James Patterson - Step On A Crack

Normally, I would have been a little rattled to receive NYPD Police Commissioner Daly’s curt nod of hello a second before Bill Gant’s, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s New York office. But my shock reserve was bone-dry that afternoon. I just nodded back at both of them.

“Afternoon, Detective,” the commissioner said.

He was tall, aristocratically handsome, and seemed more like a banker than a cop in his broad pinstripe navy suit. Some said, with his tailored clothes and his Columbia MBA, he was just another glory hound, far removed from the rank and file. This was the first time I’d gotten close enough to make any kind of judgment.

“We just heard about the… my God, I can’t believe I’m saying this… Andy’s… I mean, the mayor’s murder,” Daly stammered. He seemed genuinely upset, and that touched me. “You’ve been speaking to the individuals responsible. What do you think this is all about?”

“Frankly, sir,” I said, “I can’t get a bead on them. It looked like a straight-up money deal, at first. A group of professional criminals trying to pull off an audacious mass kidnapping.

“But then, for some unknown reason, they shot a priest. I guess you could chalk up shooting the tactical team officers to defense, but what they did to the mayor shows a great degree of rage. Maybe at first it was for money, but now, since they see how surrounded they are, they’re losing it.”

“Do you think all or a part of this might have had something to do with a personal grudge against the mayor?” Gant asked. With his basset-hound eye bags, the short FBI chief looked like the antonym of Daly. Pudgy and pale in a dark Sears single-breasted suit, Gant could have been a bartender at a funeral.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s possible.”

“You don’t know too much, do you?” Gant came right back at me.

“You think I volunteered for this detail?” I said, unclipping the crisis phone off my belt and sliding it across the boardroom table at him. “Be my guest, pal. Step right up. You guys sure showed ’em how it was done down in Waco.”

And minutes before, I’d thought I was in a place beyond anger. I guess not.

“I’m sorry,” Gant said, backing away from the crisis phone as if it might bite him. “That was a cheap shot.”

“Yes, it was,” the commissioner said, eyeing the FBI leader like he was looking for a soft place to hit him with a billy club. “Detective Bennett is going above and beyond in this case, and he’s staying on it. Is that clear?”

Screw what they said about the commissioner putting on airs, I thought, hiding a smile. They were wrong.

Gant looked taken aback, but he nodded agreement. A second later, Gant’s phone rang. He shot out of his chair and into the hall after he looked at the caller ID.

He came back a moment later with an even paler look on his face. “That was the director. He just got off the horn with the president. Military intervention has been authorized. Delta Force has been mobilized and is en route.”

I WAS STILL trying to come to terms with what I’d just heard as I staggered out of the boardroom inside Rockefeller Center. I’d been on some big cases before, but this was the first time I’d heard war declared.

Just when I thought things couldn’t escalate any further, I saw that the whole of the command center operation had been moved into the hallway for more space. I spotted my fellow NYPD negotiator, Ned Mason, placing a sheet of computer paper up on a corkboard filled with them. The FBI negotiator, Paul Martelli, was on the phone at a desk beside him.

“So it’s true? Thurman is dead ?” Mason asked. I’d noticed that he always needed to know what was going on, to be in the loop.

I nodded solemnly. “He was dead when they threw him out on the street.”

Mason looked like a brick had just hit him in the face as he nodded back.

“How could this be happening here?” Martelli said. He looked shocked, too. “ Russia. Baghdad, maybe. But Midtown Manhattan? Jesus. Hasn’t this city been through enough?”

“Apparently not,” I said. “How’s the money-gathering going?”

“We’re getting there,” Mason said, gesturing toward the papers on the board. Each one indicated an individual hostage, their representative, and the amount of the ransom.

“I just got off the horn with Eugena Humphrey’s people in LA,” he said. “In addition to Eugena’s ransom, they’re going to put up the money for the two reverends inside as well.”

“That’s generous,” I said.

“If only the rest of them could be that cooperative,” Mason continued. “Rooney’s business manager refuses to release any money until he personally speaks with one of the hostage-takers. When I told him that was impossible, he hung up and is now refusing to take my calls. Can you believe it? It’s like he thinks he’s negotiating a contract instead of taking his client’s life out of danger. Oh, and one of Charlie Conlan’s kids has started legal action to block the transfer of any funds. The asshole’s argument is that maybe his father is already dead, and he’s refusing to put his inheritance in jeopardy.”

“Family values at work,” I said.

“You said it,” Martelli agreed.

“How much do we have collected so far?” I asked.

“Sixty-six million in escrow,” Mason said, after punching buttons on a desk calculator. “Another ten makes seventy-six, and we’ll be ready to wire it.”

“Did you subtract the mayor’s ransom?” I said.

Mason’s eyes widened as he looked up at me. “You’re right. Okay. Take away his three million, the total goes from seventy-six to seventy-three. Only seven million dollars to go.”

“Only,” I said. “You know you’ve been hanging out with the rich and famous too long when you use the word only before the words seven million dollars .”

“It’s like the man said,” Martelli added, putting the phone in the crook of his neck. “A million here, a million there. Pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

JACK SAT ON THE STEPS of the high altar with his cell phone antenna clenched between his teeth. He’d quit smoking eight years before, but he was seriously considering starting up again. He’d known the operation would be stressful. He’d even predicted the attempted breach.

But that was on paper. Actually dealing with it in real life, he thought, the blood pounding in his head as he scanned the surrounding jewel-colored windows for snipers, was a-whole-nother ball of wax.

Maybe I pushed it too far, he thought, gazing at the flag-covered casket of the First Lady in front of him. Maybe they’d storm the place now, celebrities or not. He’d wanted to make a statement with the mayor, but he wondered if he hadn’t gone a little over the top on that one, too.

The pathetic whimper Andrew Thurman had made when Jack slid the Ka-Bar into his back still echoed in his ears. The saints on the holy windows seemed to stare down at him sternly, their strange dead eyes brimming with a malevolent disapproval.

No, no, no, Jack thought with a violent sneer. No way could he even think about going soft now. He knew what he had to do, and he was doing it. Killing the mayor had been nothing. Part of a formula that would end with his getting very rich. Besides, the prick deserved it , he reminded himself.

There was a time when Jack had badly needed the mayor’s help and had been left twisting in the wind. Hizzoner had it coming , Jack thought with a nod.

And there would be more killing before this was over, Jack thought. No doubt about that.