"Excuse me:' she said.
"Yes?" he replied in a thick French or French-Canadian accent.
'Tm looking for Mr. Kadesky."
"He is not here. 1 am one of his assistants."
"Where is he?"
"Not here. Who are you?"
"I'm working with the police. Mr. Kadesky met with them earlier. They have some more questions for him."
The young man glanced at her chest, presumably, though not necessarily, looking for ID.
"Dh-huh. Ah. Police. Well, he-'s at dinner. He will be back soon."
"Do you know where he's eating?" she asked.
"No. You'll have to leave. You can't be back here."
"I only need to see him-"
"Do you have a ticket?"
"No, I-"
"Then you can't wait. You must leave. He never said anything about the police."
'Well, I really need to see him," she said firmly to the man with Gallic
good looks and a chill demeanor.
"Really, you must go. You can wait outside for him."
"I might miss him."
'I'll have to call a guard," he threatened in his thick accent. "I will do that."
I'll buy a ticket," she said.
"They're sold out. And even if you could buy one you could not be back here. I will walk you out." He herded her out the main door, where the ticket-takers were now on duty. Outside she paused and pointed over his shoulder toward a trailer on which was a sign, BOX OFFICE. "That's where I could buy a ticket?" A demi-sneer crossed his face. "That's what a box office is. But, as I said, there are no more tickets. You can call Mr. Kadesky's company if you need to ask him something." After he'd gone, Kara waited a moment or two, then turned the comer of the tent and proceeded to the stage entrance in back. She smiled at the security guard and he smiled back, giving only a cursory glance at her belt, where now sat the French-Canadian's employee pass, which she'd easily unhooked from his belt when she'd pointed and asked the foolish, but quite misdirecting, question about the box office.
Now, there's a rule for you, she reflected: Never fuck with somebody who knows sleight of hand.
Inside the backstage portion of the tent once again she hid the badge in her pocket and found a friendlier employee. The woman, Katherine Tunney, nodded sympathetically when Kara explained what she was doing there-that a former illusionist wanted for murder had been identified as someone Mr. Kadesky had worked with a long time ago. The woman had heard about the killings and she invited Kara to wait until the producer returned from dinner. Katherine gave Kara a pass to sit in one of the VIP boxes and then left on another errand, promising that she'd tell the guards to make sure Mr. Kadesky came to see her as soon as he returned.
On her way to the box seat her pager sounded, an urgent beeping. She gasped when she saw the number, ran to a bank of temporary pay phones and, hand shaking, made the call.
"Stuyvesant Manor," the voice said. "Jaynene Williams, please."
A huge wait.
"'Lo?"
"It's me. Kara. Is Mom okay?"
"Oh, she's fine, girl. But I wanted to tell you-don't get your hopes up. It might be nothin'. But a few minutes ago she woke up and asked for you. She knows it's Sunday night and she remembered you coming by earlier."
"You mean, 'me,' the real me?"
"Yep, your real name. Then she gave this little frown and said, 'Unless all she goes by is that crazy stage name of hers, Kara.'"
My God.... Could she be back?
"And she knew me and she asked where you were. Said she wanted to tell you something."
Kara's heart accelerated.
Tell me something...
"Better get over here soon, honey. Might last. But it might not. You know how that goes."
"I'm in the middle of something, Jaynene. I'll get there as soon as I can." They hung up and, frantic, Kara returned to her seat. The tension was unbearable. Right this instant her mother might be asking where her daughter was. Frowning and disappointed that the girl wasn't there.
Please, she prayed, looking again toward the doorway for Kadesky. Nothing.
Wishing she could tap a hickory magic wand on the battered metal railing in front of her, point it at the doorway and materialize the producer. Please, she thought again, aiming the imaginary wand toward the door
way. Please... Nothing for a moment. Then several figures entered. None of them was Kadesky, though. They were just three women dressed in medieval costumes and wearing masks whose forlorn expressions were belied by the buoyant spring in the step of actors about to begin their evening's performance.
Roland Bell was standing in one of the canyons of downtown Manhattan: Centre Street between the grimy, towering Criminal Courts building,
crowned by the Bridge of Sighs, and the nondescript office building across the street from it.
Still no sign of Charles Grady's Volvo.
The lighthouse rotation once again. Where, where, where?
A honk nearby, in the direction of the entrance to the bridge. A shout. Bell turned and jogged a few steps toward the sounds, wondering: Misdirection?
But, no, it was just a traffic dispute.
He turned back, toward the entrance to the Criminal Courts building,
and found himselflooking right at Charles Grady, who was strolling casually up the street, a block away. The prosecutor was walking with his head down, lost in his thoughts. The detective sprinted toward the man, calling, "Charles! Get down! Weir's escaped!"
Grady paused, frowning.
"Down!" Bell called breathlessly.
The alarmed man crouched on the s_dewalk, between two parked cars. 'What happened?" he shouted. "My family!"
'Tve got people with them," the detective said. Then, to the pedestrians:
"Everybody! Police action here! Clear the street!"
People scattered instantly.
"My family!" Grady called desperately. "You're sure?"
"They're fine."
"But Weir-"
"Faked the shooting in detention. He's out and's somewhere around here. I've got an armored van on its way."
Turning again, squinting, surveying the scenery.
Roland Bell finally reached Grady and stood over him, his back to the dark windows of the government office building across the street. "Just stay right where you are, Charles," Bell said. 'We'll get out of this
fine." And pulled his handy-talkie off his belt.
