Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

SINNERS

Chapter 18

A LOW WHISTLE escaped through my teeth as I pulled my department-issued blue Impala up to the barricade thrown across Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street. I hadn’t seen so many cops out in front of the landmark church since the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Only instead of goofy tam-o’-shanters, shamrocks, and smiles, they were wearing black steel ballistic helmets, automatic weapons, and deadly serious frowns.

I showed my shield to a sergeant by one of the blue-and-white sawhorses. She directed me to the mobile command center, a long white bus parked across the street from the cathedral. The sergeant told me to park in front of the Sanitation Department dump trucks that blocked up Fifth next to the 51st Street barricade.

Two barricades, I thought. Mobile command centers. This was no single homicide for sure. This was a disaster in the making.

As I got out of my car, a jackhammer throbbing sounded, and I looked up as a police helicopter swung out from behind Rockefeller Center and hovered low over the cathedral. Dust and coffee cups and newspaper pages spiraled up in the rotor wash as a sniper in the helicopter’s open door scanned the stained glass and stone spires over the barrel of a rifle.

I took my eyes off the helicopter when I almost walked into a famous, controversial radio host who, for some reason, was holding court on the street in front of the inner barricade. “What in the hell did those friggin’ priests do this time?” I heard him say as I passed.

As I entered the staging area between the grilles of the parked dump trucks, I stopped and stared in disbelief. A half dozen Emergency Service Unit cops were crossing the avenue with their heads down. They stopped and pressed their bulletproof backs against the side of the long black hearse parked at the curb.

How could this be happening at Caroline Hopkins’s funeral?

Chapter 19

THOUGH ONLY FIVE SEVEN, with his broken nose and violently frank way of looking at everybody, except maybe his mother, borough commander Will Matthews was about as pugnacious-looking an Irish cop as you could still find on the force. He looked like he’d just gone fourteen and a half bare-knuckle rounds when I found him standing on the sidewalk smack in front of the command center bus.

“Glad you could join us, Bennett,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” I said, “I hadn’t had a chance to see the tree yet anyway.”

Instead of chuckling, Matthews looked like he wanted to hit me with a billy club. So much for trying to lighten things up.

“I’m in no mood for stand-up, Bennett,” he said. “The mayor, the former president, the cardinal, several movie, music, and sports stars … who else? Eugena Humphrey, and about three thousand other VIPs are being held hostage inside by a dozen or more heavily armed, masked men. You follow me so far?”

It was hard to register what Will Matthews had just said to me. The mayor and the former president alone would have been mind-boggling, but all the rest?

The borough commander stared at me belligerently, waiting for me to pick my jaw up off the sidewalk before he continued his rant.

“We don’t know if the gunmen are terrorists. Preliminary reports from the law enforcement personnel who were just released from inside the church indicate that the lead hijacker, at least, is non-Arab. He spoke to the crowd, and I quote, ‘sounds white,’ unquote.

“These unidentified masked men took out thirty-one cops and about two dozen federal agents, including the former president’s Secret Service detail, with nonlethal weapons. Tear gas and rubber bullets and Tasers.

“There’s more. Twenty minutes ago, they opened the Fiftieth Street entrance doors and bum-rushed all of the cops and security personnel. There were a lot of broken noses and black eyes, but they could have gunned them down just as easy as let them go. So I guess we can be grateful for small mercies.”

I struggled to keep the shock and confusion off my face. It wasn’t that easy. The security must have been incredible, and it was taken out? Using nonlethal weapons?

“How can I help?” I asked.

“Excellent first question. Ned Mason, our top negotiator, is on his way. But he has a place upstate, in Orange County or some other ridiculous place. Newburgh, I think. I know you’re not in Hostage Negotiation anymore, but I needed our best option in case these guys call before he gets here.

“Also, as I recall, you’ve got a lot of media airtime under your belt. So I might need you to run interference with the locust swarm of press this thing is bringing. Steve Reno’s got the tactical lead. You can consult with him when he comes down off that bird, okay? Sit tight. Think about what to say to the press.”

I was following orders, “sitting tight,” staring across at the huge, stately church, beginning to try to figure out what kind of person or persons would pull this—when I heard a terrible commotion by the 50th Street barricade. Something bad was happening. Now!

Instinctually, I went for my gun as a shirtless blond man and a heavily made-up redheaded woman sprinted out from behind the barricade. What the hell? They made it across cleared-out Fifth Avenue and were running up the cathedral’s stairs when three ESU officers came out from behind the hearse—and tackled them.

The redhead’s wig flew off, revealing a crew cut. The blond kid was still smiling, and I saw that his drug-addled pupils were as big as dinner plates.

“One love! Transgender love!” the blond yelled as the cops carried him and the kicking transvestite right past the press at 51st Street.

I released a tense breath. Nothing to worry about. No suicide bombers. Just another performance of bizarre street theater, courtesy of New York City.