Slaughter - Lutz John - Страница 31

The little guy looked up at him, smiling. “I already talked with him. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get outta your hair.”

“Okay.” Louie gave a little wave and started back to where he’d left the jackhammer, along with half a sandwich from his lunch bag. Pastrami and mustard, with just the right amount of horseradish. He wondered, could any of those Broadway babes with the boobs and swinging behinds put together a pastrami sandwich like his wife Madge could?

He doubted it.

As he picked his way toward where he’d broken off work, he noticed the guy with the hard hat and clipboard over where the street had been torn up. He was making his way through piles of debris, stepping carefully, still making notations on his clipboard.

Louie heard his name called.

He looked over and saw Feldman, his boss, standing across the intersection, near the Liner Diner.

Feldman saw that he had Louie’s attention and waved him over.

Jack Feldman was a reasonable guy, but when he was mad he was a son of a bitch. Mistakes couldn’t be made here. There were few second chances, and no third. Louie had no idea what Feldman wanted. He started walking toward Feldman. There was a large lump in Louie’s throat, but he couldn’t figure out if he’d screwed up, or if Feldman was simply going to ask for a progress report on the removal of the portico concrete. Louie couldn’t think of any reason why he should endure an ass-chewing. He told himself that maybe he was going to get a promotion, and smiled at that one.

The sun had moved enough so that there was a stark shadow lying across the intersection where the Liner Diner was located. Louie realized the shadow was from the crane.

Feldman was standing in the shadow, which extended from the diner to beyond Louie.

Louie found it a few degrees cooler in the shadow of the crane, and walked toward Feldman, who stood with his fists on his hips, watching Louie.

There was a sharp, cracking sound from overhead.

Lightning strike was Louie’s first, alarmed thought. But the sky was a cloudless blue.

When Louie lowered his vision he saw that Jack Feldman was for some reason sitting on the pavement, as if he’d fallen. He was waving and pointing at the sky. Maybe he had been struck by lightning. Louie could feel his own hair standing on end.

Then he noticed there was something different about the deeply shadowed path on which he stood, leading toward Feldman and beyond. The shadow of the crane.

It was moving.

Feldman was struggling to get to his feet, where he had instinctively dived to the ground at the loud noise. Disoriented, he ran to his right, then back left, toward the crane’s looming shadow. The long shadow was moving in a greater arc now, back and forth, like a gigantic scythe trying to break free from whatever held it high.

Feldman waved his arms at Louie. He was shouting something Louie couldn’t understand.

Louie didn’t stop, didn’t think, running toward Feldman.

There was another loud crack! from above as the huge crane pulled away from its moorings. Somewhere a woman was screaming.

Louie put his head down and ran harder.

33

Betty and Macy had left the diner and were about to cross the street to walk beneath the scaffolding where the Taggart Building was being transformed to its larger, more useful self. In the bright sunlight outside the diner, they absently paused to do some stretching and bending after sitting so long. They, like the other dancers, were well aware of the staring eyes of the hard hats across the street. They were prepared for the shouts, whistles, and occasional lewd suggestions. Sometimes smiles were exchanged across the street, but for the most part the construction workers were ignored. They might as well have been calling to the dancers from another dimension.

“If those guys would ever learn their manners—” Betty, who had just been referred to as “the bouncy blond beauty,” began. That was when what sounded like a lightning strike came from above. The shouting from across the street stopped, then became louder. Desperate.

Betty heard a woman scream nearby. There was a subtle change in light and shadow, in the movement of air. She felt Macy grip her shoulder and squeeze it hard enough to hurt.

As he ran toward Feldman, some part of Louie’s mind grasped what was happening around them. It wouldn’t be the first time a construction crane had fallen in Manhattan, but it might be the worst.

He was closing on Feldman when something like the dark shadow of a raven’s wing crossed the ground around them. Louie lowered his head and hunkered down as he ran, prepared to hit Feldman hard enough to carry them both out of harm’s way. Feldman was like a football player who’d forgotten to signal for a fair catch and was about to pay for it.

He turned away just before contact, and 260 pounds of Louie slammed into Feldman’s hip. Louie heard the deafening crash of the crane, felt the ground tilt beneath him so that for a few seconds he and Feldman were airborne.

Before he hit the ground again, Louie was sure his collarbone was broken from hitting Feldman. He knew, too, all in a split second, that he had more injury coming when the two of them landed and slid, with Feldman on top.

Louie thought they might both live, though, as long as more falling debris didn’t hit them.

He was thinking of Madge as consciousness left him.

Quinn said, “What the hell was that?”

Fedderman raised his eyebrows. “Earthquake?”

They were at Q&A, Quinn at his desk, waiting for Pearl to call and say where she wanted to meet for lunch, Fedderman in a chair over by the coffee brewer, going over case notes.

Quinn walked over and looked out a window at West 79th Street. He could hear sirens now, but they were from the south, and not close.

He went outside and stood on the concrete stoop, looking around. No sign of smoke. The sirens were slightly louder, and there were more of them.

Quinn went back inside and called Renz at One Police Plaza, and was told that Renz couldn’t be reached right now.

“Is he dead?” Quinn asked the duty sergeant.

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Then he can be reached. Is this Sergeant Ed Rutler?”

“It is. And who might I be talking to?”

“Captain Frank Quinn. How are you, Ed?”

“Still locomoting, Cap’n. Sorry I didn’t recognize your voice.”

“I’m smoking fewer cigars, Ed. I felt and heard a big boom, and now I hear sirens. What’s going on?”

“We’re still trying to figure it out. Could be a building collapse. The Taggart Building, that they been screwing around with for months. But it’s too early in the game to know.”

“Any dead or injured?”

“Not as many as you’d think, is what I hear. They’re saying one of those big construction cranes let go and fell about twenty floors, but it’s too early to confirm. I hope that’s what happened. Fewer killed and injured than there’d be in a building collapse.”

“Probably, Ed.” Then, “I got confirmation now in a TV news crawl. It’s the Taggart Building, all right. A big crane fell. It did bring down some of the building with it.”

“Jeez! Casualties?”

“Still counting, Ed. The building was unoccupied at the time, but there were some people killed or injured by the crane itself. And there were people in the vicinity of the building that were too close and got hit by falling debris. I’ve deduced a lot of that from early reports and what I could see on television They’re still fitting it all together. You know how it goes.”

Ed did.

Harley Renz called then and got patched through. Sergeant Rutler knew it wasn’t going to become a conference call and said his good-byes.