Allen Steele - Jericho Iteration

Someone was in the tower.

I strode the rest of the way through the park until I reached the base of the water tower, then climbed the eroded limestone stairs until I reached the upper parapet. Within a recessed archway were a pair of heavy iron doors, their peeling gray paint covered with graffiti I couldn’t read in the gloom. Dracula would have felt right at home, particularly if he had taken to wearing gang colors.

I tugged at the battered handles; the doors didn’t give so much as an inch. I felt around the doors until I found a keycard slot: a rather anachronistic touch, installed only in recent years, but it didn’t do me a damn bit of good.

I pounded my fist a few times against the panel, feeling old paint flaking off with each blow, then waited a moment. Nothing. I pounded again, harder this time, then put my ear against the cold metal panel. Still nothing.

I raised my fist again, about to hit the door a few more times, when I thought I heard movement from the stairs below me: a soft, scurrying motion, like a rat rustling in the darkness at the bottom of the tower …

Yeah. A six-foot rat with an eight-inch stiletto. I froze within the archway, listening to the night as I regretted not taking the gun Cortez had offered me. There was no other way off the parapet except for a thirty-foot drop to a hard pavement.

I heard an slow exhalation, as of someone sighing in resignation, then dry leaves crunched beneath a cautious footstep on the stairs. A pause, then another footstep. I slid farther into the shadows within the arch.

There was a sudden creak from behind me, then the door inched open a few inches as the narrow beam of a flashlight seeped past my face. “Rosen?” a voice inquired.

“God, yeah!” I whipped around to face the door. The beam rushed toward my face, blinding me for an instant; I winced and instinctively raised my right hand against the light. “I’m Gerry Rosen,” I gasped. “Get me outta-”

The door opened farther and a strong hand reached past the light to grab my wrist. In the same instant that I heard someone running up the stairs, I was yanked past the flashlight beam and through the doorway.

Looking back for an instant, I caught a glimpse of a scrawny, long-haired teenager, wearing a filthy Cardinals sweatshirt and wielding a pocketknife, as he rushed the rest of the way up the stairs; he gaped at me in frustrated anger as the iron door slammed shut in his face.

“Aw, jeez, man,” I gasped, “thanks for-”

“Shut up!” The hand that had rescued me slammed me against a brick wall. “Stand still!”

The halogen flashlight was back in my eyes; squinting painfully against its glare, I made out a vague figure behind the light. His right hand moved to his side, then I felt the unmistakable round, hollow bore of a gun pressing against my neck.

“Show me some ID!” the intense male voice demanded. “Do it quick or I’ll throw you back out there!”

“Yeah, sure,” I murmured, shutting my eyes. “Just take it easy, all right?” I felt around in my jacket until I found my press card, then I pulled it out and held it up to the light. “See? It’s me. That’s my face. Just be careful with the artillery, okay?”

A long pause, then the gun was removed from my neck, and the light swept away from my face. “Okay,” the voice said, a little more relaxed now. “You’re clean.”

“Glad to hear it.” I let out my breath, shoved the card back into my jacket, and rubbed my knuckles against my eyes. It took a few seconds to rinse the spots from my retinas; when I looked up again, the flashlight was still there but was now pointed at the stone floor. A young man was backlit in the glow; it took me only a moment to recognize his face.

“Dr. Morgan?” I asked.

“Jeff Morgan,” he replied, letting out his own breath as he carefully stuck the.22 revolver in the pocket of his nylon windbreaker. “Sorry about that, but we can’t be too careful. Especially now.”

“Ruby said you were expecting me.” The stone-walled room was chill; I could now make out the bottom of a wrought-iron spiral staircase. “Didn’t you know I was coming?”

“Spotted you from up there.” His voice held the flat midwestern accent of a native Missourian. “You saw the kind of company we keep these days, though. That kid’s been trying to get in here for the last couple of days. Like I said, we can’t be too careful.”

“No shit …”

“Yeah. No shit.” He turned around and began walking up the spiral stairway, each footstep ringing within the hollow tower. “C’mon,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”

Guided by the flashlight beam and the weak city light that filtered through the dusty tower windows, I followed Morgan up the staircase as it wound its way around the central steel pipe of the tower’s main pump, each footfall echoing dully on the iron risers.

“We came here because we thought it would be the last place anyone might think of searching for us,” Morgan explained as we climbed upward. “Ruby was able to decode the doorlock, and we figured that up here at least we’d see anyone coming for us.”

“Makes sense …”

“Besides, it wasn’t safe for us to stay in anyone’s house, and for all of us to rent a hotel room together might have raised some attention … especially since ERA’s tried to frame Dick for Po’s murder.”

“And John Tiernan’s,” I added.

He paused and looked back at me. “And your friend’s,” he said. “I’m sorry that happened, believe me. When Beryl decided to make contact with him, the last thing she wanted to do was put him in any danger … or you yourself, for that matter.”

“I understand.” I hesitated. “You know about this afternoon, don’t you?”

Morgan sighed, then resumed walking up the stairs without saying anything. “Yeah, we know,” he replied after a few moments. “Ruby told us almost as soon as it happened. What we can’t figure out is how ERA managed to track her down. She was being careful not to leave a trail, but …”

It was tempting not to let him know that I was partially to blame for her murder, but it was important that he be informed of everything. After all, he was on the run just as much as I; as Beryl herself had said, our mutual survival depended on everyone’s knowing the facts.

“They found her through me,” I said. “I hate to say it, but I led ’em to her.”

Morgan paused again, this time shining the flashlight on me; I glanced away before he could blind me again. “Barris’s men busted me in my apartment last night,” I said before he could ask. “They took me down to the stadium and gave me the story about Payson-Smith being the killer-”

“And you believed them?”

I shook my head. “Not for a second, but that wasn’t the point. The whole thing was a pretense for Barris to give me a smartcard that could track my movements. I guess they figured I would eventually make contact with one of you guys, and they were right. When I met up with Beryl at the cafe, they must have figured things out and sent in their hit man.”

“You didn’t know you were carrying a smartcard?”

“Uh-uh,” I said, shaking my head. “Beryl figured it out and destroyed the thing, but by then it was too late.”

Morgan slowly let out his breath. “Goddamn.” he whispered. “I told her it was a bad idea to contact the local press. I knew you couldn’t be trusted to-”

“Look, bud,” I snapped, “don’t gimme this never-trust-the-press shit. My best friend’s dead because of your team, and if I hadn’t taken out their hitter we’d still be up shit creek.”

“For your information, Mr. Rosen,” he replied coldly, “we’re up shit creek anyway. We’ve got the whole goddamn city looking for us-”