James Patterson: Kill Alex Cross

So I brought reinforcements with me — my “ninety-something” grandmother, Nana Mama; and my wife, Bree, who works as a detective with the MPD’s Violent Crimes Branch and was also just crazy enough to marry me a few months earlier.

The three of us showed up early at the community center to help set up. I was trying to keep Ethan and Zoe Coyle off my mind.

“Thanks for doing this, sugar. I owe you,” Sampson said. He was running sound cable while I pulled folding chairs off a big rack. “It’s probably going to get a little ugly in here tonight.”

“Can’t be helped, John. You were just born that way,” I said, and he started for me. Sampson and I bring out the smart-ass kid in each other — ever since we were smartass kids growing up in this same neighborhood.

“And we’re focusing .” Billie came whizzing by with a handful of flyers for us to give out at the door. She was excited, but also nervous, I could tell. A lot of misinformation had been spread around the neighborhood, and the opposition to the charter school was mounting.

I thought the rain might keep people away, but by seven o’clock the room was completely full. John and Billie got things started, talking about a small-community approach, double periods of math and reading, parental involvement — everything that had them jazzed. Just listening to them, I was getting excited myself. My youngest, Ali, might go to this school one day.

But this is Washington, where nobody lets a good idea stand in the way of the status quo, and things started to go downhill in a hurry.

“We’ve heard all this before,” a woman in a housedress and sneakers without laces said from the mike in the aisle. I recognized her from church. “The last thing we need is another charter around here drawing down our public school budget.”

There was a mix of half applause, half boos, and some unpleasant shouting around the room.

“That’s right!”

“Come on, get real!”

“What’s the point?”

“ The point ,” Billie cut in, “is that not nearly enough kids from our neighborhood go on to college. If we can get them started on the right foot from day one—”

“Yeah, that and a dollar won’t even get you a cup of coffee anymore,” Housedress Lady said. “We should be getting some of our closed schools reopened, not trying to start up new ones.”

“I hear that!”

“Sit down!”

“ You sit down.”

The whole thing was kind of depressing, really. Made my head hurt. I’d already taken two turns at the mike and gotten nowhere in a hurry. Sampson looked like he wanted to hit somebody. Billie looked like she wanted to cry.

Then I got a hard nudge in the ribs. It was from Nana. “Help me up, Alex. I’ve got something to say.”

“Well, doesn’t this feel familiar?” Nana stood at her seat and launched in. “Or is it just me?” She already had everyone’s attention, and apparently she didn’t even need a microphone. Just about everybody here knew her.

“Last I checked, this wasn’t the House of Representatives, and it wasn’t the floor of the Senate,” she said. “This was a neighborhood meeting, where we can speak with more than two voices, have different ideas, listen occasionally, and who knows, maybe even get something accomplished every once in a while.”

The woman had a forty-year teaching career in the day, and it wasn’t hard for me to imagine her lecturing a roomful of disobedient students. A few people around me were nodding their heads. A few looked like they didn’t know what to think about this fierce old lady yet.

“I suppose some of this is understandable,” she went on, tapping her cane as she spoke. “We all know how cheap a promise can be in Washington, and as you said, ma’am, you’ve heard it all before. So if some of you are feeling a little frustrated, or burned out, or what have you, let me be the first to say I understand. I feel the same way most days.”

“But,” I whispered in Bree’s ear.

“ But ,” Nana said, poking a finger in the air, “with all due respect, we’re not here to talk about you.”

Bree squeezed my arm like the Wizards had just sunk a winning bucket.

“We’re here to talk about the eighty-eight percent of eighth graders in this city who aren’t proficient in math, much less the ninety-three percent in reading. Ninety-three percent! I call that an emergency worth doing something about. I call that a disgrace.”

“That’s right, Regina,” someone said, and “Mmm-hmm,” from another corner. I love when Nana “goes to church,” as we call it at home, and she wasn’t done yet.

“So if you’re here for an actual conversation, I say let’s have one,” Nana went on. “And if not — if you came for politics, and side-taking, and business as usual, I say we’ve got a whole big city out there for you to play in.” She paused just long enough that I could tell she was secretly loving this. “And there’s the door!”

About half the room broke into laughter and applause and cheering. Maybe even a little more than half. In DC, that’s what you call progress.

After the meeting, Sampson came over and gave Nana a big hug, then a kiss on the cheek. He even picked Nana up for a few seconds.

“I’m not sure I changed any minds,” she said, taking me by the arm to leave. “But I spoke my own, anyway.”

“Well, I’m glad you did,” Sampson said. “And just for the record, Nana? You haven’t lost a step.”

“ Lost a step?” She reached up and swatted him on his huge shoulder. “Who said anything about that? I’ve gained a step on you, big man.”

And of course, she got no argument from any of us on that point, either.

The husband-and-wife team of Hala and Tariq Al Dossari hid inside their dingy room at the Wayfarer Hotel, waiting for instructions and watching the insipid, repetitious news coverage about the kidnapping of the president’s children while they did. They wondered whether the abduction had something to do with The Family, and thought that it might. Whatever was happening now, it was meant to have historic implications.

“There’s a good likelihood our people took those two spoiled brats,” Hala said. An image of the Coyle children’s smiling faces from some happier time played across the television screen, but all she felt was contempt. No one in this country was innocent. No one was exempt from retribution for America’s so-called foreign policy.

“I’m sure The Family’s plan is the correct one,” said Tariq, who was a good man, but not a complicated one.

“President Coyle’s thinking will be clouded. That’s good for us,” Hala said. “We should eat something. It wouldn’t hurt to get some air, so our thinking doesn’t get clouded.”

When she rose from the bed, Tariq stood up to follow. Hala was in charge in America.

Back home, marriages were still arranged in some families — including their own — and Tariq knew exactly how well he’d done for himself. Hala was a medical doctor, while he was merely an accountant. She was beautiful, especially by Western standards. He was plain and fat, by just about any standard one used. His wife had even come to love him, in time, and had given him two beautiful children, Fahd and Aamina.

Will we ever see our children again? Tariq wondered. It wasn’t a question he allowed himself too often, but all this waiting around was driving him crazy. It felt good to get up and leave their stuffy hotel room for a little while.

Outside, the streets were almost empty. On Twelfth Street they had trouble finding anything acceptable to eat. They passed McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Dunkin’ Donuts, and then Taco Bell, whatever it was they sold there. What would bells taste like?