19 Purchase Street (60 page)

Leslie was able to squeeze sideways through and in. It was tighter for Gainer, and at once point it seemed the door and its sharp-edged jamb had him unable to move at all. Leslie pulled on him. He gritted and scraped painfully in.

What they'd gotten into, they discovered, was a large old toilet area. Evidently for men. Situated along the length of one wall were ten toilet bowls, and along the wall opposite were as many urinals. The floor where it was still intact was made up of white octagonal ceramic tiles. Years of grime on everything. The ceiling had surrendered long ago, dropped its plaster in uncountable chips and some huge chunks. Almost in the middle of the room stood four displaced sinks, two-legged porcelain sinks meant to have a wall to lean against that now depended haphazardly on one another. Other sinks of the same sort were thrown in a six foot high pile in one of the deepest corners. Directly above them was a leaky ventilating shaft, so those sinks were layered with wet mold, like someone had poured a scummy green topping on them.

An unlikely, and safer, place, they decided. They sat in the corner behind the pile of sinks.

Gainer's watch told him five after five. Another hour and a half or so before sundown and even then there would be leftover light for quite a while. He watched the sweep hand of the watch complete the circle and he drew encouragement from thinking only ninety more of those, which then didn't seem so terribly long. He recalled how Sweet had coveted that watch. An Audemar Piquet from Norma two years ago. Gainer could practically measure his life by the various watches Norma had bought him in Zurich. From the first Phillip Patek to the Baume Mercier that had been his favorite next to this one.

He pictured Sweet rolling him over dead and unbuckling the watch from his wrist. He hated the thought of Sweet telling the times of
his
life from this watch. Sweet would never get it, Gainer vowed. He'd smash it first, would smash it now if he didn't have the need for it.

Ten minutes went by.

Leslie snuggled in the cave of Gainer's right arm. Part of her was remembering little luxuries, giving them their due and including them in things she'd miss. At the same time, most of her was listening. Even the most innocent sounds made her start.

She elbowed Gainer. Walked fingers on her thigh to convey that she thought she heard footsteps.

Gainer couldn't hear them.

And then he did. The pulverizing of chunks of fallen plaster under someone's weight. Not stalking steps, not someone trying to be stealthy, but a regular stride at an easy pace, like that of someone who knew where he was headed.

Closer footsteps, louder.

Bound knowingly for Gainer and Leslie, it seemed. Bringing a certain confrontation.

Gainer drew his ASP.

So did Leslie.

Their view of the entrance of the other end of the room was blocked by a three-quarter partition, making it impossible for them to see who it was that passed by the entrance and continued on.

The footstep sounds receded.

They stopped.

They returned to the toilet area.

The man appeared from behind the partition like a performer making an entrance from the wings. He stood there in the low light facing only as much as he could see, an audience of toilet bowls and urinals. One hand held the automatic rifle by its grip, as though its seven and a half pounds were next to nothing. The rifle seemed undersize compared to him. There were white smudges of plaster dust on his black trousers and jacket. He glanced right at the pile of old sinks in the far corner and then let the muzzle of his rifle relax.

Gainer wanted to shoot him. So did Leslie. However neither had a positively sure heart or head shot. The four sinks that were propped up in the middle of the room were in the way. A miss or mere wound would trigger an answer from that automatic rifle. Better not to risk it.

The sinks would save the man.

He was about to turn and leave when he noticed a door. Only four steps and a reach away.

He opened it.

They were too quick for the rifle to do him any good, although in reaction he did squeeze off one wild burst. He had no chance to run.

They had known he was there, and in their chronically nervous manner had anticipated the intrusion. The single hole in the rear of the large old mop-and-pail closet could not accommodate a swift enough retreat for so many. They had to accept that they were hemmed in, and when the opening came they attacked. Some were old four-year-olds, most were at least full grown. They could leap four feet ahead and two feet straight up.

They were afraid of humans.

They hated humans.

This was human.

