Come Morning

Chapter 26

Standing on the roof of the elevator cage, Runyan fit the Jumars to the cable. The clock was really running now. He put his feet in the slings and, black nylon stuff bag clipped to his belt, began walking himself up the cable. Could it have been just two days ago that Louise had watched him do this under the overhang on Monday Morning Slab?

Under the street two blocks away, Taps Turner was moving cautiously along one of the utility access tunnels by the light of a tiny powerful halogen-bulb flashlight. He set down his electrician’s kit in front of a switch box bolted to one wall and used his prybar to break the padlock hasp. Inside the hinged cover were rows of engaged knife switches. He began to compare the interior layout of the box with a wiring diagram, humming a Lionel Ritchie love ballad softly under his breath.

Louise drove the Cougar while Grace wiped the makeup off her face with a wad of kleenex. They both were laughing at her tale of Emery’s wandering eyes and bulging pants.

In the elevator shaft, Runyan grunted his way upward. The air was close and smelled of hot metal and lubricating oil. The day on Royal Arches had taken a lot out of him, but it had insured his physical confidence, made it possible for him to be here now. His movements were crisp, without hesitation, exact. He had no “protection” in place — he was working without a safety line — so the strength of his grip on the Jumars and the sureness of his feet in the slings were his only insurance against falling as he practiced this mild form of... what? Masochism? Maybe self-abuse. His body was sure feeling abused as he climbed the cable.

Endlessly.

He rested a moment, panting, tipped his head back to look up into the dimness of the shaft. The big cable wheels still seemed a long way up.

He went into the fugue state he had perfected while practicing gymnastics at Q, trying to pass the endless hours of confinement. One of the prison survival skills you never heard about was infinite patience. He had learned it.

What was Louise doing right now? He checked his watch. Still driving around; she wouldn’t park the car near the other condo’s underground garage entrance until about five minutes before he was scheduled to be coming out.

He shoved up a Jumar, and it rapped against the rim of the grooved wheel over which the cable passed.

He’d made it!

Runyan grabbed the nearest spoke of the wheel, made sure of his grip, then carefully disengaged his feet from the Jumar slings to swing his legs up and hook them around the wheel rim.

Hanging backward under it like a sloth under a branch, he removed the Jumars from the cable with his free hand and clipped them to carabiners threaded on his belt. From there it was a cinch to climb the spokes of the massive wheel and step onto the metal gridwork service platform.

The housing door, as on the diagram he had studied, opened out onto the blacktopped roof of the building. He stopped for a few moments, massaging the tautness from his arms while gulping fresh night air. Still on time. He negotiated the mini obstacle course of capped chimneys and vents to the edge of the building that faced the twin high-rise a hundred feet away. On the inside of the four-foot-high concrete parapet a sign held to the wall with cement screws read: DANGER-HIGH TENSION.

He bent across the top of the low wall to look down. Bingo. A very thick black power cable ran along the outside of the building five feet below, did a right angle through a terminal box, and stretched away into the darkness toward Brother Blood’s building. Right where it was supposed to be.

Runyan checked his watch again, unclipped the stuff bag from his belt, set it on the roof, and took out a break-’em-shake-’em, cracked and twisted and shook the short rod until it glowed with a soft cool green light like Darth Vader’s sword. He bent it into a horseshoe around his neck. Break-’em-shake-’ems left the hands free, a vital factor in rock climbing.

He zipped the bag, clipped it back on the belt, unclipped his Jumars, and put them on the top of the parapet. Then he jumped up so he was sitting between them, facing in. One minute before two a.m. He edged himself back across the top of the wall until his butt was hanging off into space. This was the tricky part. He now was supported only by his hands gripping the outside angle of the top and the outer wall and by his heels hooked over the inside edge of the wall.

Runyan hyperventilated, focusing his energies to that white-hot physical point that perhaps only athletes know, then let his knees slowly bend, arching his body slowly back and down. Now only his heels hooked over that inner edge, and his calves along the top of the wall, supported his body; he was hanging face-out, upside down above the high tension cable terminal.

He groped above him on top of the parapet for one of the Jumars, found it, brought it slowly down in front of his face. If he should drop it now, everything was over.

In the tunnel, Tap’s glowing watch digits read 1:59:58 and:59 and 2:00:00 and his hands, in place on two of the knife switches, pulled them down to disengage them.

In the Cougar, Louise was just turning into the block where the high-rises were when all the lights went out except the street lights. She grabbed Grace’s arm in her excitement.

“It’s happenin’, baby, it’s happenin’!” responded Grace in a voice almost guttural with tension.

Hanging upside down by the green glow of his break-’em-shake-’em, supported by his calves and heels on the parapet, Runyan jammed the first Jumar into place, squeezing it down so the brake bit into the high-tension core of the cable with its relentless grip. If the power had not been cut, he would just be smoking meat.

He found the second Jumar, fixed it into place. The seconds ticked away in his head. Only 90 of them before Taps reengaged the knife switches.

