Fredric Stern: The Endorphin Conspiracy

“Get the full background check yet? We got a sheet on him?” asked O’Malley as he turned toward Lieutenant Valdez, who had just returned to the command post.

“Best we can tell, sir, he’s clean. Nothing, not even a parking ticket. Married, five kids, goes to church on Sundays, worked in the Parks Department for fifteen years. Same place, right here in the Zoo. Personnel record’s clean, too.”

O’Malley shook his head in disbelief. “You mean this loony tune’s been chugging along on the straight and narrow for the last forty-nine years of his life and all of a sudden he goes bananas?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t seem to, sir.”

“Check the city hospital logs?”

“Yeah. No psych admissions. Hit by a car going home from work a few months ago. Spent a week in the intensive care unit at the Trauma Center, but I guess he came out okay.”

“Except for his scrambled brains.” O’Malley glanced at his watch. “When’s his old lady getting here? It’s already 1310.”

“The guys at the service entrance are expecting her any minute.”

What better way to smoke out a hot-headed, crazy man than to bring in his esposa . Get his emotions revved up, cloud his thinking, force him to make a careless move. The wife was O’Malley’s catalyst.

“If she doesn’t arrive soon, my men are in a good position to take him out—”

“Goddamnit, Valdez!” O’Malley crumbled up the wrapper from the last stick of Juicy Fruit and threw it to the ground. “When I’m ready to sacrifice that little girl, I’ll know who to call! That lunatic has a grenade and is loco enough to blow up both himself and the girl. We have to let him think he’s making the first move. Get it straight now , Valdez. Next week you’re on your own!”

Although angry at Valdez’ impatience, O’Malley had been in enough of these situations to sense there was a healthy tension building. Something would happen soon. The impasse was nearing an end.

“Commander O’Malley,” crackled the voice over the walkie-talkie, “Señora Romero is at the gate.”

“Well, Rispoli, roll out the red carpet.” O’Malley replaced the radio in his holster. “Valdez, alert the sharpshooters. No one moves until I give the word.” O’Malley watched the woman approach with her police escort.

“And, Valdez, get on the radio and tell the men to let her walk to us alone. We don’t need to make Jesus any more paranoid than he already is.”

“Yes,sir!”

O’Malley and the men of the TRU tracked Maria Romero as she turned right and passed between the weathered stone eagles on her way to the makeshift command post, which had been just four-and-a- half hours ago merely another hot dog stand at the zoo.

O’Malley knew the Romero woman was forty-eight, but she looked ten years older. Her bright yellow tent dress rippled with each step as she walked anxiously past the sea lion pool and headed toward them.

The shrill call of a macaw pierced the air.

Señora Romero was speaking in Spanish—a language O’Malley never quite grasped and therefore considered babble—rapidly and loudly. Her plump face was beaded with sweat, her hair flying wildly as she walked past them, not to them. She dropped to her knees in a position of prayer.

“Jesus, mimosa , what’s gotten into you? Let the pobrecita go, please! Think of our own little Juanita!”

O’Malley was worried. His catalyst had turned out to be more of a runaway nuclear reaction. There would be a goddamn meltdown if they didn’t control the situation now.

“Grab her, Valdez! Say something to her in Spanish and shut her up! She’ll blow the whole thing open.”

Even as she spoke, O’Malley knew it was too late. Jesus Romero had heard his wife’s unexpected plea. How he’d react was anyone’s guess. O’Malley had to make a move. His mind whirred into high gear as he grabbed the megaphone from Valdez.

“Jesus, your wife Maria is here. She wants to talk to you.” An eternal second passed.

“Man, you get that cochina out of here, or I blow myself up and take the girl with me! Time’s running out, you know man? You got five minutes, then it’s bye-bye!”

O’Malley heard Jessica’s whimper echoing inside the Penguin Building. He’d never even seen the girl, but her pitiful cry triggered an emotional association in his brain and summoned deep feelings of sadness.

Filthy animal . Donald O’Malley, the ultimate professional, tried his best to suppress his simmering emotions. Donald O’Malley, the grandfather, unfortunately could not.

“Jesus, we’ve got the money, but you know we can’t land a plane here.”

“You just deliver what you said, man, or it’s over. You got that?”

Maria broke loose and ran toward the Penguin Building, her fists stabbing the air in defiance. “You son-of-a-bitch, I’m no cochina !”

The men in black fatigues on the rooftops and behind the columns were ready, laser sights trained on the entryway to the building. Goddamn meltdown , thought O’Malley.

To everyone’s astonishment, Jesus appeared in the doorway, his green Parks Department uniform hanging over his corpulent frame like a soggy sheet, drenched with the sweat of the oppressive New York summer and his raging emotions. His beefy arms were wrapped tightly around little Jessica. Between his hands he clasped the grenade. His dark brown eyes danced wildly.

“I told you to get the bitch away from here. Now! Or I pull the pin!”

Maria stopped dead in her tracks, barely ten feet from the doorway. “ Dios mio —”

O’Malley saw an opening. “Take him. Now!”

The first shot came from the sharpshooter stationed on the roof of the restaurant. The bullet hit Jesus just above the right brow, blew out the back of his head and splattered bloody fragments of brain tissue on the stone facade of the building behind him.

It was the second shot, though, O’Malley would live to regret. Fired from the Tropic House walkway, the bullet pierced Jesus’ right hand, the index finger of which had been wrapped securely around the grenade pin. The fiery explosion propelled Jessica violently backward. Her head smacked against the brick column by the entrance. Jessica Humphries lay on the cement like a limp ragdoll.

The blue and white Airlift Northeast helicopter maneuvered between the trees and landed with a blast of wind on the slate walkway in front of the Penguin Building. Medic Enrique Santos was the first out of the chopper door, followed closely by Rosey Ceravolo. Rick Davidson, the pilot, remained in the cockpit.

Santos and Ceravolo raced up the walkway, Ceravolo dragging the stretcher behind her. Now ten minutes since the explosion, Jessica had been left untouched by the police. Feeling frustrated and impotent, they knew better than to move a patient with serious head and neck injuries. Jessica’s head was cocked obliquely, resting in a pool of blood at the base of the column. Her extremities, no longer limp, had assumed a rigid, mannequin-like attitude, wrists and toes extended downward. Her skin was a pale, waxy yellow, her cheeks and lips drained of life-sustaining blood and oxygen.

The look of death. Santos had seen it all too many times before.

Her little chest heaved ever so slightly, but with great rapidity, as her brainstem automatically directed the muscles of respiration to suck every bit of precious air they could into her lungs. The two medics knelt on either side of Jessica and went to work.

“Pulse 130 and thready, blood pressure 60/palp,” said Ceravolo as she released the Velcro on the undersized blood pressure cuff. “She must be hemorrhaging internally.”