They went for his legs, his calves and thighs. Got onto them, clawed in, sunk their teeth as they climbed around and up him. He tried to beat them off with the butt of the rifle, tried to knock them off with his hands. Their bites clamped them to his hands.

When they reached his shoulders he hunched his head to protect his neck, and he did not scream until they got to it. He threw his weight against the wall, hoping to crush them with himself. Some were stunned and fell off him. He scraped his body along the wall. But as many as brushed off, twice as many leaped onto him.

The man knew if he went down they would finish him. He stayed upright, used the walls, reeled from one wall to another. Fell over one of the urinals, managed to regain his feet only to go off balance again against the sinks in the middle of the room. The sinks would not save him. They fell over. The man collapsed awkwardly among them, and was reduced to kicking and flailing.

Gainer stood up. He squeezed off two shots that thudded into the rats. Two more shots caused a squeal rather than a snarl, and as though that was a signal the pack scattered, scurried back into the closet and out the entrance, except a few that slunk along the edge of the room behind the toilet bowls, peering, quivering.

Gainer approached the man.

His clothes were shredded. He was bitten a thousand times. Both his ears had been chewed off. His eyes were open, apparently dead eyes.

Gainer avoided those eyes. He retrieved the automatic rifle and found a spare magazine in the man's jacket pocket. Took the time to put a full clip in the ASP.

Leslie could not get out of there quickly enough.

Gainer glanced back. The rats were already returning, snarling and snapping at the air.

That toilet area, as it turned out, was located off a main passageway, the one with walls of bare brick and storage spaces built parallel. Gainer and Leslie recognized it and were at once reoriented. When they were previously there they hadn't noticed how dim the passageway was, the only light coming from the few doors of the rooms connected to it.

Which way now? In one direction the passageway would take them to the north part of Ellis, where they'd seen those old shoes slung over a high pipe and the dormitory with the graffiti. They could go that way and, later on, work back around to the Riva. But wouldn't it be expected of them, as amateurs, to run as far as possible from where the danger had first shown itself? It would be less predictable for them to remain around here in the thick of it, Gainer decided.

They headed south along the passageway, single file and close to the wall. On the lookout for a good hiding place. They had not gone twenty paces when they heard voices ahead. They stepped into the deeper shadow of one of the storage spaces just in time. Two of their adversaries entered the passageway.

The men's voices were resonant in the tunnellike atmosphere.

“Me, I'd swim for it.”

“You'd wash up tomorrow down around Sandy Hook or someplace. The channel might look easy but it's full of rips.”

“We're going to be here all goddamn night.”

“Could be worth it.”

“Screw the bonus.”

“Okay. Seeing that's how you feel, if you make the kill, say I made it so I can collect. I can use ten large. You think Sweet meant ten for wasting both or ten for each?”

“You're a money hungry bastard.”

“Who isn't?”

“Some shylock must be into you. Either that or you've got yourself a spinner with a tight ass and a cold nose.”

“I need, that's all.”

“Christ, I hate the white powder shit that's all over this place. Probably asbestos. Asbestos will give you cancer, you know. I can already feel it getting to my sinuses.”

“So, don't breathe.”

The man sneezed twice and blessed himself.

By then the two were well down the dark passageway, having passed within a few feet of Gainer and Leslie. It hadn't occurred to them to search the storage spaces along there, apparently presuming someone else already had.

But the next who came along might be more conscientious, Gainer thought. He and Leslie checked both ways before slipping out into the passageway again. They tried to keep their steps light but could not help making crunches and cracklings. Any moment now, Gainer expected one or more of them would jump out and fire from point-blank range. He himself had an automatic rifle now but it was the first time he'd ever even held one and its unfamiliarity made it seem less dependable than his ASP.

