Above all, he must be brave.
He tells Halliday: Half a loaf is better than none, but in a world of want, even a single slice is better than none. I’m offering you three dozen slices. You need to think about that.
He tells Halliday: I’m not going to be anyone’s birthday fuck, you better think about that, too.
He tells Halliday: If you think I’m bluffing, go on and try me. But if you do, we both wind up with nothing.
He thinks, If I can hold my nerve, I can get out of this. And I will hold it. I will. I have to.
Morris Bellamy parks the stolen Subaru two blocks from Bugshit Manor and walks back. He lingers in the doorway of a secondhand store to make sure Ellis McFarland isn’t in the vicinity, then scurries to the miserable building and plods up the nine flights of stairs. Both elevators are busted today, which is par for the course. He scrambles random clothes into one of the Tuff Totes and then leaves his crappy room for the last time. All the way down to the first corner his back feels hot, his neck as stiff as an ironing board. He carries one Tuff Tote in each hand, and they seem to weigh a hundred pounds apiece. He keeps waiting for McFarland to call his name. To step out from beneath a shadowed awning and ask him why he’s not at work. To ask him where he thinks he’s going. To ask him what he’s got in those bags. And then to tell him he’s going back to prison: Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Morris doesn’t relax until Bugshit Manor is out of sight for good.
Tom Saubers is walking his little pack of real estate agents through the empty IBM facility, pointing out the various features and encouraging them to take pictures. They’re all excited by the possibilities. Come the end of the day, his surgically repaired legs and hips will ache like all the devils of hell, but for the time being, he’s feeling fine. This abandoned office and manufacturing complex could be a big deal for him. Life is finally turning around.
Jerome has popped into Hodges’s office to surprise Holly, who squeals with joy when she sees him, then with apprehension when he seizes her by the waist and swings her around as he likes to do with his little sister. They talk for an hour or more, catching up, and she gives him her views on the Saubers affair. She’s happy when Jerome takes her concerns about the Moleskine notebook seriously, and happier still to find out he has seen 22 Jump Street. They drop the subject of Pete Saubers and discuss the movie at great length, comparing it to others in Jonah Hill’s filmography. Then they move on to a discussion of various computer apps.
Andrew Halliday is the only one not occupied. First editions no longer matter to him, nor do young waiters in tight black pants. Oil and water are the same as wind and air to him now. He’s sleeping the big sleep in a patch of congealed blood, drawing flies.
19
Eleven o’clock. It’s eighty degrees in the city, and the radio says the mercury’s apt to touch ninety before subsiding. Got to be global warming, people tell each other.
Morris cruises past the Birch Street Rec twice, and is happy (though not really surprised) to see it’s as deserted as ever, just an empty brick box baking under the sun. No police; no security cars. Even the crow has departed for cooler environs. He circles the block, noting that there’s now a trim little Ford Focus parked in the driveway of his old house. Mr or Mrs Saubers has knocked off early. Hell, maybe both of them. It’s nothing to Morris. He heads back to the Rec and this time turns in, going around to the rear of the building and parking in what he’s now begun to think of as his spot.
He’s confident that he’s unobserved, but it’s still a good idea to do this quickly. He carries his bags to the window he’s forced up and drops them to the basement floor, where they land with a flat clap and twin puffs of dust. He takes a quick look around, then slides feet first through the window on his stomach.