Turn your back and walk away- And live to graft another day.
That’s my motto and it’s a good one. I got where I am because I stuck to it. And daydreams aren’t part of getting away from the police.
I pushed all thoughts from my mind as I reached the end of the aisle. The entire area outside must have been swarming with cops by this time and I had to move fast and make no mistakes. A fast look right and left. Nobody in sight. Two steps ahead and press the elevator button. I had put a meter on this back elevator and it showed that the thing was used once a month on the average. It arrived in about three seconds, empty, and I jumped in, thumbing the roof button at the same time. The ride seemed to go on forever, but that was just subjective. By the record it was exactly fourteen seconds. This was the most dangerous part of the trip. I tightened up as the elevator slowed. My. 75 caliber recoilless was in ‘ my hand, that would take care of one cop, but no more. The door shuffled open and I relaxed. Nothing. They must have the entire area covered on the ground so they hadn’t bothered to put cops on the roof. In the open air now I could hear the sirens for the first time–a wonderful sound. They must have had half of the entire police force out from the amount of noise they were making. I accepted it as any artist accepts tribute. The board was behind the elevator shaft where I had left it. A little weather-stained but still strong. A few seconds to carry it to the edge of the parapet and reach it across to the next building. Gently, this was the one dangerous spot where speed didn’t count. Carefully into the end of the board, the suitcase held against my chest to keep my center of gravity over the board. One step at a time. A thousand-foot drop to the ground. If you don’t look down you can’t fall . . . Over. Time for speed. The board behind the parapet, if they didn’t see it at first my trail would be covered for a while at least. Ten fast steps and there was the door to the stairwell. It opened easily-and it better have-I had put enough oil on the hinges. Once inside I threw the bolt and took a long, deep breath. I wasn’t out of it yet, but the worst part where I ran the most risk was past. Two uninterrupted minutes here and they would never find James Bolivar, alias “Slippery Jim”, diGriz.
The stairwell at the roof was a musty, badly lit cubicle that was never visited. I had checked it carefully a week before for phono and optic bugs and it had been clear. The dust looked undisturbed, except for my own footprints. I had to take a chance that it hadn’t been bugged since then. The calculated risk must be accepted in this business. Good-by James diGriz, weight ninety-eight kilos, age about forty-five, thick in the middle and heavy in the jowls, a typical business man whose picture graces the police files of a thousand planets-also his fingerprints. They went first. When you wear them they feel like a second skin, a touch of solvent though and they peel off like a pair of transparent gloves. All my clothes next-and then the girdle in reverse-that lovely paunch that straps around my belly and holds twenty kilos of lead mixed with thermite. A quick wipe from the bottle of bleach and my hair was its natural shade of brown, the eyebrows, too. The nose plugs and cheek pads hurt coming out, but that only lasts a second. Then the blue-eyed contact lenses. This process leaves me mother-naked and I always feel as if I have been born again. In a sense it is true, I had become a new man, twenty kilos lighter, ten years younger and with a completely different description. The large suitcase held a complete change of clothes and a pair of dark-rimmed glasses that replaced the contact lenses. All the loose money fitted neatly into a brief case. When I straightened up I really felt as if ten years had been stripped from me. I was so used to wearing that weight that I never noticed it-until it was gone. Put a real spring in my step. The thermite would take care of all the evidence. I kicked it all into a heap and triggered the fuse. It caught with a roar and bottles, clothes, bag, shoes, weights, et al, burned with a cheerful glare. The police would find a charred spot on the cement and microanalysis might get them a few molecules off the walls, but that was all they would get. The glare of the burning thermite threw jumping shadows around me as I walked down three flights to the one hundred twelfth floor. Luck was still with me, there was no one on the floor when I opened the door. One minute later the express elevator let me and a handful of other business types out into the lobby. Only one door was open to the street and a portable TV camera was trained on it. No attempt was being made to stop people from going in and out of the building, most of them didn’t even notice the camera and the little group of cops around it. I walked towards it at an even pace. Strong nerves count for a lot in this business. For one instant I was square in the field of that cold, glass eye, then I was past. Nothing happened so I knew I was clear. That camera must have fed directly to the main computer at police headquarters, if my description had been close enough to the one they had on file those robots would have been notified and I would have been pinned before I had taken a step. You can’t outmove a computer-robot combination, not when they move and react in micro-seconds-but you can outthink them. I had done it again. A cab took me about ten blocks away. I waited until it was out of sight then took another one. It wasn’t until I was in the third cab that I felt safe enough to go to the space terminal. The sounds of sirens were growing fainter and fainter behind me and only an occasional police car tore by in the opposite direction. They were sure making a big fuss over a little larceny, but that’s the way it goes on these overcivilized worlds. Crime is such a rarity now that the police really get carried away when they run across some. In a way I can’t blame them, giving out traffic tickets must be an awful dull job. I really believe they ought to thank me for putting a little excitement in their otherwise dull lives.