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He was in a slipknot now, which was tightening as he stood there.
Beyond the fire pit, there was an enclosed rooftop bar with a RESERVED sign on a stand in front of its French doors. Through the glass, he could see guests and waitstaff and tables set with flowers and white linens. A DJ in a tuxedo shirt bent by a turntable, and then there was a sudden blast of swinging trumpets and Sinatra singing “Come Dance with Me.”
Clueless civilians. No help in that direction. No time to even ask.
He went to the roof’s edge and looked down on Broadway. Sixteen stories down. Two lanes of moving traffic. Lights of Lincoln Center. Some people on the sidewalk. No way to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
He rushed along the roof deck, skirting the building’s perimeter to 67th Street, looking for a fire escape. At the northeastern edge of the building down 67th, he was hoping for another building he could escape onto, but there was nothing except a huge empty dirt lot with a bunch of construction equipment.
He’d come along the southeastern back corner of the hotel when he finally saw his out.
Behind the hotel was an old building under renovation. They were doing brickwork and had an outside scaffold set up, a cruciform track running from roof to ground with a movable scaffold forming the horizontal part of the cross. The right-hand end of the scaffold was about fifteen feet away from where he was standing, and about a floor and a half below the level of the hotel roof.
He looked behind him at the path he’d just come down. If he went back to the other edge of the hotel by 67th, ran full-out and got a little height as he leapt off the top of the waist-high wall, he could do it. He could long jump it.
Don’t think. Don’t look down. Just do it.
He made it to the other end of the roof deck and had turned back for his running start when Therkelson came out of the shadow on his right and grabbed him.
Forgetting his knife, the dark-haired man scrambled with animal panic to break the bigger, stronger man’s iron grip. He bashed the big son of a bitch in his mouth with the heel of his right hand, trying to get a thumb in his eye with his left.
But Therkelson didn’t let go.
Gripping the struggling dark-haired man by his lapels, Therkelson lifted him up off his feet and, without preamble, easily and silently threw him hard off the side of the building.
In that first terrible instant out in the black space and open cold air, the dark-haired man saw the city around him, like an upside-down I?NY postcard snapshot. Window lights and water towers and the setbacks on the apartment buildings.
Then he was spinning and falling, the cold air rushing and ripping in his eyes and face.
No, no, no! Can’t, can’t! Not now! he thought over the blasting of the air and his heart, as he free-fell faster and faster through the cold and black—down, down, down.
At the barrier to the construction site, Devine ripped a piece of plywood free and rushed in.
The place was empty and unlit. He pulled the wood back into place and scurried along the wall of the hotel, searching the concrete-dusted iron pipes, snarls of cable, and mounds of brick rubble and ash-gray dirt.
He glanced up at the buildings around him. Three hundred and sixty degrees of endless windows, in rows and columns. Had somebody seen?
As if. The phone-faced folks of this metropolis didn’t so much as look up while walking across the damn street these days. The chance of some Jimmy Stewart type laid up with a broken leg at a window witnessing Pretty Boy’s Superman audition was about as remote as him surviving his assisted sixteen-story swan dive.
Welcome to New York City, Devine thought as he walked around a pallet of cinder blocks. Apathy central. Home of eight and a half million ways to not give a shit whether another human being lives or dies.
He found Pretty Boy on the other side of the battered steel tower of a pile driver, between some orange netting and a bunch of empty spackle buckets. He was on his back, blood covering his face.
Devine looked down and clicked his penlight. Oh my. The worksite wasn’t the only thing that needed reconstruction. Pretty Boy wasn’t looking too pretty anymore, that was for sure. Devine looked around; he must have hit the steel housing on the pile driver on his way down.
As he knelt beside the body, he realized that, unbelievably, Pretty Boy was still breathing. Devine lifted his wrist and expertly took his pulse. Very, very faint. But still there, for the moment.
“You did this to yourself, you stupid ass. You know I’m right,” Devine said as he searched him. “You screwed yourself real good, Pretty Boy. What did you think was gonna happen?”
He found some cash in his right pants pocket, along with a hotel room card and a little flip knife at the back of his belt. The man’s phone was in his inside jacket pocket, and he slid it out. It was still on. The phone was in one of those industrial waterproof shock cases and had survived the fall unharmed. How do you like that?
“Who says they don’t make good products anymore?” Devine said as he pocketed it.
He patted Pretty Boy down, took off his shoes and socks, and unbuckled his belt. He did a quick professional groin probe with his green rubber-gloved hands. There was nothing else on him. Not even a wallet. It had to be on his phone, then, on his contacts or in his notes. It wasn’t in his room. They’d already checked there. No luck. Found what looked like a couple of grand in cash, sure—but left it. Give the cops a chance to chase their tails.
Devine shook his head as he took Pretty Boy’s pulse again. Still alive, the stupid ass. Too dumb to die. Was he conscious on some level?
“Where is it?” he said to him. “On your phone, right? Is it on your phone? Tell me, bro, and I’ll save you. You still have a chance.”<
