Gone Tomorrow

handles had been painted over many times. So had the window frames.
    I undid the lock and put three fingers into each of the handles and heaved. The frame moved an inch, and stuck. I increased the pressure. I got close to the force I had used on the barred cages in the firehouse basement. The frame shuddered upward, an inch at a time, sticking on the left, sticking on the right, fighting me all the way. I got my shoulder under the bottom rail and straightened my legs. The frame moved another eight inches and jammed solid. I stepped back. Night air came in at me. Total gap, about twenty inches.
    More than enough.
    I got one leg out, bent at the waist, ducked through, got the other leg out.
    The phone vibrated in my pocket.
    I ignored it.
    I went up the iron ladder, one slow quiet step after another. Halfway up my head was at the level of the third floor sills and I could see both front room windows.
    Both had closed drapes. Old soot-colored cotton material behind soot-stained glass. No apparent light inside. No sounds. No evidence of activity. I turned and looked down at the street. No pedestrians. No passersby. No traffic.
    I moved on upward. To the fourth story. Same result. Dirty glass, closed drapes. I paused a long time under the window where I had seen movement. Or imagined movement. I heard nothing and sensed nothing.
    I moved up to the fifth floor. The fifth floor was different. No drapes. Empty rooms. The floors were stained and the ceilings sagged and bowed. Rainwater leaks.
    The fifth floor windows were locked. The same simple brass tongue-and-slot mechanisms I had seen below, but there was nothing I could do about them without busting the glass. Which would make noise. Which I was prepared to do, but not yet. I wanted to time it right.
    I hauled the strap around until the MP5 hung down my back and I got a foot up on the window sill. I stepped up and grabbed the crumbling cornice high above my head. I heaved myself over it. Not an elegant process. I am no kind of a graceful gymnast. I finished up panting and sprawled facedown on the roof with a face full of weeds. I lay there for a second to get my breath and then I got to my knees and looked around for a trapdoor. I found one about forty feet back, right above where I judged the stairwell hallway would be. It was a simple shallow upside-down wooden box sheathed in lead and hinged on one side. Presumably locked from below, probably with a hasp and a padlock. The padlock would be strong, but the hasp would be screwed into the frame, and the frame would be weak from age and rot and water damage.
    No contest.
    Standard tactical doctrine for any assault: Attack from the high ground.

Chapter 80
    The lead sheath around the trapdoor lid had been beaten with felt hammers into gentle curves. No sharp corners. I got my gloved fingers under the edge opposite the hinge and yanked hard. No result. So I got serious. Two hands, eight fingers, bent legs, deep breath. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to think about Peter Molina. So instead I pictured Lila Hoth’s insane smile at the camera right after she checked the Kabul taxi driver’s departed pulse.
    I jerked the lid.
    And the night started to unravel, right there and then.
    I had hoped that the hasp’s screws would pull out of either the door or the frame. But they pulled out of both together. The padlock with the hasp still attached free-fell ten feet and thumped hard on the bare wooden floor below. A loud, emphatic, tympanic sound. Deep, resonant, and clear, followed immediately by the tinkle of the hasp itself and the patter of six separate screws.
    Not good.
    Not good at all.
    I laid the trapdoor lid back and squatted on the roof and watched and listened.
    Nothing happened for a second.
    Then I heard a door open down on the fourth floor.
    I aimed the MP5.
    Nothing happened for another second. Then a head came into view up the stairs. Dark hair. A man. He had a gun in his hand. He saw the padlock on the floor. I saw the wheels turning in his head. Padlock, floor, screws, vertical fall . He peered upward. I saw his face. Number eleven on Springfield’s list. He saw me. The cloud above me was all lit up by the city’s glow. I guessed I was silhouetted quite clearly. He hesitated. I didn’t. I shot him more or less vertically through the top of his head. A burst of three. A triple tap. A brief muted purr. He went down with a loud clatter of shoes and hands and limbs, with two final big thumps as first the