So I looked up, back up, toward where I'd fallen from, and Mary Ann was leaning over the side, reaching her hand out to me, but she was far away, ten feet, ten miles, ten years, and the guy was behind her. and I had to swallow before I could yell, "Look out!"
And she was struggling with him, he had her halfway over the side, and I let go with one arm, clutching with the other, legs hooked 'round the slanted support, and got my automatic out from under my arm.
Christ knows how. and the guy just about had her over the side when he saw the eye of my automatic looking at him, and. before I could fire it at him, he disappeared from view.
Mary Ann, thankfully, did not; the blond gone, she leaned over and reached out again and I said, "No! Too far!" and she began to cry. I think she was trying to scream, but couldn't find the sound. Or maybe she was screaming and the wind in my ears was keeping me from hearing as I clumsily rucked the automatic back under my arm.
I yelled at her: "Go down to the observation booth!"
She nodded, and disappeared.
The support I called home angled under the platform, connecting underneath it; I'd fallen past the windows of the observation booth, but apparently nobody had seen me, and I was at a position that prevented them from noticing me, hanging here like Harold Lloyd. The support below me paralleled this one but connected right to the corner under the observation booth and its windows. If I could drop down to the next support, I might crawl up it and get in view of the people in the booth, besides which Mary Ann would by now have alerted them to my situation anyway, and I might with somebody's help make it in through a window.
It was only about five feet down; I wouldn't have to be an acrobat to make it. But it would have helped.
I tried not to look at the fair below me. I tried not to think about the six-hundred-foot drop below me. Just that support beam five feet down. Why was it so cold up here? So windy? Why was my mouth so
dry, and my eyes so damp? I let my legs loose and hung by my amis only; my feet touched the support beam below. I looped one arm around the support, let the other one loose, hanging by the crook of my arm, trying to stand on the beam below, trying to get my balance so I could risk letting go of the upper support altogether. A calm came over me; a passive, quiet feeling I couldn't hope to explain. I let go of the beam above, and then I was standing, I had my balance, but it was like standing on the tilted floor of a fun house, only much narrower, and, Christ! I began to slide, my feet began to slide, and my balance went and the fair whirled below me, and I hit the beam in a belly flop and clung, grabbed, hugged, slid. Then stopped sliding. Home again.
I looked up. Mary Ann's wide-eyed face was in a window, the corner window, and her mouth was open in a silent scream; I grinned up at her, like I was showing off, while resisting the urge to pee my goddamn pants. Then she was pointing, and the florid-faced guard was busting the glass out with his gun butt.
I edged up the beam toward them, on top of the beam this time, like a baby crawling, then I was up to where the beam joined with the underpart of the platform and the windows were right above me and the guard, some college-kid fairgoer bracing him from behind, was reaching out a hand down to me and I took it, hanging over the fair for one long moment before he pulled me up and in.
Mary Ann hugged me; she was crying, but she wasn't hysterical. Happy. Real happy.
Actually, I didn't have time for that. "Go back to your flat," I said curtly, moving past her. "Wait for me!"
What
"Just do it. baby. Just do it."
I thanked the college kid who'd helped the guard reel me in. then turned to the guard. "Keep this one under your hat. pal."
He glanced at the eight or ten people standing around open-mouthed, talking among themselves, as if they wondered if this were part of the show. "I don't know if I can do that"
"There's a half a C-note in it for you if you do. And I'm covering the damages."
He grinned, shrugged. "Do my best, Mr. Heller."
Then I went to the two elevators and grabbed one- I caught a glimpse of Mary Ann, her face tight with irritation, hands on hips, staying behind, but reluctantly. The elevators took only one minute to go down, and I didn't figure I'd been hanging out there more than two or three minutes, so my old friend, my blond friend, the man who killed Jake Lingle, the man who helped kill Cermak, had a lead on me; but not much of one.
The ticket-taker in the lobby of the Sky Ride entryway said yes, he had seen the blond guy in the pale yellow suit, moving quickly, and pointed toward the lagoon. There wasn't a huge crowd at the fair tonight, but enough of one, and the lights were designed to make the world an out-of-focus pastel wonderland, not to heighten visibility or clarity.
So I stood there looking for a figure moving quickly, but didn't see one; then I moved quickly, toward the Sixteenth Street bridge, and stopped the first pith-helmeted security guard I came across, and he recognized me and smiled and I asked him if he'd seen this guy.
He had, and he pointed across the bridge, toward the Hall of Science, its square buildings and towers burning orange and green and blue against the night. In the foreground, gondolas, canoes, sailboats glided; a peaceful scene, and my brain was on fire.
The Eighteenth Street entrance. That was the closest way out; the closest way to the parking lot.
I ran.
Like a bat out of fucking hell, and knocked a few people down and to hell with excuse me, and almost got stopped by more than one security guard, but when they saw who I was, figured I was after some pickpocket, and one guard, in fact, fell in stride with me and yelled, "Need any help, Heller?"
I shook my head no, and the guy fell away.
Then the fair was behind me and all the cars in Chicago were parked in front of me, row after row, car after car.
But it was private parking, and there were only a few ways in and out. Maybe, just maybe, I had him.
I showed my fair ID to the two attendants at the entry to the parking area; they were in street clothes but had coin changers on their belt, and they told me, yeah, they saw a blond guy run through here, and pointed down to the left. I saw no one. I jogged down the first row of cars, glancing to either side; when I'd put some distance between me and those attendants back there, I got the automatic out. A car was pulling out, so I ducked to one side, waited and watched as it passed. An elderly couple.
I kept looking: the parking area wasn't lit, but the aurora borealis of the fair, at left, provided light enough. I was Hearing the end of the first row when I saw a car pull out over on the next row, a little black Buick coupe with a white canvas top. It was the car that had glided by and gunned down Cooney last night. I ran between parked cars into the next lane and as the lights bore down on me, I saw him. Behind the wheel.
The blond.
I stepped to one side and pointed the gun at him but he swerved toward me, and as I backed up out of the way, squeezing between two parked cars, he got a shot off at me, a silenced one, and it grazed my arm, and, dammit, goddamnit, reflex sent my automatic flying.
And he saw that, and hit the brakes, and then he was hopping out of his car, moving toward me, gun in hand, the silencer making it look bulkily modern, as if a souvenir of the fair.
At the same time, I fell back, on my back, grabbed my chest as if he'd hit me there and kind of curled up and moaned and as he was standing over me, smiling, pointing the gun down at me, I kicked his balls up inside him.
This time he dropped the gun.
He dropped it, his hands popping open when he doubled over, and a wheeze came out of him. not a scream, just a dry pain-racked wheeze, and as he was still bent over I slammed a fist into his jaw that about took it off its hinges and he fell on his side, but the moment of white pain had passed, apparently, because then he was scrambling for his gun and suddenly he had the damn thing, was bringing it up toward me when I dove at him, and with both hands grabbed the wrist and turned it in on him and together we pulled the trigger. The sound was no more than a snick but the ghostly pale face went slack and I barely had time to say it: "This time I did get you, flicker."