The wash cradle was pressing the rope against the building. There would be just enough time to build a little momentum and scramble to one side.
Richardson was walking from one end of the window to the other, preparing to swing his way clear of the descending cable when it dropped, closing the ten-foot gap in a second.
Underneath his feet, Curtis felt the bottom of the cradle strike Richardson hard. He looked over the rail and saw that for the moment the rope held, although the impact had knocked the architect unconscious.
It was while tying Mitch's wrists behind his back with a plastic thong that one of the arresting officers noticed the electrically subdued suspect's wristwatch.
'Hey, look at this,' he said to his colleague, who was still holding the Taser gun in case he needed to give Mitch another jolt.
The other officer bent closer. 'What?'
'This watch. It's a gold Submariner, man. A Rolex.'
'Submariner, eh? Maybe that's why he's so fuckin' wet.'
'How come a doper's wearing a ten-thousand-dollar watch?'
'Maybe he stole it.'
'Naw. A doper would have sold a watch like that. Maybe he's telling the truth. What'd he say he was? An architect?'
'Hey, architect.' The cop slapped Mitch lightly on the face. 'You hear me, architect?'
Mitch groaned.
'How much T you give him?'
'Just the one mug.'
They untied Mitch's wrists, sat him in the back of the black-and-white and waited for him to recover.
'Maybe something's wrong in there after all.'
'The building attacked him? C'mon.'
'The guy at the county gaol said the elevator killed someone, didn't he?'
'So?'
'So, maybe we should check it out.'
The other cop shifted awkwardly and looked up at the sky. His eyes narrowed on the Gridiron's facade.
'What is that? Up there.'
'I dunno. I'll get the night sights.'
'Looks like window-cleaners.'
'At this time of night?' The cop fetched a pair of Starlight binoculars from the trunk and trained them on the front of the building.
Two hundred feet above the heads of his fellow LAPD officers, Frank Curtis struggled to recover the semi-conscious body of Ray Richardson that was hanging helplessly at right angles to his own ropes beside the Mannesmann cradle. The control rope had fallen from Richardson's hands and it was only the friction action of the descendeur that had prevented him from plummeting to his death. There was blood on the side of his head, and even when he opened his eyes and caught sight of Curtis's outstretched hand it was a minute or two before he felt strong enough to grasp hold of it.
'I've got you,' grunted Curtis as he pulled Richardson towards the cradle.
Richardson grinned wearily and held on.
'Yeah? But who's got you?' He shook his head, trying to clear it, and added, 'use the abseil rope to tie us off or we'll both be killed. Hurry, man. Before it decides to drop us down again.'
Curtis reached towards Richardson's harness and grasped a handful of the rope that was hanging beneath him.
'Make a loop,' Richardson ordered.
Curtis pulled a loop through the handrail and started to tie a figure-ofeight knot back on itself, the way he had seen Richardson tie the rope earlier.
Richardson nodded his approval. 'That's good,' he sighed. 'Make a climber out of you yet.'
A second or two later the knot tightened as once more Ishmael overrode the Mannesmann's brake checks to let the cradle run free on the cables.
'What did I tell you?' said Richardson as the cradle dipped down on one side like a capsizing boat. The rope slipped up to the corner of the handrail and the two men found themselves pressed close together. Suddenly the cables went taut again and the cradle straightened.
'What now?' said Curtis, struggling back on to the diminutive platform.
'It looks like we're going up again,' observed the other man. 'What's the matter? Don't you like the view from my new building? Hey, you want the world? Take a good look. I give it to you.'
Thanks.'
'My guess is that when Ishmael gets us up to the top it'll drop us back down again. Try and jolt us off.'
Curtis looked up at the top of the building and saw that the rocketlauncher profile of the yellow Mannesmann was moving away to the left.
'No, I think Ishmael's got something else in mind,' he said. 'Looks like it's dragging the cradle round the other side of the building to try and break the knot on your rope.'
Richardson followed the line of Curtis's pointing finger. 'Or maybe break the anchor. Or the rope itself.'
'Will they hold?'
Richardson grinned. 'That all depends on what Ishmael uses to wash the windows.'
Dilute solution of acetic or ethanoic acid to clean building's windows. Cleaning surfactant based on California citrus juices. But in concentrated, undiluted form, acetic acid almost pure, colourless and highly corrosive, especially to core of continuous nylon filaments encased in woven sheath of climbing rope. Nylon and acetic based on carboxylic acids. Soon as undiluted cleaning surfactant in contact with nylon rope, orientation of filaments' specially stretched molecules will alter.
'Look,' said Helen, pointing down towards the piazza side as Hope Street began to fill with flashing blue lights. 'Someone must have seen them. Or maybe Mitch got out after all.'
'Thank God,' said Jenny. But as she said it she thought that help would come too late for Richardson and Curtis. She searched desperately for some way of stopping the Mannesmann on its track. Noticing the Stillson wrench lying on the rooftop where Richardson had dropped it, she ran and picked it up. She dashed into the path of the machine and forced the wrench into the gap between the rail and the runner wheel. For a moment the Mannesmann continued its course. As Jenny scrambled to get clear it suddenly stopped moving. She pushed herself up and returned to the parapet in time to see the abseiling rope snap and the cradle it had been restraining catapulted back across the facade of the Gridiron. For several moments it swung like a pendulum. Such was the force of the separation that both women were certain they would see the men flung across the downtown sky to certain death. So when Jenny let out a scream it was not for grief or fear but the relief at seeing them still aboard the suspended cradle and, for the moment at least, still alive.
Bunkered in the earthquake-proofed fourth and fifth sub-levels of City Hall East, Police Captain Harry Olsen commanded the Gridiron operation using ECCCS, the LAPD's state-of-the-art Emergency
Command Control Communications Systems. Designed by Hughes
Aerospace and NASA at a cost of $42 million, the control centre resembled a smaller version of NASA's own mission control room in the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. Cameras on the ground and on the helicopters of the LAPD airforce gave Olsen an almost complete picture of what was happening outside.
His computer assessed the fragmentary account given by Mitchell Bryan and judged that it would not be safe for a SWAT team to enter the building until the main power supply had been interrupted.
The ECCCS maintained a dedicated telephone line to all the major utilities, including the city's electrical engineers. As soon as Olsen had considered the computer's recommended course of action he spoke to the night-time supervisor and requested that they cut off the relevant circuit.
The helicopter pilots were already lowering safety harnesses to the two women on the roof. They looked like they had had a pretty rough time of it, he reflected. It was a simple enough rescue. But the two men on the cradle might turn out to be a little more tricky.