Melody Burning Page 4

  As he climbed the side of the shack, he saw one of the doors to the roof slowly open. For an instant, he was transfixed. Disbelieving. He quickly jumped down and in three strides concealed himself behind the shack, back where the water towers hissed and the bats lived.

  A figure came out into the middle of the roof and stood. It was all in white, a woman, her back to him. The wind blew the thin white gown around her.

  Then she turned a little, and a shock as powerful as lightning went through him. It was Melody.

  She walked straight ahead, going toward the edge that dropped down to the building’s marquee and front entrance. As she got closer to the edge, she walked faster. And now she spread her arms out and let the wind blow her white gown back, and he saw her body in its perfection outlined against the glow of the city. He knew that she was perfect and of the high world, and he was not perfect, hardly a person at all.

  Her voice rose, magic in the night. She was singing a song he’d heard her working on.

  “So not free, so not free, when will you come and take me? So not free, so not free, where is the love I need? So not free, so not free . . .”

  She bent over and the words went away, and she was sobbing into her hands.

  He wanted to help her so much that he actually reached out and took a few steps toward her.

  She straightened up and went even closer to the edge. She was right against the railing now, and he was thinking that she must not get up on it, that she was not like him; she didn’t know how to climb and balance. She raised a leg, and he almost moaned aloud.

  Then she leaned forward. If she went just a few more inches, she was going to topple over the edge.

  She held her hands to her head and uttered the saddest cry he’d ever heard in his life.

  She bent forward further. Her thighs were tight against the rail.

  No!

  She stood very still now, her hands at her sides as she looked to where the moon hung low. Every inch of his body and every whisper of his soul made him want to run to her and put his arms around her fragile waist and draw her back from the edge. But if he surprised her, she would lose her footing.

  Now she sang again, her voice climbing the tower of the air, pealing through the wind as if there was no wind. “So not free, so not free, please come for me, please come for me. Unlock the perfect prison of my life, make me new, make me true, ’cause I’m so not free, so not free.”

  The words moved him to his core, and he felt their meaning, the eternal sense of loss that is at the center of every human heart, and he thought they were the truest words he had ever known, a cry to the night and the moon to come and unlock the prison of life.

  Again she swayed, and once again she raised her arms. He could see her naked form in the thin robe, outlined by the moonlight.

  He thought if he ran fast enough, he could maybe grab her from behind and pull her back, then throw himself to one side among the air-conditioning equipment to her left. Once he was up under there, he would somehow make his way to the other side of the roof, where there was more than one place to slip away into the building and be gone.

  Sure, but what if he missed? Or was too slow? If she heard him coming? It was just too dangerous to even try.

  He stepped back into the shadows of the elevator shack and cried out as loud as he could, “So not free, so not free!”

  She froze. It looked as if she was riveted to the rail.

  He bit his tongue almost to bleeding, then covered his mouth with his hands. He stood as still as a statue.

  Suddenly she whirled around. Her eyes were glaring, her lips twisted with pure hate—it was like the face of some kind of beautiful monster—and her hands were out in front of her like claws.

  “I hate you,” she said, venom in her words. Then her eyes widened and she screamed, “I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!”

  He smashed his hands against his ears and cried out as if he was being struck, because that’s how it felt.

  She was looking right at him. Did she see him? The light was behind her, but it wasn’t very bright, so he couldn’t be sure.

  With a single broad step, he slipped behind a cooler tower. Now peering through the falling water, he watched her as she turned once again toward the edge.

  For another long moment, she leaned out over the abyss.

  Then she straightened up. Turned around. Without looking again in his direction, without making a sound, she strode to the stairway door.

  Then she was gone, back into the building that was her home and, he now understood, her prison. He didn’t know if she would actually have jumped, not even if she’d been planning to. But he feared it.

  His heart went with her down the hard steel stairs to the luxury and torment of the fiftieth floor. In his mind was the image of her glowing in the moonlight, and another image, of her lying in the alley as his father had, arms spread, absolutely still.

  He slid into his space and closed his eyes. He stayed there a while. He lay listening, determined to stay alert in case she came back. But his thoughts went to those night-vision goggles.

  He got his rose and cradled it.

  The rose of life and the rose of happiness, he thought, and in that moment he made a decision. It was dangerous, he knew, and it was foolish, and it would take from him the thing he loved the most. But he also knew that his rose could bring Melody happiness, too, and maybe even help her somehow.

  He slipped into the electrical room through the hatch he’d made from his little space, then dropped down along the hot, humming cables and into the fiftieth-floor crawl space. There was rock music coming from 5052 and, from across the hall, a man and a woman arguing. Apartment 5050 was silent. He went out across the ceiling of the den and did something he never did when somebody was home.

  He put his hand on his hatch. Closed his fingers around the little latch he’d screwed into it and opened it.

  Silence below. Darkness. A faint odor of something sweet—perfume, he thought.

  He dropped down into the closet. Hardly breathing, he listened for movement in the room beyond.

