HE ALLEY TEAM didn’t even ask each other if they were willing to help the kid, it was a given. Greg thought he knew him from somewhere, and he was in some kind of trouble–‘Vinnie’kind of trouble. That was enough for them. The hood had taken too much control of the neighborhood and, they were certain, he was up to no good. Eddie had taken a fall and almost died and Jimmy had been murdered–mind you, not that anyone felt any great loss over his passing. . . .
Vinnie slouched in his desk chair and offered Mitch a seat. He was holding the title to Mitch’s “goat,” along with the gun that had killed Mike, still in a plastic bag. “You sure you don’t wanna sit?”
“Positive.” Mitch consciously slowed his breathing, his arms folded across his chest.
“Suit yourself,” Vinnie sniffed. “Okay, here’s the bet: I hide the gun in my cah, give you the title to your cah as good faith.” Vinnie waved the title like a trophy. “You knew I had it, didn’t you?” Mitch nodded. “Then you got forty-eight hours to steal my cah and get the gun. If you do it without laying so much as a scratch on my precious Ferrari, we trade cahs. You bring mine to me, I give you the goat back–in pristine condition, mind you–and you walk away, no questions asked.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And if I don’t get away?”
“You come to work for me. You can keep the cah and I’ll pay you like you never been paid before. The gun’ll be insurance, so you don’t renege on the bet.” Vinnie reached out with the title.
“How do you know I’m not a cop?”
Vinnie burst out laughing. “Kid you got your butt hangin’ out all over. That pretty little wife a’ yours has ‘vulnerability’ written all over you. And cops don’t drive Pontiac GTOs with plates from a Chrysler.” His face went grim. “And if you was a cop, I’d either be dead or locked in the slammer–like you’ll be if the Feds figure out who killed Mike.”
“What about Mike?” Mitch still stood with his arms folded.
Vinnie dropped the title on the floor at Mitch’s feet. “Good ol’ Mike, curled up sound asleep in the back a’ your woman’s car.” Vinnie turned, stretched his arms, and began to pace. “The cah’s a total loss. Hafta burn it. I’ll take care of Mike after you move the body into his sedan. It’s still parked outside the body shop. The keys are in his pocket.” Vinnie opened a file cabinet drawer and took out a pair of disposable coveralls. “You might want to put these on.” He tossed the bundle on the floor near Mike’s badge. “Leave ‘em in the trunk with Mike, along with the gun and badge. Make sure you wipe your prints clean.”
Mitch shook his head. “The way I see it, you’re still playing with the deck stacked in your favor.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re betting my life and my car. If you lose, you lose nothing. If I win, I’m still out a car and my credit cards you’ve been messing with. Up the anti–put something of yours on the line, then hand me the keys to your car. . . .”
Vinnie paced again. “I see your point. Maybe I’ll make a bettin’ man outta you yet.” He stalked back to the fridge and pulled open the door. After pulling a banded pile of cash from one of its trays, he returned and dropped the stack on the coveralls. “Twenty grand. You win, it’s yours, paid up front. My boys catch you first, you lose, it’s three months’ wages.” Vinnie reached into his suitcoat pocket, pulled out the keys to his car, and held them out in his open palm. “This oughta be fun, kid. Real fun.” He dropped the keys on the pile.
Sound was first to run down the alley, with Smitty close behind. Ritter was nowhere in sight. “There’s a body in the trunk!” he announced, out of breath. “Poor guy’s brains are leaking out.”
Greg shuddered, already freaked out by Nurse’s story. “Shut your traps! You want th’ whole stinkin’ block to know?” Nurse chided. “‘Sides, ain’t the first time you seen a dead body.” She craned her neck to peer back out to the street. “Where’s Ritter?”
“He’s coming.” Sound gave a wave of his hand, then lowered his voice. “Sure, but this one’s been murdered. Yeah, I’ve seen bodies before, but those were guys having accidents or just being on the street too long . . .”
“Ain’t true,” countered Nurse. “Skip was thrown front a’ a train. Cops didn’t care, ‘cause he’s one a’ us.” Sound nodded in agreement. “Sunny, you gotta take a look a’that car and see if’n it’s same one Vinnie was pullin’ out.”
