When Darkness Falls (9 page)

T hings were moving way too fast for Jack to be scared. He was still facedown in the parking lot behind the squad car. The driver-side door was open. The wounded officer was down on one knee, struggling to reach for the radio control and at the same time keep his gun trained on Jack. Jack’s ears were still ringing from the discharge of Falcon’s pistol inside a closed vehicle, but he thought he could hear voices from somewhere across the parking lot. The sound of a car crashing into a building was nothing short of the blast of a bazooka, and it had sent neighbors scurrying out of their apartments and into the street like a swift kick to an anthill.

“You people get back inside!” the cop shouted, but his voice was weak. He tried to stand but couldn’t. He propped himself up, elbow on the running board, groaning in pain as he managed to key the public address system on his vehicle. “Everyone, back inside your homes. You are in extreme danger!”

He dropped the microphone and grasped the radio control. Jack could hear sirens approaching from the north and south-or was it that damn ringing in his ears? No, it was definitely sirens. They were getting louder, closer, with each passing moment.

“Six-one, this is McKenzie,” the officer said into his microphone. Who’s out there?”

“Fernandez,” the reply came back. “Where are you?”

“Biscayne Motor Lodge,” the cop said, his voice fading. “Officer down. I’m hit, too.”

“Hang on, buddy. I’m one minute away.”

“It’s bad. Real bad. Lopez took one in the head. Send a full-crisis team. Got a possible hostage situation.”

“Roger.”

Jack was under orders not to speak, but his silence was helping no one. “Tell him that it’s Pablo Garcia, aka Falcon. The homeless guy who was stalking the mayor’s daughter.”

McKenzie’s breathing grew heavier, as if he were summoning the strength to tell Jack to stay quiet. Or perhaps he was just processing the information. Finally, he keyed his microphone and said, “Tell the chief to send Vince Paulo.”

THE BULLET HAD flown right past Theo’s left ear.

“On the floor!” Falcon shouted. He was holding a young woman as a human shield, her eyes wide with fright. The gun was jammed against her right temple.

It wasn’t the first time Theo had been locked in a stare-down with a gunman, but calculating his next move against a deranged man with an innocent hostage was unlike anything he’d ever faced.

“Down on your belly, now!”

Theo’s mind was awhirl. The guy had a gun. It was obviously loaded. He’d hit two cops already. The chances that he’d miss Theo a second time seemed pretty slim.

Falcon jabbed his finger into the girl’s eye, and she screamed again.

“Okay, okay!” Theo said as he went down on the floor.

Falcon pushed the girl onto the bed, grabbed a ropelike sash from the draperies, and tied her hands behind her back. His movements were quick and efficient, as if he’d done this before. With the gun aimed at Theo’s head, he patted him down for weapons. Theo had none.

“Get up!” said Falcon as he grabbed the girl and pulled her up from the bed. Again, she was his shield. “Everything goes up against the wall,” he told Theo. “The mattresses, the dressers-everything. Right now!”

Theo climbed to his feet and started moving furniture.

“Faster!”

Theo was practically throwing things into place, creating a mountain of debris behind the wall, window, and door that separated them from the police in the parking lot. There wasn’t enough to cover the entire window, and some light from the parking lot seeped into the room through the top of the draperies. When the task was finished, Falcon said, “On your belly!”

This time, Theo didn’t wait for him to savage the girl’s eye. He went down quickly. Falcon came to him and pressed the muzzle of the gun against the back of his skull. Theo could smell gunpowder from the previous rounds. He wondered if this was the end, if Falcon was of the mind that two hostages were more than he could handle.

“Let the girl go,” said Theo. “You don’t need her.”

“Don’t tell me what I need.”

“Seriously. Swyteck can help you.”

“Swyteck can’t do shit.”

“That’s not true. He helped me, and I was on death row.”

“Death row, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“I got news for you, big guy,” Falcon said as the gun barrel burrowed into the nape of Theo’s neck. “We’re all on death row.”

