At The Stone
Snipe had good ears. "Ears like a dog," he was fond of telling people . . . and it was almost true. A small accident of biology had blessed him not only with ears that were slightly outsized, but also ear canals and eardrums that were several decibels and several octaves more sensitive than those of most other people.
It was a little past 8:00 P.M., and Snipe was in the middle of giving the nine people he had brought together in The Stone's lobby another pep talk about "staying in line and staying alive." He stopped talking in midsentence and turned his head quickly to the right, his gaze on an open concrete stairway about forty feet away, a stairway which led to the second floor.
He had heard a stomach growl.
One of his "lieutenants" (a designation that, by inference, made Snipe feel very important indeed), a boy nicknamed "Cheese," because he seemed to carry the faint, but unmistakable odor of cheese around with him, said, "D'ja hear something, Snipe?" Snipe did not answer. Cheese elected wisely to stay quiet.
After half a minute, Snipe nodded once toward the stairway. "There!" he commanded. And immediately three of his lieutenants ran to the stairway and started up. They stopped as one when Snipe shouted at them, "Alive! I want that sucker alive!" Again as one they nodded and ran up the stairway.
Georgie MacPhail could taste the blood seeping into his mouth from his lacerated gum. He liked the taste. He remembered something from "The Wild Wild World of Animals" about a tribe in Africa drinking cow's blood regularly and he thought that that was all right. If it tasted anything like people's blood, then it was probably habit-forming.
He was trying very hard not to think about the events of the past few hours. About the poor, dumb kid who'd chased him down the fire escape. About the ugly whump! the kid's body had made after falling three floors to the damned blacktop behind the South Park Apartments. About the lousy, time-wasting tug of war that had gone on in his—Georgie's—mind when he'd seen the kid lying there, moaning and bleeding in his damned jockey shorts. "Goddamn you, kid!" Georgie had whispered at him.
He told himself that it was a matter of priorities. This poor dumb kid's life, or the lives of Georgie's mother, and his little brothers, who depended on him for support. Because if he stayed and helped the kid, then he'd get caught. And if he got caught he'd be out of work for a year, maybe longer. And in that time, anything could happen.
He had come upon the solution quickly, surprising himself: He stooped over, picked up a large piece of chipped blacktop, and heaved it at the nearest window. The chip of blacktop broke apart against the iron grating, but a chunk just large enough got through and the window behind the grating shattered beautifully. A light went on almost immediately. Seconds later, a female head appeared, "What in the fuck . . ."
"Call an ambulance!" Georgie yelled, and pointed frantically at the dumb kid's body at his feet. "Please . . ." The head disappeared, the light went out. Another light, in the apartment just above, went on; a man's head appeared.
"Call an ambulance!" Georgie yelled again.
And then he ran.
He told himself now that the man had called for an ambulance (anonymously, of course—which was the way things like that were done in New York). He told himself that the poor, dumb kid would be all right, that he'd just had the wind knocked out of him.
He didn't believe a word of it. Because anybody who falls three floors like that, head over heels, onto blacktop gets more than just the wind knocked out of him.
And so Georgie ran.
Down 89th Street, to 79th, then to 2nd Avenue, and, finally, a half hour later, to the back of The Stone, where he stopped, breathless.
He had recognized the building, vaguely—the way he might recognize an uncle he hadn't seen in quite a few years. And because he recognized it, because he had a good idea what kind of building it was, it became, instantly, a place for him to hide. For a couple of days, anyway. Just in case the poor, dumb kid lucked out and pulled through and was able to describe him. The cops had his picture on file, after all, and there was no sense taking chances. And maybe he had that look about him—the look that said loudly, "Hey, I just done something wrong!" But he wasn't sure. He didn't think he had that look. He thought he just looked scared, and maybe that was bad enough.
Getting into The Stone had been a piece of cake. Up a badly rusted fire escape, and in through a window. No iron grating. No bars. Just an open window, and a screen behind it, which had pushed open with shameful ease.
And then inside.
In the darkness, he had fallen over Winifred Haritson.
THEORIES NUMEROUS ON CAUSES OF ADIRONDACK DISASTER
(Sept. 19) (UPI): In the wake of the recent unexplained, grisly accident which took fourteen lives at a Holiday Inn parking lot in the Adirondacks, 45 miles northwest of New York City, state and federal investigators are putting forth several theories as to the cause of the tragedy.
A Chief Accident Investigator from the FAA was quoted as saying he has seen similar accidents involving the rotor blades of helicopters—most recently in Manhattan several years ago, when a helicopter tipped over on top of one of the World Trade Center Towers: "The carnage then was incredible, unbelievable, and this accident seems similar in many ways, although we do not yet have any reports of missing helicopters, or rotor blades."
The same investigator explained that certain jet fuels might, under some conditions, have the effect of denuding bodies of flesh, as was seen in the Adirondack tragedy. He goes on to say, however, that the chances of such a spill from a passing aircraft are "extremely, almost impossibly remote," and that, at any rate, it would be difficult to accept in the light of the fact that the parking lot itself was not damaged, nor were several cars in the immediate vicinity—most notably, the car in which the only survivor was found.
An attack by a horde of "army ants" was also offered as a possible cause for the tragedy, and quickly dismissed. Army ants are not native to New York State; they are native to various southern states; and have not been encountered above Maryland. It also seems implausible, experts say, to believe that army ants could be the cause of such incredible destruction . . .