Everyone turned to see Ritter coming up the alleyway, waddling heel-first. Greg turned back to Nurse. “I’ll try, but I don’t think I’ll be much help.”
Badly out of breath, Ritter shuffled up to the group. “Mitchell and– Stephanie Wilson,” he gasped. Then, turning to address his fellow street rats, he whined, “Why in blasted darkness ‘d you run off so fast?”
“Didn’t you hear us?” replied Sound. “We found a body in the trunk. The key was broken in the lock, so Smitty just popped the trunk open with a screwdriver.”
“Some bloody friends you are–leaving me sittin’ in the cab while you’re racing down the street.” Ritter doubled up his fist and made a beeline for Sound. Smitty, diving for cover, slithered behind Cap’n, who in turn seized Ritter by the collar.
Holding up her arms, Nurse quelled the near-riot. “Hold it! We ain’t gonna have no cat fight!”
Cap’n’ brought Ritter’s face near his own. “You hear? ‘At’s an order.” Giving him one last warning scowl, he shoved Ritter away like a pesky fly.
“Bloomin’ cowards,” Ritter mumbled, his eye twitching in pain as he straightened his shirt.
Finally Nurse steered the group back to the matter at hand. “Who in th’ love a’ Pete is Mitchell an’ Stephanie Wilson?” she demanded.
“Registered owners of the car, for queen’s sake,” Ritter trumpeted. Still messing with his shirt, he mewled, “You big ox, you broke me button!”
Cap’n raised his big paw in a threatening gesture, sending Ritter scampering away. Nurse raised a crooked finger and shook it at them both. “I ain’t warnin’ ya’ ‘gain. One more word a’ trash an’ I’m sendin’ ya’ both home. We got work t’ do.” The old woman dropped her hand– and her voice. “Names ring a bell?” she asked Greg. He shook his head. The little family then ducked behind the power box in front of Nurse’s shack and began to form a plan.
“We on?” Vinnie asked.
Mitch stood thinking over the proposition. At last he unfolded his arms. “One change.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll take care of Mike’s body and the car. Someone once told me I need to see to the details–personally.”
“See, you learned somethin’ already.”
“Yeah, I’m learning real fast.” Mitch looked down at the pile at his feet.
“Take it, kid, all bets final.” Mitch crouched over and gathered up the assorted items: Mike’s badge, $20,000 in cash, the keys to Vinnie’s car, the title to his GTO, and the pair of disposable coveralls. As he went to stand up, Vinnie grabbed him by the hair and again shoved the barrel of his gun in Mitch’s cheek. “Remember–you screw with me, kid, and I’ll do your pretty lady while you watch, then show you–up close and personal–what a piece like this’ll do to your head. Got that?”
Mitch held his head erect and looked Vinnie straight in the eye, jaw clenched. “I got it.”
“And you try and skip out on me, the gun goes downtown with your name on it. Can’t run far enough to get away from the Feds, neither. I got a few friends who tried. If the Feds don’t get you, I will.” Vinnie shoved Mitch away. “Forty-eight hours,” he snapped, then pushed the call button by the elevator. “My boys catch you before you get the car, the bets over and I win. Good luck getting outta the hotel.”
Mitch stepped into the elevator. A slender hint of a smile creased his lips as he remembered the camera in the corner. Turning to face his foe, he said, “Catch me? Won’t happen.” The elevator door closed.
Vinnie immediately sat down at his desk and flipped on the digital computer screen, scrolling through the frames of live surveillance video until he got to the elevator. There was his patsy, his back to the lens. The kid pushed the stop button, then fumbled nervously with the items he held clamped under his arm. Then the kid did something totally unexpected: he turned to face the camera and said, “You’re still playing with a stacked deck, Mr. Domenico. Go fish. . . .” Then he raised Mike’s gun and aimed it at the camera. When he squeezed the trigger, Vinnie recoiled and slouched to the side, as if dodging a real bullet, before the screen went blank. The sound of gunfire echoed up the elevator shaft. Vinnie grabbed the phone and punched a button.
“The kid’s on the eleventh floor. He’s got a gun. The guy that nabs him–alive–gets the twenty grand he’s packin.” The downstairs security office became a tank of sharks caught up in a feeding frenzy. Uniformed guards scurried about, seeking out positions near the elevator and the hotel’s exits. “And park three men at my car,” added Vinnie. “I don’t want him gettin’ near it.”
