A
rash of elaborate cat burglaries of luxury buildings in Manhattan
has the police and mayor panicked. When a group of social media obsessed
millennials—a loosely organized crew that call themselves “urban explorers”—are
suspected in the heists, NYPD detective Jake Rivett is assigned the case.
Already undercover with one foot on each side of the blue line, Rivett is
ordered to infiltrate the group and discern responsibility. Battling against
both his own personal demons and misgivings regarding his superiors, Rivett
dives deep into the urban exploration scene in pursuit of the truth. But what,
and who, he finds—deep in the sewers, up in the cranes above under-construction
skyscrapers, and everywhere else in New York—will
change not only Jake, but the city itself.
Two feet hammered the pavement. With movement as rapid as it
was controlled, the explorer’s muscles tensed for what was to come. The target,
all twenty stories of unabashedly neo-classical splendor, towered across the
street. Infiltrating the building would be easy, but the next step was
difficult. And the rest? Brilliant meets impossible.
The explorer was wearing a small camera on his chest, which captured his
viewpoint with slightly shaky but high-definition clarity. A parking post stood
ahead—cement poured into a strong iron tube. The man sprinted forward and
vaulted onto the post. He maintained his momentum, springing off the top of the
post onto an enormous industrial air-conditioning unit. Now eight feet in the
air, he had only one stride before his next jump. He sailed through the empty
air, arms outstretched, fingers tensing—a twelve-foot-high brick wall ahead.
Just reaching the wall, the explorer’s fingers grasped the edge. His right hand
couldn’t find traction. His fingernails scraped desperately as he started to
fall. But two fingers on his left hand did their job. He hung on, swinging
precariously before centering himself and pulling his body up and over the
wall.
The explorer dropped down on the other side. His body contracted into a tight
ball as he careened toward the construction gravel below. At the last moment,
he rotated and achieved a rolling landing—lessening gravity’s impact. He came
to a stop. Breathing heavily, he took a brief respite from the task at hand.
His chest heaved as he peered around the construction site that he’d just
infiltrated. He knew that a lone security guard sat in a booth on the other
side of the block. But he also knew the guard was engrossed in his cell phone,
only stopping occasionally to gaze onto an adjoining street. As long as the
explorer was quiet, the guard would be none the wiser. The coast was clear. He
reached for a mic attached to the side strap of his backpack.
“All silent. Only one clown in the circus,” the explorer whispered into the
microphone. Still out of breath, he reached for his hydration tube and took a
long sip of water. Then he rotated and watched as three more compatriots
covertly slid over the top of the tall brick wall.
They each hit the ground in the same rolling manner, limiting trauma with
expert precision. The entire crew was clad in dark outdoor technical clothes,
breathable shirts, top-of-the-line Gore-Tex pants and trail runners with all
reflective surfaces blocked out by black Sharpie. Their faces were covered by
bandanas or ski masks. Respirators, climbing gear, knives, and cameras were
both hanging from and strapped to their belts and backpacks.
The crew split in three different directions, acting as lookouts for any errant
guard or construction manager onsite in the middle of the night. It was
unlikely, but their plans called for extreme caution. That’s what had made them
so successful—their secret sauce was not daring; it was preparation. After
confirming that the others were in position, the explorer focused on the
mission at hand.
An enormous tower crane stood against the edge of the construction site. Built
like a towering T, the machine’s base was a concrete shithouse holding up three
hundred feet of crisscrossing steel. The explorer expertly grabbed the side of
the crane. Instead of heading for the control booth at the bottom, he simply
began to ascend up the latticework that made up the sides—hands followed by
legs on an upstream ladder.
Stopping midway to catch his breath, the man couldn’t help but look down.
Vertigo’s tendrils reached out like forbidden fruit. His foot wavered to catch
hold of a one-inch bar of the latticework. But he controlled the panic,
centered himself, and continued climbing.
A few minutes later, the explorer reached the top of the crane. He pulled
himself over the T’s edge and gazed along the hundred-and-fifty-foot-length
atop the long horizontal span. Instead of traversing in the direction of the
construction site from which he’d originated, the explorer headed the opposite
way. Careful with the placement of his feet, he headed towards the side of the
crane that extended halfway across the street below. It was a slow process. The
latticework consisted of both ninety-degree and diagonal pieces of steel, like
a series of bars with a crosshatch pattern strung across it. And between the
pieces of the crane’s structure was nothing—a dark void. One misstep, one
hesitation, one dash of grease and the explorer would plummet over twenty
stories through thin air and become one with the blacktop of the city. It was
not a pleasant thought, making the already difficult process deeply
nerve-wracking.
“You will not bust.” The man talked himself through the fear as he reached the
far end of the crane. He was now extended as far across the street below as the
machinery would take him.
The explorer gazed down the gleaming city from the Upper West Side,
all the way through Midtown and into Chelsea.
It was more than a place now, more than a landscape. By this point at its
evolution, Manhattan represented a
geospatial-and-social coordinate on the razor’s edge of modernity. It was no
longer what the future could be. It was the future itself, right now, happening
in front of one’s eyes and reaching the stage of infinite singularity. As the
years had gone on, the surfaces of the metropolis had become smooth, the lights
perfect, the façades utterly complete. It no longer beckoned for the masses
humbly—it repelled them. The construction site the explorer had ascended from
would soon consist of glass, marble, and sex. That was all, and that was
everything, and if one was rich enough, one could buy it. The new culture
didn’t care for culture itself. It did not bow to subtlety of argument or
freedom of soul. It only knew money—astronomical levels of money. The only
people who could afford to live here would be the progeny of sovereign wealth
fund managers, tech moonshot winners, and industrial titans. Nothing was free,
for anyone—not even the views.
Except for our explorer—right now. It was his, alone. He admired the panorama
of New York. Yes, there was the
mission, but this was deserving of a photograph. He pulled the camera off his
chest harness, activated selfie mode, and turned it towards himself. He lined
up, framing the background of the city behind him. Click. The camera’s flash
erupted. He flipped his hand down, as if to form an upside down V slogan.
Click. Another flash—another selfie—his face shrouded by a hood throughout the
entire process.
Having finished memorializing the scene, the man ducked down towards the crane.
As he secured something to the crane, he gazed away from the construction site
and towards his target.
A sharp contrast to the modern structures popping up like weeds, the limestone
apartment building across the street was built during the turn of the
century—the last century, not this. Its hulking body did not undulate as it
rose. Instead the building consisted of strong vertical bands that ran up to
form elaborate choragic arches and support the pointed top of the roof. Four
large penthouse balconies graced each corner of the building, easily visible to
the explorer who stood above them on the crane. He breathed deeply, then jumped
off the crane into the darkness below.
Suspended by a climbing rope, the man careened from the top of the crane and
over the street, until he was positioned directly above the penthouse balcony
of the old building. The pendulum continued, however, and he swung back.
The second time he was ready. His toes landed lithely on the penthouse’s
balcony. He paced towards the enclosed glass greenhouse. One of the small
windows of the greenhouse was unlatched, exposing a sliver of access.
The explorer carefully maneuvered the window open.
He climbed into the penthouse.
And the city’s lights twinkled as if nothing had happened at all . . .
About the Author
Denison
Hatch is a screenwriter and novelist based in Los Angeles.
Although he lives in the proverbial desert now, he is originally from Delaware—land
of rolling hills and DuPont gunpowder. Denison
has a number of feature and television projects in development, including his
original screenplay, Vanish Man, which is set up at Lionsgate. A graduate of Cornell
University, Denison
lives with his wife and big dog in a little house in Hollywood.
Never Go Alone is the second novel in the Jake Rivett series.
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