  Not a sound.

  He stepped into the hallway, then stopped listening.

  All he could hear was his own thrashing heart.

  Why was he doing this? Was he crazy? But he had to. He wanted to give her the rose.

  He stood before her door, pressed his ear against it, listened, and heard nothing from inside. Was she asleep?

  Turning the handle carefully, he opened the door a crack. He waited. No sound. He opened it further. Her bed was a dark pool, her form on it a curled shadow.

  In three long, silent steps, he was beside her. He looked down at her face, shadowy and gorgeous, the full lips held in a line that suggested great sadness.

  Trembling, he laid a hand on her broad forehead, feeling fear and electric pleasure as he touched her for the first time. For a moment he was paralyzed, unable to break the connection.

  Then he took his rose from his pocket and placed it on the pillow beside her face.

  He stepped quickly out of the room and slipped ghostlike down the hall and through the den, drawing himself into the crawl space and closing his hatch behind him.

  He slipped into the darkness and hidden passages of the building, leaving behind, like a sacrifice and a talisman, the most precious thing he possessed.

  CHAPTER 7

  Frank waited miserably in Mr. Szatson’s big office in his magnificent home. He wasn’t precisely sure why he’d been called to come here, but it couldn’t be good, that was certain.

  He stared out through the glass wall toward the beautiful swimming pool. A woman sat beside it under an umbrella, reading a book in the sun and listening to music that was too faint to make out.

  “My wife,” Szatson said sarcastically as he came hurrying into the room. He threw his athletic form down behind the huge desk and fixed his dark, quick eyes on Frank.

  Frank knew perfectly well that Mr. Szatson had hired him to do fir
es. So, probably that’s what this meeting was about. Some Szatson development somewhere was being stalled by some jerk refusing to move, and he needed to be burned out.

  Szatson looked at him for so long that it became uncomfortable, and Frank had to look away. It was an intimidation technique, he supposed. If so, it wasn’t going to work. He was going to need more than his pitiful super’s salary to do a fire.

  “What’s our present vacancy status?”

  Frank blinked with surprise. He wasn’t often wrong about people, but this was not the question he had expected. “I’ve seen a steady stream of move-outs, sir.”

  “What’s the complaint log look like?”

  “Not a lot. The rents need to come down—that’s our problem.”

  “Frank, I want to tell you something. The move-outs don’t matter.”

  That made no sense, but he was the boss. “Uh, okay.”

  “In fact, I want you to encourage more of them. Hassle people a little. Nothing illegal, of course, don’t go that far. But you can cut back air-conditioning, drop hot water pressure. You can do that sort of thing.”

  “Sure, but why?”

  Again, Luther Szatson’s eyes met his. “Frank, Frank, Frank.” He chuckled. “Have you learned the building?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then you know how it all works, the power systems, the air, the steam, all of that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And how much fuel oil does it carry, Frank, at any given time?”

  Frank was so astonished that he almost couldn’t reply, because that question told him instantly where this was going. But no—no. The Beresford was too big. It was—oh, God, it would be the fire of the century. He swallowed hard and fought to gather enough spit to talk. “We generally have about twenty thousand gallons on hand. More in the winter. The capacity is thirty thousand gallons.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Where is the fuel oil stored?”

  “Exactly.”

  “In the storage tanks. There are three of them under the machinery floor.” Szatson must be quizzing him to make sure he knew his stuff. Okay, he’d pass this quiz.

  “And where is the elevator shaft in relation to this storage area?”

  “Uh, the shafts come down—the service cars bottom on the tank floor.”

  “The elevator shaft is actually open all the way from the top of the building to the bottom, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yeah, of course.”

  “That would be a major violation, Frank.”

  “Yeah, but the doors down there are code doors. Fire doors. So any problem is gonna be contained, if that’s what you’re worried about, Mr. Szatson.”

  Szatson’s eyes smiled, but his words were spat right in Frank’s face. “It’s none of your business what I’m worried about.”

  Frank would sooner have been watched by a cobra. He needed some kind of clarification. Because if Mr. Szatson was going to torch a fifty-story apartment building full of people, Frank was not his man. No way.

  “You’re saying I need to do everything I can to increase vacancies, Mr. Szatson? Because I’m not quite sure, here.”

  “Let me ask you this. If something happened in the basement, if there was a fuel fire, how well protected are we?”

  The words hung in the air. People would be killed. With his record, the cops would be all over him. If he got convicted, he’d get the needle.

  “Frank, are we protected? Or do I need to do something about that shaft?”

  “Well, those fire doors would close. If it was a straight flamer, no problem. The sprinklers would take care of it before the fire department even got there. The thing is, though, if the fuel tanks went up, they’d blow the doors off, and then you’d see that shaft work like a chimney. You’d have fire all the way to the top of the structure in a matter of seconds.”

  Then he thought an incredible, chilling thought: Was this why the elevator shaft went down to the fuel storage tanks? Had Szatson always planned to torch the Beresford?