Gripping the Jumars with iron hands, he kicked off the building. His body swung out and down and around, his arms and hands taking the full shocking jolt of his weight as he jerked up under the cable. He was now hanging from the Jumars only by his grip, which already had loosened the brakes so he was sliding down the cable toward Brother Blood’s building.

Emery skittered his flashlight beam around a lobby lit only by the streetlights outside. Over by the elevators a second guard’s flash danced and probed.

“It isn’t just us, Emery,” he called.

Emery felt a great weight lift off him. He had been afraid it might somehow have something to do with that black hooker who had showed up. “Okay, then, I’ll call Water and Power,” he said.

Runyan, still lit only by his break-’em-shake-’em, walked the Jumars quickly up the cable toward the junction box on Brother Blood’s building, panting with nonstop effort as the seconds exploded in his brain. At the box he reached over, a hand at a time, to grab the bare power cable. Then he kipped himself up into a full pressout. He got a foot up onto the cable, a knee, was balancing on the wire, grabbed the edge of the parapet and jerked his feet up off the cable.

There were crackling bursts of white light as the Jumars, scorched and smoking, fell away. The lights flickered on in the buildings as he muscled himself up onto the wall and dropped over onto the roof.

He ran lightly across a patio landscaped with expensive potted greenery and shrubs to the sliding glass doors of the penthouse. It looked like a lock that might be reasonable about raking. Since the penthouse was supposedly the only way to the roof, he didn’t have to worry about alarms.

Louise had pulled over to the curb and stopped when the lights had gone out. Now, 90 seconds later, they were back on again. She whirled on Grace.

“Did he make it? Did he?”

“I didn’t see no falling bodies,” smiled Grace. “Relax, shugah. That man of yours, he’s a survivor.” She dug an elbow into Louise’s ribs. “Let’s get moving again, baby. Don’t wanta draw no po-leece before Taps can get out of that manhole.”

With a thrust of his powerful shoulders, Taps heaved the manhole cover aside. He grabbed the tool kit from where it was wedged between him and the ladder, set it on the street, then leaped nimbly up on the pavement himself. He kicked the manhole cover, clanging, back into place before running to the sidewalk.

He had taken only half a dozen jaunty and unconcerned steps when a power company truck came rumbling around the corner and stopped beside the manhole. The uniformed workmen who got out never even glanced his way.

Runyan slid open one of the glass doors, entered, shut and locked it carefully behind him, then pushed his way through the drapes into the spacious living room. It was sumptuous and decorator perfect in the dim glow of his break-’em-shake-’em.

The study also was a decorator’s wet dream: thick carpets, microcomputer and letter-quality printer, massive hardwood desk, overstuffed leather executive’s swivel chair that looked ready to fly, waist-to-ceiling bookshelves behind the desk, silver-edged trophy plaques on the walls.

“Coke-Dealer-of-the-Year Award,” muttered Runyan. He shut the door and returned his break-’em-shake-’em to the stuff bag after turning on the lights. His time was almost up.

The telephone was a futuristic model with memory; on one side of it was a black oblong box with six buttons on it, on the other a computer modem cradle for the receiver. The phone was the key to the safe, but here Taps’s intelligence was vague. Runyan pushed the top button on the black box. The stereo deck started to play. He pushed it again. The stereo stopped.

Second button. The maple doors slid open on the huge console TV and the set switched on. Again. Off.

Third. Lights on and off.

Fourth. Window blinds.

When Runyan pushed the fifth button, a panel of the bookshelves, books and all, swung open to reveal a small wall safe of hardened cadmium steel. Runyan tried the swing handle. Locked. Since there was no visible dial, the box with the buttons on it probably also opened the door of the safe.

He went back to the desk and pushed the final button. Nothing happened. Again. The safe was still locked.

But it had to have something to do with the box and its buttons. How would the mind of a Brother Blood work? Intricate mind. Liked games. Liked gadgets. A sly and tricky dude...

And a dude who played around with a computer. A computer which had a modem for communicating with other computers through the telephone. What if this modem had a different function? He picked up the phone receiver and fitted it into the computer modem. Then he punched the final button again. Nothing.

One last thing to try. He flicked on the black rocker switch on the back of the computer. Tried again. The door of the safe popped open an inch.

Yeah. The games people play. Here’s to you, Brother Blood. He switched off the computer and took from the stuff bag the stacks of ornately-scrolled counterfeit bearer bonds which had been forged to Grace’s order. Inside the safe were exactly similar stacks of genuine bearer bonds with the same sequenced serial numbers. He put these stacks on the far end of the desk. It would be disastrous to mix them up.

Taps cut off from the sidewalk between bushes to the rear wall of Brother Blood’s building. He had just put down his electrician’s box when a thin nylon cord set down Runyan’s black nylon stuff bag a dozen feet away. Taps slashed the cord with his switchblade and walked away with the bag, not glancing back, not bothering with his tool kit.

At the corner was an open pay phone without a booth. He looked quickly, almost guiltily around, then slotted his dimes and tapped out a seven-digit local number.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone. “I want to talk with Brother Blood. Tell him Taps Turner is calling.”