Deadline Y2K (15 page)

A hands-on commander, Garcia was about to go downstairs and restore order himself when the scanner on his desk blasted out a radio call for all units to respond to a riot in progress at the new Safeway on Broadway and 96th.

In a flash he was in the garage and climbing into the first car heading out.

“Go, go, go,” he shouted to the young uniformed driver. “Hit it. What's your name?”

“Richards,” said the driver. “Happy New Year, Captain,”

“Yeah, thanks, you, too, Officer Richards. Shut up and drive.”

“Yes, sir!”

Radio crackling, siren screaming, engine roaring, tires screeching, the blue-and-white Ford flew down 100th Street to Broadway, scattering pedestrians and pigeons and dodging trucks. Two more cars were right behind, trying to keep up.

Garcia grabbed the microphone and punched the button. “This is Captain Garcia in Unit 1331. I'm on my way to 96th and Broadway. What the hell is happening down there? Anybody.”

The driver was sweating and pulsing his siren as he poked through red lights, trying to make his way through the heavy traffic. AM radio stations with police scanners of their own were broadcasting reports of the riot with live coverage on the way, and several civilians altered their routes to follow the train of police cars.

“Holy shit,” Richards squealed. “These idiots are right behind us.”

“Nothing picks up the day better than a little police action on the fly,” said the captain as he punched the microphone button again. “This is Garcia,” he shouted. “Somebody down there talk to me!”

“This is Unit 1346, Sergeant O'Donahue. We have looters, Captain, and Broadway is blocked. We're going to have to go in on foot. Jesus, look at that guy. He's got a case of champagne. Hey, bud, you got a receipt for that? Christ, there's another one. They're all over the place. Stop the car, Joe. Hey, fella, hold it right there.”

“O'Donahue, forget the looters,” Garcia shouted into his microphone. “There's a race riot inside the store. Get in there and shut it down.”

“Yes, sir.”

Riots rarely came out of the blue and never at ten in the morning. The department's riot squads had orders to assemble at their division headquarters at four that afternoon for New Year's Eve duty, and most members were still at home asleep.

The police dispatcher sang the song of the city, pulling officers from wherever she could, aware that she was leaving huge tracts of urban terrain open to predators. Garcia could hear an orchestra of sirens approaching 96th and Broadway, but all the streets were blocked. The cops abandoned their cars in the middle of 96th in front of a Blockbuster Video, across the street from the Safeway where a New Year's Eve party was in full swing on the sidewalk. An uproarious chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” greeted the policemen, provoking a smile from the young cop and an explosion of rage from Captain Garcia.

“Clear the sidewalk,” he shouted. “Tell them to drop those bottles and if anyone gives you any shit, cuff 'em. Richards, come with me.”

Beyond the singers, the sidewalk looked like a tornado had swept across the cement. Groceries had spilled from overturned carts, cars at the curb were smashed, people were wandering around dazed, and one group was kneeling in prayer. Four people had been trampled and one customer had had a heart attack. Most of the looters had fled, and paramedics were on the scene, surrounded by gawkers as they administered CPR to the heart attack victim. The captain quickly marshaled his forces, a dozen uniformed officers, and assigned them the tasks of restoring order and helping the injured.

The store was a shambles. The liquor department was a sea of broken glass and foaming liquid. The security guards had five looters cornered in the dental care aisle. Garcia summoned a pair of uniforms, told the guards to put away their illegal guns, and went looking for Spillman.

He found his friend upstairs with Amanda and Denise who were consoling one another with glasses of champagne.

“What happened, Jon?” the captain asked. “What the hell happened?”

Spillman's face glistened with sweat and his mouth was pulled back in a maniacal grin. For a moment Garcia thought his friend had lost his mind, an understandable turn of events.

“Jon? You okay?”

“You want to know what happened, Ed? The impossible. What was never supposed to happen happened. Have some champagne. Happy New Year.”

Captain Garcia softly repeated his question, “What happened?”

Spillman pointed at a blank computer screen. “Y2K happened,” he said. “The millennium bug”

“Jesus,” Garcia said, wrinkling his nose. “You and Donald talked my ear off about that. You said it would never happen to you.”

