Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (17 page)

 
          
 
He got midway up the flight before
Crawley
pushed open the door, stepped cautiously
out onto the roof, and the single shot snapped out. Crawley doubled suddenly,
stepping involuntarily back, and would have fallen backward down the stairs if
Levine hadn't reached him in time and struggled him to a half-sitting position,
wedged between the top step and the wall.

 
          
 
Crawley
's
face was gray, his mouth strained white. "From the right," he
said,
his voice low and bitter. "Down low, I saw the
flash."

 
          
 
"Where?"
Levine asked him. "Where did he get you?"

 
          
 
"Leg.
Right leg, high
up.
Just the fat, I think."

 
          
 
From outside, they could hear a man's voice
braying.

           
 
"Danny! Danny!
For
God's sake, Danny!"
It was Mr. Brodek, shouting up from the bedroom
window.

 
          
 
"Get the Hght," whispered
Crawley
.

 
          
 
Not until then had Levine realized how rattled
he'd been just now. Twenty-four years on the force. When did you become a
professional? How?

 
          
 
He straightened up, reaching up to the bare
bulb in its socket high on the wall near the door. The bulb burned his fingers,
but it took only the one turn to put it out.

 
          
 
Light still filtered up from the floor below,
but no longer enough to keep him from making out shapes on the roof. He
crouched over
Crawley
, blinking until his eyes got used to the
darkness.

 
          
 
To the right, curving over the top of the
knee-high wall around the roof, were the top bars of the fire escape.
Black shadow at the base of the wall, all around.
The boy
was low, lying prone against the wall in the darkness, where he couldn't be
seen.

 
          
 
"I can see the fire escaf>e from
here," muttered
Crawley
.
" I've
got
him boxed.
Go on down to the car and call for help."

 
          
 
"Right," said Levine.

 
          
 
He had just turned away when
Crawley
grabbed his arm. "No. Listen!"

 
          
 
He listened.
Soft scrapings,
outside and to the right.
A sudden flurry of footsteps, running,
receding.

 
          
 
"Over the roofs!" cried
Crawley
.
"Damn this leg! Go after him!"

 
          
 
"Ambulance," said Levine.

 
          
 
"Go after him! They can make the
call." He motioned at the foot of the stairs, and Levine, turning, saw
down there anxious, frightened, bewildered faces peering up, bodies clothed in
robes and slippers.

 
          
 
"Go on!"
cried
Crawley
.

 
          
 
Levine moved, jumping out onto the roof in a
half-crouch, ducking away to the right. The revolver was in his
hand,
his eyes were staring into the darkness.

 
          
 
Three rooftops away, he saw the flash of
white, the boy's shirt. Levine ran after him.

 
          
 
Across the first roof, he ran with mouth open,
but his throat dried and constricted, and across the second roof he ran with
his mouth shut, trying to swallow. But he couldn't get enough air in through
his nostrils, and after that he alternated, mouth open and mouth closed,
looking like a frantic fish, running like a comic fat man, clambering over the
intervening knee-high walls with painful slowness.

 
          
 
There were seven rooftops to the corner, and
the corner building was only three stories high. The boy hesitated, dashed one
way and then the other, and Levine was catching up. Then the boy turned, fired
wildly at him, and raced to the fire escape. He was young and lithe, slender.
His legs went over the side, his body slid down; the last thing Levine saw of
him was the white face.

 
          
 
Two more roofs.
Levine stumbled across them, and he no longer needed the heel of his hand to
his ear in order to hear his heart. He could hear it plainly, over the rush of
his breathing, a brushlike throb —throb —throb —throb — throb —

 
          
 
Every six or seven beats.

 
          
 
He got to the fire escape, winded, and looke'd
over.
Five flights down, a long dizzying way, to the
blackness of the bottom.
He saw a flash of the boy in motion, two
flights down. "Stop!" he cried, knowing it was useless.

 
          
 
He climbed over onto the rungs, heavy and
cumbersome. His revolver clanged against the top rung as he descended and, as
if in answer, the boy's gun clanged against metal down below.

 
          
 
The first flight down was a metal ladder, and
after that narrow steep metal staircases with a landing at every floor. He
plummeted down, never quite on balance, the boy always two flights ahead.

           
 
At the second floor, he paused, looked over
the side, saw the boy drop Hghtly to the ground, turn back toward the building,
heard the grate of door hinges not used to opening.

 
          
 
The basement.
And the
flashlight was in the glove compartment of the squad car.
Crawley
had a pencil flash, six buildings and three
floors away.

