“D-di-did these children come to school today?” he stammered.
“What? Let go of me this instant! You can’t do this! Who are you?”
“Listen to me!” Francis yelled. He took the silenced Beretta from his waistband and put it to her head.
“Did these children come to school today?” he said again.
The old woman started to cry when she saw the gun.
“Please!” she shrieked as she tried to pull away. She’d closed her eyes and was really blubbering now. “No, please. Why do you want those students? Don’t hurt me! What are you doing?”
Damn it, Francis thought, shaking her. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
He turned at a soft rushing noise behind him. It was the door. Francis saw Coach Webb standing there, wide-eyed.
“What in the name of Holy God are you doing?” the coach said.
Francis let go of the woman. His mouth dropped open as he met his old teammate’s eyes. Caught. Holy shit. Caught.
His body and mind seemed to arrest simultaneously. He felt like his breath had been knocked out of him. The gun suddenly felt unbelievably heavy in his hand.
It was over. He was too weak. He knew it. He shouldn’t even be up on his feet at this point. Where was he now? Stage four? Deep stage four. He was a very sick man, a weak, dying old man. He should be in a hospital bed over at Sloan-Kettering.
“Put it down, Francis,” Coach Webb said. “Now, man.”
Can you still drive to your left like a banshee, ma man? Francis heard him say again. A quick memory flashed through Francis’s mind. Webb in the gym bathroom doorway, howling as he held the elastic of Francis’s torn tighty whiteys above his head.
He grabbed on to the pulse of hurt and rage that throbbed through him. It was like a second wind. Francis retightened his grip on the pistol. His resolve. He raised the gun.
“How about instead you get in here and close that fucking door, ma man,” he said. The coach looked like he was about to bolt down the hall, but then he shot a look over at Ms. Typing-to-the-Oldies and suddenly obeyed.
Webb was turning back from closing the door when Francis pulled the trigger. The bullet hit him right in his smug power-forward-all-city face. He fell back comically fast, as if he’d slipped on a banana peel. Swoosh! Nothing but net! Francis thought with a chuckle. What did they say at Knicks games again? Whoomp! There it is!
Francis felt amazingly focused as he turned back to the woman. It was as if someone had turned up the dimmer switch of his energy as far as it would go.
“Did those children come to school today?” he said again clearly and confidently, his best courtroom voice. He knocked her glasses away and placed the warm gun barrel on one of her squinted-shut eyelids.
“Yes,” she said.
The woman was weeping silently. Francis suddenly noticed that he was as well.
So much blood and still more to come, he thought. He nodded. It was worth it and then some.
“It was brave of you to try to protect the kids,” Francis whispered lovingly in the old lady’s ear. “But a higher purpose is waiting for them. That’s why I’m here. To deliver unto them the very highest purpose of all.”
Chapter 78
COUGHING IN THE flash-bang grenade smoke, I found a window in Mooney’s kitchen and threw it open.
“Goddang!” Emily rebel-yelled as she laid her pump shotgun on the granite kitchen island. “We missed his ass.”
“Damn it,” I said with disgust.
I loosened one of the Velcro straps on the heavy body armor and sat down next to her. Hostage Rescue had scoured every room on both floors, and there was nothing. No one was home. No Mooney. And even worse, no Dan Hastings.
After a quick call to my boss, I learned that Mooney still hadn’t shown up to work. Which was good in a way, since he just might be looking to kill everyone there. But if not at work, then where was he?
“Where should we toss first?” I said.