At sixty stories, you’ve run out of stories. The building drops away, structural steel blackened by welding marks. You’re climbing the crane to the sky. Start counting steps. Ignore your legs Elvis-ing.
One hundred and eighty steps later, you’ve reached the operator’s cab, the white box like the driver’s seat of a semi. But it’ll be locked, so go up twenty more, to the gangway on top of the mast.
Take panting breaths on the ceiling of the city, the sky indigo around you, the world spread out jeweled at your feet.
Now the Challenge, because that was just a warm-up.
Step onto the crane arm. The metal grid is maybe two feet wide, but it feels like a tightrope. Indian-walk one foot in front of the other, keeping low to fight the wind, nothing on either side, just a few inches of steel between you and a five-second trip to State Street. Hit so hard, they’d tell each other, your shins come out your shoulders. Hit so hard nobody can tell your head from your ass. Hit so hard your teeth bounce for blocks.
Step. Breathe. Step.
When you reach the end, take a bow. Then hustle back fast as you dare. If you’re the first to ante up, congratulations. You’re the new Big Dick. Pussy out, you’re the Pisser, a little baby still whines for his mommy and wets the sheets. No hair on his nuts. No nuts at all.
It was vivid to Danny, like he could step back into that Challenge today if he wanted. The way his legs had trembled and burned. The way the air cut as he drew it in, far, far above the city-street smells of exhaust and garbage.
Once he took that first step, the fear would fade. His mind would throw up interference, like radio static, that screened out everything but a calm inner monologue and his body’s response to it. The first step wasn’t the hard part.
No, the hard part came before he stepped into the void. The hard part was the waiting, his brain imagining all the things that could go wrong, all the things he couldn’t control, all the ways that fate loomed beneath him, hungry, eager for him to slip.
The hard part was sitting in the passenger seat of the nice black Saab Evan had stolen – a sedan, probably a five-star safety rating, just the thing to drive your kid to private school – watching Evan light yet another cigarette. Watching the digital clock soundlessly change a four to a five. He caught his hands fiddling with the strap of the duffel bag, and made them stop. “Go around again.”
Evan nodded, his cigarette bobbing up and down, the muscles in his neck rigid. He was feeling it, too. They stopped at a sign, then turned right, taking the block the other direction. On both sides of the car, wide lawns sprawled in front of five-bedroom houses nestled beneath towering shade trees. The streets had that oddly wide feeling of a neighborhood where every house had a garage, nothing like the crowded city parking he was used to.
“We saw the kid come home,” Evan said. “What are we waiting for?”
“You got to put yourself in the mind of the boy, right?” Talking to relax. “He gets home, drops his schoolbag, wonders what to do with himself. No brothers, and Dad won’t be home till eight or nine. So the kid,” Danny wanting to avoid calling him Tommy, not wanting to think of him that personally, “he’s got the run of the house. What’s he do?”
“Fuck should I know?” Evan said. “Turn on the TV?”
“Exactly. That’s where I want him. Watching TV. It’ll drown out noise, and I don’t think there’s an alarm console in that room.”
“So how long do we wait?” Evan seemed eager, almost anxious. Best to move.
“What’s it been, twenty minutes? Now’s probably good.” He unzipped the duffel for one final inventory. Everything was just as it had been the last dozen times he’d checked. Before closing the bag, he brushed the inner pocket. The plastic rectangle inside felt strangely reassuring.
Evan turned the corner, another right, Richard’s house now in sight, a brick and shingle two-story with bay windows, architecturally a cross between a Swiss chalet and an English manor. The driveway was smooth blacktop that hummed beneath the tires as Evan turned in gently, letting the car coast up to the closed garage door. He threw it in park and rested his hands on the wheel. They’d both put on driving gloves in the McDonald’s parking lot, and seeing Evan tap the Saab’s wheel with his elegantly gloved hands, Danny had a flash of him as a chauffeur. Just put a jaunty cap on him. The image was funny, but he pushed it aside.
“Ready?” Evan’s voice had a hint of excitement, a familiar note that Danny had almost forgotten. He used to have the same tone playing Pisser, just before diving off the Michigan Avenue drawbridge, or sprinting across Lakeshore at rush hour.
“One second.” Danny opened his cell phone and dialed. She answered on the second ring.
“Debbie. Give us five minutes.”
“Okay. Be careful.”
“Yeah.” Danny flipped the phone closed.
“What’s that all about?”
“Let’s go,” not answering Evan, grabbing the duffel bag and opening the car door. The October wind slapped at him as he left the heated car, the air high-thirties, way colder this year than most. Careful to keep his face pointed toward the house, he scanned the windows for any sign of life. Nothing.
He looked across the roof of the Saab at Evan, who also stood with his door open, and for a moment, they just held the gaze. Then Danny nodded, and closed his door.
Time to take that first step onto the ledge.
He turned and walked toward the near side of the house, around the garage, feeling Evan fall into step behind him. The adrenaline hit full force now, the rush of blood in his ears drowning out the fear, giving him the quiet he needed. They walked steadily around the garage, keeping up a front in case any neighbors happened to look out the window.
Nothing suspicious here, ma’am. Just checking the meter. The side yard was neatly kept, the grass sparse from the shade of a maple that had to be sixty years old. The garage windows had gauzy curtains, but Danny could tell it was empty. Perfect. When they reached the back corner, he stopped and peered around.
Everything seemed quiet. The backyard was smaller than the front, with a line of evergreens marking the rear. A large deck jutted off the second story, and Danny had a sudden pang, remembering the company party last year, everybody on the deck, Richard playing Papa at the grill. Then he remembered that none of the yard staff had been invited. Besides, the man had asked everyone to bring their own beer. “Come on. Keep low.”
Danny went first, fast now that they were out of sight of the neighbors, staying bent over so that hedges screened his movement from the house. He could hear Evan behind him, the crack of sticks as he stomped along. Thirty feet brought them under the wooden deck to a single door beside the air-conditioning unit, a big Trane that came up to Danny’s waist. He ducked to look at the lock. Evan came up and squatted beside the air conditioner.
When Danny had left his old life, he’d dumped all traces of it. Except his tools. For some reason, he hadn’t been able to throw them away. In the movies, the bad guys always had a little leather pouch of lock picks, the kind locksmiths used, but he liked the ones he’d made. He kept them in the drawstring bag from a bottle of Crown Royal, hidden in a box of old junk in their basement. For the first time in seven years he unknotted the string.
He’d gotten rusty. The deadbolt held for almost two minutes.
“Jesus.” Evan’s coffee and cigarette breath came hard over his shoulder. “Took you long enough, Danny-boy.”
Danny gave him the finger, then turned the handle gently, praying the door didn’t squeak. It was always the little things that got you caught.
It slid open with only a whisper from the hinges, revealing what Richard called his mudroom, a slim, chilly space with a washer and dryer, laundry piles on the floor. He could hear the sound of the television turned up loud in another room. Heart pounding and mouth dry, he stepped inside. Evan followed, closing the door behind them.