Step on a Crack (17 page)

A MAKESHIFT MESS HALL for the army of law enforcement had been set up right in the main lobby of Saks Fifth Avenue.

I went in through the revolving doors under the neon snowflakes to grab a quick bite to eat. The Four Seasons restaurant’s recent offer of hostage meals had been rejected by Jack, so they had given the food to us instead. Christmas Muzak blared down from garlanded ceiling speakers as I spooned duck prosciutto and turkey hash onto my daisy plate. It wasn’t the continuing surrealism of the siege situation that was alarming so much as the fact that I was starting to get used to it.

I could hear that the Boys Choir still believed they could fly as I came back out onto the street. I brought my food past the animatronic Santa in Saks’s plate-glass window and back to the trailer. I was on my second bite of tuna tartare when the crisis cell rang on my belt.

What now?
I thought.
What’s your pleasure, Jack? At your service, of course.

“Mike here,” I said.

“How’s it hanging, Mickey?” Jack said. “Cold enough for you? Kind of toasty in here.”

For a moment, I thought of the various strategies I could use. I could go passive or aggressive. Ask some questions to feel out his present mood. I was tired of strategies, though. Jack was the one toying with us, and I was sick of pretending it was the other way around. At this point, I was sick of talking to Jack, period. And it didn’t matter
what
I said, did it?

“Killing the mayor was a mistake,” I said, lowering my plastic fork. “You wanted us to believe you’re a psychopath not to be trifled with? Well, you did a good job. Only that just makes storming in there more of a foregone conclusion. Which, according to you, blows up the cathedral. Which will kill you. Which makes spending all that money kind of hard. So, you really are crazy? Help me out here. I’m having trouble keeping up.”

“So glum, Mick,” Jack said. “It’s like you’re giving up, and it’s only the third quarter. Check it out. You’ve finally started paying. That was good. Real good. Now, all you have to do is come through with the rest of the dough-re-mi. Then it will get real interesting, I promise. How do the bad guys get away with it? So, stick with me here. Reach way down deep. Oh, and by the way, before I forget. There’ll be another celebrity body at midnight.”

“Jack, listen. Don’t do it,” I said. “We can work something…”

“
Shut up
!” Jack yelled.

I immediately stopped talking.

“I’m tired of your bull, my friend,” Jack said. “The delays. The stalling. You guys took your best shot and missed, and now it’s time for you to pay for messing with us. Piss me off a little more and instead of one dead celeb, I’ll make things so bad, Prada will be coming out with a body bag this season.

“You receiving my transmission loud and clear, Mike? I repeat, there will be another famous body at midnight. No more easy ones like the worthless mayor either. I’ve already made my selection. You’ll like this one. Oh, and stop that singing right now, or
I believe I will kill all the female hostages
.”

WITH ANOTHER BLOCK of excruciating downtime in front of us, I grabbed the opportunity to hand over the crisis phone to Ned Mason. Then I headed uptown to see Maeve.

I noticed a change when I came into her room. The sheets were different, flannel, new, and crisp. There was a vase full of fresh flowers, and she was wearing a new bathrobe. They were nice additions, so why did they creep me out?

Maeve was awake, watching CNN, which now had ongoing coverage of the siege. What ever happened to the Yule log? I found the remote and clicked off the set before I took her hand.

“Hey, you,” I said.

“I saw you on the tube,” Maeve said, smiling. “You always look so handsome in that suit. Whose christening did you wear it to? Shawna’s?”

“Chrissy’s,” I said.

“Chrissy,” my wife said with a sigh. “How is my little Peep?”

“She came into the nest the other night,” I said. “I forgot to tell you. I forgot to tell you a lot of things, Maeve. I…”

My wife raised her hand and put her finger to my lips.

“I know,” she said.

“I shouldn’t have been so concerned with my stupid job. I wish…”

She stopped me with a hurt look.

“Please don’t wish,” she said quietly. “It hurts more than cancer. I knew full well how dedicated you were to your job when we first met. It was one of the reasons I married you. I was so proud, seeing you speak to the press. My God. You were inspiring.”

“Who do you think inspires me?” I said, tearing up.

“No, not on these nice new sheets. Wait. I have your present.”

We always exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve, usually around 3:00 a.m., after putting together a bike or train set or some other god-awful toy.

“Me first,” I said, taking a wrapped box out of the bag I had stashed in the trunk of my car. “Allow me.”

I tore off the paper and showed Maeve the portable DVD player and the stack of DVDs I’d gotten her. The movies were old black-and-white noirs, Maeve’s favorites.

