The racially ignited riots that had engulfed the ghetto of Watts in 1965 had left deep, ugly scars in the landscape which the passage of time had still not healed. Boarded up storefronts and deserted apartment houses, their yards trashed with garbage and the shells of abandoned, burned out cars, had left a blight so complete that the area resembled a third world nation, and Hardare found it hard to believe that it had taken only fifteen minutes to drive here from his hotel.
Hardare read the street signs as he drove. At the intersection of Century Boulevard and South Graham Avenue he stopped at a railroad crossing to let the southbound Blue Line rumble by, and saw young men on the corner giving him ugly stares.
He parked on Carver Street and got out. The building where his wife was being held hostage was a skeletal five-story apartment house being prepared for demolition. A crane with a wrecking ball sat in a nearby lot.
He found the opening in the fence. A piece of paper was stuck in the wire, and he pulled it free. It was a note.
YOUR WIFES IN #556
Hardare entered the abandoned apartment and climbed the stairwell, hearing clay crack pipes crunch beneath his heels. The apartment had no electricity, the only light in the stairwell caused by holes in the walls. On the different floors he heard the sounds of drug deals going down. It made him sick to think that Jan was being kept here.
He came to the fifth floor and followed the numbers on the doors until he found #556. The door had a brand new padlock on it. Kneeling, he took out his wallet and removed his lock picks, and went to work opening the door.
His hands shook like someone with palsy. What if he was too late, and Jan was dead? Could he truly stand to see her lifeless body, to talk to it and not have it talk back? Was that the last picture he wanted lodged in his memory for the rest of his life?
He was afraid — afraid of losing her, afraid he already had — when the padlock audibly clicked open. He swallowed his fear and pushed open the door.
“Hello?” a familiar voice said.
He stepped into the barren apartment, and found his wife bound to a chair in the living room.
“Guess who.”
He cried while untying her. Jan cried as well.
“Did I ever tell you how wonderful it is being married to a wizard,” she said, hugging him as she got up.
“Did he hurt you?” Hardare asked.
“No. But I think you hurt him.”
Hardare’s eyes fell on the fully-clothed female skeleton hanging by her wrists from the ceiling.
“Oh, my God, who’s she?”
“One of the unlucky ones. Let’s get out of here.”
Hardare heard the noisy grinding of gears. Spinning around, he saw a concrete wrecking ball burst through the wall, sweeping the skeleton girl and the chair across the room in a tangled mass, the concussion knocking them both to the floor. Pulverized brick and plaster showered down, making it impossible to see.
He got up, and pulled Jan to her feet. The wrecking ball hit again, this time a few yards above their heads. Hardare covered his head with his arms, certain that Death knew exactly where they were in the building.
They ran into the hallway and down the stairs. The walls were beginning to collapse around them, and Hardare grabbed his wife’s hand, and looked into his eyes. He should have been scared, only he wasn’t. He’d gotten the thing he wanted most. If he was going to die, at least he’d be with the woman he loved.
Chapter 27
Buried Alive
Death had found a new friend, the wrecking ball machine, courtesy of the Amarillo Brothers Construction Company. To hell with guns and big knives; here was the true weapon of choice, capable of knocking down tall buildings with a few well placed whacks.
The building started to crumble. He kept at it, unconcerned about the two people inside. With each direct hit, the ground around him shook, letting him experience the profound aftershock of his own devastation. Picking up the bullhorn lying on the floor, he held it to his lips.
“Having fun in there?” he shouted.
He kept one eye on the front door. He had made sure the other exits were locked from the outside. Hardare and his bride had only one avenue of escape, and it was through that door.
“Anybody home?” he shouted.
He grasped the lever that activated the wrecking ball and made it swing forward. He hesitated, eyes searching for the uneven bricks on the building’s side which outlined the stairwell’s location, then decided to aim at the first floor, and see if he could make the building come down.
“Eugene! Over here!”
The voice jolted him. Hardare stood in a window on the second floor, waving his arms. Death spun the cumbersome wheel and made the crane tilt upward.
“Lights out!” he yelled into the bullhorn.
“Too slow!” Hardare yelled back.
As Death began to pull the lever, he blinked in disbelief. Hardare was no longer in the window, but now stood at another apartment window, over twenty feet away.
“Come on, you hairless freak!”
Clapping his hands, Hardare melted from view. A split-second later the magician reappeared in the first window.
“Fuck me,” Death said, no longer believing his eyes.
The words carried over the bullhorn.
“That’s right, fuck you,” Hardare called back.
A movement caught Death’s eye. Jan had run out the front door of the apartment house, and was heading for the street. They had tricked him, and like a fool, he’d fallen for it. It only made his desire to kill Hardare that much stronger.
He aimed the ball at the arches by the front door. He couldn’t tell if they were real, or fake, and decided to find out, taking them down with one fell swoop of the ball.
The ground around him shook. Half of the first floor had caved in, the building now sagging under its own weight. He had hit a main support.
The apartment house began to groan. Death jumped out of the cab to watch its demise. The collapse began at the building’s center, the floors falling in upon each other, spitting black and gray spirals of dust hundreds of feet into the air, the accumulating weight causing a great roar as the bottom floors flattened out and turned the five-story structure into a gigantic pile of rubble and jagged steel in a matter of seconds.
“Goodbye, Mr. Magico,” he said.
As he sprinted down to the bottom floor, Hardare saw the front entrance to the apartment cave in, and his chances for survival diminish. Spinning around, he ran to the rear of the dying building, looking for another way out.
But there was none. The windows were boarded shut, the back door padlocked from the outside. His lock picks did him little good if he didn’t have a keyhole to stick them in.
He retreated to the stairwell, thinking he might still be able to go up, find a hole in a wall that had crumbled, and make a jump for it. The apartment house emitted a sickening groan. Looking up, he saw a gigantic crack split the ceiling apart. He felt his knees grow weak and his spirits fail; there was no place left to run, no last-second miracles to pull out of his back pocket. He was done.
Half the ceiling came down, missing him by a few feet. He teetered backwards into a wall and tried to stay upright. He felt a board in the wall spring open, and stuck his hand into it. It was a laundry chute. Having no other place to turn, he dove headfirst down the narrow, pitch black shaft.
It was a tight, harrowing ride. A concrete wall met him at its end, and he felt a stabbing pain in his forehead, then an odd sense of nirvana, as if he were floating on the crest of a blackened wave. After a while, the moldy stench of rotted laundry brought him up from the depths, and he managed to open his eyes, and still see nothing.