“No, Jack,” I said. “Everybody seems to be okay. Thanks for being reasonable.”
“I’m trying, Mike. Giving it my all. I thought I better clear up any misperceptions, though … now that we’ve tossed back the small fish, I’d like to talk about the whales we’re still holding on to.”
I glanced out the window and scanned the people who had been released. My God! He was right. Where was former president Hopkins? The mayor of New York? Eugena Humphrey? The A-list people were still inside. How many of them?
“To make it easier on everybody, we’re holding thirty-four hostages,” Jack said as if reading my mind. “Celebrities, of course, some tycoons, couple of politicians. Get me a fax number, and I’ll send you a list. Along with our requirements. Here’s where things can either get real simple or real complicated, Mike. The choice is entirely up to you guys.”
Things were starting to come into tighter focus now, I realized. It was a stunning kidnapping! The most amazing one ever attempted; nothing even came close to it.
“We’re holding all the chips, Mike. So far, no one’s been hurt. But if you guys want to take this personally and try to sneak in here and take us out, there’s gonna be a bloodbath like this country’s never seen. I mean, all that Mom and Pop Flyover have left is their celebrities. It’s the only friggin’ thing we export anymore. Movie stars and pop music, right? Give us what we want, Mike, and this ugly scene will go away. Face it. You’re outdone here.”
It was kind of incredible, but I felt relief. Criminals were horrible, kidnappers especially. But at least we weren’t dealing with terrorists, a mindless force out to kill as many people as possible. You had a shot of taking down people who wanted to come out of a situation alive.
“We want to resolve this thing as much as you do, Jack,” I said.
“That’s actually good to hear, Mike,” Jack said. “Music to my ears. Because I’m giving you and these fat cats the opportunity to haul your asses out of trouble the good old-fashioned American way. I’m going to let you buy your way out.”
Chapter 25
JACK DISCONNECTED the second after I gave him the fax number that was handed to me by the communications sergeant. Paul Martelli took off his headphones and crossed the room. He sat down next to me. “You’re doing good, Mike. Cool heads prevail.”
“What’s your take on this guy, Paul?” I asked him. “First reaction, whatever.”
“Well, he’s obviously not mentally disturbed,” Martelli said. “And he sounds confident. Think about it from his side, his point of view. He’s in there surrounded by every cop in the tristate area, and he’s being a wiseass, cracking jokes. I get the feeling that he knows something we haven’t figured out yet. I just don’t know what it is. What does ‘Jack’ know that we don’t?”
I nodded. I had that same feeling; I just hadn’t put it into words. And I had no idea what Jack knew.
“We’re probably looking at a hard-core, extremely professional criminal,” Martelli went on. “Plus, some of his references sounded like he knows military tactics.”
“The thing he said about explosives on the windows and doors. You think it’s legit?”
“Looking at the way he’s handled himself so far, I’d say yeah, we have to consider that it’s a real threat. If we breach the building, he blows it up.”
I looked around for Ned Mason. He’d found a seat in the farthest corner of the room. With his failure still hanging heavy in the air, he looked like he was trying to make himself invisible.
“Ned. Tell me,” I said, “why do you think they let all those people go when they could have held on to them? Make any sense to you?”
Mason looked up, maybe surprised that anyone was still talking to him.
“Well, let’s see,” he said, standing and rejoining the group. “Logistics, for one thing. If you don’t need those extra hostages, why keep them around? They could get sick or hurt, and it would be your fault. Or worse, they could resist. Dispersing a crowd is one thing. Controlling one over a long period of time would be tricky. Plus, it follows a pattern that I’m seeing. They ejected the law enforcement people immediately because they knew they might try to fight back.”
Martelli nodded and said, “Also, maybe they thought letting out most of the people would look good for the cameras. You know, let the real people go. Only hold on to the rich. Like a Robin Hood thing. They’re playing to the crowd.”
“Bastards have the angles covered so far, don’t they?” Mason said. “The locale, Midtown Manhattan. How they punched holes through the security. They must have been planning this for months. Maybe years. One monster hit.”
