Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (33 page)

Suddenly I was perfectly alert. Someone was ringing each apartment in the building. Then he should ring mine too. I braced myself for the sound, but it did not come. If someone were selling something or looking for someone to accept a delivery, he would not omit just one apartment. I was up out of my chair. I went to one of the front windows and looked down through the pane. A stocky, middle-aged man in a short raincoat was emerging from the building entrance. I slid the window carefully up, kneeled down, and leaned out to watch him. Out on the sidewalk he turned and looked up at me. I had to force myself to remember that he couldn’t see me. He looked at the building entrance again and then at the neighboring buildings, and then he turned and looked at the buildings across the street. Nothing seemed quite to satisfy him. At this point, Eileen Coulson turned the corner and, with a suspicious glance at the man in the raincoat, pushed her way into the entrance. She was carrying two large shopping bags. The man followed her, and I could see the top of his head as he stood in the outer doorway talking to her. After a moment he disappeared into the building behind her.

I wondered if that was Leary. I had a moment of panic in which I thought that the two of them might be coming up to my apartment. But the Coulsons had no key for my apartment. Leary or whoever he was would just be asking questions. It had been pointless to stall him about the meeting. I should have given up and cleared out. To where? They were probably asking questions about every one. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. And what could they learn from Eileen Coulson that could be of any use? Of course, insofar as Eileen had any damaging information about me, she could be counted on to impart it, her feelings toward me falling somewhere between disapproval and dislike. More nearly disapproval, I suppose. I offended her overdeveloped sense of gentility. She should have been a housemother in a very strict school. I could often hear her, when I was going in or out of the building, lurking behind her door, peering out through the peephole at me. Damn her. Leary, however, was presumably not interested in whether I kept regular hours or had someone of the opposite sex staying with me occasionally.

But Leary must have been learning something. It was almost half an hour before he reappeared on the pavement. This time he left directly, without looking about, walking east. Eileen knew nothing about me that could be of any use to anyone. But in these investigations they ask everyone you know every question they can think of until they run out of questions and people. Would they be back? They were evidently not coming for me yet. They might be back to talk to my fellow tenants about me. But my fellow tenants were seldom in — Eileen Coulson would have told them that. Logically, they should want to talk to someone at my office next. But the moment they talked to someone there, Cathy would let me know. I had to avoid getting too jumpy about all this. These people are only bureaucrats: they probably have trouble tracking down people who are visible. And they probably would never figure out that they should be tracking me down anyway. They would be going through the same investigation of everyone who had been at MicroMagnetics. And then, always in the back of my mind was the reassuring knowledge that, even if everything went badly, I had prepared my escape route over the roof.

Which is why I reacted so promptly when I heard the first footstep on the roof. It had been less than an hour since Leary or whoever he was had disappeared down the street, and it seemed inconceivable that they would already be here for me. There might be children on the roof, or workmen. But I knew instantly that I had to assume the worst case and act on it directly. I had to assume that the roof exit was gone, that the only other exit might not be gone yet, and that I must try to use it at once.

I ran for the apartment door, stopping only long enough to look through the peephole. No one visible in the hall. I opened the door, peered around cautiously without seeing anyone, and started running as fast as I could down the stairs, taking two or three at a time. I could not see anyone, but I could hear people moving around somewhere below. They were whispering, but it sounded as if there were a lot of them. I was running the length of the third floor hall toward the next flight, sliding my hand along the railing as I went, to steady myself. I swung around, strode two steps down the next flight, and pulled up short. At the base of the flight and heading straight for me, were five men. Three of them were Clellan, Gomez, and Morrissey. They were climbing the stairs quickly and they filled the width of the stairway, leaving no room for me to pass. The only thing I could do was turn around and head back up, staying ahead of them.

I took my hand off the railing, because some of them were using it, and I tried to tread as quietly as I could, but they were almost running. Clellan was saying, “Now remember, when we go in, that door closes and stays closed until you hear me say loud and clear I’m about to open it. And if you should see it open without me saying I’m about to open it, you start to shoot, hear?”

