Step on a Crack (6 page)

THE TWO OF US turned as a cop in a flapping NYPD Windbreaker roared in through the 49th Street cordon on a dusty black Suzuki 750.

“Any contact?” Ned Mason barked at me in greeting as he got off his bike.

I’d worked with Mason briefly before I had left the Negotiation Team. The intense sandy-haired cop was a triathlete and a health nut. A lot of people dismissed him as arrogant and obnoxious, but I knew him to be one of those quirky loner cops who succeeds more by meticulousness and the solitary power of his strong will than teamwork.

“Not yet,” I said.

I started to brief Mason, but an NYPD Communications Division sergeant popped his head out the door of the bus holding a cell phone above his head.

“It’s them!” he said.

Commander Will Matthews joined us as we all rushed inside the bus.

“Write down everything I tell you to,” Mason said to me brusquely. “Don’t miss a word.”

I could see by Mason’s cocky attitude that he hadn’t changed a bit.

“Call came in to nine-one-one. We routed it to here,” a communications tech cop said, offering up the phone. “Who gets this? Which one of you guys?”

Mason snatched the phone out of his hand as Will Matthews and Martelli and myself pulled on headsets so we could listen in.

“Whoever you are,” Mason said into the phone, “listen closely. Listen to me.”

Mason’s voice was powerful, his tone stark and very serious.

“This is the United States Army. What you have done has gone beyond the bounds of governmental negotiation. The president of the United States has signed an executive order, and all normal channels have now been closed. In five minutes’ time, starting now, you will either release the hostages or you will be killed. The only guarantee I will give you is this: If you lay down your weapons right now and let everyone out, you walk away with your lives. This is your one and
only
chance to respond. Tell me now. Are these the last five minutes of your life?”

Mason was making a very bold move, I knew. He was using a controversial strategy, originated by Army Intelligence to end a stand-off by basically scaring the living shit out of the hostage-taker. He’d just gone “all in” on the very first poker hand. If pressure was gasoline, Mason had just dropped a five-thousand-pound daisy cutter.

“If this
asshole
,” a voice replied with equal starkness after a short pause, “isn’t
off
the line in five
seconds
, the former president joins his wife in the afterlife.
Five…
”

I almost felt sorry for Mason when I saw the deep frown cross his face. It had been a risky bluff, one that had completely blown up on him. And it didn’t look like he had a backup plan.

“Four,” the voice said.

Commander Will Matthews stepped forward.

“Mason!” he said.

“Three.”

Mason was clutching the phone; he didn’t seem to be breathing.

And nobody else was doing anything either.

“Two.”

I had been a good negotiator, but I hadn’t done it in three years, and this was a precarious time to dip my toes back into the pool.

But Ned Mason had just crashed and burned, and like it or not, rusty or not, as secondary negotiator, it was my job to step in.

“One.”

I stepped across the bus and pulled the phone out of Mason’s hand.

“HI,” I SAID CALMLY. “My name’s Mike. Sorry about the screwup. The person who spoke to you wasn’t authorized. Disregard everything he said. I’m the negotiator. We will not attack the cathedral. In fact, we don’t want anyone to get hurt. Again, I’m sorry for what just happened. Who am I speaking with, please?”

“On account of the fact that I just jacked this cathedral and everyone in it,” the voice said, “why don’t you call me Jack?”

“Okay, Jack,” I said. “Thanks for talking to me.”

“No problemo,” Jack said. “Do me a favor, Mike, would you? You tell that soldier-of-fortune dickhead who was just on that before he goes Raid on Entebbe on our asses, I got news for him. We have
every
window and door and wall in this place rigged up to a whole lotta C-4 on a multipoint motion-detector laser trigger. He better not breach.

“In fact, he better not let a pigeon shit in a three-mile radius of St. Paddy’s, or everybody on this block is going to be blown to thy will be done kingdom come. In fact, I’d seriously consider moving that NYPD helicopter off the roof if I were you. And I’d do it PDQ.”

I found Commander Will Matthews with my eyes and made a cutting motion toward the roof of the bus. Will Matthews spoke to one of his cop entourage, a radio crackled, and a couple of seconds later, the rotor thump of the helicopter began to fall away.

“Okay, Jack. I got my boss to move the helicopter back. Now, is everybody okay in there? I know we have some older folks who might need medical attention. There were reports of some gunfire. Has anybody been shot?”

“Not yet,” Jack said.

I ignored the provocative response for the time being. Once I bonded a little more, I would try to curtail the threats, get him to speak more reasonably, more calmly.

