David slipped out of a caramel tweed jacket, unknotted his bow tie and rolled up his sleeves. "You handle it," he said, "but can I ask you something?"
"What's that?"
"Haven't you ever thrown a straight haymaker? Why a roundhouse?"
Foster made a fist and fired it in a half circle. "I was off balance when I let it go," he said.
David instructed him to keep his back door ajar because that would be the most direct route "for me to intervene."
"In what? You mean an attempt on my life? Bah!" Foster fanned the air in a show of disgust. "So, what am I supposed to do if a goblin appears?"
"Yell. I'll be in the Bugles Room," David said, referring to the boardroom off the back corridor, directly opposite Foster's office. It was named in honor of the late chairman who, twelve years before, had underwritten new carpeting and furniture, including a six-figure teak table. "There's nothing to read in there, I suppose."
"Grab a few magazines in the reception room. Really, David, is all this necessary?"
"Just go with it, okay?" David left through the front door and addressing the secretary, said, "May I? I'll bring them back later," as he scooped up two magazines and continued out beyond the elevator and around to the rear corridor. In view of the findings at Bugles' condo, David sensed Foster would "go with it" with about as much gusto as he had in guarding him. But he wasn't sure either about Foster's cooperation or about the significance of the findings.
In the boardroom, he sat at the sprawling table before a wall of gold drapes, Friday on his lap, feet fastened to the floor. He knees scraped the table.
He had propped open the door with a serving table and, yet, no sounds were added to the silence around him. After thirty minutes of such quiet that it nullified any sense of immediacy, he decided he was not cut out for sentry duty. And, besides, Foster knows he's being guarded now, so why not have Kathy send a cop at noon. On second thought, that's stupid, too. This guy's a prime suspect, not a potential victim. Hunches, move over. He untied and retied his size twelve shoe.
Then he turned rigid upon hearing the rapid-fire voice of Ted Tanarkle coming from the direction of the office. "I've made my decision," the pathologist said coldly. "But why?" Foster asked.
"There's no need to talk about it."
"You can't tell me why?" Foster continued. Straining, David made out a final exchange. Tanarkle: "Good day."
Foster: "Ted, listen to me."
David sat motionless, trying quickly to decide whether to walk in on Foster or run around to the front and "casually" bump into Tanarkle. He rose quietly and concealed himself against the doorjamb to listen, but he detected no further conversation.
Suddenly from the left, he heard a reverberating, decrescendo scream. David knifed past the serving table toward Foster's door. It was closed and locked. He struggled with the knob for only a moment and then bolted left, around two corners. He stopped short when he came upon Foster, his hands clutching the sides of his head. The administrator stood slouched, facing the elevator. David whipped him aside with one arm. He saw a gaping door with no car.
David braced himself against the wall and, arching his head forward into the black shaft, looked down and thought he could make out the outline of a body, spread-eagled and still. He glanced at Foster.
"I started to follow him out. Then the … the bloody scream! God, it was so …" Foster didn't complete the sentence. "And I saw that door closing just as I got here," he added, pointing to the adjacent exit.
David checked the metal dial above the elevator. Its hand pointed to "G." He exploded into the stairwell and, more than once resisting the impulse to grab his knee, puffed his way to the basement. There, the elevator door moved to and fro, rattling against a chair on its side, a wedge that kept the door from closing, the car from rising.
David snatched up the chair and, in the car, pushed the "Hold" button. Standing on the chair to reach the emergency ceiling panel, he twisted the latches and pulled the panel down, exposing Tanarkle's head, neck and shoulders.
"Ted! Ted! Can you hear me?" he cried. He groped for a carotid pulse, but all he felt was what he knew was a final shudder.
He heard Foster's rapid breathing behind him. "Is he …?" Foster said in a loud whisper.
"I'm afraid so. Poor guy. What a way to go." "I knew it would happen sooner or later."
"What's that supposed to mean?" David said, as if the comment had shattered his moment of grief.
"An accident. This old contraption should have been torn out years ago. Damn the board! Damn the history!" "It's hydraulic?"
"Unfortunately, yes. And a strain for six floors. It always was."
"Where's the control room?"
"Around there," Foster said, nodding to the left.
"You have a key to the door?" David asked as they walked past the corner.
"Not with me but in my office." Foster's forehead was dotted with sweat.
"Wait!" David shouted. "What the … it's been jimmied!"
David bent over and squeezed into the sooty compartment. Its smell reminded him of the times he stood under his car, watching an oil change. Steadying himself on a slippery, squishy floor and brushing cobwebs aside, he yanked on the cord to an overhead light and found he was standing in a pool of inky oil.
David's eyes flitted back and forth across the ram cylinder, the pump and the oil storage tank, finding it hard to process the entire scene in one swallow. He finally settled on an oil line and squatted to get a better look. It was disconnected at the tank end where he saw oil in a thin ooze. Off to the side, he noted that the synchronizer for the car door and hoistways on individual floors had been tampered with.
He was about to stoop out when he spotted a piece of adhesive tape on the pump housing. Printed in neat, block letters was: "SEE?"
That was a last straw. David reeled back, numbed by death and mockery at the base of the clock tower he so revered.
Chapter 12
Having notified hospital security and Kathy of Ted Tanarkle's fatal plunge, David paced about the Hole awaiting the arrival of the usual investigative unit. Earlier, he had suggested to a shaken Foster that he retreat to his office-that he would be contacted shortly.
Now what? Has Victor Spritz neared his goal of eliminating the entire EMS oversight committee: Bugles, Coughlin, and now, Tanarkle? That leaves Alton Foster.
Like in a dream, he heard Belle's questions echoing in the background. And further behind, the panicky voice of the page operator. But David was in an impenetrable zone, seized by an obsession that he was in over his head. In over his head and down in the Hole, a two-bit command post whose dank smell told him he was below ground. And now there was to be an investigation of another fiendish crime, this time sixty feet away. They're getting closer.
He shuddered. It's happening. It's what you wanted, isn't it, baptism under fire? Fire? You mean a goddamned raging inferno. It could make you hard-boiled. So shape up, David, and be hard-boiled!
Kathy came in. She rose on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. He felt placated by the aroma of her presence. "Here we go again," she said.
"Are the same people here?"
"Same people."
"Mind if I listen in," Belle said, "so I know what's going on?"
David stared at her for a moment. "Belle-sorry, Ted Tanarkle's been killed. He either fell or was pushed down the elevator shaft." He pictured the control room and corrected himself: "Pushed."
"Oh, no!" Belle exclaimed. She exhaled loudly. "Where? Which elevator?"
"Around the corner."
David gave Kathy the details of the past half-hour, concluding with what he discovered in the control room. He saw Belle dabbing the corners of her eyes, something he was certain she hadn't done after she learned of the other murders.