Explain that, Mr. Birk.
But my left hand was starting to give way. My right was barely holding on.
What if I just let go? Would a good coroner be able to tell anything about ante-mortem injuries? "Hmm. These welts on his hand, his collarbone, his knee. Not consistent with a fall from a great height."
Would it matter? Birk could probably buy off a coroner. He had at least one cop in his pocket. Plenty of room for a coroner-or did Illinois have medical examiners? Didn't matter. Birk could afford either one.
Nearly a thousand feet to fall. A few seconds at most. My entire body was begging to let go. My hands wanted to. My feet did too. My mind, my heart, my will-the pain was sapping them all.
And then I heard a hum-more than a hum, a mechanical whine-something moving off to my right, on the other side of the building.
The hoist was coming back up.
Why would Birk and Curry have summoned it? They weren't through with me yet. The game wasn't over. Unless it meant they couldn't see me from above anymore and would come to the floor I was on and finish me; or go down to ground level and wait for me to fall.
No more bolts were falling from above, which gave me a chance to climb freely. If I made it down one more floor, I'd be on concrete. But I'd also be right where they expected me to be. They'd be standing in the elevator or stairwell entrance and finish it. But there was another choice. Do the horizontal beam walk again. Come in on an unfinished floor above where they'd be waiting. If the wind didn't blow me off, maybe I could find a weapon-the kind of bolts they had been throwing-or a section of rebar or chunk of concrete to drop on Curry's head from above.
My muscles were still cramping and both palms were bleeding. My feet felt frozen inside my shoes. But three floors down from the top, I inched out onto a beam and moved slowly along, summoning every ounce of my training in movement and fighting, staying steady and balanced, getting closer to the corrugated floor: fifteen feet, ten feet, five. When I was close enough I launched myself forward and landed on my side. Pain shot through my shoulder where the first bolt had hit. But I was back on firm ground of sorts, in a place with a fighting chance. I sprinted toward the elevator. It would have to pass me on the way up to fetch Birk and Curry then come back down. I hunted for a weapon, spied a wrench that had fallen between two sections of flooring, hefted it. It was the best chance I had to take Curry out. Break his gun arm, stave in his shiny skull.
And then take Simon Birk apart.
The elevator ground slowly up the side. I could see light inside it, a bare bulb that made the smears in its Plexiglas surface look ghostly, as if it had been wiped by a spectral hand. I'm left-handed but shifted the wrench to my right, which didn't hurt as badly. I breathed in as deeply as I could without sending more spasms through my side. I had two, maybe three minutes to get ready. I looked for a shadowed place to hide, to make them come to me, to shift the game to my terms.
The game. I had enough to hate Birk for already, but turning my life, my death into a game for his amusement, an entertainment of sorts? I wanted to entertain the living shit out of him. I had to focus my anger, not let it get the better of me, at least not until Curry was down.
But the elevator never went up to their floor. It stopped at mine. And when the doors opened the only person in it was Gabriel Cross.
I stumbled into it and fell onto the floor. I would have shaken his hand but I doubted he wanted any part of my blood-smeared lumps of meat.
"You got my message," I said.
"No," he said. "I got Mr. Birk's." And he surprised me by doing a note-perfect impression of Birk. "'Gabriel, I wonder if you'd do something for me. Walk back out to the end of that girder.' Like he's the organ grinder and I'm the monkey. I could tell they were up to no good with you. When I got to my truck, I took a look up through my binocs. And there you were, doing Spiderman. Figured you might need a lift."
He started the hoist back down. They could throw all the bolts they wanted. I was safe inside it.
"You work for a man," Cross said, "that's all it means. Doesn't mean he owns you. Used to, maybe. Not today. Not with all these buildings going up. Not when you're a Mohawk who's not afraid of heights."
CHAPTER 41
Gabriel Cross drove me back to my hotel, by way of a Walgreens on North Clark Street. I stayed slumped in the car seat while he went in to pick up what I needed-extra-strength Tylenol; gauze and tape; peroxide; Polysporin; arnica gel.
Sadly, they didn't sell rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
When he pulled up in front of the Hilton, he said, "My wife has a friend who's a nurse. Lives in our building. I could see if she's around."
"There's nothing a nurse can do for me."
"How you going to wrap your hands? Neither one of them's working."
He had a point.
"Her name's Nola," Cross said. "If she's home when I get back, I'll send her over."
"What should I pay her?"
"Whatever you can spare," he said. "She's a single mother."
"A hundred? Two hundred?"
"Two's all right."
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"You saved my fucking neck."
"You want to pay me?"
"If you could use it."
"I can always use it. But I'm going to say no thanks."
"Sure?"
"What I did, I did for me, not you. I told you, I didn't like how Mr. Birk spoke to me."
I said, "I'm going to thank you anyway."
He said, "Okay."
I tried to open the car door but my hand wouldn't grip the handle. He got out and opened the door from the outside. I got out slowly, feeling pain in more places than I could count. Cross walked behind me, a hand at the small of my back, as I shuffled into the lobby. He had to press the elevator buttons for me and work the key card into the lock on my door. Once I was flat on the bed, he left and I dozed for an hour until the knocking began. "My lord," Nola Johnson said. "You look like you were beaten with tire irons."
I was stripped down to my underwear, covered in welts. My palms were burning where skin had been rubbed off. "Close enough," I said.
"Do I have to tell you this might sting a little?"
"That would be a major improvement."
She used peroxide to clean my palms and the oozing cut between the first two knuckles of my left hand. I gritted my teeth and sucked in air. She covered the broken skin with a thin layer of Polysporin and wrapped my hands in gauze. She went out to the hall and filled a bucket with ice and had me sit in the tub while she rubbed ice cubes onto the welts on my arm, shoulder and thigh. Then I lay down on the bed and she rubbed arnica gently onto the bruises.
"I don't think anything is broken in your arm," she said. "As to the rest, you should probably get X-rays. I wouldn't be surprised if your second metacarpal showed a fracture. That bone isn't that hard to break."
"I practise karate," I told her. "I've broken it before."
"Your patella is awfully swollen," she said. "Can you straighten your leg?"
I tried. Couldn't do it.
"And there's your clavicle. Again, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a break. How much Tylenol have you taken?"
"Four extra-strength."
"Any alcohol?"
"No."
She reached into her pocket and took out a small vial. "These are Tylenol 3s. You can take one now and one in four hours."
"Thanks."
"But you have to wait the four hours. Promise?"
"Yes."
"I work at Cook County Hospital," she said, handing me a slip of paper with a phone number. "I start at eight in the morning. If you come in at seven forty-five, I can get you X-rayed."
"I'll see how I feel in the morning."
"You worried about the cost?"