He stationed himself at the elevator bank on the thirty-seventh floor. He didn't give a damn how long it took. He could get two, even three of them if he had any luck at all. They had written him off. He loved it. Little Tony, Karl, and the woman Leland had heard reciting the letters and numbers on the radio. That would be the end of it. He wanted to hear that electric whine. When you were in an elevator, you never knew where it was going to stop. Thirty-eighth floor, women's lingerie, kitchenware, and toys; thirty-seventh floor, death.
He wondered if he could find a way of getting down below the normal line of fire, but he couldn't bend his left knee. The only thing he had going for him was the fact that the people in the car wouldn't know it was going to stop. Maybe he would catch them talking about how well they were doing, now that they were rid of him.
He had to wait another twenty minutes before one of the electric motors kicked over. A car was coming up from below. He had to hobble from door to door to decide which of the four on the right side it was. As soon as the doors started opening, he was going to shove the assault rifle in and start firing. He pressed the call button and wiped a gritty hand on his shirt, or what was left of it. He had that going for him, his appearance.
The rifle fired three rounds before it jammed. Leland had the Browning out when the doors fully opened the car was empty. The doors started closing again. He hit the rubber bumper on the edge of the door with the barrel of the Browning. As the doors rolled open a second time, Leland peered inside.
A small trunk on the floor, and in the middle corner next to the control panel, on an aluminum tripod, a television camera. The doors began rolling again. Leland grabbed the camera by the top of the tripod and pulled it out of the elevator onto the thirty-seventh floor. If he had to give himself away and jam his machine gun for a television camera, he might as well have it. And get moving, too, because the gang would be after him again.
He lugged the thing toward the stairs.
He had to pull the desks out of the way to get to the open window. He stood in the shadow and turned on channel nine.
"Powell, are you there?"
"Hey, Joe, where've you been keeping yourself?"
"I've been around. Look, I want to let you have another souvenir, but I don't want to step out where I can be seen until I know some young genius isn't going to put one in my rib cage."
"Okay. Hold on." The radio went dead. "You're clear. What have you got for us?"
Leland told him. "You said they wanted to go on the air? They had the equipment for television."
"Black and white or color? I'm going into the business."
It made no sense to tell Powell he had seen him on television. "Well, I spoiled their fun. It wasn't what I had in mind, but it'll have to do."
He tossed the television camera out into the bright morning air. As he watched it plunge like an arrow toward the street, Leland asked himself if Little Tony was really so uncontrolled an egomaniac as to put himself on television for no good reason. The answer was no, he had a reason. While he stood in the window, Leland raised the jammed assault rifle over his head. If Tony was watching a television set, he could believe that Leland was still a player in the game. The pilot of the police helicopter pressed his hand against the plastic bubble in a salute. It was time to get out of sight.
He was thinking of Tony... and the safe. Given the freedom-fighter pose in the window, Little Tony expected Leland to take the initiative again. In reality, Leland had only the Browning but enough explosive to turn the Klaxon building into Wilshire Canyon. Tony had to think of the explosive, too. Perhaps he was convinced at last that Leland was liable to do anything. The trick was to keep him off balance. The situation had not changed. In spite of the daylight and the electronic penetration, Leland remained independent. It was to his advantage to let Little Tony think otherwise that he was the "trained dog" that had beaten and shot Hannah to death. As things now stood, Tony thought Leland was still trying to break down their defenses against the police. Leland set out for the thirty-third floor, where Tony would not be looking for him. It was time to free the hostages, before the ring around them was drawn too tight.
The assault rifle was hopelessly jammed. He needed tools to get into it, and even then there could be a broken part, like a spring. He put it in a desk drawer. He had no need for deadweight, and leaving it where it could be seen was just foolish.
He turned the television set on, the sound very low. One of the elevators was running, and Leland assumed it was a trick to draw him out. He was curious about what they could have arranged. Enough of that they wanted him curious. At least they didn't believe he could be frightened.
The radio was still silent. On the television screen, the reporter jabbered animatedly, looking up. The director cut to a shot of the building, labeled "live." The camera zoomed up to the window in which Leland had just been standing. What the hell was the use of that? The reporter again. The picture broke up and the building reappeared, labeled "recorded earlier."
It was the same shot, but now Leland could see a blackened ragged figure holding up the useless gun. On the screen he was not so much nightmarish as pathetic. Like something from a concentration camp. Now the director cut to a helicopter shot, tracking the police helicopter floating in front of it, the building swinging into view beyond. There he was again, recorded earlier, gun aloft. Leland turned the sound off. He wanted to think. Television was another tool, if he could figure out how to make it work. If he could communicate what he wanted without giving the game away.
More than that: without even having heard the announcer's words, Leland knew that he had been telling the world what it had just seen, and was about to see again. Tony had a television set. The people in charge of what went out over the air had revealed his position in a situation that was still life and death.
He wrote another note, strapped it to a staple gun with rubber bands, and put it in his kit bag. The police were able to retrieve notes thrown from the northeast corner. On the way he took a fireax from the wall, to break the window.
What he wanted was complicated, and he hoped that he was being clear. If he saw a television helicopter on station a quarter mile to the east, he would go to the windows of the thirty-fourth floor, where he would put on a show of pushing desks around. The television people would put him on tape, which they would broadcast for the first time at exactly 9:28, calling it "live." He and Powell could add the dialogue then, over the radio. Leland guessed that Little Tony would know within a minute it was another of Leland's tricks, but that was all Leland thought he needed to sweep the glass on the stairs out of the way with the towel on his foot, and get down onto the thirty-second floor.
The window was harder to break with the ax than he had thought, and then it shattered with a noise like an explosion. People half a block away on Wilshire Boulevard started running for cover. He could see broken windows and blackened walls everywhere from blocks around. He chucked out the staple gun and started away, hefting the ax like a woodsman. It was a good idea it would work. The hostages would be headed down the stairs by 9:45. All Leland had to do was hide out another nine minutes.
The elevator again more than one. The doors rolled open and someone shouted in German. Leland went down before the firing began, the sounds tearing through the glass partitions. They had seen him on television getting rid of the staple gun! He let go of the ax and crawled across the office floor. More shouting, high and low. They wanted him so badly they didn't care what was seen and heard on the street below. The next office led nowhere but back to the elevators. He drew the Browning and got behind a desk, his back to Wilshire Boulevard. The sound of the firing grew closer. The next burst crossed the top of the desk and brought the ceiling and walls down on top of him. Leland huddled down, trying to protect his head.