“So you don’t have to constantly watch the idiot box,” I said. “Look,
Double Indemnity
. I’ll sneak us up some Atomic Wings. It’ll be just like old times.”

“How awesomely devilish of you,” Maeve said. “Now mine.”

She produced a black velvet jewelry box from under her pillow and handed it to me. I opened the box. It was an earring. A single gold hoop. I used to wear one back in the late “Guns N’ Roses” eighties when we first met.

I started to laugh. Then both of us were laughing hard, and it was wonderful.

“Put it in. Put it in,” Maeve cried through her laughing fit.

I maneuvered the earring into the latent hole of my left ear. Miraculously, after nearly two decades, it slipped right in.

“How do I look? Totally tubular?”

“Like a well-dressed pirate,” my wife said, wiping a rare happy tear from her eye.

“Arrrrrrr, matey,” I said, burying my face in her neck.

I backed away when I felt her stiffen. Then I shuddered at the distant look in her eyes. Her breathing became irregular, as if she was hyperventilating without any hesitation. I blasted the nurse’s button half a dozen times.

“I’ve spilled the water from the spring, Mother,” I heard my wife say in the Irish accent she’d fought so hard to erase. “The lambs are all in the ditch, every last one.”

What was happening? Oh God no, Maeve! Not today, not now-not ever!

Sally Hitchens, the head of the Nursing Department, came rushing in. She shined a light into Maeve’s eye and reached under her robe for her pain pack.

“Doctor upped her meds this morning,” Sally said. Maeve closed her eyes when the nurse put her hand on her forehead. “We have to watch her closely until she adjusts. Can I speak to you a second, Mike?”

I KISSED the top of my wife’s head and followed Sally out into the hall. The nurse looked directly into my eyes. Bad sign. I quickly thought of the unsettling difference in my wife’s room. The nice new sheets. The fresh flowers. Some kind of preparations were being made.

No. Not acceptable.

“We’re getting very close to the end now, Mike,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“How long?” I said, looking at the hall carpet first, then back up at Sally.

“A week,” the nurse said gently. “Probably less.”

“A week?” I said. Even I knew I sounded like a spoiled child. It wasn’t the nurse’s fault. The lady was an angel of mercy.

“Impossible as it is, you have to prepare yourself,” Sally said. “Didn’t you read the book I gave you?”

She’d given me Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous book
On Death and Dying
. It described the stages in the death process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

“I guess I’m stuck in the anger part,” I said.

“You’re going to have to unstick yourself, Mike,” the nurse said, annoyed. “Let me tell you something. I’ve seen some cases in this place that, I’m ashamed to say, haven’t affected me all that much. Your wife is not one of those cases. Maeve needs you to be strong now. It’s time to deal. Oh, and Mike, love your earring.”

I closed my eyes and felt my face flush red with anger and embarrassment as I heard the nurse walk off. There was something unending about the pain I felt pass through me then. It seemed incredibly powerful, as if it would burst out of my chest like a bomb blast, stop the world, stop all life everywhere.

It passed after a moment when I heard someone in one of the other rooms click on a TV.

Apparently not, I thought as I opened my burning eyes and headed for the elevators.

I CALLED HOME on my cell phone as I left the hospital and hurried toward my car. Julia picked up.

“How’s Mom?” she said.

In homicide interrogations, sometimes it takes lying very convincingly in order to extract a confession. At that moment, I was glad I’d had some practice.

“She looks great, Julia,” I said. “She sends her love. To you, especially. She’s so proud of the way you’ve been taking care of your sisters. So am I, by the way.”

“How are you, Dad?” Julia said. Was that static or extremely mature concern in my baby’s voice? I remembered that she’d be heading to high school next year. How the heck had my little girl grown up without me noticing?

“You know me, Julia,” I said into my cell. “If I’m not actually freaking out, I guess I’m doing pretty good.”

Julia laughed. She’d been front row center for my classic comedy,
Dad Meltdowns
.

“Remember that time when everyone was fighting on the way to the Poconos, and you told me to ‘close my eyes and look out the window’?” Julia said.

“I wish I could forget it,” I said with a laugh. “How are things in the barracks?”

“There’s quite a line behind me, waiting to tell you,” she said.

As I drove through the cold city streets, I spoke briefly to each of my kids, telling them how much their mother and I loved them. I apologized for not being there for their pageant or Christmas Eve. I’d missed holidays working cases before, but there was never a time when neither Maeve nor I had been there. As usual, the kids were taking things in stride. Chrissy was sniffling when she got on the line.

Uh-oh. What now
? I thought.

“What is it, honey cub?” I said.

