Roderick Thorpe - Nothing Lasts Forever

The hell he wasn't.

A Mars bar. Leland had always liked them.

He put the gun out of sight behind the box and grabbed the guy's wrist and pulled him up to a sitting position. He had to grab his collar to keep him from falling over.

"When you see what's coming, Skeezix, you're going to be glad you're dead."

Leland slung him over his shoulder and lugged him around to Wilshire Boulevard. The frame for the lighted Klaxon sign extended outward almost a yard, but it also provided Leland with a place to park the body while he caught his breath. He was not going to do any more lifting. After this, though, he wasn't going to have to do anything to get attention, either. He pushed the body over the side.

"Geronimo, motherfucker."

He had to know where it landed. Jouncing him across the roof had pumped the guy's blood all over Leland's chest and back. He had to be sure people could see the body. Leland got his head beyond the sign just as the body struck the steps and rolled toward the street, distorted and twisted as if all the bones were broken. Leland had thought he was too high to hear anything, but the sound came up, loud, an awful, wet, crackling sound. Leland knew at once he was going to be sick. He was back on the roof when he thought of MacIver and all the others who had done that to themselves. They had heard that sound. Leland was able to bend over before the airline dinner Kathi Logan had served him came flying up again.

He spat and wiped his chin on his sleeve. Now to retrieve the Thompson.

He was going to try it one more time. It was the last thing they were expecting. He was careful working his way down from the roof, then around on the fortieth floor to the corridor beyond the library — but he was not slow, either, going purposefully down the thickly carpeted corridor, stepping over Rivers and Number One. He could hear someone working in the board room. He stopped at the left side of the door and set himself, took his deep breaths, and turned into the doorway.

It was a girl! She was wearing fatigues and a cap, but there was nothing else tough or warriorlike about her. Her eyes dropped from Leland to the automatic weapon on the table. She hesitated, then she lunged for it.

"Don't do it!"

She actually stopped — but then she looked up at him and went on, flinging herself onto the table and getting her hands on the weapon. Leland squeezed off a burst that hit her in the head and chest and blew her off the table and back against the wall.

He straightened up, his heart pounding. He couldn't delay. What was the attraction up here? He hurried around the table and into the next room. A safe — as simple as that. A big, deluxe, copper-colored wall job, now decorated with four small, shiny, perfectly squared holes drilled around the wheel. Four kit bags were arrayed against the wall. He knew what he wanted, and it wasn't candy bars. The first two bags contained plastic explosive. He took three packets. The next bag had the detonating gear, including percussion caps. He threw that over his shoulder.

The elevator was coming. He hurried up the corridor and into the library, trying to keep track of the sound of the approaching car. With the explosive and the detonators, he had picked up another twenty pounds. He had just sworn off lifting. Being sick had taken something out of him. So had killing a girl. She had been twenty-three or four, a baby. How'd you like it, boy? Now you've done it all! He stopped when he reached the corridor on the west side. Voices. He had to hang around. He was near the northwest stairs, having taken the one route he could depend on, and he was near the board room again. He had to gamble. He did not know how the offices were interconnected in this corner of the floor, or if doors were going to lock behind him, if he was not careful with them.

He passed through a luxury suite, working his way down to the typist's tiny quarters. Her door opened onto the broad hall leading down to the board room. With the door ajar, he could hear them plainly, speaking German, but he was too close — it was too dangerous.

He let the door close, and pressed his ear against it.

They were trying to get Karl to calm himself. The dead girl's name was Erika. They knew about Skeezix down on Wilshire Boulevard. Karl wanted to kill Leland himself. He didn't think they were going to accomplish their mission. Then Karl said something just beautiful: there were only nine of them left. Only? What was it that Stepin Fetchit used to say?

"Feets, do yo' stuff," Leland whispered.

First, he hid the detonators. If they caught him with them, they would be back on the track again. Even if they caught him without them, if he had been cute about his hiding place, they might figure it out. So the kit bag was in the wastepaper basket under the big desk in the suite's innermost office. The next step was in trying to get an idea of how they were going to search for him. He could have some influence on that: he could change the rules of the game.

He was on the thirty-sixth floor, going down, when he heard gunfire up above, loud and resonating. Somebody had had the bright idea that Leland would return to his redoubt in the elevator tower. No, it wasn't going to be that simple. He didn't have to be told twice that they were trying to guess his every move.

Hell, they had to, now.

And that was why he was not going down to the thirty-second floor to "surprise" them with another sortie. If Leland knew his man, Little Tony, Anton Gruber, word had already gone down on their secondary channel, and they were in the stairwells waiting for him.

Effectively, there were only seven. Two were downstairs, one in the basement, the other in the main lobby, where he had seen something fall out of Santa's sleigh onto Wilshire Boulevard. Leland wondered if anyone else had seen it. They might have been able to get the body out of view, but they weren't going to be able to hose down the steps.

Now Leland was having trouble holding onto the reasons why he had done it. To get attention. To show them they were dealing with someone who simply hadn't been lucky with Karl's brother. If they wanted to take him for a wild man, so much the better. He was having trouble holding on and he knew it. He had never killed a girl before. Lucky Lindy, the last of the lonesome knights. What had made her think she could beat him? Skeezix's blood, that was it, which was now drying Leland's shirt to his skin. She had thought it Leland's blood, that he was terribly hurt. The next one won't be so easily fooled, Leland thought. It was not something he could count on anyway.

He stopped at the thirty-fourth floor, where the desks ranged in the open from one end of the building to the other. Of all the places he knew, this probably offered him the greatest real protection. The partitions on some of the other floors terrified him. With them, you were only out of sight, not out of danger. If he could use them to his own advantage, he would, but he couldn't figure out how.

More gunfire above. They were working their way down. They were conducting a sweep. Did they know how? Leland went to the elevator banks and pressed the call buttons. Nothing — no familiar whine. The elevators were closed down. Okay. No doubt about it, he was their top priority.

Probably the safest spot was in one of the corners. He selected the northeast, and began pushing desks together, trying to get as many thicknesses of sheet metal between him and them as he could. How many rounds had he left? Twelve in the Browning, a clip and a half for the Thompson, which could jam at any time. He had the plastic. If the packets were embedded with percussion cups, a burst of machine gun fire set them off, and if he molded the packets over the red emergency lights over the stairwell doors, he would have a good chance of hitting them.