  But why hadn’t the insurance company seen it? One reason and one only: Mr. Szatson was in the insurance business, too. You could be sure, though, when the Beresford burned, it wouldn’t be his money that would come out of the insurance trust to pay the gigantic claim. No, that would be the money of innocent investors.

  How much would he collect? Easily half a billion dollars and probably more. There would be lawsuits galore, of course, from the survivors and the families of the dead—for there would be many dead—but the suits would also be covered by liability insurance.

  Instead of making a small monthly profit on the Beresford, Szatson was going to cash out in what was bound to be one of the most spectacular fires in Los Angeles history.

  “Is it doable?” Szatson asked. His voice was very quiet. “I mean, could it happen? A fire like that?”

  “I don’t think those fuel tanks are that dangerous. That oil takes special treatment to burn—that’s why you’ve got blowers on the fireboxes.”

  “Well, good. Then I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it.” He went to a drawer and removed a file. “I got a variance from the city for that shaft. They let me off the hook, thank God. It was an honest mistake.”

  Frank knew that he had to have paid plenty for that variance. No honest inspector would let a violation that dangerous go unrepaired.

  “So, Frank, are we together on this?”

  Frank knew he was the best torch in the game, and Luther Szatson had reached out for him.

  He took a deep breath and spoke. “I want you to know that I understand very clearly, Mr. Szatson.” He would not say that he would do it, though. He would not do it. First, it was too dangerous. Second, he’d never killed anyone. He did arson, not murder.

  Szatson strolled to the glass wall that overlooked the pool.

  Frank interpreted this as a signal that the meeting was over and started to get up.

  “No, no,” Szatson said, “we’re not quite finished here.” He opened the folder on his desk. “I’m looking at a complaint here.”

  “About me? From a tenant?”

  “It’s from a tenant’s lawyer. The singer on fifty.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The thing is, this lawyer is claiming that somebody is bothering the girl. Somebody is—listen to this—‘utilizing shaftways and crawl spaces to stalk Miss McGrath.’ ”

  That damn squatter. Frank held up his hand. “Say no more. It’s taken care of.”

  “Wylie said that. Christopher before him. Now you say it.”

  “Except I can do it.”

  Szatson glared. “Then why haven’t you?” His voice was acid. Frank knew this shadow man could turn out to be a witness, and witnesses were dangerous.

  “I’ve confirmed that he’s there. That’s a start.”

  “I don’t need a start, I need a finish!”

  “He’s good at what he does.”

  “Get the job done!”

  “I’ll take care of him.”

  “If this bastard uses the chases, fine. He can fall.”

  Frank knew exactly what those words meant. His boss had just told him to kill the squatter.

  “Yes, sir,” he agreed, “he can fall. But then we have a police investigation inside the building.”

  “He falls, he disappears.”

  Frank could smell the stink of fear in the room, the sharp odor of his own sweat.

  “Well,” Szatson said, “I think we’ve reached an understanding. Am I right?”

  Frank had just been asked to set a fire that was certain to kill and to murder a squatter. He temporarily froze.

  “Frank, you know why you came out of the house early? Why you’re off the parole list?”

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “It’s the right idea. I did it, and I can undo it. I can make it look like you forged the release documents. You, Frank. You’ll go back in.”

  And, as Frank knew all too well, this time it would be for good.


  So he was being given a choice: kill people and risk being executed, or refuse to do it and spend the rest of his life in prison, convicted of using forged documents to escape.

  He sucked breath. Life in prison for certain against the possibility of a death sentence. A certainty against a possibility.

  He made his choice.

  “You’re gonna get your work done, sir. Just like you want it done.”

  Szatson smiled. Somehow the brightness of his teeth made the deal even more terrifying.

  Back in his car, Frank sat for a long time. “So what happens to me?” he muttered into the silence. “What happens to me then?”

  The answer was, Szatson went on down the road amassing his billions, and a little guy like Frank—well, maybe he got something, and maybe he didn’t.

  As he angled his car down into the city streets, he felt the tightness of frustration constricting his throat. Stopping at a light on Franklin, he watched a bunch of kids from Hollywood High School cross the street and head toward Starbucks.

  When the light changed, he found that his foot had been pressing the brake so hard that it had cramped in the arch.

  He drove on back to the Beresford with one thought in mind: the creep who was using the shafts was about to find out that when you got an unexpected push, the fall was long and the landing hard.

  CHAPTER 8

  We’re in the middle of a media frenzy, and I’m totally thrown, I have to say. It’s over Alex, of course. I should have expected it, but I didn’t. I woke up this morning thinking only about the creep on the roof, then Lupe, who cleans our place, called to say the doorman wouldn’t let her in because he thought she was with the reporters.

  Now I’m gonna have to do a papi walk just to get out of the building. It makes me wish I could fly, and suddenly a new song is in my mind, “Flying on Forever.” Every kid in the world will understand this song, I know it.

  I’m still thinking about the unbelievable fight we had. The worst ever, I think.