THE NEXT FEW minutes unfolded like a war zone around Jack. At least a dozen squad cars roared up Biscayne Boulevard and positioned themselves around the motel in circled-wagons fashion. An ambulance was right behind them. Two City of Miami cops jumped out of their cars and ran toward Officer Lopez, who lay motionless in the parking lot. A quick round of gunfire from room 103 turned them back and sent them scurrying for cover behind their vehicles. Another squad car squealed across the parking lot and stopped between the downed officer and the motel to create a shield. On hands and knees, a paramedic crawled toward Officer Lopez. Thirty feet away, closer to the street, another paramedic hurried toward Officer McKenzie. Jack watched it all unfold from a worm’s-eye view, his cheek flat on the asphalt.

Another officer rushed to McKenzie’s side. The name tag on his breast pocket said D. SWANN. “Where you hit, Brad?”

“The shoulder,” he said. “There’s innocents inside that building. You guys have to hold your fire. How’s Lopez?”

“Don’t know. Paramedic is with him now.”

With a jerk of his head, he pointed toward Jack. “This guy was driving the car that crashed into the building. Could be dangerous.”

“I’m not dangerous, I was carjacked,” said Jack.

“I’ll take care of it from here,” said Swann.

The paramedics placed McKenzie on a gurney, and the ambulance whisked him away. Swann patted Jack down, but before he reached Jack’s wallet, he said, “You’re Jack Swyteck, aren’t you? Governor Swyteck’s son.”

“Yes. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you guys. That’s my client in there with-” He stopped, his chain of thought broken by another round of gunfire.

Swann keyed his microphone. “Hold your fire!” He looked at Jack and said, “What’s your client armed with?”

“Handgun.”

“Pistol or revolver?”

“Pistol, I think.”

“How many ammunition clips?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s his name?”

“Pablo Garcia. He goes by Falcon.”

Swann keyed his public address system. “Falcon. This is the City of Miami Police Department. You are surrounded. Please, just calm down, and hold your-”

The crack of gunfire sent him diving to the pavement. For a split second, Jack thought Swann had been hit, but he was just taking cover. “That’s one pissed-off client you’ve got there, counselor.”

“No kidding. What you need is a trained negotiator.”

“Got one on the way.”

“Good,” said Jack. “Tell him to hurry.”

A t twelve-forty a.m. Alicia dug her ringing cell phone out of her purse and checked the display. It was Renfro, the chief of police. She and Vince were still seated at their outdoor table, talking and listening to music. Alicia plugged one ear with her finger to silence the sounds of the nightclub and took the call. The chief gave her a quick update on Falcon and the possible hostage crisis.

“Where are they?” asked Alicia.

“Biscayne Motor Lodge. You know it?”

“Of course.” Any cop who knew anything about twenty-dollar prostitutes and petty drug deals knew the Biscayne Motor Lodge. “Anyone hurt?”

“Two officers down. Juan Lopez and Brad McKenzie.”

“How bad?”

“McKenzie called for backup. Lopez-It was a headshot.”

“Is he…”

“Yeah, he’s dead.”

“God, no. His wife just had a baby.”

Vince said, “What’s wrong?”

The emotion in Alicia’s voice was more than enough to signal that it was something serious. She reached across the table and touched his hand, as if to say “Just a sec.”

“You’re shaking,” he said.

She wasn’t sure that she was, but Vince had definitely picked up some sign of her distress. Nothing cut through cops like the loss of their own.

The chief continued, “I know that Paulo has pretty much settled on the idea that teaching at the academy is the right place for him, long-term. But he and this Falcon have a history. He at least has that much going for him to start up a dialogue. Do you think-”

“I’d bet my badge on it,” said Alicia.

“Talk to him first. You’ll know what to say to him. Then have him call me.”

“Will do.” After a quick good-bye, Alicia hung up and laid a twenty-dollar bill on the table to cover the last round of drinks. “We have to go, Vince.”

Vince handed the money back to her and opened his own wallet. The bills were folded differently, according to denomination-singles lengthwise, fives widthwise, and so on. He unfolded two tens and laid them on the table. “You bought the first round,” he said.