Inside elevator #1, Mitch punched the buttons to every floor, tucked the cash, coveralls and title inside his shirt and the gun and badge in his pocket. Before hitting the start button, he contemplated how he would proceed. Getting out of the building will be the hard part. But if I make it out in one piece, Vinnie’s made one big mistake: without a body, the gun’s useless. Mitch calculated the risks involved. Vinnie’s just playing games again. There’s no way he’s going to let me out on the street with a gun, the keys to his car and twenty-thousand dollars. It’s got to be another setup.
Meanwhile, Vinnie scrolled down on his video surveillance equipment and switched the camera view to the 11th-floor hallway, where he watched the elevator doors shut. The camera was located around the corner, so Mitch was out of view. He couldn’t be sure whether the kid was still inside. Vinnie cursed, “Override the elevator.”
The guard from the main security room called back, “We can’t, sir. The system’s too old.”
“Then get a man on every floor and every entrance and kill the power to my elevator. Don’t let the kid outta the building. He stole the keys to my car.” Two guards rushed down the hall toward the mechanical room. The slow-moving elevator lurched to a halt on the 10th floor. Vinnie switched screens again, to a large group of senior citizens chatting in the hallway while waiting for a lift. The doors opened and the energetic seniors scurried inside–into an empty car.
Up above, Mitch eased his foot through the jimmied trap door in the elevator’s ceiling and quietly coaxed it shut. The muted voices of the old folks below rattled on about the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet . . . too many calories . . . how much they’d won and lost in the nickel slots . . . the lousy beds in room 1015.
Still farther below, the #2 and #3 elevators settled to the lobby floor, opening to several waiting guards. Suddenly the #1 car jolted to a stop. A collective gasp issued from its older passengers, followed by a sing-song of self-reassurances that everything would be alright. Mitch’s eyes had gradually adjusted to the darkness of the elevator shaft, which, he saw, shared a connecting shaft with two other cars in a common concrete compartment. Greasy, metal guide tracks were bolted to the back walls by means of angle-iron straps, spaced in three- to four-foot intervals up and down the shaft.
The two rising elevators advanced intermittently, their bells ringing at each floor. One elevator stopped just one floor below. Mitch listened in on the guards’ hot-blooded argument as to who should stay on the 8th floor and who would go on up to the 9th. The second of the two elevators ground to a halt about a foot short of the powerless car where Mitch waited. He stepped over to its roof as the doors opened and the pack of frantic guards rushed out.
“Power #1 back up,” he heard a guard call over the radio. The #2 car’s doors shut and the lift began its ascent. Mitch didn’t hear the reactions of the startled elderly guests when their elevator doors opened onto a line of armed guards. Their sighs of relief and astonished gasps were drowned out by the spinning pulleys and moving cables attached to the second elevator–a car that, Mitch realized, was moving in the wrong direction! He stooped to listen as the two remaining guards waited for the door to open.
“He’s not on the elevator,” the radio squealed, over the mingled voices of alarmed senior citizens.
“Block the door with an ashtray,” one of the men ordered. “Then search the floor. I’ll check the stairs.”
Mitch took hold of the latch on the trap door and opened it a crack. The car was empty. Not a good move to start out above the other elevators, he thought as he released the latch and studied the jumble of suspended cables and electrical wires overhead. He gave a tug at the power cable attached to the top of the shaft. It seemed to hang from a retractable pulley that reeled it in and out as the car went up and down. The cable slackened as he stretched it around the metal guide wheels at the back of the car. With any luck, at first movement the elevator would be disabled.
Drawing the disposable coveralls from his shirt, he wrapped them around his hands and reached for the cables of the #3 car, which sat motionless just two floors below. Cautiously, he began sliding down the cable, his feet swinging precariously in the air. Hoping and praying the elevator didn’t move and send the cables on their pulleys reeling in opposite directions, his feet finally came to rest atop the third car. Quietly standing chest-high to the doors of the 10th floor, he fingered their release latches. They didn’t seem to work like he’d seen in the movies. It appeared the doors were designed to open only when two spring-loaded safety latches on opposite sides were tripped. And they could only be tripped when the elevator was parked in the proper position. That would pose a problem. Getting out of the shaft without an elevator seemed the best option; disabling the other two cars seemed like time well spent.