“You guys need food or water or anything?” I asked.

“We’re good for now,” Jack said. “At this point, I just want to lay two things on you that you need to start wrapping your mind around. You’re going to give us what we want, and we’re going to get away with this.
Say it
, Mike.”

“We’re going to give you what you want, and you’re going to get away with this,” I said without hesitation. Until we had more of an advantage, I needed to get him to accept me as quickly as possible. See me as someone who was willing to give him what he wanted anyway.

“Good boy,” Jack said. “I know it’s a little hard to compute, sitting where you’re sitting, Mike. A little hard to believe. So I just wanted to reach out and plant the seed there. Because it’s gonna happen. No matter how hard you try to resist. No matter how much you tough guys huff and puff.
We’re going to get away with this
.”

“My job is to make sure we all come out of this in one piece. Including you, Jack. I want you to believe that.”

“Aww, Mike, what a sweet thing to say. Oh, and don’t forget.
It’s already over, okay
? We win. Smell you later,” the hijacker said-and the line went dead on me.

“WHAT’S YOUR TAKE on these guys, Mike?” Mason suddenly found his voice again.

I was about to try to answer, but being the closest to the command center window, I was the first to see the movement at the front of the cathedral.

“Wait a second,” I said. “The doors are opening.
The front door
! Something’s going down.”

The crackle of frantic radio calls ricocheted through the cop-filled trailer like one of my kids’ dime-store bouncy balls.

At first I could only make out the dimness of the church’s interior. Then a man in a torn blue dress shirt appeared in the doorway. He was blinking in the pale sunlight as he stepped onto the flagstone plaza.

Who was this? What was happening?

“I have him,” I heard one of the snipers call over the police band.

“Hold fire!” Will Matthews called back.

A woman in a broken-heeled shoe hobbled out behind the man in the blue shirt.

“
What the…
,” Will Matthews said as a thin stream, then a flood of people started pouring out onto the cathedral’s front steps.

Hundreds, maybe a thousand people, were suddenly swarming out onto Fifth Avenue.

Were the hijackers letting everyone go? The other cops around me seemed as confused as I was.

We stared, silently watching the churchgoers scramble down the front steps. It was an unfathomable mob scene. Uniformed task force cops waded in immediately and guided the people south past the 49th Street barricade.

“Get every detective down here. Robbery, Special Victims, everyone! I want those released hostages identified and interviewed,” Commander Will Matthews barked at one of the assistant chiefs.

Then the doors of the cathedral began to close again. What was happening now?

Martelli patted me on the back.

“Nice work, Mike,” he said. “Textbook negotiating. You just saved thousands of lives.”

I appreciated the compliment, but I didn’t think what had just happened had much to do with me.

Maybe the strong-arm tactic Mason used had worked after all. Or they’d lost their nerve.

The whole thing was so utterly
bizarre
.

“Is it over?” Will Matthews asked. “Is that possible?”

There was a communal flinch around the room when the phone I was holding suddenly rang.

“My guess,” I said, “would be no.”

“MIKE,” JACK SAID. “How’s it hanging out there, buddy? People make it to safety okay? Nobody trampled to death, I hope.”

“No, Jack,” I said. “Everybody seems to be okay. Thanks for being reasonable.”

“I’m trying, Mike. Giving it my all. I thought I better clear up any misperceptions, though… now that we’ve tossed back the
small
fish, I’d like to talk about the
whales
we’re still holding on to.”

I glanced out the window and scanned the people who had been released. My God! He was right. Where was former president Hopkins? The mayor of New York? Eugena Humphrey? The A-list people were still inside.
How many of them
?

“To make it easier on everybody, we’re holding thirty-four hostages,” Jack said as if reading my mind. “Celebrities, of course, some
tycoons
, couple of politicians. Get me a fax number, and I’ll send you a list. Along with our requirements. Here’s where things can either get real simple or real complicated, Mike. The choice is entirely up to you guys.”

Things were starting to come into tighter focus now, I realized. It was a stunning kidnapping! The most amazing one ever attempted; nothing even came close to it.

“We’re holding all the chips, Mike. So far, no one’s been hurt. But if you guys want to take this personally and try to sneak in here and take us out, there’s gonna be a bloodbath like this country’s never seen. I mean, all that Mom and Pop Flyover have left is
their celebrities
. It’s the only friggin’ thing we export anymore. Movie stars and pop music, right? Give us what we want, Mike, and this ugly scene will go away. Face it. You’re outdone here.”