“Thanks, but we really have to go.”

“What is it?”

“Not good,” she said. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

Ten minutes later, they were speeding across the Julia Tuttle Causeway on their way to the mainland and the Biscayne Motor Lodge. Cruise ships in the Port of Miami lit up the bay like floating hotels. To the west was the Miami skyline, a jagged assortment of modern skyscrapers bathed in a rainbow of colored spotlights. Alicia gave Vince all the details, and the chief’s proposition was hanging in the silence between them.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Vince.

Alicia changed lanes to get around a truck. “All you have to do is talk to the guy. He knows you.”

“Talking a homeless guy down from a bridge is one thing. But we’re dealing with a clinically paranoid gunman holed up in a hotel room with at least one hostage, possibly more. That leaves zero margin for error.”

“It’s a phone call, Vince.”

“No, it’s a hostage negotiation. Slight difference.”

“Do you really think that’s beyond your capabilities?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think someone else can do it better?”

“How can I know, damn it?”

“Don’t get testy about it. Just take this for what it is-a vote of confidence from the chief of police.”

He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You just don’t understand.”

“No, I probably don’t. Tell me.”

“I’m so tired of the extremes.”

“How do you mean?”

“People either pity me to death and think that I can’t possibly manage a minute of my life without a sighted person holding my hand, or they think I’ve been magically transformed into some kind of blind mystic with extrasensory powers. Well, that’s not the way it is. I’ve been using my white stick for six months, and I still on occasion walk straight into a lamppost; my sense of smell does not rival a bloodhound’s; and even if Bruce Willis and M. Night Shyamalan were sitting right next to me, I could not see dead people. It’s just plain old me, get it? I’m not helpless, but I’m not a blind Superman, either. I’m just a regular guy who’s doing a pretty decent job of making my life a little better from one day to the next.”

Alicia kept her focus on the string of orange taillights ahead of her. With the old Vince, she would have pressed harder. The new Vince was more complex, and maybe he had a point. She was probably as guilty as the next person, assuming that any man who lost his sight could suddenly sniff out an apple from across the room or pick up body rhythms over the telephone. Granting Vince those little pluses, at least in her own mind, helped her deal with the enormity of his loss. “You’re right. This isn’t my decision. It’s yours.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She glanced to her right. His head was turned away from her, as if he were looking out the passenger window. He wasn’t, of course. It was all about body language, a signal that the discussion was over. It was the kind of behavior that she would never have let the old Vince get away with, and Alicia wasn’t going to start now, simply because he was blind. “Just get the negotiations started, all right? If you don’t feel comfortable, then pass if off to someone else.”

He didn’t answer.

“Vince, please. If you say no to the chief this time, there’s not going to be a next time.”

There was still no reply.

“Damn it, Vince. What do you want to teach at the academy? How to be a quitter?” She worried that she might be hitting below the belt, but after a minute or so, her words seemed to have the desired impact.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll get it started.”

She wished that he could see how proud she was of him. Instead, she reached across the console and squeezed his hand, and they rode the rest of the way in silence to the Biscayne Boulevard exit.

B iscayne Boulevard was completely shut down, both north and south, for as far as Jack could see. Eerie was the mood on a normally busy street that was suddenly deserted, particularly at night, with the swirl of police lights coloring the neighborhood. Jack hadn’t seen Miami’s main boulevard so empty since Hurricane Andrew ripped through South Florida. It made the arrival of the SWAT transport vehicles even more dramatic. There were two of them, one from the City of Miami, and the other from the Miami-Dade Police Department. Rather ominously, another ambulance trailed right behind them, just in case.

Jack prayed that Theo wouldn’t be the one to need it.

Jack was standing in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant, across the street and down a few hundred yards from the Biscayne Motor Lodge. Law enforcement was setting up a makeshift command post right outside the restaurant. Its location was strategic-close, but not too close, to the motel-and a ready source of burgers, fries, and coffee certainly didn’t hurt.

