Jonah Maxwell felt like shit.
‘What’s this bastard’s name again?’ he said.
It was an overcast day in the Bronx, and he sat in the passenger seat of a parked car, once again about to tangle with a dangerous fugitive. He was sweating even with the window down, and just the slightest nip of cool air reminded him it was already late October.
It was supposed to be an election year and this would normally be the climax of it, but they’d canceled the election a month ago after the Vice President got blown up in his car. The President himself had gone underground, mouthing TV platitudes to the rudderless nation from a bunker under a mountain somewhere out west. The talking heads chattered about the government rescheduling the election for a date in the spring, or maybe next fall. Or maybe never, Jonah figured.
Didn’t matter, anyway – we might not make it to next spring. The doomsday chorus, growing louder every day, was calling for the end of the world just before Christmas, which was the abrupt stopping point of the ancient Mayan calendar. About six weeks from now. The Mayans had watched the stars move for thousands of years, and had projected those movements well into the future. For some reason, they decided that the stars would stop moving on the twenty-first day of this coming December.
Jonah sighed. The end of the entire world. He could almost believe it was true, and it did nothing to calm his nerves. Bad nerves made him sick to his stomach. He closed his eyes, trying to control his breathing, trying to control the tingling in his head, hands and feet – trying to find his center. Street sounds came to him. He could hear the rumble of the elevated subway line over on Jerome Avenue. Closer, children shouted about a block away. Salsa played on a boombox.
The car he sat in was a tiny Honda Civic hatchback parked on a quiet side street. The car had rolled off the line cherry red twenty years before, stock, with an AM radio, windows that rolled up and down by hand and not even so much as air conditioning for the New York summers. Now it was mostly red with one blue quarter panel, rust beginning to eat through everything. The dashboard was caked in grime. The odometer claimed a quarter of a million miles.
Gordon Lamb, the Honda’s master, sat behind the wheel and pored through the papers on his lap. Even with the seat pushed way back, there wasn’t much room because of his belly and legs. He had a two-day beard and his hair stood up as if he had forgotten to shower that day. Jonah called him Gordo, short for El Gordo, a nickname coined by a funny Dominican whore Gordo had spent the night with years before. She had trouble with the whole name Gordon, so she dropped the n. It was perfect. In Spanish, El Gordo meant “the fat one.”
He and Gordo made an odd couple, maybe. Jonah: a slim, muscular, well-dressed black man – cafe au lait because of his white father – who made the ladies swoon, and Gordo: a big, heavyset bear of a white man who you might mistake for a lumberjack.
‘The name’s Foerster,’ Gordo said. ‘Davis Foerster.’ He spelled it aloud and shuffled some paper around. ‘Also known as Mark Foster. Also known as Foster Davidson.’
Jonah glanced out the window. From the looks of it, from the smell of it, Jonah guessed that garbage pickup in this neighborhood had happened two or three weeks before. Along the edge of the sidewalk, in the shadows of the apartment buildings, overflowing garbage bags were piled high. Assorted kitchen scraps and other trash were strewn all over the street and sidewalk. Bomzhies, junkies, and scavengers of all types came and ripped open the plastic bags, looking for food or anything of value to put in their old supermarket shopping carts and trundle home. As Jonah watched, a large rat crossed the street, well-fed, in no hurry, moving from one mountain of trash to the next.
Meanwhile, Gordo launched into the story as if he hadn’t told it half a dozen times before. ‘Foerster’s the perfect scumbag. Been up to petty shit since he was a teenager, but somewhere in there started getting serious. Cops wanted him for questioning on a year-old forcible entry and rape. A man fitting his description knocked on a 75-year-old woman’s apartment door late one night, forced his way in, pushed her down and raped her. Took about five hundred in cash she had laying around the place. Case remains unsolved, but looks a lot like two earlier ones where the old ladies got killed.’
Jonah took another deep breath, letting Gordo’s words wash over him.
‘In any case,’ Gordo continued, ‘two weeks ago, Foerster lands in their laps. He gets picked up on a breaking and entering and attempted rape. Cops want to roll him up on the old lady case. They figure if they can break him on the one where they still have the victim alive, maybe they can break him on the other two. But all of this coincides with the latest general amnesty for nonviolent prisoners. The city swings wide the cell doors, and lets five thousand inmates – mostly drug offenders – walk. At that moment, there are two men with very similar names on Riker’s Island. One is called Davis Foster. One is called Davis Foerster. True to form, they let the wrong one go. Foerster gets off a prison bus in Queens and disappears. Too late, the city realizes its mistake, and quietly issues a $50,000 reward for his capture, hoping to get him back inside before the newspapers realize they did the bad thing again and released another maniac by mistake. Tough for a cash-strapped city, but good for people like us.’
