The Pinebox Vendetta Page 5

  Finally, he swung over the railing onto the top balcony.

  No sweat. Just like fetching the whiffle ball from Old Man Gaither’s backyard.

  The sledgehammer was waiting on the balcony floor. He retrieved it with glee, spinning it in his palm.

  The roof was just a catwalk away. Rock bounded up the diamond-checkered steps, his shoes’ smack, smack, smack echoing to the street—to the very land Pruitt Riflery had once occupied. He’d just sighted the first of the building’s dual roof spires when lights came on inside.

  They were coming for him.

  He ran faster. Reaching the roof, he inhaled cold, clean air. His shoes felt spongy on the tar and gravel surface.

  He heard metal on metal from below, then clattering.

  Then footsteps.

  He crossed the roof, circling past the spires to the west side. There! Straddling the far edge of a lone section of peaked roof, head bowed, collared shirt greenish by the moonlight.

  The reader.

  Like most statues, he knew he was better than you. He wore this pensive, faux-humble expression, holding the book with one hand meekly draped over the top. The pose had a persecuted vibe.

  All he asks is a place to read, a place of peace and contemplation.

  Sure! Rock thought wildly. I know just the place—how about the top of a tall building? That way you can look down on the rest of us unworthy brutes.

  He had despised this statue as an undergrad. He’d journeyed up here maybe a half dozen times with Derek Dickerson or another pal, often trashed, but never thought to do anything.

  He’d been a boy then. He hadn’t understood institutions were meant to be destroyed—like the wooden pyre at the end of Burning Man.

  Rock took a running go at it. The sledgehammer on his shoulder, he accelerated along the tar and gravel, carrying the momentum two steps up the peaked slope and swinging, his lead foot planting on the roof’s edge, his weight dropping into his hips—Rock had hit cleanup for the baseball Elis all four seasons—and unloading.

  The head fractured but didn’t sever. Rock took another hack. A blow to the neck sent half the collar flying to the street below. A shoulder shot made a delicious crunch.

  He began swinging faster, barely aiming, aware that his mouth was stretched wide and grotesque hisses were coming out. Bam, doink, crack.

  He would’ve liked to cleave the book, but it was carved tight against the reader’s chest with too much surrounding stone. The head, though, was ready to say sayonara. Rock’s initial barrage had left it sagging, twisted a few degrees right as though distracted by some hubbub in the periphery.

  Yeah, baby, Rock thought. I got some hubbub for ya.

  The energy spreading down his body was orgasmic. He was sweating with exertion, but his muscles weren’t tired. They felt supercharged. Had his dress shirt split down its back a là the Incredible Hulk, Rock wouldn’t have batted an eye.

  He took his last swing. The face of the sledgehammer connected squarely, and off flew the reader’s head—a gray hunk, airborne, toppling, dumb, beautiful.

  He never heard it land. Sirens split the air, and an army was upon him.

  Rock chucked the sledgehammer in the general direction of the reader’s head. He started for the north side of the roof, thinking to…well, he didn’t know, but the point became moot when a door between the spires opened and two security guards emerged.

  Tits.

  He sprinted for the catwalk. That direction was clear—the rent-a-cops had come up by the conventional janitorial route—and Rock hurtled down the steps, his ears ringing, a dervish in the night. It was impossible that a forty-two-year-old former congressman, a member of the storied Pruitt dynasty, was so engaged, but here he was.

  He reached the balcony of twenty-three. The roof banged with footsteps: they were coming for him. Hard. Rock looked out across New Haven. Police cruisers had pulled up on Elm and Wall—flashers wild, parked crookedly—but they weren’t directly below on York Street.

  He lowered himself over the railing, dangling momentarily as before, free over the campus, clutching, lilting. He squeezed his midsection to get swinging, out, in, out…and let go just after the apex. He landed in a heap on the balcony below.

  He repeated this insanity ten more times. No two drops were the same. By the time he’d descended to the twelfth floor, both elbows had bled through his suit and his spine felt like a towel in a locker-room snap fight.