The wound on the side of Jack’s head was no longer oozing blood. One of the paramedics had cleaned and bandaged it, and Jack declined a trip to the hospital. After some forty-five minutes, the ringing in his ears had finally subsided. Discharging a firearm inside a closed vehicle was definitely not something he would recommend to friends.

The SWAT vehicles and the ambulance rolled up through the drivethru lane and parked alongside the restaurant. Moments later, a large motor van bearing the blue, green, and black logo of Miami-Dade Police Department arrived. The antennae protruding from the roof signified that it was equipped with all the necessary technical gadgets to survey the situation and make contact with the hostage-taker. The rear doors to the SWAT vans flew open, and the tactical teams filed out. They were armed with M-16 rifles and dressed in black SWAT regalia, including helmets, night-vision goggles, and flak jackets. They appeared ready-eager, in fact-to go on a moment’s notice.

A uniformed officer led Jack to the City of Miami police van and introduced him to Sergeant Chavez, the crisis-team leader. “Wait right here,” said Chavez. “I definitely need to talk to you.” He turned and went directly to the crisis-team leader from MDPD. Almost immediately, Chavez and the MDPD officer were embroiled in a heated discussion, as if the face-to-face confrontation were a mere continuation of an argument they’d been conducting by telephone or radio. Jack couldn’t hear their conversation, but he knew a turf war when he smelled one.

Fortunately, the men and women in the field weren’t quite so paralyzed. Jack watched as they moved from building to building, door to door, making sure that no one in the neighborhood ventured out onto the street. A helicopter whirred overhead-low enough for Jack to read the Action News logo on the side.

“Too close!” shouted Chavez, this time speaking in a voice that Jack and everyone else could hear. “Get them to back off-now!”

Another officer picked up a loudspeaker and told the intruding chopper to mind the restricted air space. It seemed to have no effect.

For several minutes, Chavez and the MDPD officer continued to haggle for control of the situation. Two fully armed and outfitted tactical teams awaited instructions, doing exactly what many believed to be the true meaning of the SWAT acronym: sit, wait, and talk. Jack was losing his patience. The motel had been silent for almost fifteen minutes, since the last exchange of gunfire. Jack could only speculate as to Theo’s condition, but he knew one thing for certain: Falcon was still alive and in control. The gunfire had told him as much. The best Jack could hope for was that Theo was now a hostage. He didn’t want to consider the worst.

Jack approached Chavez and the MDPD officer. It was time to settle their differences. “Who’s in charge here?” said Jack.

“I am,” they said in unison.

“Who are you guys?” said Jack.

Chavez reintroduced himself. The other man said, “Sergeant Peter Malloy, crisis-team leader, Miami-Dade Police Department. Who are you?”

Chavez said, “This is Jack Swyteck. He’s a criminal defense lawyer.”

Malloy’s expression soured, as if Chavez had just said, “He’s a pedophile who teaches kindergarten.”

Jack said, “That’s my client in there, Pablo Garcia. Homeless guy who calls himself Falcon. He was out on bail after climbing up the Powell Bridge.”

Chavez said, “He’s got a thing for the mayor’s daughter, who also happens to be a City of Miami police officer. That means I got one cop dead, one wounded, and one stalked. That’s three good reasons for me to be in control here. How many do you got, Malloy?”

“Dozens. I got a tactical team, a negotiating team, a traffic-control team, a communications team, and supervisors to control their actions. And unlike you folks at the city, we’re trained to do this full-time.”

Jack was about to slap them. “Hey, I got the best reason of all to be here. His name’s Theo Knight. He’s the hostage. And he’s my best friend.”

That silenced them for a moment, but the sound of his own words seemed to hit Jack hardest of all. As long as he’d known Theo, and as much as it felt true, Jack wasn’t sure he’d ever used those words before-“He’s my best friend.”

“Might be a woman in there, too,” Jack added. “I heard a scream when Falcon went into the next room. Theo went in after her. That’s when the standoff started.”

Malloy glanced toward the motel. Spotlights had been rigged up on the rooftop of the office building directly across the street. Two powerful beams of light cut through the night, one trained on the door to room 103; the other, on the demolished room 102 and Jack’s car. Malloy said, “That your vehicle?”

