High Chicago

CHAPTER 38

To call it an elevator was an insult to other elevators. It wasn't even a lift. A hoist, pure and simple, a technology that dated back to the building of pyramids, one weight descending to pull another upward. The higher we went, the harder the wind blew, waves of it rocking the hoist. The view was probably magnificent but obscured by walls of Plexiglas smeared with months' worth of dirt, handprints, dried drops of rain. Maybe even tears.

The car bucked harder as we rose past sixty, seventy floors, the pitch of the wind moaning like a grieving old woman as it whistled through unfinished floors of the building.

When the hoist reached the very top, Curry stepped back and took out a pistol. "You can get out first," he said. "Slowly, if I were you. Not that there's anywhere to run out there."

There was no flooring beyond twenty feet in any direction. Nothing to walk on but sheets of corrugated plastic, bridged here and there by plywood. After that it was girders only.

I stepped out as Curry directed, stopping halfway across the flooring. Not much I could do with my hands cuffed behind me.

"A little farther," Simon Birk said, and Curry waved his pistol to encourage me. I moved two steps farther out.

No walls, no ceiling. Just girders, the steel skeleton of a rising giant, through which the wind was truly whipping. My pant legs were flapping against my legs, my hair blowing straight back.

Birk said, "I wanted you to see first-hand what I'm building, since you seem so determined to bring it to a halt."

"Okay," I said. "I've seen it."

"Isn't it magnificent?"

Curry was staying well back of me so there was nothing for me to do but agree.

"Walk," Birk said, nodding his head toward the edge of the ribbed plastic floor. The surface seemed solid enough under my feet. I assumed heavier men than me had trod it. I walked. The wind got stronger with every step out.

Below us, traffic rushed through the streets. Cars, buses, trucks and subway trains, all carrying people to their destinations. To better places than I was in.

"It sways more than you'd expect, doesn't it?" Birk asked. "Up to two feet from its vertical axis. All skyscrapers do, of course. There has to be some give in them. If they don't bend, they might break. Some of the sway will be reduced when it's finished and the cladding is in place. The tenants will never really feel it. But you do, don't you? You feel you're not entirely on solid ground, am I right?"

I saw no point in disagreeing.

"There's a lesson in there, Geller. When someone gives you a chance to bend, you should take it. It beats the hell out of breaking, doesn't it?"

"I get your point," I said.

"You should have done that when it counted."

"Boss," Curry said. I turned around to see Curry's hand on Birk's arm, stopping him from moving or speaking, then pointing out ahead of us.

At the end of a girder that extended out into the blackness was the figure of a man, seated with his back to us. Curry moved over to me and stuck the barrel of his gun in my back. He slipped a key out of his pocket and undid my cuffs. "You say a word," he said, "or make any fancy moves and you'll be dead. And so will he."

"Got it," I said. "No moves."

"Be smart."

"Excuse me?" Birk called out. "What are you doing here?"

The man rose up on the girder in one effortless move, as if the girder beneath him was twelve feet wide instead of twelve inches. He turned to face us. "I work here," he said.

"Well, I own the damn thing," Birk said. "Come on in."

He walked toward us along the girder. No harness. No hard hat. Thick black hair in a braid down his back. When he reached a perpendicular beam, he stopped. "Mr. Birk," he said.

"And you are?"

"Told you. I work here."

"Your name, please?"

"Cross," he said. "Gabriel Cross."

"And what were you doing out there? Your shift was over hours ago."

"Watching."

"Watching what?"

"The night," Cross said. "It's a good place to be when it's quiet. Watch the lights. Stars. Clouds. Can't do that during the day. Too much light. Too many people."

"You don't have a harness on."

Cross shrugged.

"You're Mohawk?"

He nodded.

"Mohawks aren't afraid of heights," Birk said to Curry. "Did you know that?"

"I've heard."

"Gabriel," he said. "I wonder if you'd do something for me."

He said, "Sure."

"Walk back out to the end of that girder."

"The one I was on?"

"Yes."

I tensed, wondering if Birk was setting the man up to fall. Get rid of a potential witness to whatever was going to happen to me. Curry must have felt me tense up because he jammed the gun into my back hard enough to send a sharp pain through my kidney.

I felt bad for the kid I had punched earlier, then went back to feeling bad for myself.

Cross turned and walked to the end of the girder. He never looked down. He could have been on a paved road for all the care he showed.

"Now turn around and walk back, please," Birk said.

He did a little pirouette and walked back.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Birk said to me.

"Yes," I said.

"Thank you, Gabriel," Birk said.

He shrugged.

"I'm going to ask you to leave now," Birk said.

"Okay." He came off the girder and crossed the plywood sheet and went over to a spot on the metal floor where his hard hat and lunch box were. He put on the hard hat, picked up the lunch box. Curry moved directly behind me, so Cross couldn't see the gun at my back.

I moved my left hand onto my belt and used my thumb and first two fingers to form a W. Turned it sideways. Implored Cross silently to see it. It was a sign taught to me last year by a Tyendinaga Mohawk, after I stepped in to even up a fight three drunken white boys had picked with him behind a beer store in Belleville when I was working undercover on the Ensign Tobacco case. A warrior greeting of sorts. But Cross turned away and got into the elevator. Either he hadn't seen my sign, hadn't recognized it or didn't give a shit.

I was on my own. Once Cross was gone, I thought, I'd be left to whatever end Birk and Curry had planned for me.

Before he closed the door, Cross said, "Mr. Birk? That thing about Mohawks-that we aren't afraid of heights?"

"Yes?"

"It's a myth. It's bullshit. We are afraid of heights," he said. "As much as you or anyone else. It's just ironwork pays better than anything else we can get."