Repairman Jack [02]-Legacies

A bell is the least of my worries, he thought.

With the hook and cord in one hand and his briefcase in the other, Jack stepped through the open doors.

The seventh floor was indeed under construction, a clutter of lumber and wallboard, all coated with a fine layer of sawdust and plaster.

And no workers yet.

As soon as the elevator doors slid shut, Jack dropped his briefcase and began working the hook through the space between the metal lintel and the top of the elevator doors. He and Milkdud had practiced this a dozen times last night on the elevator in Milkdud's building. The top space here was narrower.

And then the elevator alarm bell started ringing as Milkdud hit the emergency button, stopping the cab between the sixth and seventh floors. Jack had been expecting this, but still he jumped.

He knew he had time, but the bell was a goad, pushing him to hurry. Finally the hook slipped through and dropped over on the other side of the door.

And kept dropping, taking the cord with it.

He'd forgot to wrap the damn cord around his wrist.

"Christ!"

Jack snatched at it and snagged the last foot of cord just before it disappeared into the void of the elevator shaft.

And all the while, that damn emergency bell kept up its steady, insistent ringing.

He let out a breath. The next step would be a little harder.

Jack reeled in the cord until he heard the hook clink against the other side of the door, then he worked it up and down, twisting the cord as he let it in and out.

Finally, he felt the hook catch, but just as it did, he heard another bell, a ding! He glanced around and saw the up arrow glowing above the far right elevator door. Someone was coming.

Jack yanked on the cord, praying it was hooked on the shaft side safety handle.

It was. The elevator doors parted a few inches. That was all Jack needed. He got his foot between them, then spread them wide with his hands.

The emergency bell was even louder now. He looked down.

Two feet below his feet the top of the elevator car waited.

Now came the hard part. The really hard part.

Jack hesitated—I've got to be out of my goddamned mind!—and would have loved to have hesitated longer if he'd had time, but the doors to that other elevator were sliding open. Wedging his doors open with his feet, he grabbed his briefcase and stepped down onto the roof of the elevator car. As the doors eased closed behind him, he found the switch for the light atop the elevator and flipped it, hoping the bulb hadn't burned out.

"Yes," he said as the incandescent lit within its cage.

He grabbed the hook off the safety handle and pulled the rest of the cord through. He banged the go-ahead signal to Milkdud on the roof of the car, then dropped into a crouch.

Abruptly the emergency bell stopped.

And for a few heartbeats, blessed silence.

Then the car started down with a lurch.

"Oh, shit!"

Going down wasn't the problem. The car was supposed to head down. That was in the plan. Milkdud had started it down before stopping between the floors, so it had to continue that way. Once he reached bottom, he'd start it back up… and take it all the way to the top.

The problem was that Jack's breakfast wanted to remain between the sixth and seventh floors. He gritted his teeth and forced the cherry cheese Danish and coffee to stay in his stomach. With his free hand, he clutched the heavy steel sling bar that ran across the top of the car. It looked like a piece of I-beam girder. Had to be strong—it anchored the hoist cables. To his left and right the roller guides rattled softly as they wheeled along in their shoes.

The car picked up speed.

"Oh, shit!"

He whispered the two words over and over in a scatological litany all the way down. He was scared. Not that he'd ever admit it to anyone, not even Gia—no way he'd even tell Gia about this—but he freely admitted to himself that at this moment, in this place, he was flat-out, all-but-screaming terrified.

Not the height that bothered him, because he couldn't see the bottom; and being enclosed in a sealed concrete shaft wasn't all that bad, because the light atop the car let him see where he was.

It was the whole deal: Here he was dressed in a business suit and hanging onto a briefcase while riding an elevator on the wrong side of its ceiling. Sure, there had to be a first time for everything, but Jack swore this first time would also be the last time.

Because he liked to be in control of his gigs, and at the moment he was anything but in control.

And he didn't see any quick way out of here.

Plus he couldn't help worrying about what awaited him at his ultimate destination: the top of the shaft.

Finally, a faint ding! and the car slowed to a stop. He heard the doors open onto the main floor, then overheard Milkdud explaining to someone how the emergency stop was his fault, how the car had started to go down when he'd wanted to go up so he'd pressed the stop button by accident. Sorry. No harm done, right? Don't worry, he wouldn't make that mistake again.