Leland was on the thirty-fifth floor, hailing an elevator. Tony was not so in love with the sound of his own voice that he would not recognize the starts and stops of the elevator for what they were evidence that Leland was coming after him. What Leland had in his favor was the fact that Tony was on the air. If he tried to punish Stephanie for what Leland was doing, Tony would lose whatever audience sympathy he was trying to develop. He knew it. Leland had no doubt that everything Tony was saying was true. Tony's tragedy was that he didn't see that he was as much a factor a result of the problem as the woman he was threatening with a gun.
The elevator arrived; Leland banged the "40" button and shuffled toward the stairs. He would be able to hear what happened. More gunfire from below. Good. Anything to make Tony think the situation was changing. Leland was at the stairs when the elevator stopped again and the shooting began almost at once and stopped. Leland got on the radio.
"Tony, you're feeling the strain. I tried that trick an hour ago, and it didn't work for me. I'm disappointed with you."
Tony sighed. "Mr. Leland, how do you know that your daughter is not already dead?"
Taco Bill boomed. "You touch that woman, I'll kill you myself, you son of a bitch!"
"That's how I know," Leland said. "Let her go if you want to fight me." He kept climbing: the length of time the elevator had been in motion made him think Tony was on the thirty-eighth floor. It was an open floor plan up there, with the outside windows in view on all sides. You'd better figure out what you're going to do, kiddo.
"Mr. Leland, your problem is that you don't know what battle you're fighting, or even what century you're in. Your chivalric notions have no relevance here. You are not Robin Hood and that fool with his radio is not Little John. Your daughter is one of the principals in this illegal transfer of weapons. You seem to know something of the real strength and status of multinational corporations. There are arms stockpiles here in the United States and in warehouses all over the world, where the most lethal weapons are traded on commodities exchanges, as if they were pork bellies or grain futures. We can document the transfers of funds, the money laundering, the attempts to conceal, obscure, and confuse the record. Even as I speak, on your precious, stupid holiday, ships are in international waters, bound for Chile, supposedly carrying farm equipment and machine tools, but in fact laden with automatic weapons, rockets, and other assorted arms. They set sail yesterday morning because the first payment was delivered to this building promptly at nine o'clock, and the signal was given. Six million dollars six million of the people's money. It has been in the safe here all this time, Mr. Leland. It is our intention to return it to the people. This six million is evidence of Klaxon's disregard for life and human rights in its pursuit of wealth and power. In our redistribution we are going to demonstrate the power of the grip corporations like Klaxon have on all of you. We are going to show how you all dance to their tune."
"Blow it out your ass," Taco Bill said.
"I think he was saying he was going to throw it out the window," Leland said.
"Yes, indeed," Tony said. "At noon. Do you have any objections, Mr. Policeman?"
Leland was thinking of something else, the remark Judy had made about him looking like one of them. Leland was above the thirty-seventh floor, going slowly. He was going to be two weeks in the hospital. All he had to do was live. "Tony, you have an odd sense of social justice. I don't think you'd be as thrilled with the idea of redistributing the wealth if you weren't involved. You'd probably be looking for a secret motive, wondering if somebody was getting a bigger cut than you. That's the way you are most people listening to you know that already. You made a point before of telling us that you weren't stupid. The most stupid thing people like you do is believe you understand the rest of us. You're not selling revolution, you're just trying to grab a piece of the action for yourself, on your own terms. No sale."
Leland was still thinking of Judy's remark. Tony rarely had been off the thirty-second floor. In the glimpse of him Leland had had moments ago, he had looked reasonably clean, even groomed. Leland looked like one of them? None that he had killed, not Tony, and not the girl who was still alive.
Karl. Karl was the one downstairs. Maybe he had lived through the elevator explosion. He was some tough son of a bitch.
Leland opened the stairwell door slowly. He was on the east side, still believing in Billy Gibbs's advice. He wanted to tell Tony that he hadn't known about Klaxon's and his daughter's involvement in the clandestine arms trade. But he knew about the arms trade itself, and everything Tony had said about it was true. Anything that was possible, some human beings were willing to try, apparently including Stephanie. He would be able to explain her behavior when someone was able to explain humanity to him.
Leland got down on his hands and right knee, and pulled himself toward the windows of the east side of the building. The Browning, as big as it was, taped up high between his shoulder blades, gave no sign of coming loose.
Leland and his daughter lived on opposite ends of the continent and saw each other once a year or so. They talked on the telephone every month, when they remembered, or when he was in a hotel room somewhere alone. In Atlanta or Boston, with the day already over in the East, he could call Santa Monica where it was still early evening, and say hello to everybody. He knew Steffie loved him, and knew, too, that sometimes she grew tired of him. Whether he wanted to believe it or not, the passage of time had made him old-fashioned. She had not had an easy life, and in some measure he was responsible but how much responsibility did he bear for an Ellis in her life, or the compromises she had made with herself to get so involved in this?
Leland wasn't thinking about guilt, he was thinking about distance, the distance between people. In spite of his success, money, and privilege, Leland could be in Atlanta or Boston at the end of a day as lonely as a bum sleeping in the park. When people knew who he was, what he had done, and where he had been in the world, they enviedhim without ever bothering to inquire about his interior life. What was true for him was true for millions of others. Face-to-face, Taco Bill, whoever he really was, probably couldn't sustain a conversation for more than five minutes, unless it was about radios or drugs, sex, or rock and roll. Over the air, though, why, this was living!
"Mr. Leland," Tony cooed, "I thought you were going to meet with me."
Leland had the volume low. "I'm still on the stairs."
"I know, I know. You're not so talkative."
"I've talked to killers before. You have nothing to teach me."
"There you go again. Rivers was an international criminal. A crime is being committed here, Mr. Policeman don't I have the obligation of a citizen to try to stop it? Do you claim that what you have done is morally different from, or superior to, trying to alert the world that another of your great multinationals is up to its elbows with human blood? And as for your daughter, what can a trained dog sire but a blood-thirsty bitch?"
Tony meant to kill her, too. Leland was moving along the east side of the building, still even with the elevator banks. He had been sure that Tony would be between them, but if that had been true, by now Leland would have picked up his voice in the room. Leland pressed the "Talk" button.