Gordo raised an eyebrow.
‘Most interesting thing? A little bird told me the FBI contacted the city cops about this guy two days after he walked. The feds also want to talk to him, and they’re not saying why. He’s not officially wanted, mind you. They just want to ask him a few questions.’
Gordo dropped the paper he was holding into his lap.
‘All that said, who are you to him?’
Jonah gestured at the jumpsuit he wore. The name Jake was stenciled in white across his right breast. The jumper felt too small for his chest and round shoulders, and wearing it made him feel silly. He was too pretty to pass as an exterminator.
‘I’m the guy who’s here to kill his roaches,’ he said.
They went through the drill every time. The skip’s name, his description, the layout of the place, how they were going to nail him. They had gone over it the night before on the phone, but one more time never hurt. Gordo liked to be thorough, and if it meant they made the collar, then Jonah didn’t mind.
Gordo moved two photocopied maps to the top of the heap. One was a building floor plan, the other a zoning map of the neighborhood. Jonah leaned over to get a better look.
‘Okay,’ Gordo said. ‘This is the apartment, 5C, rented by the so-called Mark Foster. It’s a studio, right? And you can see the fire escape is outside this window, which is in the kitchen and dining room area. If you flush him out that window,’ he switched to the neighborhood map, ‘then you can see over here that he has to come down to this alley.’ He looked up and peered down the street. He pointed to an opening between Foerster’s building and the boarded-up building next door. ‘Which is that alley right there. And that’s where I’ll be standing.’
‘What if he goes to the roof?’ Jonah said.
‘If he goes anywhere other than the alley, you call me on the walkie-talkie,’ Gordo said. ‘But he won’t. His first reaction will be to get down to the alley and disappear. Also, his building is free standing and he probably knows it. It’s gotta be fifteen feet across to the next roof, maybe more. So he’ll figure if he goes to his roof, he’s trapped up there.’
Gordo closed the file and placed it on the back seat.
‘But once he commits to going for the alley, then he’s really screwed.’
‘What if he has a gun?’
Gordo shook his head. ‘Not his M.O. In his entire life, he’s never once been picked up with a gun.’
‘Easy pickin’s, then,’ Jonah said.
‘Cake,’ Gordo said. ‘Twenty five thousand dollars each for a ten-minute gig.’
Inside his apartment, Davis Foerster slumped and smoked a Camel while he pulled the stuffing out of a gash in the upholstery of his easy chair. A bottle of beer was propped against his crotch. His feet rested on the worn parquet floor. The walls around him were bare except near the light switch, where years of hands had smudged the area almost black.
The bruises around Foerster’s eyes had faded. His hair was growing back over the scar that had run across his scalp like a railroad. The middle and ring fingers of his left hand were still wrapped in a dirty plaster cast that extended down to his wrist. Only his thumb, pointer and pinky were free.
He blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling and stared at the thirteen-inch color TV on the stand in front of him.
No cable, and the reception in this building was so bad, he only got one channel clearly. There’d been rolling brownouts all day, and when the power finally came back on, he was treated to the spectacle of an afternoon talk show with a bunch of fatties lined up on stage, all of them sitting and blathering about how it felt to lose a hundred pounds and change their lives. The host was a cheerful woman who America had watched rollercoaster from fat to skinny to fat and then skinny again. She’d tried all the fad diets, and had worked out with all the trendiest workout gurus. So this weight thing was a topic close to her heart.
The camera panned the studio audience. Housewives with tears in their eyes. A couple of the saps even had handkerchiefs out. A person weighs five hundred pounds, Foerster thought, loses a hundred, and still weighs four hundred. How does that change their life?
‘That really touches me,’ the host said to one of the porkers.
‘Fuck you,’ Foerster said.
Foerster didn’t need to lose weight. If anything, he needed to gain some. Get some size to him for the next time he got in a tangle. With a little more size, he maybe wouldn’t have ended up in the joint again.
Another smoke ring, a little one chasing through a big one.
