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about anything but shoving his chair toward it as fast and as powerfully as he
could, catching the Tengu right in the knees, sweeping it into the rolling
castored chair with the sheer momentum of his desperate forward run; half
wheeling, half forcing the Tengu clear across the room and driving him
straight into the floor-to-ceiling window at a careering, uncontrolled pace,
right into the net curtains, until there was an awesome creaking of glass, and
then an explosive shatter. The Tengu hurtled straight out into the afternoon
sky, followed by the black leather chair, and both dropped 27 floors, 332
feet, the Tengu spread-eagled, surrounded by glittering tumbling glass, and
taking slightly less than four seconds to hit the ground. They heard the bang
of flesh against concrete, even from so far up, and the clatter of the chair.
Francesca held Gerard very tight, clinging, almost clawing. Her face was so
tense that it was ugly. Time passed, thirty seconds, a minute.
"Gerard," she said.
Gerard covered his mouth with his hand. Then he said, "Listen. I know what you
think you've got to do. I know you're supposed to arrest me, and all of that.
But just give me twelve hours. Can you do that? You've given me plenty of rope
until now. Give me twelve hours more."
Francesca said, in a jumbled voice, "I don't love you, you know. I don't love
you enough to want to stay with you."
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"Francesca, I just want the time."
She released her grip. The sound of police and ambulance sirens was already
echoing across the plaza below them. The wind billowed the nets and sent
letters headed CROWLEY TOBACCO IMPORTS snowstorming across the room. "All
right," she said. "But call me tomorrow morning, when you've done whatever it
is you have to do. Don't fail me, Gerard, because if you do, I'll have to send
them out looking for you, and you know they'll find you. They may even kill
you."
Gerard said nothing, but went to his desk and took out a handful of cigars,
which he pushed into his inside pocket. He gave Francesca one last look, and
then he walked out the torn-open door, and through the reception area. In the
corridor, he met two breathless policemen.
"Hey, did you see which office that guy fell out of?" one of the cops asked
him.
Gerard pointed two doors down, along the corridor, herman & gublenik,
attorneys at law. "I think it was that one," he said. "Those two are always
fighting, Herman and Gublenik. It wouldn't surprise me if one of them pushed
the other out of the window. Either Gublenik or Herman, who knows?"
"Okay, friend," said the cop, and went hurrying on.
Gerard walked along to the elevator, stepped in, and pressed the button for
the lobby. When the doors closed, his eyes closed, too. Only his cold
self-control prevented him from trembling like a newborn foal.
330 Tengu
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The ambulance had been quick, but Mr. Esmeralda, who had been parked in his
limousine by the curb on the Avenue of the Stars, had been quicker. With one
of Kappa's nameless Japanese to help him, he had shouldered his way through
the crowds which had surrounded the Tengu's fallen body and dragged the Tengu
off to his car. A man had protested, "I'm a doctor. You can't take that man
off like that. The police are going to want to see him."
Mr. Esmeralda had smiled at the doctor, all teeth and Latin charm. "You must
understand that / am this man's personal physician," he had lied. "If he had
fallen from a window, it is necessary that I examine him before the police.
Ethics, you know."
The doctor had started to protest again; but with a kick to the kidneys that
was so fast that it was practically invisible, the Oni paralyzed the doctor
where he stood, so that the doctor could do nothing but grasp in agony at his
back and gasp for breath.
Sweating, Mr. Esmeralda had humped the Tengu's body into the back of his
limousine, slammed the door, and driven off in a howling U-turn toward Santa
Monica Boulevard. Just as he had reached the traffic signals, a Doheny Medical
Services ambulance had come howling around the corner, its red lights
flashing. Mr. Esmeralda had put his foot down and barged his way into the
east-west traffic, provoking a chorus of very non-California hornblowing. Then
he had roared off westward, as fast as he could, toward Eva Crowley's
apartment.
Now Mr. Esmeralda glanced in his rearview mirror at the dead Tengu, propped up
in the back seat, where Mr. Esmeralda himself used to sit, before Kappa had
detained Kuan-yin as a hostage. Mr. Esmeralda had imagined when he was younger
than when people fell from tall buildings, they were smashed into pieces; it
was only when he had
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seen Life magazine's celebrated picture of a 23-year-old girl who had thrown
herself 86 floors from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, to
lie peacefully and apparently undamaged on the dented roof of a limousine,
that he had realized how peculiarly calm a death it was. You fall, you stop
falling. That was all.
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It had been essential, however, for him to rescue the Tengu's body before the
police and ambulance arrived. This was the last Tengu who was anything near to
readiness, and, as it was, Doctor Gempaku was going to have to perform the
Hour of Fire again to revive him. Considering they were supposed to attack the
nuclear-power station at Three Arch Bay at eight o'clock tomorrow night, that
didn't leave Doctor Gempaku very much time. Mr. Esmeralda silently cursed
Kappa and his penchant for hiring the weak and corrupt and dispensable. But
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