“We were wrong,” Spillman said. “If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.”

“It's doomsday,” Amanda said. “All our systems are down.”

“But why the riot? Damn, I know why. All the hype, that's why. I'm going to want your security videotapes.”

“Take anything you want,” Spillman said. “Everyone else did.”

He swallowed a glass of champagne and muttered, “Shit. They just went crazy, ordinary people turned into maniacs.”

“It was the kids,” Denise said, spitting out the words. “Savages.”

Garcia, who saw violence and its aftermath every day, studied his friend and the two store employees. Jonathon Spillman was brash, Jewish, intelligent, as cynical and jaded as any New Yorker and usually unfazed by anything, but he was rattled. Amanda was pale and near tears, and Denise looked like she just wanted to go home.

“Anybody hurt up here?” the captain asked.

“No, but one of my checkers had his leg broken,” Spillman said, “and a guy had a heart attack.”

“The paramedics are out front. They'll be okay. I think all of you should lock up and go home.”

“I can't,” Spillman said. “I have to clean up and stay in contact with the technical people in Pleasanton.”

The policeman's radio crackled and he pressed it to his ear. “Garcia.”

“Central dispatch here, captain. We have another disturbance at 99th and Amsterdam. A large assembly of people are on their knees praying in the middle of the street, and they're blocking the intersection.”

“Mother of God. Okay, I'll be there as soon as I can.”

“More trouble?” Spillman asked.

“I have a feeling this is going to be a day to…” He didn't finish the thought.

“A day to what?” Amanda asked. “What are you saying, captain?”

“Judgment Day,” Garcia said, almost in a whisper, “when we find out who we are.”

Outside, a siren shrieked as an ambulance carried away another casualty. Amanda burst into tears.

“Don't worry,” Denise consoled her. “We've been through the worst. It's over.”

“Oh, no,” Amanda wailed. “Don't you understand? It's just starting.”

“Go home, both of you,” Spillman said. “There's nothing you can do here now.”

Amanda shook her head. “How? There's no way I'm getting on a train with all those disgusting people.”

“Look,” Spillman said. “Go to my house. Denise, get a cab. I'll call Shirley and let her know you're coming. She's home today. All right?”

“I'll take Amanda to my house,” Denise said. “I want to go home to my kids. Let's go, Amanda. It'll be all right.”

“No,” she said, her voice rising. “Nothing will ever be the same again.”

Amanda dropped her glass, ran downstairs, stumbled, picked herself up and rushed toward the front of the store. Denise and Spillman were right behind, trying to stop her.

“Amanda, wait!”

It was no use. Amanda ran out of the store, pushed through the crowd on the sidewalk and disappeared.

Spillman saw media vans pulling up in front of the store and stopped short of the doors. “Let her go, Denise,” he said. “Stay inside. We don't want to be on TV on the day the world is falling apart.”

In the back of the store, the automatic sprinklers came on in the produce department. Looking fresh and delicious, the lettuce was lost in cyberspace and would rot on the shelves. Spillman rolled up his sleeves and went looking for the hand-valve to shut off the spray.

*   *   *

On the far side of the globe, the millennium bug was approaching the most densely populated regions of Asia. Unlike Russia, all of China occupied one time zone, and huge celebrations were scheduled at the Great Wall. Illuminated along its 1200-mile length, the wall was visible from space, and a gigantic digital clock set in the wall just north of Beijing was counting down the minutes. The Great Wall, like the wooden barricade that once ran along Wall Street, had been built to stop alien invaders from reaching the Forbidden Palace. It didn't work in the 14th Century, and wouldn't help in the 21st, either.

8

Looking over the crowd outside the Safeway, Garcia noticed that the usual I've-seen-it-all-before-so-what New York attitude was missing. Everyone appeared glazed and shocked, a rare thing on the island of Manhattan. He stuck his nose in the air and sniffed. Like every city, New York has a unique smell, and Manhattan had always smelled like ozone, salt and sweat. Garcia recognized another odor. He smelled fear.