His mind wandered, back to the most recent fall he’d taken. He had climbed through a window this time. Windows were the easiest, especially a couple of floors up. On hot nights, people left them open. All the way, a crack, it didn’t matter. He just picked an open one along a fire escape and climbed up there. He slipped inside and stood in the living room.
Pretty nice furniture in there. Somebody in the place was still working. He remembered hearing a car go by outside – cop car? No other sounds. The good stuff was usually in the bedroom, top dresser drawer in most places. Cash, maybe some gold. The place had wall to wall carpet, which was good – his feet would make no sound. He followed a short hallway. He passed a narrow door. It looked like a closet. Another closed door, maybe the bathroom. A sharp left turn and here was the bedroom. There was a sleeping form alone on the double bed. Foerster allowed himself another silent inhale and exhale, watching and listening. He could tell by the size and shape of the body, and by the hair sticking up from under the blanket. It was a woman.
That was better than money.
He went for her, of course. It was a stupid play and he knew it as he stood over her. But she aroused him and it clouded his thinking. Women didn’t always arouse him, and he had to take the opportunities when they presented themselves. He slid into bed with her, working on his zipper. She made a sort of welcoming sound, like a sigh. It should have tipped him off. In her sleep, she thought he was somebody else, somebody who was supposed to be there.
It didn’t tip him off, though. It got him excited instead.
Later, the cops were happy to fill in the gaps in his knowledge. The husband got up in the middle of the night, went in the bathroom and fell asleep on the can with the door shut. When Foerster grabbed the wife, she gasped, then screamed, and hubby woke up. The big boy came storming in and found Foerster on top of his lady. The next thing Foerster knew, the storm broke loose. Hubby let Foerster have it with a wind-up clock, a lamp, a glass candle holder, a metal magazine rack. They went around and around the room, the wife still screaming, the whole building waking up, Foerster trying to escape, trying to get his zipper closed while the husband clubbed him with everything in reach.
He made it back out the window, bleeding a river down his face. He didn’t get far. Two pigs in a patrol car picked him up a block away. He banged into parking meters and shit as he ran, half blind from all the blood in his eyes, half-mad from the pain, his zipper still stuck half way down.
A funny scene, even Foerster could see the humor in it. But it turned ugly once he got back to the joint. He spent a night in the precinct house, took a trip to the doctor, then did three nights on Riker’s.
The wounds he got in jail were worse than the beating from hubby. The black guys in jail didn’t need to beat him up. They just got him three or four at a time, stuffed a sweaty doo-rag in his mouth, held him face down and did it to him. Jesus. And the fucking c.o.’s didn’t give a shit. It was all in fun, right? A guard even told him he should act like a man, stick up for himself more. The piece of shit said it while standing at the cell door, looking down at Foerster spread-eagled on the floor, cons sitting on each arm, a big two-hundred pound shrieking porch monkey grinding away on top of him.
Foerster didn’t give it easy, though. They did him, but he fought them first, and he got his shots in. He could say that much for himself. No matter what happened, they hadn’t broken his spirit. But he couldn’t imagine what serious time would be like and for a second it had looked as if serious time was in his cards.
As it turned out, the cops knew about the old woman. Maybe they didn’t know for sure, but they suspected. He thought about the woman for just a second, got an image of her. A white-haired biddy, with a clean honest face. The skin around her throat sagged and creased like an elephant’s knees. He had seen her on the street a couple times. She plucked something in him, like a finger twanging a guitar string. So he had taken her. He hadn’t planned it that way, but Foerster hardly ever planned these things. His desires came to him from some other place – he could go for weeks at a time without feeling anything. But when the thing started flowing, he always flowed with it. It felt natural. It felt right.
His mistake had been to let the old woman live. He had seen something in her eyes that night. They’d remained wide open and staring the whole time. She looked so gentle, like a doe paralyzed by the headlights of an onrushing truck. He couldn’t finish her. Not with those big eyes looking right at him.
He wondered: How long could she put him away? Ten years? Twenty years?
Life?
Foerster shook his head. No way. He was never going back to jail.
He stood up and got another half-cold beer out of the box. He tapped the empty on the edge of the sink until it cracked, then he placed it on a rickety white table piled high with similar empties. He once hit a guy in a bar three times with a beer bottle and it didn’t break. Then he learned. Crack ‘em just a little and they break on the first shot. Nobody likes to get a head full of glass.
He stood in the kitchen with his next beer and looked around. Shabby ass apartment. Roaches in the cabinets. He didn’t even have sheets on the bed, just an old mildewed mattress and a quilt. He needed to start treating himself better. First and foremost, he needed to stay out of the joint.