What was this? Hobbs Wentworth watched his target below him-the prosecutor cowering on the sidewalk behind a man in a sportscoat, a cop obviously. The crosshairs of Hobbs's 'scope poked around the officer's back, searching unsuccessfully for an unprotected shot at Grady.
The prosecutor was low, the cop standing. It seemed to Hobbs that ifhe shot through the cop's lower back he'd probably hit Grady in the upper chest, since he was crouching. But the risk was that the shot would be deflected and Grady'd only be wounded and fall to safety behind a car.
Well, he had to do something pretty soon. The cop was talking on his radio. There'd be a hundred more of'em here in a minute. Come on, sharp operator, he said to himself. Whatcha gonna do?
Below him the cop was still looking around, covering Grady, who squatted like a bitch retriever peeing.
All right. What he'd do was shoot the cop in the upper leg, the thigh. That way, most likely, the cop would fall backward, exposing the prosecutor. The Colt was semiauto so he could fire five shots in two seconds. Not perfect but it was the best Hobbs could think of.
He'd give the cop a moment or two longer to step aside or sway out of the way.
Both eyes open as the right one stared through the 'scope, painting the back of the detective with the crosshairs and thinking that when he got back to Canton Falls he'd make up a Bible story about this. Jesus would play his role and would be armed with a kick-ass compound bow, about to ambush a bunch of Roman soldiers, who'd been torturing Christians. Julius Caesar would be hiding behind one soldier and thinking he was safe but Jesus would shoot through the soldier and kill the son-of-a-bitch.
Good story. The kids'd love it.
The cop was still huddled over the prosecutor.
Well, that's it, Hobbs thought, clicking off the safety of the big Colt. No time left. Bum in brimstone, Christ-killing Romans. He centered the crosshairs on the back of the cop's leg and began to apply slow pressure on the trigger, thinking that his only regret was that the officer was white, not black. But one thing Hobbs Wentworth'd learned in life: you take your targets
the way you find 'em.
Chapter Forty
Roland Bell smelled the distinctive plastic/sweat/metal scent of the Motorola handy-talkie as he clutched it to his face.
"ESU Four, you 'bout ready, K?" he drawled into the mike.
"Roger that, K," one of them replied.
"Okay, now-"
Which is when the muffled cracks of multiple shots resounded through the canyon of the street.
Bell jumped.
"Gunshots!" Charles Grady cried. "I heard shots! Are you hit?"
"Just stay down," Bell said as he dropped into a crouch. He spun around,
lifting his gun and squinting hard at the government office building across the street.
He was counting furiously.
"Got the location," he called into the radio. "I make it the third floor,
fifth office from the north end of the building." Then Bell examined the glass. "Ouch."
"Say again, K?" one of the officers called.
"I said, 'Ouch.'"
"Uhm. Roger. Out."
Grady, lying on the sidewalk, said, 'What's going on?" He started to get up.
"Sit tight there," the detective told him, standing up cautiously. Turning
now from the window and scanning the sidewalk around him. There was a possibility that more shooters were nearby. A moment later an armored Emergency Services van pulled up and five seconds after that Bell and Grady were inside, squealing away from the attempted hit and taking the prosecutor back to the Upper East Side and his family.
Bell glanced behind him to see more ESU troopers streaming into the building across the street from the courthouse.
Don't worry.... He'll find us.
Well, he sure as hell had.
Bell had concluded that the best way to try to hit Grady would be from
the office building across the street. It was most likely that the killer would break into one of the lower offices facing the sidewalk. The roof was unlikely because it was monitored by dozens of CClV cameras. Bell had remained in the open as bait because of something he knew about this particular building from the hostage situation he'd run there: the windows, as in many of the newer government buildings here, couldn't be opened and were made from bomb-proof glass.
There'd been a small risk, he supposed, that the shooter would use armor-piercing rounds, which might penetrate the inch-thick glass. But Bell had recalled an expression he'd heard during a case a couple of years ago: "God don't give out certain."
He'd taken the chance ofluring the sniper into shooting, in hopes that
the bullet would spider the window and reveal the man's location. And his idea had worked-though with a variation, as Bell had men
tioned to the ESU team. Ouch....
"ESU Four to Bell. It's Haumann. You were right, K."
"Go ahead, K."
The tactical commander continued, 'We're inside. Scene is secure. Only what do they call those? The Darwin Awards? You know, where criminals do stupid things, K?"
"Roger that," Bell responded. 'Where'd he hit himself, K?"
Bell had spotted the shooter's location not because of cracked glass but because of a large spatter of blood on the window. The ESU chief explained that the copper-jacketed slugs that the man had fired toward Bell had ricocheted off the glass, shattered and struck the shooter himself in a half-dozen places, most significantly his groin, where they apparently severed a large artery or vein. The man had bled out by the time the ESU team had made its way to the office.
"Tell me it's Weir, K," Bell said.
"Nup. Sorry. It's somebody named Hobbs Wentworth. Address, Canton Falls." Bell scowled angrily. So Weir and maybe others working with him were still around. He asked, "Find anything that'll give us a clue what Weir's up to or where he might be?" "Negative," said the raspy-voiced commander. "Only his ID. And, get this, a book of Bible stories for kids." There was a pause. "Hate to say it but we got another victim, Roland. He killed a woman to get into the building, looks like.... Okay, we're going to secure the place and keep looking for Weir. Out."
