Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

After a long, thoughtful moment, he made a thumbing motion at the former president.

“Mr. President, you know what? You’ve been through enough today,” he said. “Why don’t you go home? You’re dismissed! Get him the hell out of my church.”

Two of the hijackers grabbed the former president roughly by his elbows and started shoving him quickly into the main part of the church, toward the front doors.

“Tell you the truth, though, Hopkins,” Jack called at the former president’s back. “After meeting you, I’m actually glad I voted for Nader. Both times.”

Chapter 28

JOHN ROONEY, LA Times–proclaimed “film comic of the decade,” was praying. Seriously lapsed or not, he was baptized a Christian, and he was sitting as still as he could in his pew, silently saying the Lord’s Prayer to beat the band.

He stopped in midprayer when something small and sharp struck him in the side of the neck. When he looked down, he saw that there was a little wad of folded paper on the pew beside him. What the heck was this?

The paper ball was made from a page ripped out of a hymnal. In black ink, someone had written open me right over the musical notes.

Rooney palmed the note as he looked up at the hijackers guarding them. The biggest one—Little John, was it?—sat on the altar as if it were the hood of a car, and he yawned so wide that Rooney could see his back molars.

Rooney opened the note in his lap.

ROONEY—I’M IN THE ROW BEHIND YOU.

SLOWLY SCOOTCH OVER INTO THE CENTER

OF YOUR PEW SO WE CAN TALK. WHATEVER

YOU DO, DON’T LET THE SCUM IN FRONT SEE

YOU!—CHARLIE CONLAN

Rooney shoved the note into his pocket, at least until he could get rid of it. Over the course of the next few minutes, he slid over the polished ash wood of the pew.

When he was about halfway, a gravelly voice behind him whispered, “Jesus, Johnny. I said slowly, not glacially.”

“Sorry,” Rooney whispered back.

“You saw what they did to Hopkins?” Conlan said.

Rooney nodded grimly. “What do you think they want with the rest of us?” he said.

“Nothing good,” Conlan said. “I guarantee you. Thing that scares me is how surrounded by cops this church is. Only thing between these guys getting shot or going to jail for life is us.”

“What can we do about it, though?” Rooney said.

“Fight back,” Conlan said. “Todd Snow’s a row behind me. He’s talking to the tycoon, Xavier Brown, behind him. With you—it’s four.”

“To do what?” Rooney asked. “You saw what they did to Hopkins when he just opened his mouth.”

“We wait for now. Be patient. Pick our spot. Four of us can take one or two of these guys. We go from there. John, we may not have a choice.”

Chapter 29

THE ELATION THAT New York Times reporter Cathy Calvin had felt at being released from the cathedral was quickly being burned away by her annoyance at having to wait on line with everybody else to be interviewed by the police. The NYPD had all the detainees corralled outside of Saks Fifth Avenue, and they weren’t letting anyone go until they’d been debriefed by one of four detectives sitting at a row of folding tables set up on the sidewalk.

Calvin noticed for the first time the news-van microwave towers beyond the blue-and-white sawhorses. They rose above the crowd like the masts of some invading armada.

Wait a second. What was she thinking? And complaining about? She was where everyone else was trying to get. Inside the ropes!

Calvin quickly calculated the strategic advantage of her position. She’d been in the cathedral before, during, and after the takeover. She was an eyewitness to the siege, which would make it her exclusive.