On that end, he was in good shape. He had stopped showering in case the cops came while he was naked with the water running. Instead, he was dressed and ready to go at all times. Every dollar he had was in his pocket. He had his bottles, and leaning in the corner he had his table leg. If all else failed, he had practiced his escape route until it didn’t even scare him anymore. There was a trick to it, one so dangerous no coffee and donut cop would ever attempt it – why get killed over nothing?
Foerster glanced at the kitchen window, where a threadbare curtain billowed in the breeze. He was waiting here, and he didn’t like it. He wanted to get moving. Tyler Gant – his man down south – needed him for another science project. It was easy work, the kind of thing a smart tenth-grader could probably pull off, but Gant didn’t seem to realize that. Pretty soon, one of Gant’s goons was supposed to come to Foerster’s door with an envelope. When Foerster opened that envelope, he was supposed to find $5,000 in cash. Then he was supposed to get in a car with the goon and drive down to Dixie.
Shit. Five grand in cash, and Foerster hadn’t even done anything yet? This job must be something pretty big. Wouldn’t it be nice if the goon showed up here today?
Just then, the doorbell rang.
Jonah stood in the bleak hallway and faced the solid green door to apartment 5C.
Weak light filtered through a translucent window at the other end of the hall. Solid glass bricks half a foot thick. Some kid had probably gone out the original window by accident, ended up with a broken neck in the street. Those glass bricks gave the only light – the overheads were all out. At night, this would be one dark hallway. On the wall, some new Picasso had drawn a mural in black magic marker, a big penis rubbing between a pair of breasts.
‘Every nigga has 2 scheme 4 da creme,’ read the caption underneath.
Nice building.
Sounds echoed through the halls. Laughter. Somebody shouting. Running feet. TV sets – the power was on. Water dripped somewhere. Plunk, plunk, plunk.
Jonah’s body shook, a little nothing tremor maybe nobody could see but him. He always got nervous before one of these gigs. It wouldn’t have taken much to throw up – if he thought too hard about his finger approaching the back of his throat, that might do it. Taking a shit would have been even easier. All he had to do was sit down.
In one hand, he held a clipboard with some bogus papers attached. In the other, he held a small black canister of pepper spray. It contained five bursts that could travel up to ten feet. The blasts would last one second each, fifteen percent OC every time. OC stood for Oleoresin Capsicum, fifty dollar words, but Jonah knew what they meant in plain English: STRONG SHIT. If he sprayed that stuff in Foerster’s face, the blood vessels in the man’s eyes would swell up, forcing them shut. His face would burn and the pepper would get down into his throat and lungs. He would start coughing up his insides. He would be under Jonah’s complete control.
Jonah slid the canister into his right back pocket.
The left back pocket was where he kept the handcuffs. They were chainlinks, nickel-plated all steel construction, and rated for police work. Gordo had scammed them from somewhere.
Jonah reached up to ring the bell one more time. Someone shuffled on the other side of the door. Jonah took a half-step backward.
‘Who is it?’ said a scratchy voice.
‘Mr. Foster?’ Jonah said. ‘Mr. Mark Foster?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Exterminator.’
‘What?’
‘Exterminator. I’m here to spray your apartment, sir.’
The peephole in the center of the door slid open. Jonah stepped in front so Foerster could get a good long look.
‘What’s your name there,’ the voice said, ‘Jake?’
‘Jake, that’s right.’
‘Who do you work for, Jake?’
‘The landlord sent me. Manor Property Management. I’m checking through all these apartments because of a roach infestation. Do you have any roaches in there, Mr. Foster?’
‘How do you know my name?’
‘Your landlord gave me all the names.’
‘My landlord can fuck off.’
Jonah sighed, just a working man getting nowhere with a customer. ‘Sir, I’m going to have to come in there sooner or later. There’s a roach problem in this building. If I have to call the office, they’ll just get the maintenance guy to let me in.’
He waved the clipboard as if that would tell the story.
The door opened a crack. Foerster kept the security chain on. An eyeball peered out at Jonah. ‘They have to give me twenty-four hours notice. You know that, right? You can’t just walk in here without notice.’
Jonah slid his right foot into the crack. Foerster tried to slam it shut but the foot was already there. Jonah shouldered the door hard. Once. Twice. Three times and he could feel the chain going. Four times and it was loose. Five and he blasted the chain housing out of the wall. Then he was off balance and inside the apartment.
