City Of Lies (54 page)

I can’t come in, Captain . . . I can’t come in. I have to do something to stop this going down. I need you to back me up on this Captain—

‘Back you up? Fuck you! Who the fuck d’you think you’re talking to—’

The line goes dead.

McLuhan frowns, shakes his head. ‘Duchaunak?’ he says to a disconnected receiver.

‘Ah, fuck this,’ he states emphatically. ‘This is just too fucking much.’ He sets the receiver down, comes out from behind his desk and steps into the corridor.

‘Oates! Oates! Where the fuck are you?’

Sergeant Warren Oates appears at the end of the corridor.

‘Get a black and white over to Duchaunak’s place and see if he’s there. And have another black and white go up to West Twelfth and see if anything’s happening.’

‘Anything?’ Oates asks. ‘Can you give me something more specific to go on?’

McLuhan, who is in the process of stepping back into his office, turns suddenly and glares at Oates. ‘An armed robbery Sergeant, a fucking armed robbery! Have someone drive to West Twelfth, and if there happens to be an armed robbery going on down there then ask them if it wouldn’t be too much fucking trouble to perhaps give me a call, okay?’

Oates doesn’t speak; merely nods, turns, hurries down the corridor.

McLuhan walks to the office window and looks down into the street. Ten minutes before he’d been figuring out how to get his wife a Christmas present, something that would appear to have required a great deal of thought and consideration.

Now he is thinking about Frank Duchaunak running down West Twelfth with a handgun. He closes his eyes, bows his head. If there is no reward in Heaven he is going to be mightily pissed off.

Nine-thirty a.m.

Same moment that Frank Duchaunak finally gives up on trying to reach Faulkner, as he kneels beside his bed and drags out a shoebox within which is an ancient-looking .45, as he snatches a jacket from the back of a chair, as he hurries towards the front door of his apartment, as his heart kicks up into high-drive and he starts to feel the adrenaline pulling his stomach into his chest . . .

At that precise moment: same vehicle, Ford Econoline E-250, Henry Kossoff at the wheel, Ray Dietz hunched behind him, hands gripping the headrest of the passenger seat, back of him Walt Freiberg and Cathy Hollander, hooded faces, each of them unrecognizable, and on the floor between them handguns, M-16s, three heavy-duty kitbags, a tension like hot whipcord stretched to its limit . . .

Junction of Bethune and Greenwich, across the road the facade of the American Investment & Loan Bank, and as Kossoff eases his foot off the brake he doesn’t so much as head for the front entrance, he aims the vehicle at it. Like some heat-seeking missile the Econoline hurtles across the road, cuts between moving cars with seemingly impossible inches to spare, and before the drivers even have a chance to lean on their horns the black van jumps the sidewalk, crosses the brief gap between the curb and the building, and ploughs right through a half-inch plate glass window into the foyer itself.

Inside the vehicle the three passengers are thrown against the seats, hands grabbing for anchor, shoulders undoubtedly bruised, muscles strained, but the sheer rush of the moment, the combination of fear and energy, makes such impacts and abrasions irrelevant. No-one feels a thing but the way the front
window gives, and the skidding of the tires as they attempt to make purchase against the highly polished floor within.

Freiberg is out first, Dietz beside him, Hollander at the rear, each of them running across the foyer and through the internal doors.

Two security guards, one of them a good six and a half feet tall, each of them coping with shock, terror, the split-second hesitation that means the difference between reaction and overwhelm. Neither one is adequately trained to deal with such a scenario. The shorter one manages to withdraw his gun but he goes down beneath a terrific thundering blow from Ray Dietz. Ray Dietz is not a small man, and he just clothes-lines the guy, breaks his neck, and then keeps on running until he reaches the counter.

People are scattering now, and Freiberg makes it across the floor to the taller guard.

‘Down!’ he’s screaming, and even as his voice breaks pitch the guard is falling like a tree. Face down, hands out before him, gun gathered up and emptied of shells. The shells are pocketed, and then Freiberg hurls the gun across the high-ceilinged entranceway. It lands with a clatter somewhere out of sight.

Cathy Hollander is quick, quicker than both of the men, and by the time the guards have been disarmed she is already herding the customers against the back wall of the main concourse.

