The voice came from the flat roof. When he looked, Remo saw a broad, puzzled face peering from the deep shadows just above the upper roof ledge. It turned quickly away, calling into the darkest shadows in a husky rasp.
"Gino, get over here. You gotta see this." Another face joined the first. This new face, presumably Gino's, grew as surprised as the first when it spied Remo standing on the impossibly thin wire out in the middle of nothing. The alley below lurked dark and menacing.
The cable swung gently in the breeze. Remo swung with it.
"You know dat guy, Ennio?" Gino asked his partner.
"What, do I look like I know him?" Ennio scoffed. He smacked Gino in the side of the head.
They turned their attention back to the man on the wire, Gino rubbing his smarting head.
Remo was of average height and build. His only unusual features, besides his obvious ability to root to a swaying cable in defiance of gravity, were his abnormally thick wrists. They were as thick around as coffee cans. Though it was cool, he wore a black cotton T-shirt and matching chinos. A pair of expensive Italian loafers were the only things between the wire and the soles of his feet.
"What are you doin' out there?" Ennio demanded.
Remo paused in midstep. "Just out for a quiet little walk." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and glanced around. His dark features grew puzzled. "Hmm. Guess I must have taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque."
"Oh, a smart guy," Ennio mocked. "Hey, we got a smart guy standin' eight friggin' stories in the air."
"How you doin' that?" Gino pressed, ignoring Ennio.
"You boys ever hear of gravity?" Remo questioned.
"What are we, morons?" Ennio demanded. "Dat's what makes things fall."
"Close enough for government work," Remo said. "How about super-conductivity?"
Ennio and Gino looked at one another, each apparently unwilling to admit he didn't know. They looked relieved when the floating stranger let them off the hook.
"No matter," Remo said. "That's a tough one. What I do, see, is I meet the force of gravity with an equal repulsive force. It only looks like I'm walking on the wire. In point of fact, I'm a fraction of a millimeter above it."
There was a spark of genuine curiosity in Gino's eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but was suddenly interrupted.
"What the hell is dat?"
A new voice. This one came from behind Remo. He glanced over his shoulder, back to the neighboring building. Three new angry faces peered over at him from just above the spot where the cable snaked into the old brick building.
"He was just tellin' us!" Gino hollered across the alley to his compatriots. "Somethin' about supercondominiums or somethin' !"
Remo rolled his eyes. "Could you yell a little louder? I don't think they can hear you in East Providence."
Gino wasn't paying attention to the others. He was staring at Remo's feet. They seemed anchored to the swaying line as firmly as if it were a broad concrete sidewalk.
"So it's like wit two magnets," Gino ventured.
"Sort of," Remo admitted, tearing his eyes away from the new arrivals. "But the repulsion isn't that intense. It's equal parts repel and attract."
Gino was clearly fascinated. Ennio, less so. With the appearance of the other three men, he had taken on a more authoritarian demeanor.
As Remo watched, a lightweight SMG swung into view, its collapsible skeleton stock already locked in place. Ennio aimed the barrel of the gun at Remo.
"I don't care about no supercondominiums or any of dat gravity bullshit."
At Ennio's lead, the three men opposite raised their weapons. Remo felt the telltale pressure waves of the three barrels aimed at his back. Before him, Gino reluctantly aimed his gun as well. All five of them were a hair away from firing.
In both directions, the men were too far away for Remo to reach before they fired. In the cross fire, with the added difficulty of having to stay balanced on the wire, Remo was at a minor disadvantage. There was only one alternative.
As five hairy fingers tightened against five separate triggers, Remo was already flashing forward. Bending double, he gripped the cable with his right hand, slashing downward with the left.
Bullets sang into the vacant air where his chest had been a split second before. Even as the sheets of hot lead soared in either direction, Remo's hand sliced through the cable. Holding one smoothly cut end, he swung dramatically to the nearest building. For added flair, he let loose his best Tarzan yell as he slapped into the grimy brick facade.
Using a variation on his wire-walking technique, Remo scrambled up and over the side of the building. The gunfire was rattling to a stop even before he crested the wall. He saw why the instant he hit the sheet of black tar.
The gunmen were dead. All three of them. "Oops," said Remo.
Looking away from the bodies that had been mowed down accidentally, he glanced over to the adjacent building-the building he was supposed to be on. Ennio's startled face stared back at him. Gino was nowhere to be seen.
"What the frig!" Ennio snarled across the vacant alley space.
"Wrong building," Remo called back sheepishly. "Don't move."
Scampering back over the ledge, Remo climbed, spiderlike, down two stories. As Remo moved, Ennio took frequent potshots at his speeding form. He missed every time.
Puffs of brick and mortar dust burped into the fetid alley air.
Remo found the fire escape. Landing on the rusted upper platform, he raced down the remaining six flights of crisscrossing stairs to the street.
Ennio stopped shooting at him by the time he'd reached the fifth floor. All was silence by the time Remo broke into the alley. He crossed over to the next building and began climbing rapidly up the grimy wall.
He should have gone up this building to begin with. He had used the elevator in the first building so that no one would see him in the second. Now everyone had seen him. This was what he thought as he climbed. If his employer wasn't always so damned concerned with security, he would have just gone in, done his job and got out.
Remo had worked up a good head of steam by the time he reached the top of the eight-story building eleven seconds later. He climbed quickly over onto the roof.
As he had expected, Gino lay dead on the black surface. Circles of red kissed his crumpled frame. Killed in the cross fire.
Remo found the stab of weak yellow light from the roof door. He entered the well, climbing down the narrow flight of stairs to the top floor.
The two buildings he'd visited this night, and indeed most of the structures on the block, were owned by the Patriconne crime family of Rhode Island. The eighth floor of this particular apartment building was left vacant for Mob use. The man Remo was looking for was somewhere on this floor.
He stole down the corridor, listening for heartbeats beyond closed doors. He found what he was looking for at the end of the hallway.
Remo kicked in the second to last door. The steel buckled, exploding into the room amid a hail of plaster dust.
Two goons were waiting in ambush. As the ruined door was bouncing atop the sofa and sliding to the floor, they were already firing.
Bullets savaged the wall behind him. Remo moved through the storm of leaden missiles as if they were no more than raindrops in a spring shower.