Our coffee cups jumped as my fist hit the counter. That was it. What had been bothering me. I couldn’t believe it. The conclusion I’d come to sent a chill through me.
“This whole takedown was choreographed, right? No detail was overlooked. But how the hell can you plan to take over a state funeral without a body. Somehow, they killed Caroline Hopkins.”
Chapter 26
GAZING THROUGH the frosted crystalline web of a giant snowflake on the fourth-floor picture window of Saks Fifth Avenue, the Neat Man chuckled down at the street.
Look at all the little assholes scurry, he thought. Replace the piped-in fa-la-la-la-la Christmas crap with some old-timey piano music, and you’d have a live-action version of the Keystone Kops down on Fifth.
Christ, this felt good, he thought. He held a mildly shaking hand out in front of his smiling face. He wouldn’t deny it anymore. He lived for this.
He scrolled through his ready store of violent fantasies. His all-time favorite was the one where he was standing in the middle of Grand Central Station during rush hour. All of a sudden, he would remove something from his jacket. Sometimes it was a samurai sword. Sometimes a chain saw. In his favorite, it was a flamethrower. Talk about shock and awe.
But the real thing was so much better than fantasy, he decided, peering down at the “authorities” and “crisis experts” trying to get up to speed in a hurry.
Now he had real power over real people.
The music suddenly stopped in the perfumed air of the department store. Now what?
“Due to a police emergency, Saks Fifth Avenue is closing. Please make your way to the nearest exit and please remain calm. You are in no danger.”
The Neat Man couldn’t hold back a smile.
Now they were playing his song.
He’d refined his dark urges, hadn’t he? Transformed them, made them work in his favor.
He was a master.
He removed a Wet-Nap from his pocket. His hands were still shaking a bit as he tore it open, but by the time he was done with his face, he was steady as a rock.
Then he called home—talked to his wife and kids. “I’m fine, Helen. I’m in no danger.”
Chapter 27
STEPHEN HOPKINS SAT by himself in a pew in a small chapel behind the main altar. His head was buried in his hands. He was almost glad Caroline wasn’t around to see what had happened on account of her death. She was such a good soul, it would have hurt her deeply, and it wouldn’t have been an act with Caroline.
There were maybe thirty hostages scattered in the pews around him. He recognized a lot of the faces, well-known folks for the most part, the generous ones whom Caroline had gotten to do charity work and other good deeds.
He looked up at the three masked gunmen standing at the front of the chapel. The bastards were always alert. He’d been around a lot of soldiers, and that’s what they reminded him of. Soldiers? Was that what they were? Former military?
Did that make the motivation political? When the takeover started, his first thought was that it had to be Middle Eastern terrorists—but it was obvious these men were Americans. What the hell did they want? How could they be so brazen? So unafraid of death?
A short, muscular hijacker stepped into the center aisle and cleared his throat rather theatrically.
“Hi, everybody. I’m Jack. You can call my big,
bad buddy over there Little John. Our sincerest apologies for detaining you like this. Anyone who needs to use a bathroom, just raise your hand, and you’ll be escorted. There’s food and water. Again, just raise your hand. Feel free to lie down in the pews or on the floor there in the back. If you cooperate, things will go smoothly. If you don’t, well, the consequences will be very unpleasant. The choice is yours.”
Who was this little twerp to lecture them like they were schoolchildren being held in detention? Stephen Hopkins stood up at the same time as the mayor of New York. The mayor sat back down.
“What’s this all about?” he said angrily. “What do you want with us? Why do you dishonor my wife?”
“Mr. President,” the hijacker said, smiling as he walked down the aisle. “That tone of voice will not do. I’m going out of my way to be polite. I sincerely urge you to do the same.”
Stephen Hopkins’s knuckles went white as he gripped the back of the pew in front of him. He wasn’t used to being spoken to like this by anyone. Not in a long, long time.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “You want decorum. Then would the gentleman in the ski mask deign to let the assembly know why he’s holding them hostage?”