Dietz runs beside her, and then he turns left, suddenly, almost as an afterthought, and jumps up onto the counter that runs the length of the floor. Cashiers and assistants are screaming. People overturn desks and chairs in an effort to get as far away as they can.

Dietz releases a burst of gunfire into the ceiling and the screaming ceases, more from shock, the deafening roar that such a thing produces, than anything else.

‘Cashiers back to the counter!’ Dietz screams. One of the customers steps from the gathered crowd against the wall. Cathy Hollander drives the butt of her M-16 into the man’s lower gut. He goes down soundlessly.

‘Cashiers . . . everyone on cash back to the counter!’ Dietz repeats.

A single girl starts to edge forward.

Freiberg jumps up alongside Dietz, and then comes down on the other side. He hurries to the back of the enclosure, merely feet from the group of employees, and he grabs a young man by the collar of his shirt and pushes him down to the ground. He withdraws his handgun and presses it against the back of the man’s head.

The young man is in shock, starts crying, heaving, eyes wide, face white with abject terror.

‘Cashiers,’ Freiberg shouts. ‘All of you . . . everyone who has a cash desk position back to the counter. There are eight of you. Each of you back to the counter. All cash – fives, tens, fifties, hundreds – all of it up on the counter. No bullshit. No alarm buttons. No dye packs. Anything aside from taking money out of the drawers and placing it neatly on the counter . . . ’

Freiberg pauses, leans down until his face is no more than six inches from the young man’s. ‘Name?’ he asks.

The young man doesn’t respond, doesn’t seem capable of speech. A wide dark area has already grown from his crotch and spread across his pants.

Freiberg shakes his head, looks at a girl nearest him. ‘His name?’ Freiberg asks.

‘Steve,’ she says, her voice hesitant. ‘His name is Steve Tyler.’

‘Serious? His name is Steve Tyler?’

She nods.

‘Okay, folks . . . co-operate like you never co-operated before or Mr fucking Aerosmith here loses the back of his head in a riot of color!’

The eight cashiers hurry forward, each of them to their stations, each of them immediately occupied with unloading cash drawers onto the counter. Dietz stands over them, walks back and forth along the counter, stepping over their hands as they hurry to empty all they can onto the surface.

Cathy Hollander stays back with the customers, never looking back at Freiberg and Dietz, scanning the faces of the people ahead of her, looking for the wiseass, the one who’s going to try something – the retired cop, the off-duty security guard, the jujitsu nut who figures he can take three armed people with a rolled-up newspaper and a guardian spirit. Every few seconds she surveys the street, watching not only for people who might walk into the bank, but also any indication of police activity. There is
nothing. Her heart thunders like a freight train. Her pulse has long since left the scale. She’s never been so frightened in her life.

‘Okay,’ she hears Freiberg say. ‘Where the fuck is Frederick Ross?’

Harper hails a cab.

Standing on the sidewalk, one foot in the gutter, raising his hand and waving like a maniac, it is nevertheless some minutes before a cab pulls up alongside him.

Once inside he leans forward.

‘Where to?’ the driver asks.

‘West Twelfth,’ Harper says. ‘You know West Twelfth?’

The driver laughs. ‘Know West Twelfth . . . Christ, I know the whole of New York like I know my own name.’

Harper leans back in the seat. He feels a sense of panic, something dark and close; he believes that whatever he may be able to do will not be enough.

Frank Duchaunak saw the commotion outside the East Coast Mercantile & Savings before he left the shadow of St Vincent’s. He came from the east side – from Perry, crossing Bleecker, West Fourth, up onto Seventh Avenue.

At first he was uncertain, hurrying down past the hospital, glancing left at the facade and wondering whether Lenny Bernstein was still alive. He was uncertain why barriers had been erected, why there were black Hummers parked behind sawhorses, yellow and black crime scene tapes strung between them in an effort to keep people back. Uncertain because he’d heard nothing on the radio, nothing on the closed-channel police receiver in his car. Uncertain because nothing seemed to be making sense.

He believed he had coincidentally walked into something else entirely.

Down by the barriers he was stopped by an armed and helmeted police sergeant. Breast-badge gave his name as Mackey.

Duchaunak showed his ID. ‘What we got down here?’ he asked.

‘Bankjob. East Coast Mercantile. Seems to be three men inside.’