It was kind of incredible, but I felt relief. Criminals were horrible, kidnappers especially. But at least we weren’t dealing with terrorists, a mindless force out to kill as many people as possible. You had a shot of taking down people who wanted to come out of a situation alive.

“We want to resolve this thing as much as you do, Jack,” I said.

“That’s actually good to hear, Mike,” Jack said. “Music to my ears. Because I’m giving you and these fat cats the opportunity to haul your asses out of trouble the good old-fashioned American way. I’m going to let you buy your way out.”

JACK DISCONNECTED the second after I gave him the fax number that was handed to me by the communications sergeant. Paul Martelli took off his headphones and crossed the room. He sat down next to me. “You’re doing good, Mike. Cool heads prevail.”

“What’s your take on this guy, Paul?” I asked him. “First reaction, whatever.”

“Well, he’s obviously not mentally disturbed,” Martelli said. “And he sounds confident. Think about it from his side, his point of view. He’s in there surrounded by every cop in the tristate area, and he’s being a wiseass, cracking jokes. I get the feeling that he knows
something
we haven’t figured out yet. I just don’t know what it is. What does ‘Jack’ know that we don’t?”

I nodded. I had that same feeling; I just hadn’t put it into words. And I had no idea what Jack knew.

“We’re probably looking at a hard-core, extremely professional criminal,” Martelli went on. “Plus, some of his references sounded like he knows military tactics.”

“The thing he said about explosives on the windows and doors. You think it’s legit?”

“Looking at the way he’s handled himself so far, I’d say yeah, we have to consider that it’s a real threat. If we breach the building, he blows it up.”

I looked around for Ned Mason. He’d found a seat in the farthest corner of the room. With his failure still hanging heavy in the air, he looked like he was trying to make himself invisible.

“Ned. Tell me,” I said, “why do you think they let all those people go when they could have held on to them? Make any sense to you?”

Mason looked up, maybe surprised that anyone was still talking to him.

“Well, let’s see,” he said, standing and rejoining the group. “Logistics, for one thing. If you don’t need those extra hostages, why keep them around? They could get sick or hurt, and it would be your fault. Or worse, they could resist. Dispersing a crowd is one thing. Controlling one over a long period of time would be tricky. Plus, it follows a pattern that I’m seeing. They ejected the law enforcement people immediately because they knew they might try to fight back.”

Martelli nodded and said, “Also, maybe they thought letting out most of the people would look good for the cameras. You know, let the real people go. Only hold on to the rich. Like a Robin Hood thing. They’re playing to the crowd.”

“Bastards have the angles covered so far, don’t they?” Mason said. “The locale, Midtown Manhattan. How they punched holes through the security. They must have been planning this for months. Maybe years. One monster hit.”

Our coffee cups jumped as my fist hit the counter.
That was it
. What had been bothering me. I couldn’t believe it. The conclusion I’d come to sent a chill through me.

“This whole takedown was choreographed, right? No detail was overlooked. But how the hell can you plan to take over a state funeral without a body. Somehow, they killed Caroline Hopkins.”

GAZING THROUGH the frosted crystalline web of a giant snowflake on the fourth-floor picture window of Saks Fifth Avenue, the Neat Man chuckled down at the street.

Look at all the little assholes scurry, he thought. Replace the piped-in fa-la-la-la- la Christmas crap with some old-timey piano music, and you’d have a live-action version of the Keystone Kops down on Fifth.

Christ, this felt good, he thought. He held a mildly shaking hand out in front of his smiling face. He wouldn’t deny it anymore. He lived for this.

He scrolled through his ready store of violent fantasies. His all-time favorite was the one where he was standing in the middle of Grand Central Station during rush hour. All of a sudden, he would remove something from his jacket. Sometimes it was a samurai sword. Sometimes a chain saw. In his favorite, it was a flamethrower. Talk about shock and awe.

But the real thing was so much better than fantasy, he decided, peering down at the “authorities” and “crisis experts” trying to get up to speed in a hurry.

Now he had real power over real people.

The music suddenly stopped in the perfumed air of the department store. Now what?

“Due to a police emergency, Saks Fifth Avenue is closing. Please make your way to the nearest exit and please remain calm. You are in no danger.”

The Neat Man couldn’t hold back a smile.

Now
they were playing his song.

He’d refined his dark urges, hadn’t he? Transformed them, made them work in his favor.

He was a master.

He removed a Wet-Nap from his pocket. His hands were still shaking a bit as he tore it open, but by the time he was done with his face, he was steady as a rock.

Then he called home-talked to his wife and kids. “I’m fine, Helen. I’m in no danger.”