They faced each other in a kind of stand off, Jonah startled by the looks of the man. Unshaven, Foerster held an empty beer bottle in one hand – the hand with two fingers wrapped together in a cast. He was pale, almost a shade of yellow, as if light was bad for him. His skin hung on bone, like a vampire’s would.
‘Davis Foerster. I’d like you to come with me, sir.’
Foerster smiled, a wan and sickly sight.
‘You a cop?’
‘No, I’m not. I work for the courts. Why don’t you come along peacefully? That way nobody gets hurt.’ Jonah started to reach back to take the cuffs out.
‘Sure,’ Foerster said. He smiled that terrible smile again. He seemed relaxed, relieved even. ‘I'll be right with you. Just hold this for me, will you?’
He threw the beer bottle. They stood five feet apart, maybe less. Jonah ducked too late. The bottle bonked his head and shattered, spraying glass and beer all over him.
He backed away into the hall again, but things went funny. The hallway was black, and bright white spots – call them stars – shot across the dark field of his vision. They sparkled and left trails of glowing dust in their wakes. They looped and spiraled. Spiders spun cobwebs in the corners.
Then his vision came rushing back, brushing away the darkness. He was down on one knee like a man proposing marriage. Things had gone wrong right from the start. He fumbled the walkie-talkie out of his jumper. He’d better call Gordo quick.
He looked up and it all moved in long slooow mo. Foerster came out of the apartment. Now he had a thick wooden table leg. He carried it like a slugger in the on-deck circle. A long screw stuck out from the business end. The screw would attach the leg to a table. It looked nasty, like it could poke a nice hole through somebody.
‘C’mere,’ he said. ‘You wanna fuck with me, right?’
He swung the table leg full bore. Jonah jerked away, but the swing connected with his hand and knocked the walkie-talkie flying. The handset bounced off the wall, then hit the floor and broke into pieces. Jonah crawled backwards, pulling out his pepper spray. Foerster kept coming. Jonah shoulder-rolled and came up firing like a shortstop. He pressed the button on the top of the canister, but he aimed too low. The spray hit Foerster in the shirt.
Foerster gaped down at the wet stain and Jonah charged.
He hit Foerster hard and it was like tackling a scarecrow – there was no real substance to the man. He bulled him back into the apartment. They flew through the doorway and crashed to the floor. Jonah lost the pepper spray. Foerster lost the club.
Jonah landed on top. They wrestled. This close, Foerster smelled like cigarettes and body odor. Jonah was bigger and stronger, but Foerster raged with desperation. He screamed in Jonah’s ear, and squirmed away like an eel. Jonah reached for Foerster’s waistband, snagged it with his finger, lost it.
‘Shit!’
Jonah rose to his feet and picked up Foerster’s club himself. He adjusted his grip on it. The weight felt good. That screw stuck out thick and mean.
A glass bottle shattered near his head. He looked up. Foerster stood behind a paint-peeling white table. It was piled up with empty bottles – beer bottles, wine bottles, hard stuff. Foerster grabbed another bottle and threw it. Jonah ducked and it smashed against the wall. He felt the wet tingle of the glass.
‘Get the fuck out of my house,’ Foerster said.
Jonah ran down his options. He thought fast. The club might break this guy in half. Look for the pepper spray instead? That meant turning his back. Lost seconds. Time for Foerster to move. Fuck his M.O. – did he have a gun in the fridge? Maybe. Under the pillows? Jonah didn’t want to find out.
Let him have it with the club? Of course.
He moved in.
Foerster threw another bottle.
Jonah swung.
He connected, spraying beer and shards of glass all over himself. He took another step forward.
‘This is a citizen’s arrest,’ he said.
Foerster threw again. He threw to the right and high. The bottle smashed harmlessly. He picked up two more, one with each hand, and let fly. His aim was gone. Beginner’s luck that first time. Jonah charged him, the club raised high. He brought it down like a woodsman splitting logs – knees bent, legs planted, his thighs and back doing the work, the force of it like electricity through his body, grip so firm his knuckles stood out in white.
The club smashed the empty bottles, then sliced through the table. The table broke in half, then separated and fell in. Glass went flying, a fountain of glass. The sound was like a car crash. Foerster dropped way back, then dove out the window.
‘He’s coming out! He’s coming out!’
Jonah went to the window and stuck his head through it. Foerster aimed a kick. His foot whistled just past the edge of Jonah’s nose. Jonah ducked back.