  Rock picked himself up with the idea of dashing inside here, at twelve, but the lights were on inside. He could see through the stacks to the elevator bank, where a guard had just disembarked.

  The guard saw him at the same time he saw the guard.

  There were balconies all the way down to three, but Rock didn’t feel he could keep going this way—they could run stairs or ride elevators faster than he could lower himself. He could bum-rush the guard. This appealed to Rock on many levels, but it would take too long. He’d be overrun.

  There was another way down.

  He turned away from the guard, who was racing toward him now, and stepped atop the railing. He was getting used to these bad boys—he flexed his knees twice, like Randy “Macho Man” Savage warming up the top ring rope at WrestleMania. Directly underneath was a sort of foliage moat, bushes and mid-sized trees. Ornamental spiked fences surrounded some Yale buildings, but he couldn’t see well enough in the dark to know if one lurked here.

  He emptied his lungs, emptied his mind, and jumped.

  Soaring through the air, Rock lost his stomach. He’d skydived before and knew the sensation, but still it chilled him to the core. He felt his feet drifting out in front of him and realized he’d given exactly zero thought to how he should land. The ride was smooth, free, cleansing—like leaving a hooker.

  Rudely, a pad of high branches and thorns met him. A hundred arrows pierced his back and butt. He tumbled through one level of branches, then another, his pants and face getting flayed and head jerking unnaturally. A limb poked him right between the eyes, stopping him for a moment before gravity insisted he resume falling.

  The pinball route down slowed Rock—saved him, in fact. He landed in a sprinter’s stance, his knee in some herb-smelling ground cover.

  He ran pell-mell. He didn’t waste a glance at traffic lights crossing Elm Street, cut east toward Old Campus, dashed up High Street.

  The gate on this side of Old Campus—the double quad where most freshmen lived—was locked, but Rock’s reunion badge blipped it green.

  “That’s him!” a cop yelled from Elm. “Go, other way!”

  Rock banged through the gate and tore ten yards into Old Campus. Then hammer-stomped in place, thinking where to go.

  Back to Silliman?

  Ahead to the train station?

  Every inch of his skin stung. He felt like he’d just fought a porcupine.

  Cops appeared at the Elm Street gate.

  More cops at High Street, the direction he’d come from.

  Rock u-turned for the south gate, the only escape left. Fuzzy blue rimmed the craggy tops of Dwight Hall, McClellan Hall, Chittenden Hall—centuries-old campus icons.

  Rock ran. He tripped on cobblestone and blew through a midnight couple holding hands, spinning the dude to the lawn.

  Three-quarters of the way across the quad, Rock saw—unmistakably through the south gate—more blue lights.

  He was surrounded.

  The air became hot or busy or something, just for a snap, before they tackled him.

  Rock’s head bounced off cobblestone. His wrists were joined viciously, and he opened his mouth to scream where he was going to bury these bleepity-bleeping bleeps and their entire families when a hood closed over his head.

  Quickly he was yanked to his feet and forced ahead, blind, by at least two pairs of hands in his back.

  His captors said nothing, only kept shoving him. When Rock’s feet dragged, they gripped him by the belt and coat and ran him forward. A card reader beeped. Rock felt himsel
f being boosted over a step.

  They were entering a building. A building on Old Campus?

  The hood chafed the wounds on his face, and whatever was around his wrists—zip ties?—cut his skin. They were racing down a flight of stairs, now another. Rock stumbled, slamming the man in front of him. The man said nothing, only kept them hustling ahead.

  The temperature plummeted. Rock smelled, what, wet earth? Vines? Rot?

  Were they in some cellar or sub-basement?

  Only now did the men speak. So scrambled was Rock’s brain, between booze and sledgehammers and his abduction, that he only heard disconnected syllables.

  “On your belly.”

  Rock stood dumbly.

  A captor shoved him to the ground, which was indeed mud. Rock crawled on his elbows in the direction indicated by their barks and prods. He struggled through what could’ve been a doorway or tunnel entrance, the ground briefly stone, then mud again.

  He fell repeatedly. His hood and car coat—did he still have that rag?—were caked solid. Dirt filled his teeth and nostrils. He’d possibly pissed himself.