The power cable on the third car was also wound on a retractable pulley. Mitch drew out enough slack to wind it around the guide wheels at the back. Then, dangling perilously by the angle-iron braces, he crossed back over to where the first car had reappeared.
“Come on, let’s give ‘em a hand on the eleventh.” The voice came from one of the elevators down near the 9th floor, but the echoing sound in the shaft made it almost impossible to distinguish which one. Centering himself on the first car, he tugged at the power cable overhead. Guards entering below shook the car. Mitch made a quick wrap with the cable just as the elevator doors shut. Hurrying to make a frantic second loop around the wheel, he released the cord. As the elevator started up along its track, the floundering cord became entangled in the wheel and stretched beyond its limits, sending a shower of sparks cascading from its jagged ends. The car bounced, then recoiled to a brakeless stop.
The stunned guards inside the car started to cuss and bang on the elevator doors. Unhooking their flashlights from their belts, they peered dumbly up at the innocuous ceiling tiles above them, speculating about how their ‘man’–possibly still hiding in the elevator shaft–had brought the car to a standstill. Mitch yanked the frayed power cable from the greasy gears and again drew some slack from the reel, several stories above. This new cord he wedged between an angle-iron brace and its neighboring track, and dropped the hot end on the car’s trap door. Without further delay he clasped tightly to a second brace and started climbing down the wall of the shaft, his long legs and arms navigating from one brace to the next.
The blood-curdling yell of the guard who’d been lifted up by the others to check out the trap door rebounded up and down the 13-story chasm. Mitch cringed, hoping the man wasn’t seriously injured. Muffled radio chatter and angry voices echoed and collided with the man’s screams. Mitch subconsciously counted floors as he hurled himself downward along the back of the wall. They’d have the power off soon, and then they’d come after him. He didn’t have much time.
Meanwhile, Smitty had been busy picking two locks–one to Carson Auto Body’s alley-side door, the other to Stephanie’s ignition–while Sound disconnected the phone service and power to the body shop to shut off the alarm and disabled the keypad. Nurse had been adamant about not repeating the same three-ring circus they’d suffered through before at Eddie;s place.
“It look like the same car?” Nurse asked Greg as the little Escort pulled in the alley.
Greg shook his head. “I’m not much help in the dark. Even in the light, all little white cars look the same to me.”
She nodded. “Don’t break yer pick thinkin’ too hard. If’n it is, someone’s gonna be wonderin’ where it went. An if’n it ain’t, we just come up with a mouthful a’ feathers. My bet is, Mr. Vinnie did the poor fella right here.” She rapped on Carson Auto’s overhead door and it slowly inched up. Smitty, a silly grin on his face, stood just inside.
Greg scanned the joint. “You think this is the safest place to keep it?”
Nurse chuckled. “You ever wear glasses?”
“No.”
“Well I did, ‘til I weren’t able to see no more. And I’ll be hog-tied in a hornet’s nest if’n I couldn’t find ‘em while they was a sittin’ on my own head! Nah, they wouldn’t think to look here. Now we gotta hurry ‘fore ‘at boy comes back.” Nurse waved Ritter forward into the garage. “You ‘member where you know ‘im from yet?”
“No, not for the life of me. But for some strange reason I think he knows my son.”
“No matter. If’n he killed ‘at poor fella, we’ll be tellin’ the law. If’n he didn’t, we’ll be helpin’ ‘im outta a butt noose, the one Mr. Vinnie probably got ‘im latched in tighter ‘an a fiddle string.” She waved Ritter back out of the garage as Smitty pulled the door closed.
Nurse was right, no doubt about it. Mitch’s tail was in one heck of a noose. One security guard had climbed out onto the back wall and was starting down the elevator shaft from above, while a second was barking orders from atop the disabled car. “It looks like he’s just about to the third floor,” he called out. “Get the elevator down there.” The #1 car, still on the 11th floor, whirred to a start. Mitch felt the vibrations of the tracks and braces. He could see the elevator, strung with power cables like the first one, headed down above him in his shaft. Before reaching him, however, it would peel the climbing guard right off the wall. “Not that elevator,” screamed the upper guard into his radio. “Our man’s in that shaft– shut it down!” But the car continued its decent.
