Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [145]
Oscar turned as far as G. A. would allow and saw a look in G. A.’s eyes that told him he wasn’t playing. Hell, he was strangling him. It was his necktie around Oscar’s neck. “I’m okay,” Oscar said. “I don’t—”
The tie was being tightened from behind, tightened and pulled and tightened some more. Had G. A. gone mad? The idea was to go upstairs and get rid of Finney, not each other. Oscar wanted to speak, to reason this out, but his windpipe was closed off, his face squashed against the wall so hard his dental plate was twisting out of place. He tried to reach for the knot at the back of his neck, but G. A. was a large man, surprisingly strong, and he held him like a lion holding a young wildebeest.
He began to see stars, and it was then that he remembered what he’d learned in his emergency medical training. Once the carotid artery was blocked, unconsciousness occurred in as little as fifteen seconds. Sometimes only seven or eight seconds. Sometimes . . . the last thing Oscar heard was a gurgling in the bottom of his own throat.
71. THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON FIRE
Norris was making a second call to his mother when one of the waiters who’d been loitering near the freight elevator burst into the men’s room and whispered loudly to his friends who were passing around a joint. Intrigued by their words, Norris slogged through a haze of marijuana smoke and followed them out of the john.
It seemed a pair of waitresses had noticed that for no particular reason and without any fanfare the freight elevator had returned to seventy-four, empty. So far twelve waiters, one supervisor, eight waitresses, and three chefs knew about it, and word was spreading. Everybody knew the responsible thing would be to alert the firefighters in the other room, but nobody budged. Most had picked high numbers in the lottery.
Since the building alarms had gone off, the staff had been more or less relegated to the back room like servants, and then just before the numbers were drawn, one of the wedding party, an older man with silver sideburns, had suggested the help not be included in the drawing. Although they eventually had been included, it was hard to ignore the underlying group arrogance and assumed superiority that led to his suggestion. Everybody in the back room had taken umbrage.
The freight elevator was behind several tall wheeled carts, in an area that smelled of baked halibut and smoke from the fire that was climbing toward them from below.
While the waitresses and kitchen staff debated whether or not to use it, Norris knew instinctively what needed to be done and, in one of the few truly decisive moments of his life, he returned to the main room and retrieved Patterson Cole and both briefcases. They brushed past the group of debaters to the rear of the car. Norris proceeded to unbuckle his belt and loop it around the waist-level metal bumper in case anybody tried to remove him forcibly. They might get Cole out, but he was strapped in.
The stampede that took place next may have been provoked by the belt business or by the recognition of Patterson Cole. By now everyone on the floor knew Cole owned the building and that he’d been working his way around the room trying to purchase a lower lottery number than the one he’d drawn.
For just a second, the area outside the freight elevator was silent. Then, like an implosion, people filled the car—waiters, chefs, waitresses. Several women shrieked as their feet were stepped on, and one chef began to look faint as his toque was knocked off and he was flattened up against a wall. As the car filled to capacity, the stronger men and some of the women in the forward part of the car began pushing latecomers back out. A shoving match ensued.