He counted to three then poked his head out again.
He caught a glimpse of Foerster’s head going down the stairs. Jonah dropped the bat and clambered out onto the ironwork. It had been white once but now was flaking with rust. Across the alley was the old fire escape to the abandoned building next door. He went to the railing and glanced around five stories below. Gordo’s round moon face stared up at him.
‘He’s coming down!’
Gordo raised his arms upward like he was praising his maker. ‘Bring him to me.’ His voice echoed off the brick walls.
Jonah hit the stairs, taking them two at a time. He reached the first landing, turned the corner and two seconds later stood at the top of the next flight. One floor down, Foerster was perched up on the handrail like a bird on a telephone wire, grasping the stairs behind him with one hand.
It was three stories to the street and Jonah thought he had a jumper.
‘Foerster! Don’t do that!’
Foerster didn’t even give him a glance. He let go of the stairs, bent deep at the knees and launched himself out into nothing like a squirrel from a tree.
Jonah’s stomach lurched.
Foerster flew across the alley and crashed into the neighboring fire escape half a floor below. He hit it railing high, catching the railing in his stomach. The whole fire escape shook with the impact. Foerster hung on, legs dangling, and yanked himself up and over the railing. He fell onto the landing and rolled over, holding his gut. Then he began crawling up the stairs.
Jonah watched as Foerster, gaining his feet now, reached the landing across from and a little above his own. Foerster stopped and leaned on the railing, breathing hard. Right there, but just out of reach. He looked over at Jonah and flashed his nasty smile.
‘Nothing to it if you have the balls,’ he gasped. Then he continued on his way.
Jonah leaned over the side again. Gordo’s big face still loomed there. It hadn’t seemed like such a terribly long way down just a minute ago. Now it looked like the Grand Canyon.
‘I can’t reach the ladder on that side,’ Gordo called. ‘It’s folded all the way up.’
Of course. Foerster planned it that way.
Jonah surveyed the situation. Crunch time had come. Lose the skip and you might never see him again. It was one of the first rules Gordo taught him. The skip makes you and gets away, tomorrow he’s gone. Wherever he can get to. It could be New Jersey, but it might as well be Bangkok, as far as you’re concerned.
Well, if a skinny bastard like Foerster could do it…
That decided him. A moment later, Jonah was up on the railing. Precious seconds ticked by. Between his shoes he saw all that open space. Gordo’s face watched from the bottom of a deep well. Ten miles across the alley, and a little bit below, the landing of the opposite fire escape beckoned. Everything seemed to swim and spin.
Now or never, said the demon.
Climb down and forget the whole thing, said the angel.
He bent like he had seen Foerster bend, a full squat. He imagined himself leaping and landing on the other side. Like shooting a free throw, that’s all. See it happen and then do it. In his mind, he saw it happen. To his fevered imagination, it looked like an elf dancing from mountaintop to mountaintop.
See it happen. See it happen.
Do it.
He launched, everything in his legs.
The ground rushed up. The fire escape came at him on an angle. He fell too long and he was sure he had missed it. Then he hit like a meteor. The railing caught him in the stomach and his air whooshed out. He slid, grabbing madly for anything. The rail jammed into his armpits, his hands found grips, and he held on for dear life. The iron shook all the way up, and for a second he thought his extra weight would bring the whole thing down. It didn’t. They made those things to last.
Far away, he heard a long whoop that told him Gordo was cheering.
Jonah pulled himself over the railing and collapsed to the deck. He gave himself a moment to let his wind come back. The cool metal slats pressed against his face. He was shaking a little, but not bad. He was alive and the chase was still on.
He groped his way to his feet. Foerster must have felt him land. Jonah needed to move fast. He climbed, dragging up the stairs at first, then catching a rhythm and starting to hit it. One landing, around the corner and more stairs. Another landing, no idea where Foerster was now. Did he go in a window?
Jonah kept pushing, guessing the roof. He passed another landing, then another. Did he hear breathing above him? He kicked the engine into another gear. He reached the top landing, eight floors he thought, he wasn’t sure. Some view up there. The city, impossibly vast, stretched away in every direction. Near the horizon, something big was on fire, belching thick, dark smoke. He didn’t have time to dig it because there went Foerster, twenty yards ahead, tearing ass across the black tar.