I could hear people muttering assent as they huffed up the stairs behind me.

“The moment that door opens. You don’t wait to see what you’re shooting at, hear? This guy has a gun, and he’s already used it once. Gomez will try to get him with the tranquilizer gun, but if he gets out of that apartment, you get him any way you can.”

When I got to the fourth floor, I continued several feet past my door to where the corridor dead-ended. The men behind me collected at the head of the stairs in front of the entrance to my apartment. There was no question of slipping past them. Then, at a sign from Clellan, one of the men headed toward me. To get out of his way, I climbed over the railing and hung out over the stairwell. He went right past me and proceeded to inspect a second door, which had been sealed up years ago. Clinging to the balusters, I edged my way back toward the other men at the head of the stairs. The whole railing was wobbling horribly from my weight, but they were too busy with the door to notice. One of them had crouched down and was doing something to the lock.

When I reached the point where the balustrade curved around 180 degrees and began its slope down to the third floor, I stepped across and climbed over the railing onto the descending flight of stairs. I paused and looked back up at the five men by the door. The man working on the lock stood up, nodded at Clellan, and stepped back. Each of the men reached into his suit and pulled out a pistol, except for Gomez, who was already holding an odd-looking gun with a long, thick barrel. Then Clellan nodded, and the door swung violently open. Morrissey, Gomez, and Clellan charged into the apartment — my apartment — and the door slammed shut again immediately behind them. The two men left outside stood watching, their pistols pointed at the door.

I could hear footsteps running through my apartment, and I could hear Clellan’s voice speaking to me.

“Mr. Halloway, don’t move. We’re here to help you. There are armed men all around you with orders to shoot at any noise or movement. Tell us exactly where you are and we will come to your assistance.
Please do not move.
We are here to help you.”

When you think about it, it is extraordinary the way these people were always trying to help me. And all these guns for my protection. I did not at the time stop to think about it. Holding the railing, I started back down the stairs, two at a time, as fast as I could go without making noise. As I came down the last flight, I could see that there were two more men standing in the vestibule between the two doors that led to the street. Even if I shot them, their bodies would only block the outer door. And beyond them in the street stood other men holding walkie-talkies. One of them was Jenkins.

I stopped halfway down to the ground floor. I was trapped in the stairwell. The front door was blocked. So was the roof. My apartment was gone. The other tenants not home. But at least one of the Coulsons was home. I walked carefully the rest of the way down, until I was standing just inside the glass entrance door, looking straight at the two men on the other side. On my right was the Coulsons’ door. I waited until both of the men were looking away toward the street and began jabbing the Coulsons’ doorbell furiously. The men in the vestibule heard it ringing in the background and looked up quizzically. I held the button pushed in so they would not see it popping in and out. Where was she? I pressed my ear to the Coulsons’ door so that I could listen for her, keeping my face turned so that I could at the same time watch the men in the vestibule. Over the continuous buzzing sound I could hear someone stirring deep within the apartment. The men in the vestibule were becoming agitated. They were talking to each other now, but they were both peering the entire time through the glass entrance door, their gazes searching the entrance hall. If they had known what they were looking for, they would have had me. One of them turned and went through the outer door to speak with the men in the street.

I could hear footsteps approaching from within the Coulsons’ apartment. Why couldn’t the woman hurry, damn it. Waddle, waddle, waddle. The man who had left the vestibule was talking to the group of men out on the sidewalk. There was a sort of commotion as one of the men suddenly pushed through the group and started running at the door. It was Jenkins. Eileen Coulson was behind the door now, speaking.

“Is it all right to open up again now?”

I remembered in time that I must not let her recognize my voice. I held my arm up against my mouth and called out as calmly as I could, “Yes, ma’am. We’re all finished here. I’d just like to use your phone for a moment, if I may.”