Thirty more paces brought them to an opening of double doors, one door being held awry by a single screw of its lower hinge. Inside was a moderate-sized room with ceiling and walls blistered to the third degree by moisture. Gainer and Leslie realized it was a room they hadn't been in. Nor had anyone else for a long while. No human tracks in the plaster dust that lay like flour sifted onto every surface. It was not a possible hiding place, their footprints would give them away.

Across the room on the outer wall were three sash-type windows that presented a view of the New Jersey docks on the other side of the channel. Sumac and locust branches reached in through broken panes. Gainer's mental map of the island told him he was near the southwest corner. An outside hiding place in that general area would be advantageous when the time came for them to try for the Riva.

The lower section of one of the windows was open about ten inches.

They walked quickly back and forth several times from the window to the entrance, so that from their tracks no one would be able to tell whether they'd come or gone. Gainer tried raising the window further. All three windows were metal-covered and rusted stuck. It would be a squeeze. Leslie went head and shoulders first out the window, just did manage to wiggle her way out. She dropped hard to the ground five feet below, landed in a sprawl.

Gainer wanted so much to make it through the opening he believed he could. But this was inches worse than the door he'd scraped through earlier. He got his head out by turning it sideways, but his shoulders and surely his chest would not go.

“
Try
, lover,” Leslie urged. She reached to pull on him.

The last thing Gainer wanted was to get helplessly stuck in a window and be blown away from the rear.

“I'll find another way out,” he told her. He retracted his head and stood upright. Glanced down and out to her and knew from her expression she was feeling what he was—the wrench of this sudden separation. Both realized now how much they had been drawing on one another.

For Gainer, a new urgency was now added to the danger. Perhaps that was why on his way from the room he brushed against the precariously hung door, caused its last holding screw to tear loose.

The door fell flat with a clap as loud as a shot.

That was sure to bring them.

Gainer rushed down the corridor to his right, searching for a way out. He came on several doors and tried them. Some gave to closets, dead ends. They would be literally that for him. Others were either locked or stuck shut. The place was a maze of small windowless rooms and sidehalls. Gainer took so many rapid lefts and rights he worried that he'd turned himself around, might be headed back instead of away. If so, he'd run right into them. That small table crushed almost out of sight behind a disconnected radiator—wasn't that the same he'd passed along the opposite way just moments ago?

Don't panic.

Don't feel cornered.

He continued on and, finally, there was an area he recognized from his explorings with Leslie. The crematorium. Only one room away from the extreme southwest corner now, he realized. Running out of options. He stood stock-still, hoping he wouldn't hear them, hoping they had taken the fall of that door as something accidentally caused by one of their own.

No such luck.

He heard them coming from all directions, even from overhead, converging on this part of Ellis. They weren't at all careful about their noise. It sounded as though some were running full out, rushing to be first to get off the ten-thousand-dollar shot.

Gainer hurried into the next room.

The morgue.

It had a line of windows on its outer wall. They were high up, out of reach by four feet. Metal casement-type windows. A couple were even slightly open. Gainer looked around, but there was nothing for him to stand on. Killed by four fucking feet, he thought.

Should he stand there and let them come to him or charge them like a kamikaze idiot? One thing for sure, he'd take as many as he could with him.

Appropriate place to die, huh Norma?

He didn't want to die for at least a million reasons, all Leslie. He tried to picture her and it was difficult because it seemed all the many lovely parts of her he'd come to know so well wanted to be last remembered. He couldn't even settle on her mouth, although her smile was very persistent and her hands, her hands that had conformed to the various shapes of him so many times.

Not enough.

God no, he hadn't kissed her enough or touched or held or done anything enough with her. And again, as it had been with Norma, he felt the fultility of all the things left unsaid. Fuck the bullets,
this
was the suffering of it. Never again anything Leslie.

He hoped she was safe. He shouldn't have allowed her to get into this mess with him, her and her nicely laid out, long, soft life. She was resourceful, somehow she'd survive, Gainer wanted to believe. And if there was another side, as she claimed, he would perch himself up there on the edge of a cloud or whatever and do nothing but wait.