Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

As the rest of the hostages continued to laugh at Rooney, Conlan did his best to recall some of his army training. He counted the grenades on the kidnappers’ chests, eyed the guns they carried, the batons, the bulge at the waist of their robes where bulletproof vests seemed to end.

He slid a couple of feet to the left in his pew, nothing too obvious, nothing to draw any attention.

“Todd,” he whispered.

“What’s up?” the New York Giants football star murmured near his ear.

“Is Brown with us?” The real estate tycoon was a big man, in his fifties, who looked to be in pretty good shape.

“He’s psyched,” the athlete said. “He talked to Rubenstein. Rubenstein’s going to try to get the mayor on board.”

Conlan was glad the quarterback was with them. Out of all of them, the six-four, two-hundred-thirty-pound athlete had the best shot at physically overpowering one of the hijackers.

“That’s progress,” Conlan said to Snow out of the corner of his mouth. “With Rooney, that makes at least five of us. The more, the better our chances.”

“What’s our move?” the quarterback asked.

“This is between me and you for now. You know how they frisked us? Took away our cell phones and wallets?” Conlan said.

He paused as Rooney told another joke.

“They missed the .twenty-two in my boot,” Conlan whispered.

There, he’d said it, he thought. He didn’t have a gun, but survival meant keeping up people’s spirits, keeping them hopeful and motivated to act when the time was right.

Conlan glanced up at the altar when he heard more applause. Rooney was taking a bow now. The show was over.

“We’ve got a shot,” the quarterback said through the clapping. “Say the word. We go. We roll.”

Chapter 41

THE NEAT MAN WINCED as he probed a gloved hand behind the pay phone in the kiosk on the northwest corner of 51st and Madison. The sour reek of stale urine rising from the phone’s pedestal teared his eyes as he groped around blindly. Where the hell was the device?

Of all the places to set up a rendezvous, he thought as his fingers finally, mercifully found the plastic-coated wire behind the steel box.

Yet another bullet point in their plan, he noted as he clipped a phone company dial set across the pair of hidden colored wires. Three weeks before, his boys had actually snaked a pair of phone lines through a street duct in the rectory basement, into the corner phone company manhole, and, from the manhole, up the pay phone duct here to the street. Anticipating that all cell phone and landline transmissions in and out of the church would be monitored, they had created their own undocumented line.

The Neat Man checked his watch as he lifted the dial set to his ear.

At exactly 6:00 p.m., there was a crackle as one of the hijackers inside St. Patrick’s attached a simple nine-volt battery to the opposite end of the line, powering it. Instead of going high tech, they had outwitted the dopes by going low tech. He

had every angle covered, right through to the dramatic climax and escape, which, he had to admit, was a real doozy.

The Neat Man whistled softly—“O Come, All Ye Faithful,” a holiday favorite of his.

“You there, Jack?”

“Where else would I be? How’s it looking from your end?” Jack answered.

“When you sent out that first wave,” the Neat Man said with a smile, “they didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. Ditto with Hopkins. They’re still shaking their heads in disbelief.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Jack said.

“How’d the interviews go with all our rich friends?”

“Real informative,” Jack said. “Question now is will law enforcement stay stunned and stumped for the amount of time we need to get this done?”

“From what I’ve seen so far,” the Neat Man said with a laugh, “they’ll be scratching their heads ’til next Christmas.”