Please
open the fucking door.

Jenkins was through the outer door and was pushing the man in the vestibule aside. I could hear locks clicking and turning under the incompetent hand of Eileen Coulson. I was lucky her husband wasn’t home. He might never have gotten it open at all. Hurry, for Christ’s sake. Jenkins was finding that the hall door was locked and was barking at the man next to him to get it open. His voice was still soft and controlled, but I could see the urgency and anger in his face. His narrow little slit eyes.

The door in front of me swung open two inches and stopped abruptly. She had it on a police chain, the stupid cow! Her eyes moved around in the crack, peering everywhere in a futile effort to see me.

“Are you quite sure it’s all right to open up now?” she was saying. “I was told absolutely not to—”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, to keep her interest. The one thing I did not want was to have her shut the door again. As the other man fiddled at the hall door lock, Jenkins’s gaze shifted up impatiently, and through the glass he saw the Coulsons’ open door. He began shouting. “Shut that door! Get that door shut!”

“That’s exactly right, ma’am,” I was shouting in an effort to drown out Jenkins. Eileen Coulson’s eyes became more uncertain. The hall door was swinging open and Jenkins was pushing through it. I took two quick steps backward, almost into his approaching arms, and charged the Coulsons’ door, slamming sideways into it with all the force I had. The door swung open, pulling the police chain out of the door frame and smashing the large body of Eileen Coulson back into the wall of her foyer. I had a glimpse of her crumpled on the floor, blood streaming from her face, as I ran by.

I charged down the hall and into the living room, with Jenkins right behind me. He had never been there before and of course he could not know exactly where I was, so that when he found himself in the middle of the large room, he slowed up momentarily and looked around. That gave me enough time to pull open the double glass doors in the far wall and get out into the garden. The garden — only a New Yorker would call it that — was a small, lifeless, paved area with metal furniture, surrounded by high wooden fencing cutting it off from other, similar gardens. I grabbed a chair, slammed it against the back fence, and, standing on the ground beside the chair, began pushing and shaking the fence as violently as I could.

Jenkins was right there. Assuming I was on the chair climbing over the fence, he charged, groping for me with both hands along the fence above the chair. Before he had time to think, I hit him hard with my closed fist in the side of the neck. His body slammed into the fence and twisted around so that he faced me. I hit him again hard, this time in the belly, aiming for the solar plexus. He vomited as he doubled over onto the ground.

I slid the chair to a corner of the fence where a strut made it easier to climb and hoisted myself over into the facing garden. If I could get out through one of the buildings on this side, I would be on Eighty-eighth Street, a block away from the Colonel’s men. I looked around. Two windows and a door, all locked. I went over the next fence. It was not so high, but it swayed precariously under my weight as I twisted over the top of it, and for a moment I thought it was going to collapse altogether. As I turned myself around and lowered my feet onto the ground on the other side, I found myself staring straight back at the face of Morrissey, who was peering over the Coulsons’ fence. The face dropped out of sight. He knew where I was. I had to get out of here. I looked up at the roof above my apartment. Gomez, staring down at the fence that I had just nearly wrecked, was raising his gun to his shoulder.

I turned and nearly collided with a woman of about fifty in a bathrobe. She had just gotten up from a plastic chair next to a table that held a cup of coffee and a burning cigarette. She was striding toward me, her face horribly contorted with rage. She suddenly began to shriek — so loudly and savagely that her voice cracked.

“Stop it! Stop that right now!”

For a moment I thought she must be able to see me, and I cowered. But then I saw that she was staring right through me at the fence, and I realized it was her fence she was upset about. She thought someone was knocking it down from the other side. I stepped out of her way, as she strode the rest of the way to the fence and glared truculently at it.

There was a small, explosive thud from the direction of my terrace above, and a gash appeared at the base of her neck. Blood began to run out over her shoulder, and she collapsed at my feet.