“It won’t stop!” both radios answered in unison.
The car hummed past the disabled elevator, bearing down on the guard. “Tom, get the hell outta there!” yelled the one above. “He’s got the power cable tangled in the rollers!”
A cuss word tripped from the guard’s tongue, causing him to drop the small flashlight he carried in his teeth. Its beam flickered and twirled on the grimy walls as it plunged past Mitch to the basement below. “Jump to the other side!” Mitch screamed up at the man. “Jump!” The guard glanced down frantically at Mitch, then pressed his body up against the cinder block wall to brace himself for the impact. Once more his eyes met Mitch’s, the dim lights panning down from the top of the shaft onto his prey’s face. Then they shifted across to the other shaft. “Now!” screamed Mitch.
The guard hesitated, measured his leap, then lunged from the braces like a hippo out of water. A loud grunt was followed by a groan as he careened headlong into the rails and slid down the wall, his leg jamming up against the next brace. The tracks rattled and the elevator car slid by where he’d dangled only a second before. The 7th-floor bell sounded.
The car maintained its steady descent. Mitch squinted across the shaft to the 2nd-floor doors and likewise pushed himself away from the wall in their direction. He, too, groaned from the blow as he flung himself against the metal doors. Stunned from the blow, he managed to grasp onto the lip at the base of the opening and pull himself awkwardly up to the small crack of light that offered a plausible escape.
Breathing hard, Mitch peered out the half-inch crack. There on the floor below three guards were cramming a metal bar between the elevator doors in the main lobby, trying to pry them apart. Finding a foot-hold between floors, he grappled to push himself up the slick metallic surface. The old elevator above rang the 6th-floor bell, and Mitch silently began counting down the time between floors in order to measure its rate of descent. If he measured wrong, the massive elevator would flatten him like a nail on a railroad track.
Desperate for some sort of pry bar, he plunged his hand into his pocket to extract Mike’s badge. With the fingers of his other hand wedged between the doors, he lunged to grasp onto one of the greasy latches that cinched the doors closed.
The 5th-floor bell sounded, followed by the commotion of angry men–or of caged wild animals–pounding frantically on the stalled elevator’s trap door. The banging resounded up and down the shaft. The pounding and the cries for help were accompanied by the groanings of rusted door latches as the pressing guards strained to liberate themselves from their confining prison.
From his cumbersome vertical stance, Mitch put all his weight on the latch, gouging the badge between the doors. They barely budged. Realizing the second door latch needed to be released, he shuffled his feet to raise his right leg. The 4th-floor bell rang. With any luck they won’t be on the second floor, he thought–just as luck seemingly ran out and the crumbling concrete toehold he was on suddenly gave way underfoot.
Like the primary culprit in a bumbled trapeze act, Mitch hung helplessly from the latch, clinging on by tooth and nail. Then he was falling, his fingers still gripping tightly to the latch. Its handle had broken off, sending him tumbling back onto the lip from where he’d begun. The 3rd-floor bell sounded as he clawed his way back up and grabbed onto the second latch, trying to force the door open. Simultaneously battering at the gap with the badge, the door opened a crack, enough for him to jam two fingers through. With the athletic prowess of his youth, Mitch lifted himself off the ground, wriggled the fingers of his other hand through the widening gap, and wrested the doors apart.
A jumble of fidgety feet and legs of patrons from the restaurant level met his initial gaze. Only a two-foot space linked the upper section of the elevator car and the floor of the restaurant. Hoisting his torso and legs to safety, he turned to watch the crippled elevator buzz past. The 2nd-floor bell gave a loud ding, and the heads of the dumbfounded diners turned as one in his direction. He peered behind him once more, staring into the dark void. The ghastly sound of snapping metal and anxious voices greeted the diners as Mitch rolled to his hip, pressed his greasy hands to the carpet and pushed himself to his feet. “I’d use the stairs if I were you,” he panted, flashing the officer’s badge at the astonished crowd. Dropping it in his pocket and brushing his hands on his pants, he added offhandedly, “The elevators–they’re out of order due to the fire on the fifth floor.” Blackened face and filthy clothes confirmed his words as patrons spread the alarm: “Fire!”