Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [142]
“You weren’t listening to the mathematics,” Radford said. “We’re not going to make it.”
“If you’re not, I’m not, because I’m not leaving until everyone’s down.”
“But you people have those oxygen tanks.”
“Compressed air. And they’re almost empty. If the rest of these people are willing to go with their numbers, you should be, too.”
“They don’t have a choice. We do.”
“Oh?”
Radford looked at his boss, who, until now, had been letting Radford do all the talking. Cole took a deep breath, scratched an ear with an arthritic finger, and said, “You take us down on the elevator. You’ll have to keep it on the QT. Otherwise we could cause a stampede.”
“Even if we could call a car to this floor, I wouldn’t get in an elevator under these conditions.”
“Why? It’s dangerous? What’s more dangerous than burning to death?”
“Mr. Cole, I think you started this fire. Or had it started.” He turned to Radford. “And you were at Bowman Pork. You’re the one who set us up. They gave you numbers? Keep the numbers. If it was up to me, I’d throw you both out the window.”
When Finney began to walk away, Radford tried to grip Finney’s bare shoulder, still slick with perspiration. Then he stepped ahead of Finney and danced backward, carefully wiping Finney’s sweat off his hand with an embroidered handkerchief. Finney had a feeling from his intricate foot movements that he was a fair ballroom dancer.
“Let’s make a trade. I’ll give you information, and you give us lower numbers. My eyes are already bloodshot. Can you see this?” Using his thumb, he pulled on his right eyelid.
Finney addressed his next statement to Patterson Cole, who was following them. “No trades. You killed my partner.”
Cole said, “How do you figure I killed your partner?”
“You had somebody set the fire at Leary Way. Bowman Pork, too.”
“You’ve lost two partners?” the old man asked.
“That’s right. And you’re responsible directly or indirectly for both.”
“I’ll pay them. The family. Whatever you think they need. I’ll write his wife a check right now. Both wives. I’ll write you a check. Thirty thousand each sound okay? No, that’s a little on the cheap side. A hundred? You’re looking at a man who still saves used tin foil in a drawer. Let me think. A widow. Lost her husband. Your friend. A million?”
“The price isn’t for the widow. The price is for your life, isn’t it?” Finney and the old man stared at each other. Finney didn’t think Cole and Radford were going to die up here, but he didn’t mind if they both believed they were. A little bit of hell was just what they needed. “Tell you what,” Finney said. “You go out to the cemetery and you dig up Bill and then you dig up Gary and you breathe life back into them. You do that and I’ll get you out of here before these others. A couple of walking, talking corpses would put you right at the head of the line. You like to play God. Go ahead. Bring ’em back.”
Finney turned and walked away.
70. LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE
Oscar Stillman was upset with G. A.—he’d wasted a lot of time separating his men from the frenzy and getting them down to the meeting room. Supposedly, G. A. was to have distributed the communications equipment, which would have made it a whole lot simpler, but he confessed to Oscar that he hadn’t had time to stop by Kmart, as if this were a grocery item he’d forgotten to bring home for the wife and she could divorce him if she didn’t like it.
Had Oscar been in charge of communications, they would have been purchased out of town a month ago with cash, and long since passed along to the troops.
Now they had only their fire department radios, which they didn’t dare use lest their exchanges were immortalized on the master tape down at the alarm office.
They held their meeting three floors below the command post and directly opposite the entrance to Fourth Avenue in a small back room adjoining a closed taco stand.
Oscar had found Marion