suddenly stopped and then a short, dumpy figure was trotting slowly across the opposite roof toward me, lumbering really, and I didn’t see how he could make it, but he picked up a little speed and then sailed off into the night, his arms and legs frantically in motion as if he were still running. Kassim landed heavily only six inches from the edge of the building and I caught his left arm just before his feet went out from under him. I dragged him a couple of feet and then let him go. He started whimpering again.
I turned and watched Scales. He ran all right but when he reached the edge of the building he got his feet confused and couldn’t decide which one he should use to give him the lift and by the time he got that straightened out it was too late. But he was in the air by then, flapping his arms as if he had decided to fly the rest of the way. He landed hard, with his elbows clutching the ledge of the building as he scrabbled for a hold. I caught him and pulled him up and over and then let him lie there for a moment.
I ran to the front of the building we’d jumped to and looked down at the street. A man had come out of the park and was running across the street toward the building we had just left. He ran easily and there was a nice spring to his step. Even at night from seven floors up I had no trouble recognizing Amos Gitner.
I hurried back to Kassim and Scales. The king had stopped whimpering, but he looked a little ashamed of himself and smiled at me nervously, as if he hoped that I’d have something complimentary to say about how nicely he had jumped. Instead I said, “Gitner’s on his way.”
That got Scales up off the roof where he’d sat picking at the torn elbow of his shiny blue suit. “It’s torn,” he said.
“When the king gets all that money, maybe he’ll buy you a new one. Let’s go.”
Scales turned toward Kassim. “I apologize for having struck you, your Majesty, but given the circumstances—” He didn’t finish the sentence, perhaps because there was nothing in his background and training that would provide him with an excuse for having struck a royal person. “You jumped very well,” he said in a lame tone.
Kassim brightened. “Thank you, Scales.”
“Let’s go,” I said again.
We moved over rooftops until we came to the building that formed the corner on Avenue A and Ninth Street. We started down the fire escape. At the second floor, I climbed on the ladder that screeched and howled as it slid slowly toward the sidewalk. The king and Scales followed.
I started trotting up Ninth, herding Scales and the king ahead of me. We cut left on First Avenue and then started walking rapidly up St. Mark’s Place, past the Polish Democratic Club and the Scorpiana Boutique, walking as quickly as we could toward Astor Place and Cooper Square.
I kept looking back but he didn’t show himself until we had nearly reached the square. Gitner was running toward us. He ran fast and I snapped, “Go!” at the king and Scales and they fairly bounded down the steps of the subway entrance, as if trying to compensate for their twin flops in the running broad jump event.
Gitner was just crossing the street as I jumped down the first three steps of the subway stairs. I dropped the tokens that Padillo had given me into the turnstile and shoved the king and Scales through. Then there was nothing to do but wait for the next train.
I heard it coming, and it seemed a long way off, but then it was there and we darted into it. I turned to watch the turnstiles. Gitner was racing toward them now and he had his token ready. He would. Then he was through the turnstile and running for the train as the doors began to close, ever so slowly. Gitner was at the doors, clawing at them now, but they had closed, and we stood there and stared at each other until the train began to move.