“Daddy,” Chrissy said, sobbing, “Hillary Martin said Santa can’t come to our apartment because we don’t have a fireplace. I want Santa to come.”

I smiled with relief. Maeve and I fortunately had heard this lament at least twice before and had devised a solution.

“Oh, Chrissy,” I said into the phone with mock panic. “Thank you so much for reminding me. When Santa comes to New York City, because people in a lot of apartments don’t have fireplaces, he lands his sleigh on the roof of the building and comes down the fire escape. Now, Chrissy, do me a real big favor, okay? Tell Mary Catherine to make sure the window in the kitchen is unlocked. Can you remember that?”

“I’ll tell her,” Chrissy said breathlessly.

“Wait a second. Wait, Chrissy,” I said, turning up the police radio under my dash. “Oh, wow! I just got an official report from our police helicopter. Santa’s approaching New York City right now. Quick! Get to bed, because you know what happens if Santa shows up and children are awake, right?”

“He keeps going,” Chrissy said. “Bye, Daddy.”

“Mr. Bennett?” came Mary Catherine’s voice from the receiver a few seconds later.

“Hi, Mary,” I said. “Where’s Seamus? He should have relieved you by now.”

“He did. He’s holding court in the living room with
’Twas the Night Before Christmas
.”

Reading that story had always been my job, but I felt more gratitude than sadness. Despite the negatives, my grandfather Seamus was a wonderful storyteller and wouldn’t hesitate to do anything to make sure the kids were getting the best Christmas they could under the awful circumstances. At least my kids were safe, I thought. They were surrounded by angels and saints. I wished the same could be said for me, but the job I’d chosen often involved the sinners.
The very worst of them
.

“Please, Mary. Feel free to get out of there,” I said. “And thank you so much for picking up all the slack. When this craziness at the cathedral is over, we’ll sit down and figure out a sane schedule.”

“I’m glad I could help. You have a wonderful family,” Mary Catherine said. “Merry Christmas, Mike.”

I was speeding south past the wreath-and-holly-decked Plaza Hotel when she said it, and for a second, I wanted to believe that it could be. Then in the distance down Fifth, I spotted the harsh glow of the siege tinting the black sky.

“Talk to you later,” I said, and snapped my phone shut.

IN THE DARK CONFESSIONAL, Laura Winston lay curled on the cramped floor, sweating and shivering.
The most fashionable woman on the planet
, she thought,
is in desperate need of a makeover
.

In the twenty hours she’d been confined, she’d drifted in and out of consciousness. But ever since the dim light had retreated from the stained-glass skylight above her, six or seven hours ago, she’d been completely and atrociously awake with the fever and pain of withdrawal.

It was around noon when she had noticed her reflection in the polished brass kick plate of the door. Makeup eroded by tears and sweat, honey-blond razor cut flecked with vomit. At first Laura thought she was staring at some kind of religious carving, the image of a deranged, skeletal demon triumphantly slain by an angel. She recalled the last lines of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Mirror
”
as she lay there, unable to look away from the terrible image.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman / Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish
.

It had taken a kidnapping, a violent ordeal of historic proportions to do it, but now, finally, she realized the truth.

She was
old
.

And she’d actually hurt people, hadn’t she? Laura thought. Women especially. Month after month after month in her magazine she’d perpetuated the hurtful myth of eternal chicness and supposedly attainable beauty. Draped impossibly expensive clothes on fourteen-year-old genetic freaks and called it normal, then implied to her readers that if they didn’t look like them, they were worthless, or at least not living up to their potential.

When she got out of this,
if she did
, she was going to change, she decided. Pack it in. Go to a good rehab facility. Downsize. Instead of building an empire, she was going to establish a charitable foundation. Insane as it was, this awful experience had fundamentally changed her for the better.

Give me one last chance, Lord.
The fashionista prayed for the first time since she was a little girl.
At least give me the chance to change
.

It felt like something tore inside her ear when the gun went off just outside the confessional door.

When the ringing subsided, she could hear people screaming. The sulfurous stench of cordite wafted under the door and mixed with the sour smell of her vomit.

Her breath jammed in her throat as she heard a muffled curse and a body being dragged past her door.

God have mercy. They’d shot somebody else!

Laura felt her heart wallop against her chest.

Who could it have been? Who? Why? She hoped it wasn’t Eugena, who had been so kind to her.

The hijacking wasn’t really about money, was it? Laura concluded with numb horror. One by one, they’d be taken off to slaughter. Made to pay for their stupid, decadent sins.

She was running out of time.
I’m next
, Laura thought with a dry heave.