A few hostages in the pews laughed nervously and sat up a little straighter.
The lead hijacker looked around at the group. He laughed, too. Then he leaned in and grabbed the former president by his full head of white hair.
“Why, why, why?” he said into his ear. “That was always your weakest side, Stevie-boy. You always had to intellectualize everything.”
“You son of a bitch,” Hopkins yelled, partly because of the pain. It felt like his hair was tearing out of his scalp. This small man, Jack, was very strong.
“Now you’re calling my mother a bitch?” Jack said. “Maybe you’ve gotten your ass kissed so much you forget that it can get kicked, too. Disrespect me again, asshole, and I’ll kick your guts out and make you eat ’em.”
Jack yanked the former president out into the aisle. Finally, he let go of his hair, and Hopkins sank to the floor.
The hijacker let out a deep breath and smiled at the other hostages.
“See that? There goes my temper,” Jack said. “Now you’ve seen my one weakness.”
After a long, thoughtful moment, he made a thumbing motion at the former president.
“Mr. President, you know what? You’ve been through enough today,” he said. “Why don’t you go home? You’re dismissed! Get him the hell out of my church.”
Two of the hijackers grabbed the former president roughly by his elbows and started shoving him quickly into the main part of the church, toward the front doors.
“Tell you the truth, though, Hopkins,” Jack called at the former president’s back. “After meeting you, I’m actually glad I voted for Nader. Both times.”
Chapter 28
JOHN ROONEY, LA Times–proclaimed “film comic of the decade,” was praying. Seriously lapsed or not, he was baptized a Christian, and he was sitting as still as he could in his pew, silently saying the Lord’s Prayer to beat the band.
He stopped in midprayer when something small and sharp struck him in the side of the neck. When he looked down, he saw that there was a little wad of folded paper on the pew beside him. What the heck was this?
The paper ball was made from a page ripped out of a hymnal. In black ink, someone had written open me right over the musical notes.
Rooney palmed the note as he looked up at the hijackers guarding them. The biggest one—Little John, was it?—sat on the altar as if it were the hood of a car, and he yawned so wide that Rooney could see his back molars.
Rooney opened the note in his lap.
ROONEY—I’M IN THE ROW BEHIND YOU.
SLOWLY SCOOTCH OVER INTO THE CENTER
OF YOUR PEW SO WE CAN TALK. WHATEVER
YOU DO, DON’T LET THE SCUM IN FRONT SEE
YOU!—CHARLIE CONLAN
Rooney shoved the note into his pocket, at least until he could get rid of it. Over the course of the next few minutes, he slid over the polished ash wood of the pew.
When he was about halfway, a gravelly voice behind him whispered, “Jesus, Johnny. I said slowly, not glacially.”
“Sorry,” Rooney whispered back.
“You saw what they did to Hopkins?” Conlan said.
Rooney nodded grimly. “What do you think they want with the rest of us?” he said.
“Nothing good,” Conlan said. “I guarantee you. Thing that scares me is how surrounded by cops this church is. Only thing between these guys getting shot or going to jail for life is us.”
“What can we do about it, though?” Rooney said.
“Fight back,” Conlan said. “Todd Snow’s a row behind me. He’s talking to the tycoon, Xavier Brown, behind him. With you—it’s four.”
“To do what?” Rooney asked. “You saw what they did to Hopkins when he just opened his mouth.”
“We wait for now. Be patient. Pick our spot. Four of us can take one or two of these guys. We go from there. John, we may not have a choice.”
Chapter 29
THE ELATION THAT New York Times reporter Cathy Calvin had felt at being released from the cathedral was quickly being burned away by her annoyance at having to wait on line with everybody else to be interviewed by the police. The NYPD had all the detainees corralled outside of Saks Fifth Avenue, and they weren’t letting anyone go until they’d been debriefed by one of four detectives sitting at a row of folding tables set up on the sidewalk.
Calvin noticed for the first time the news-van microwave towers beyond the blue-and-white sawhorses. They rose above the crowd like the masts of some invading armada.