 
          
 
Levine moved again, hurrying as fast as
before. At the bottom, there was a jump. He hung by his hands, the revolver
digging into his palm, and dropped, feeling it hard in his ankles.

 
          
 
The back of the building was dark, with a
darker rectangle in it, and fire flashed in that rectangle. Something tugged at
Levine's sleeve, at the elbow. He ducked to the right, ran forward, and was in
the basement.

 
          
 
Ahead of him, something toppled over with a
wooden crash, and the boy cursed. Levine used the noise to move deeper into the
basement, to the right, so he couldn't be outlined against the doorway, which
was a gray hole now in a world suddenly black. He came up against a wall, rough
brick and bits of plaster, and stopped, breathing hard, trying to breathe
silently and to listen.

 
          
 
He wanted to listen for sounds of the boy, but
the rhythmic pounding of his heart was too loud, too pervasive. He had to hear
it out first, to count it, and to know that now it was skipping every sixth
beat. His breath burned in his lungs, a metal band was constricted about his
chest, his head felt hot and heavy and fuzzy. There were blue sparks at the
corners of his vision.

 
          
 
There was another clatter from deeper inside
the basement, to the left, and the faint sound of a doorknob being turned,
turned back,
turned
again.

 
          
 
Levine cleared his throat. When he spoke, he
expected his voice to be high-pitched, but it wasn't. It was as deep and as
strong as normal, maybe even a little deeper and a little louder. "It's
locked, Danny," he said. "Give it up. Throw the gun out the
doorway."

           
 
The reply was another fire-flash, and an
echoing thunderclap, too loud for the small bare-walled room they were in. And,
after it, the whining ricochet as the bullet went wide.

 
          
 
That's the third time, thought Levine. The
third time he's given me a target, and I haven't shot at him. I could have shot
at the flash, this time or the last. I could have shot at him on the roof, when
he stood still just before going down the fire escape.

 
          
 
Aloud, he said, "That won't do you any
good, Danny. You can't hit a voice. Give it
up,
prowl
cars are converging here from all over
Brooklyn
."

 
          
 
"I'll be long gone," said the sudden
voice, and it was surprisingly close, surprisingly loud.

 
          
 
"You can't get out the door without me
seeing you," Levine told him. "Give it up."

 
          
 
"I can see you, cop," said the young
voice. "You can't see me, but I can see you."

 
          
 
Levine knew it was a lie. Otherwise, the boy
would have shot him down before this. He said, "It won't go so bad for
you, Danny, if you give up now. You're
young,
you'll
get a lighter sentence. How old are you? Sixteen, isn't it?"

 
          
 
"I'm going to gun you down, cop,"
said the boy's voice. It seemed to be closer, moving to Levine's right. The boy
was trying to get behind him, get Levine between himself and the doorway, so
he'd have a silhouette to aim at.

 
          
 
Levine slid cautiously along the wall, feeling
his way. "You aren't going to gun anybody down," he said into the
darkness. "Not anybody else."

 
          
 
Another flash, another
thunderclap, and the shatter of glass behind him.
The voice said,
"You don't even have a gun on you."

 
          
 
"I don't shoot at shadows, Danny. Or old
men."

 
          
 
"I
do,
old
man."

 
          
 
How old is he?
wondered
Levine.
Sixteen, probably.
Thirty-seven years younger
than me.

 
          
 
"You're afraid," taunted the voice,
weaving closer. "You ought to run, cop, but you're afraid."

           
 
I am, thought Levine. I am, but not for the
reason you think.

 
          
 
It was true. From the minute he'd ducked into
this basement room, Levine had stopped being afraid of his own death at the
hands of this boy. He was fifty-three years of age. If anything was going to
get him tonight it was going to be that heart of his, skipping now on number
five. It wasn't going to be the boy, except indirectly, because of the heart.

 
          
 
But he was afraid. He was afraid of the
revolver in his own hand, the feel of the trigger, and the knowledge that he
had let three chances go by. He was afraid of his job, because his job said he
was supposed to bring this boy down. Kill him or wound him, but bring him down.

 
          
 
Thirty-seven years. That was what separated
them, thirty-seven years of life. Why should it be up to him to steal those
thirty-seven years from this boy? Why should he have to be the one?

 
          
 
"You're a goner, cop," said the
voice. "You're a dead man. I'm coming in on you."

 
          
 
It didn't matter what Danny Brodek had done.
It didn't matter about Nathan Kosofsky, who was dead.
An eye
for an eye, a life for a life.
No! A destroyed life could not be
restored by more destruction of life.