  He crawled fifteen yards before being told to stand. It was a tunnel, some sort of tunnel. Rock could feel a limestone wall with the fingertips of his left hand. Drips fell somewhere, long, tortured plops.

  Now they walked briskly. The men permitted Rock to move by himself but never got more than a shirt-grip away.

  Military.

  Rock had dealt with mercenaries in various capacities, once through Pruitt Capital, other times working for the family’s darker tentacles. He knew how they operated. They didn’t differentiate cruelty from efficiency.

  They reached a door. Rock heard a combination lock spin and a progression of clinks as the mechanism disengaged. A boot clapped something solid.

  Hardwood? Marble?

  A walkie-talkie rattled, a sound Rock hadn’t picked out of the chaos before.

  “The package is in hand,” said a voice near Rock.

  Static made the response inaudible.

  The voice said, “Caesar-One is ready for him?”

  After another static-heavy response, Rock was led aboveground—or so it seemed by the air, still frigid but antiseptic now, lemony to the point of feeling astringent on his neck. These stairs were steeper and slightly spiraled. He had the sense of climbing into a fairy tale, up to the chamber of some sequestered beast or princess.

  Through another door, the path leveled. Rock recognized the intermittent heat of recessed torches on his skin.

  He wasn’t in Old Campus.

  Nowhere in Old Campus felt like this. He was entering a realm of tradition and accumulated glory, of secrets, of silence. A place that didn’t apologize for greatness, too entrenched to care about Yale’s recent—in its timescale—turn toward soft-headed progressivism.

  Rock stood at last in the center of a room. When his captors tore off his hood, he popped his eyes and breathed, and breathed, feeling like he’d just escaped a tomb.

  In fact, he was in a tomb—and seated in a wheelchair before him was one of the most powerful men on Earth.

  Chapter 4

  The stars more or less aligned for Sam on public transit, putting her and Joss into New Haven at six-thirty. It was plenty light out, so Sam decided they should economize and walk from the train station.

  Joss gave the obligatory teenage groan at forced physical exertion, but her mood improved as they approached Yale. Campus was, truly, an outdoor architecture museum. Sprawling New Haven Green, the towering stone goalposts of Dwight Chapel—Sam caught her daughter’s eyes swelling at the vast, effortless art.

  “Mom, is this about climate change?” Joss asked, staring down at a sidewalk chalk sign.

  Sam stooped to read. YOUR WATER IS RED AND OWED BACK TO ITS PEOPLE.

  “Could be,” she said. “Or Native American rights?”

  Joss twisted to read from another angle. She’d recently taken an interest in politics—like many girls her age, she was all in for Owen Gallagher in the next election.

  Sam remembered, as a freshman, puzzling over these obtuse slogans scribbled by various activist groups. She envied her daughter now, discovering new injustices and societal ills to care about. It made a sad contrast to Sam’s own engagement level today—too busy to educate herself, taking her news from social media or late-night comics.

  They arrived at Silliman College, the dorm location for the ninety-six reunion, with the sun still full over the horizon. Sam met a few classmates in the courtyard, smiling amiably at those she recognized but couldn’t name, shrieking and throwing her arms around those she could.

  Tape arrows labeled Registration marked the cobblestone path to entryway A. Sam made a halfhearted attempt to leave Joss hanging out with a group of friends—“I’ll go sign us in, back quick”—but Joss broke away too. As they stepped along the arrows, Sam pointed out a corkboard of flyers for various clubs.

  “Wanna just wait here, check out the flyers?”

  “No, I’m good,” Joss said. “I’ll follow you.”

  Sam approached the check-in room, wringing her hands.

  She hadn’t paid for Joss. Probably Yale had a hardship rate, some need-based discount, but she hadn’t gotten her stuff together and figured it out. She’d only registered herself.

  Which was worse: lying to your daughter, or shattering the illusion that her situation—and yours—was the same as everybody else’s?

  Sam split the difference.

  “Okay, truth time,” she said. “I didn’t officially register you as an attendee.”

