Lisa Black: Takeover

At his side, Jason consoled, “It’s an empty point anyway. The FBI has priority.”

Great, the Feebs. He’d prefer Viancourt, but no one would be asking his opinion on the chain of command. All hell had broken loose at Superior and East Sixth, and the top brass of three police agencies had closeted themselves in a conference room to hold a pissing contest over jurisdiction. Patrick turned to more proactive matters. “Why haven’t we sent a phone in there?”

“We don’t need to-there’s phones in that lobby. Half the time they call us before we call them, believe it or not. But it’s usually best if Chris talks to them first.”

“And just where is Chris? At a book signing? Or maybe filming another segment on Channel Fifteen?”

“He’s on his way,” Jason answered smoothly, no doubt used to this kind of jealousy from cops, cops who didn’t have Chris Cavanaugh’s ability to self-promote. Patrick could only wish it were jealousy. If Cavanaugh could get Paul out of there alive, Patrick would happily volunteer to drive him to the TV station. He bent his head to the telescope eyepiece.

“Hey.”

Patrick looked up. A uniformed cop stood next to a section plaque reading GENEALOGY AND HERALDRY.

“Are you Patrick?”

“Yeah.”

“Got a lady here who needs to see you. Come on,” he prompted over his shoulder, guiding his charge forward. “She says she’s-”

“I know her,” Patrick assured him. “You find anything in the car, Tess?”

9:04 A.M.

“Remarriage,” she had said to Paul only two weeks earlier, “is ‘the triumph of hope over experience.’ ”

“Says who?”

“Dr. Samuel Johnson.”

“Then perhaps I should hold on to this check.” He had dangled the piece of colored paper over the railing, letting the loose end flutter. The ship beneath their feet rocked gently in the waves. The Goodtime II ran charters and lunch cruises, and they were booking it for their wedding reception. They had discussed all its features with the manager and now stood at its bow, letting the crisp, slightly fishy air caress them. The heat wave had not yet hit, and the sun felt good as it bounced off both the water and the glass pyramid of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Hope over experience. Paul had lost his first wife to acute myeloid leukemia, a disease that attacked with such speed and ferocity that grief arrived before shock had settled in. Theresa had lost her husband to another woman, and then a different other woman, and then several more other women until she’d lost track.

Their experiences had been different, but she believed that their hope remained the same. That this time no lies would be told, mistakes would not be repeated, the fates would give them a break; this time it would work.

She had pulled the check from his fingers. “Let’s give the man his money.”

Now she could glimpse the blue water only by pressing her cheek to the library window and peeking straight north along the narrow street. The pier sat two city blocks from them, the wedding date two months. Both seemed impossibly far away.

She looked down cautiously, afraid she might see Paul’s broken body on the sidewalk, but the buffer zone between the two buildings remained calm. If it weren’t for the eerily empty street, the day would appear to be following business as usual.

“We evacuated this half of the library, in case they come out shooting.” Her cousin Frank did not ask how she felt, or tell her not to worry, or even look up from the telescope. Like Don, he knew better than to disturb her preternatural self-control. “Ticked off a lot of students and homeless people. And her.” He hitched a thumb toward an older woman in a well-cut suit; she hefted a flat-screen monitor onto the reading table as a young man filled the surface with telephone equipment. “The head librarian of the reference wing. She hasn’t shushed me once, though.”

“What can you see?”

“Not much.” He stood back.

Theresa took over the eyepiece, heart pounding. The windows of the two-story Fed lobby were covered with grillwork and reflected the bright street outside. She moved the sharply angled telescope around but saw only a desk here, a chair there. “I don’t see anybody.”

“They’re gathered in the inner lobby. You have to look at the window right over the entrance. That’s the only one with clear glass on the inside wall. Otherwise we’re just looking at the outer offices, and there’s no one there.”

She moved the telescope, swinging too far and having to backtrack. “What are we going to be able to do if we can’t even see them? They could have killed them all by-”

Past the iron grilles, the outer windows and an inner window, over the metal detector and a revolving door, she saw Paul. At least she thought she did. Next to an older black man was the sleeve of another hostage-a narrow band of charcoal gray, the color of the blazer she had given Paul for his birthday, the one he’d been wearing that morning. Still upright. Still alive.

She watched that sleeve until Frank put a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

“A camera,” she told him. “We need a camera-”

“Security has cameras in the lobby, remember? We’ll have a feed as soon as Jason here connects the monitor.” He introduced the young man as Chris Cavanaugh’s assistant.

“Don’t you usually set up in a van or something?” she demanded of him.

“Usually, but the A/C is on the blink, and we’d get heatstroke if we tried to work out there. And there’s not as much equipment as you’d think-all Chris really needs is a phone.”

“And where is Chris?”

“He’s on his way.”

Theresa wiped her forehead, leaving a streak of makeup on the sleeve of her lab coat. She took it off and pulled her silk blouse away from her wet body to feel the clammy chill of air-condition-ing. “Where’s everybody else? I expected a mob scene.”

“Oh, it is,” Frank assured her. “We have fifteen units on the streets, cordoning off the area and redirecting traffic. The Fed security guys guided the employees from the building to the Hampton Inn; they’re sending most of them home just to get them out of the way. Snipers are picking their spots now. And the higher-ups are in the staff offices.” He jerked his head, indicating the low, constant murmuring that made its way over the headers. “Hashing out who’s in charge here.”

“Who’s in charge ? Paul’s got a gun to his head, and they’re divvying up the glory?”

The librarian paused, as if only sympathy restrained her from asking Theresa to keep her voice down. Over her head two stylized Greek gods stared at the group disapprovingly.

“Don’t worry, Tess. It’s better they work it out now so it won’t get in the way later.”

“So who is in charge?”

“Technically, the Fed security force were the first responders, but with Paul in there and the possible Ludlow connection, Cleveland PD is involved. However, since it’s both a bank robbery and on federal property, the FBI can take over the whole show if they want to, and they want to. So right now the Feebs are nodding solemnly and promising to work together with the utmost cooperation, and not meaning a word of it. Not that I’m bitter or anything.”

Theresa had great faith in the FBI-though she was too politic to admit as much to Frank-but found it scant comfort at the moment. The cavalry should be riding to the rescue, not huddled over a table behind stacks of books. “Terrific. And while they’re all making nice, are they paying any attention to what’s happening across the street? Shouldn’t we be calling these guys or something? Finding out what they want? You know, doing something?”