Jonah had sprinted in high school. He had big legs. He took off and for an instant he remembered those days. He could almost see the crowd up in the dim rafters surrounding the old armory track. Back when Jonah ran, they used to pile up metal cots in the infield for the hundreds of homeless men who came there at night to sleep. Back then, the track was still made of wood, and any kid who fell down while jockeying during a race was guaranteed to get ripped up by splinters. Jonah never fell, though. He was too much of a beast. He thought back to the thundering hoof beats as the ancient track shook under his powerful foot strikes.
Foerster didn’t have a chance.
Jonah closed the gap by half before Foerster reached the building’s edge. A low brick wall marked the end. Foerster never slowed. He hopped onto the wall, launched and disappeared. Jonah was uncertain. He slowed, then came to the wall and stopped. The next building was lower and five feet across an air passage. Foerster was over there, still moving.
Jonah leaped up onto the wall, hesitated for a second, then took the gap easily. He touched down on a gravel roof.
They were on a row of packed-together narrow buildings.
Foerster reached the next gap and vaulted over it. Jonah gave chase, gaining again. He felt, rather than saw, the chasm open and close below him. His eyes were on Foerster’s back. They jumped from roof to roof, dodging antennas, Jonah growing closer all the time. They reached the end of the block and Foerster turned right. He crossed to a long and wide gravel roof that was lower still. It was a pretty good jump but Foerster did it no problem and Jonah was too turned on to stop now.
He landed in a starter’s crouch, Foerster just ahead of him, and this roof opened up like a football field. Here his legs would do their damage. He sprinted, and became aware of the handcuffs pressed hard to his ass in the back pocket of his jumpsuit. He would need them in a minute.
Closer. Foerster two steps ahead.
Their long shadows mingled on the gravel below them. Legs and arms pumping. Closer still. Be patient, Jonah told himself. Time it right.
Foerster made a sound, more like a caveman grunt than a scream.
Jonah dove and hit him waist high. He wrapped Foerster’s legs and they slid together across the roof, the tiny stones tearing the blue jumper, digging into Jonah’s flesh. Foerster scrabbled like a crab. He kicked, he scratched. Jonah looked for hand holds, but found none. Foerster slipped away.
Again.
Jonah nearly laughed. This fucking guy, was he worth all this?
The answer: Oh, yeah. Jonah needed the money.
He jumped up and continued the game. Foerster was running for the next low wall, bent over and limping now like a monkey. That tackle had hurt him – his small body took the brunt of it. Jonah pursued. Foerster reached the wall, jumped up, and then stuck his arms out like a tightrope walker crossing the gorge. Sure enough, the next roof was a big jump, fifteen feet, and Foerster walked the length of a piece of thick flat lumber about two feet wide. He reached the other side and leaped down. Jonah stopped. There was more lumber piled here, three or four big pieces.
Another gap. Another long fall.
Across the way, Foerster grabbed the beam and yanked it out from Jonah’s wall. He let it fall into the abyss, and it clanked and clattered all the way down to the alley below.
‘Heads up!’ Jonah shouted. He leaned over and watched it go, but there was nobody down there. At the bottom, in the alley, all manner of garbage was piled high. He gazed across the abyss. Foerster was there, just beyond Jonah’s reach. Maybe Foerster had known nobody was in the alley, maybe he hadn’t. What if people had been picking through there today? Foerster could have killed somebody.
‘Let me guess,’ Jonah said. ‘You don’t like jail too much, am I right?’
Foerster leaned on the opposite wall, catching his breath. ‘Ever been?’
‘Can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure.’
‘Never been, but you put people in for money,’ Foerster said. ‘That makes as much sense as anything.’ He turned his back and began to walk away. Then he stopped. ‘You’re a fucking hypocrite, you know that? You and everybody like you.’
He kept walking.
It wasn’t over, though. Not like that.
Jonah picked up the longest piece of lumber in the pile. The damn thing was heavy. He pictured ninety-pound Foerster here days before, muscling one of these things around to build that bridge, then coming back every couple of days to make sure it was still there. Jesus. The motherfucker was a boy scout. Jonah slid the lumber out over the alley, pushing down hard on his side to keep the other end up. He slid it. He slid it some more. It was too short. It fell away, banging and crashing on its trip down.
‘Fuck!’
He heard laughter. He looked up and there was Foerster, leaning against the elevator shaft and smiling at him.
Foerster pantomimed a guy checking the time. ‘I could watch this all day,’ he said. ‘But I got places to be, all right?’