  Color drained from Joss’s face.

  “It’s no big deal,” Sam insisted. “All it means is you don’t get the swag.”

  “Swag?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Yale pens, Yale water bottle. That stuff.”

  “Do I—can I still walk around?”

  Is she starting to sniffle?

  “Absolutely!” Sam said. “No sweat whatsoever.”

  “And, like, food? Can I eat meals with you, or…?”

  “Of course. It’s all buffets anyway, you just cruise right through with me.”

  “What if they want ID? Or some kind of ticket? They’ll kick me out, I—”

  “They will not kick you out,” Sam said. “And we’ll definitely get to check out all those lectures together, just like we planned. Good? Cool?”

  Sam’s last two claims were unverified, but at the ten-year reunion, nobody had gotten carded at the pasta salad station or before “China in the Twenty-First Century and Beyond.”

  “Cool,” Joss said. “I guess.”

  She ambled over to the corkboard, looking ready to disappear into it.

  Sam closed her eyes and almost wished Abe were here. Abe dealt with Joss’s freak-outs better. He knew how to ride them out, how to make himself human foam that just absorbed their daughter’s stress—rather than amplify it like Sam.

  In the registration room, a cheery girl in a Yale nineteen cap handed Sam a tote bag, information folder, and magnetic badge attached to lanyard.

  “Now it says here,” the girl said, referencing a clipboard, “that your account has a balance due. Did you want to take care of that now?”

  Sam leaned closer to see. “I—I thought I paid in full?”

  As the girl paged forward and backward for confirming documents, Sam fished around for credit cards. Which was more likely to accept a big charge, Discover or United Visa? She thought Abe had put the amps on Discover, but Joss’s ballet autopay came out of Visa…

  “No.”

  For a moment, the girl’s word hung in the air. Sam glanced out the window to the courtyard, where a group of grownups were chatting while golden-haired children chased each other around the perimeter. They looked like two or three families who knew each other from trips to Vail or Yale-Harvard tailgates.

  Sam imagined one of her old friends walking into registration this very instant, stopping short at her humiliation.

  Then the Yal
e nineteen girl looked up with a sunny frown. “Sorry, I’m wrong. I was totally looking at the line above yours!”

  As Sam’s heart restarted, she gathered her reunion materials. She fetched Joss—slumped, biting her nails—from the corkboard, and they headed to their room in entryway H.

  The dorm was empty and stark, all plaster and heavy wood. A tremendous fireplace anchored the common room, inoperable—the flues had been boarded up during Sam’s undergrad days. She and Joss took a pit stop at the bathroom shared with the suite across the hall, then dropped their bags in a corner and settled.

  Joss eyed a cast-iron radiator. “You lived here, like, four years?”

  “Believe it or not,” Sam said. “We didn’t come for the amenities.”

  Despite the digs, their mood was improved from the registration scare. All logistical snafus had been conquered. They were on a college campus for the next three days—no work, no school, surrounded by important architecture and thought.

  Joss was reading through a listing of sample courses. “Intersecting Studies of Dance and Quantum Physics!” Her jaw literally dropped. “Can we go?”

  Sam took the pamphlet, whose serifed print indicated the lecture would happen Saturday at eleven-fifteen.

  “We can do anything you want to do.”

  Joss rose up her tiptoes as though en pointe, humming with excitement. It was exactly the sort of moment Sam had hoped for.

  Then her phone buzzed.

  She forced her eyes off the gorgeously produced pamphlet and her even more gorgeous daughter.

  It was a text from Abe.

  wheres the 19v charger?

  Sam glanced to the left-side pocket of her duffel.

  here, she wrote. the Zoom takes 19v.

  His reply was immediate. need it for gig, just came in. express delivery ($$$)

  Sam’s head flopped back like her neck was a hinge.

  When Joss looked over, she caught herself and—forcing a smile—gestured for Joss to keep reading the listings.

  She texted, can’t you ask Quinn for one? or Aida?

  He didn’t need it immediately. Even with the client paying for express delivery, Abe’s gigs still carried a minimum four days’ turnaround.