“Yeah.”

“How the hell-”

The ring of Jack’s cell phone brought the conversation to an abrupt halt. Jack quickly checked the display. The number made his heart thump. He’d dialed Theo’s cell phone several times in the past half-hour, only to get no answer. Now, a call was coming back. “It’s Theo’s cell phone.”

“Answer it,” said Chavez.

“Wait,” said Malloy as he handed Jack a Dictaphone.

Jack held it to his phone, pressed RECORD, and then hit the talk button. “Theo?”

“Oh, that’s funny, Swyteck.”

It was Falcon. Jack said, “Where’s Theo?”

“He’s, uh…Let’s just say he can’t come to the phone right now.”

“You son of a bitch. If you-”

“Don’t bore me with threats, Swyteck.”

Jack struggled to quell his anger. Self-control was the key to dealing with the clinically paranoid. Particularly when they were well armed. “All right, let’s both of us just take a deep breath here. If anybody’s hurt-you, Theo, anybody-let’s take care of him okay? Do you need a doctor?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I just want to make sure everyone’s okay, that’s all.”

“Kiss my ass. I want to deal.”

“Good. There’s a negotiator right here with me.”

“I don’t want a negotiator. Tell the cops they can go to hell. Even Vince Paulo screwed me over on that bridge, and we go way back, long before he was blind.”

“Could be different this time. You’re holding the cards now.”

“Damn right I am. That’s why I’m giving you this chance. You got one shot to show me you’re the man.”

“What do you want?”

“You can start by returning the money you stole from me.”

“I didn’t steal-”

“Stop right there!” he shouted.

Jack was silent. It was impossible to tell over the telephone, but Jack could almost see Falcon biting back his rage, fighting to keep control. Falcon’s voice lowered, but it was still tight with anger. “I don’t want no excuses. No denials. Bring me my money. That’s the demand. Got it?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“No. I said, ‘Do you got it?’”

Jack hesitated. “I want to talk to Theo.”

“No way.”

“Tell me who else is in there with you.”

There was a click on the line. It wasn’t a hang-up. It sounded more like the hammer cocking on Falcon’s pistol. “One more time, Swyteck: Do you got it?”

Jack took the warning to heart. “Yeah. I got it.”

“Good. As soon as the money’s here, we can talk about my other demands.”

“What other demands?”

“You’ll see. This is going to get very interesting.”

“This is not a game, Falcon.”

“Couldn’t agree more. This is very serious business.”

“Then cut the crap. Tell me what you want.”

“I got a better idea. Just ask Vince Paulo. He knows what I want. Problem is, I don’t trust him to give it to me no more. Which means it’s all on your shoulders. So bring me that money, and we can talk. But don’t take too long. The battery on your friend’s phone won’t last forever. And when it dies…” His voice trailed off, and the ensuing silence seemed interminable.

“You still there?” said Jack.

“Yeah. Come on, man. I’m waiting. Fill in the blank. When the battery dies…”

Jack didn’t want to say it, but this wasn’t a fight worth picking. “Theo dies.”

Falcon gave him a mirthless chuckle. “Wrong again, genius. Everybody dies.”

The line disconnected. Jack stood frozen for a moment, thinking the kind of thoughts that were anything but helpful in a crisis of this magnitude. An hour earlier, he and Theo were on their way to South Beach. Now, one cop was dead, another was in the hospital, Theo was a hostage, and Falcon was calling the shots. Add to that the unidentified woman’s body in Falcon’s trunk, and it was almost too much to comprehend. Jack closed his flip phone and dabbed away a drop of blood from the bandaged wound at his temple.

The crisis-team leaders were watching him, their expressions filled with anticipation. Sergeant Chavez said, “Well, what’s the word?”

He looked at Chavez, then at the crisis-team leader from MDPD. “I think you’ve just been fired.”

“Who’s fired?” said Chavez.

“All of you,” he said, gesturing toward the SWAT vans. “Except for me and Vince Paulo.”