Alongside Night(13)

There had to be another option. There had to be. Elliot belly-crawled across the terrace until he was in front of the door and could see into the living room from under the lowered Venetian blind. This gave him a first sighting on his adversaries. There were only two. Both men were plain-50

Alongside Night

clothed. One looked in his thirties, the other was middle-aged. The older man had his jacket off, revealing a shoulder holster and pistol …and this man was muscular enough that Elliot had no desire to tangle with him. In any case, both were still in the living room, which is what he had crawled over to confirm. Sliding back to concealment, Elliot hooked the rope over the top of the railing, letting the ends hang directly down to the terrace below. He then reopened the window, climbing back in, but this time he left the window open. By no means was he certain his brainstorm would work. But it felt a good deal less uneasy than the alternatives.

Drawing his revolver, Elliot aimed out the window toward the empty sky and fired. Though expected, the reverberating explosion startled him. Elliot made a dash for the bedroom door, went through, then closed it from the other side, now pressed against the wall that cornered the living room. Had they fallen for it? Elliot risked a look around the corner. Yes! Both men had rushed out to the terrace to learn what the explosion had been; the older man was just dashing onto the terrace when Elliot checked.

Waiting a split second more, Elliot darted through the living room and escaped to the hall. It would be only a few seconds before they concluded that someone had just climbed the rope, rushing out to search the apartment below. Thinking quickly, Elliot ran into the laundry room, shutting the door. A few seconds later he heard running in the hallway. The two voices seemed to pause just outside the laundry room.

“He’s armed,” the older voice said. “Probably went off accidentally while he climbed down.”

“Think he knows we have his family?”

Elliot was too stunned to notice whether there had been any response; perhaps the older man had shrugged or shaken Alongside Night

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his head. “But he knows we want him. I’ll take the lower apartment. You phone the chief. Now move.”

Elliot heard the fire door open and slam, then a softer slam seconds later as his apartment door was used again. His ears were ringing as he tried to regain his composure. He had escaped with the intention of rendezvous with his family. They would not be there.

He knew who the earlier visitors had been.

He knew why there had been no note—why the flight reservation had been undisturbed. His father’s plan had been brilliant. What could have gone wrong? Dr. Vreeland’s words echoed back at him. “One slip—

even one you might think insignificant—may prove our down- fall.”

Was it his fault? Had he caused his family’s arrest by failing to secure a proper countersign from Al?

Elliot found himself shaking and got angry with himself. This was no time to lose control. He had to get out fast. The stairs? No, the older man would be down there. He stuck his head out into the hall, followed it, then pressed for the elevator, withdrawing into the laundry room until it arrived. An endless minute later it showed up. Empty. Elliot got on—riding it straight down—ran out through the Seventy-forth Street fire exit, and from there to the dead chill of the city.

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Alongside Night

Alongside Night

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Chapter 6


Elliot had not run more than a few blocks before shortness of breath forced him into an alleyway. There he just leaned against a concrete wall, allowing the day’s events to bear down upon him. After a few minutes, though, when the shakes had stopped, when his fears for his family had tripped out from overload, when he realized how cold it was, the improbabilities of his situation began to take on melodramatic—even comic—overtones. Echoing the punch line of a classic television sitcom he had seen on videodisc, he silently exclaimed, What a revoltin’ development this is!

He faced several problems, each of which seemed insurmountable. First, to survive. Second, to escape the combined forces of city, state, and federal government. Third, to devise some plan to rescue his family. Until today, his most pressing problem had been how to get a passing grade from a stupidly dogmatic teacher.

Elliot still had no idea what the authorities intended for his family or why they now wanted him. He considered that they might have known, when they first came to the apartment, that his father was still alive. Or that they had come on a totally unrelated mission and upon finding his father alive were now holding his family for conspiracy to evade arrest. He wondered if his father’s FBI informant had been mistaken or treacherous, and the Bureau wanted them for a totally different—perhaps harmless—reason. Maybe they simply wanted to place them in some kind of protective custody. Perhaps he was taking all this in entirely the wrong way. Maybe the best thing he could do would be to retain a lawyer to find out what was going on. Conceivably—