An invisible enemy was approaching his city, and a fifth column of terror was already loose and attacking from within. He'd seen this before. As an eighteen-year-old Marine, he'd witnessed the fall of Saigon. In those last, terrible days he'd seen panic sweep over a great city and compress a million individual traumas into a single, incomprehensible conflagration. Fear makes people run when there is nowhere to go, sometimes trampling their own children. Desperation creates instant heroes and accidental villains, rends the social fabric and makes a policeman's job impossible.

Garcia decided not to make a statement about the Safeway, but before he could find his driver, microphones and cameras were thrust in his face. The cameras were rolling, and he knew some of the feeds were going out live. Eschewing the grim face the public expected from police officials, he smiled and waved at several reporters he recognized while trying to inch toward his car.

“Where's the store manager?”

Continuing to smile, Garcia said, “He doesn't have time for you fine people, either. He's busy cleaning up his market.”

“What happened here, Captain?” came the first shouted question.

“You'll have to excuse me,” he said, “but I don't have time to chat.”

“How many people were hurt?”

“Four, I think, but I'm not sure.”

“Was this caused by computers?”

“How many arrested?”

He gave in and patiently answered their questions.

*   *   *

One hundred blocks south, Donald Copeland had just entered the steamy reception room of his favorite massage parlor on Mott Street in Chinatown. Copeland treated sex like everything else, as a business transaction. In moments of great stress, when his mind descended to his genitals, he dealt with his libido efficiently and in great haste.

“You wan' massah?” queried the Chinese madam who knew him well.

Behind her, three young Chinese massage girls were watching TV, and without warning Copeland found himself watching the aftermath of the Safeway riot. Holy shit, he thought, his friend Jonathon Spillman was the manager of the store.

“Crazy people wreck supahmahket,” said Madam Wo. “New Yawk crazy town.”

On screen a cop was talking to a crowd of reporters, and he realized the policeman being interviewed was another of his breakfast buddies, Ed Garcia.

“All I know is that the store's computers went down and the checkers couldn't handle the long lines,” Garcia was saying. “People went nuts.”

“Captain Garcia, we're getting reports that all the computers in the entire Safeway grocery chain have crashed. Do you have any comment on that?”

“No, I don't know anything about that. I'm sorry. You'll have to excuse me. I have to go.”

Copeland could scarcely believe his ears. It had to be Y2K, but it made no sense. Spillman was a member of Safeway's Y2K oversight team. A smart company, Safeway had spent a fortune to become compliant, and they'd done everything right.

“You wan' massah or you wan' watch TV? TV talk about new disease call millennium bug. You know what it is? Is it like flu?”

“Just a minute,” he said to Madam Wo, whipping out a cellphone. He punched in Spillman's private number, and the store manager answered on the first ring.

“What happened, Jon?”

“I'm tired of answering that question, Donald. I don't know. Safeway is dead, all 1,450 stores.”

“That's impossible.”

“Yeah, right, impossible. I thought so, too. Ed was here, but he's gone. There's another riot somewhere in Harlem.”

“He's on TV right now outside your store. I'm watching him.”

“Shit,” Spillman said. “TV is getting people excited. I think these people who trashed my store saw all that crap on TV before they came in. They were primed. I'm thinking about going home and sitting in my house with a shotgun, you know what I mean?”

“What's wrong, Jonathon? You sound agitated.”

“For Chrissake, Donnie, my store is dead, my company is dead, but across the street Blockbuster Video is doing fine. They have a window display of every disaster movie ever made, and people are going to celebrate New Year's Eve by watching ships sink and comets hit the earth. Not me. I don't have to watch a movie. I just got run over by a freight train.”

“Come downtown. We can have lunch.”

“Are you serious? Lunch? You yuppie bastard. I can't leave. I have to stay on-line with Pleasanton while they try to find out what happened. They got corrupted code from somewhere, but frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. I just sent four people to the hospital. One of my checkers was trampled and the bastards broke his leg. A customer had a heart attack, and God knows what else. Ever seen a riot?”