‘This was called in?’ Duchaunak asked.

Mackey shook his head. ‘We had forewarning.’ He leaned a little closer to Duchaunak. ‘Feds are here for Christ’s sake.’

‘Feds? What the fuck are Feds doing here?’

Sergeant Mackey shook his head. ‘What the fuck exactly?’

‘I can come through?’

Mackey shook his head. ‘Not through this way. You got a car?’

Duchaunak nodded.

‘Take it round the back, up to Fourteenth, head west and come down the Americas way. Think West Twelfth is open at the other end. What’s your interest in this anyway?’

Duchaunak shrugged. ‘Day off. Got bored. Figured I’d go stake out a bank robbery.’

‘Fuck that,’ Mackey said. ‘Go get the kids some more toys, for God’s sake.’

‘I’ll check out the other end of the street,’ Duchaunak said. ‘Then I’ll go get some more toys.’

‘Have a good ’un,’ Mackey said, and raised his hand.

Duchaunak backed up, turned, and by the time he reached the facing sidewalk he was running.

Nine-forty-two a.m.

Kennet Wiltsey hits the ground.

Before his head even bounces off the parquet floor Reiff has him by the shirt collar and is dragging him across the floor. He leaves a wide, and ever widening, trail of blood as he goes. The color seems too bright, unnatural beneath the fluorescents, and when Reiff heaves the man’s body up against the wall to the right of the main counters Joe Koenig knows that they have long since passed the point of no return.

There are now four dead.

The first was the security guard, shot in the eye by Karl Merrett. Second was some hero-of-the-moment bank employee; came up back of Koenig, figured he could floor him with a trashcan. Reiff was there, moved far faster than Koenig would have expected from such a big man. Trashcan hero neither saw nor felt what came. Reiff had him by the hair, jerked his head back with such force and at such an unnatural angle that his neck snapped like a greenstick. Man’s body went limp and useless, rag-doll lifeless, and crumpled to the ground. Merrett realized what had happened, turned, looked down at the guy, and with a heavy boot stamped on the side of his face. His face sort of folded inwards like a watermelon. Lot of blood. More than Wiltsey.

Third hit was just an example. Joe Koenig was backed up against the counter. Tellers were frantically emptying cash drawers into canvas sacks. Karl Merrett was behind the main interview area hustling the bank manager out of his office and towards the vault. There was a lot of screaming. Things got confusing for a few moments. Reiff – standing near the front door watching for any external activity, making sure that he had a good view of the bank’s interior – caught the reflection off a
side door. A man was pressed against the back of one of the internal pillars, no more than a few feet from where Merrett would appear once he cleared the rear offices.

Albert Reiff, a simple man, uncomplicated in both speech and manner, took three steps to the right, ducked beneath an overhanging pot-plant, and came up beside the man.

The man realized all too late that he’d been seen. He turned, looked right back at Albert Reiff, eyeball-to-eyeball in fact, and then opened his mouth to emit a sound like
Nyuuuuggghh
– an exhalation of excruciating depth and force – as Reiff drove a sixinch serrated combat knife through his lower gut. As the man went down Reiff caught him by his hair, held him suspended for a moment, and then cut his throat.

Six minutes later Kennet Wiltsey had entered the bank to cash a check.

At nine-forty-six Karl Merrett heard the first indication that things were not going strictly to plan.

The thing he heard was silence.

Beyond the plate glass front windows, out along West Ninth and across the corner of Washington, the traffic had ceased. It was a busy intersection; traffic ran through it twenty-four seven.

Silence was not good.

Joe Koenig, already aware of the fact that it was now an all-or nothing gig, held his breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them Karl Merrett was standing beside him.

‘Call Wheland in the van,’ Koenig said. ‘Tell him we’re going to need to come out the back.’

Merrett nodded, took a heavy handset from his coveralls and switched on the transmitter.

Nine-fifty-one.

Harper’s cab is stopped by the cops at the corner of Seventh and Greenwich. Two black and whites are angled nose-to-nose from one sidewalk to the other. Riot-suited officers crouch against storefronts, and from the rear window of the cab Harper can see uniformed men ushering lines of people from the back door of stores, from the mall facing him. A single spectator stands outside a record store on the left sidewalk, headphones on, in his hand a huge cup of Coke like he’s at the drive-in.