Wait a second. What was she thinking? And complaining about? She was where everyone else was trying to get. Inside the ropes!
Calvin quickly calculated the strategic advantage of her position. She’d been in the cathedral before, during, and after the takeover. She was an eyewitness to the siege, which would make it her exclusive.
Then she spotted Carmella, the lingerie supermodel, three people back in line. Not super A-list, but a good start.
“Carmella? Hi. Cathy Calvin from the Times. You okay? Where were you when it happened? What did you see in there?”
“I vas near da front on da left,” the six-foot-two blonde said in her best Austrian American accent. “Poor Caroline’s casket had jus come past our pew. Zen Eberhard, my security man, vas shot right in his crotch vith a tear gas canister. Now I can’t find Eberhard anywhere. I keep texting his cell, but he von’t answer. Have you seen him?”
Cathy Calvin looked at the towering model curiously. Maybe she was in shock. Hopefully, that was it.
“Um. I don’t think so,” Cathy said. “Rumor has it that not all of the hostages have been released. You know anything about that? What have you heard?”
“Hel-lo,” the blonde said. “Have you seen John Rooney? How about Laura Winston, or zat little slut Mercedes? Zey are still inside. Zee mayor is still inside. Deez hijackers have no taste. Vy else keep such losers and let me go?”
Vy else, indeed, Cathy Calvin thought, nodding as she carefully backed away from the model. This psycho woman was actually complaining that she wasn’t still inside. Even if the VIP room was under siege, she wanted in. Yeah, celebrities were normal. They were just like you and me.
Calvin turned away as a hush rolled through the crowd. She peered with the rest of the craning heads toward the cathedral.
Over the hood of a Sanitation Department dump truck, she could see the top of one of the cathedral’s main doors coming open again. Now what? She ran forward, hustling to get as close as she could to the hot breaking news.
And then, for the second or third time already this morning, the Times reporter couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Oh my God,” she whispered out loud.
Chapter 30
I WAS STILL in the command center bus, discussing negotiation strategy with Martelli and Maso
n, when the cathedral doors were flying open for the second time.
It felt like someone had dumped a tray of ice down the back of my shirt when I saw who it was coming out.
Jesus. What were they up to now?
A stunned-looking Stephen Hopkins came stumbling onto the flagstone plaza, and then the doors quickly closed behind him. They’d released Hopkins? But why?
Another completely unexpected move from the hijackers, I thought with a queasy feeling. It was great that they had released the former president, but the way in which they were doing things was all over the place, impossible to predict. Was that the idea? I doubted it.
A spontaneous, thunderous cheer ripped from both the police and the crowd of civilians beyond the barricades.
“Move in,” I heard Commander Will Matthews say. “Pick the president up. I repeat. Move in and get him out of there. Now!”
The words were hardly out of the borough commander’s mouth before half a dozen ESU cops nearly gang-tackled the former president and rushed him around the sanitation truck barricade at 50th Street.
I stood, just staring at the cathedral through the trailer window. The spooky gothic arches, the pale granite walls, the dark stained glass, and now Stephen Hopkins released unharmed.
How was I supposed to come up with a way to solve this thing? I thought of Maeve and my kids. I’m not usually one to make excuses, but didn’t I have enough on my plate? I needed another crisis?
Paul Martelli’s hand found my shoulder. “You’re doing the best with a horrible situation, Mike,” he said as if reading my mind. “It’s the losers inside who are responsible for this quagmire. Not us. Don’t forget that.”
“Hey, did you hear the one about the multiagency manhunt for the rabbit in the forest?” Ned Mason said from the corner of the trailer.
I looked up at him. I guess it was joke time.
“No,” I said politely.
“They sent the CIA in first, right?” Mason said. “CIA comes back, says their operatives report there is no rabbit and no forest. Then they send in the Friggin’ Blithering Idiots, and all of a sudden, the forest is on fire and they report that the rabbit had pyrotechnic tendencies and that they saw him with a Zippo. Know what happened when they sent the NYPD into the trees?”