Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

Unbelievable, I thought.

I took out my cell and speed-dialed Commander Will Matthews’s office. “This is Bennett,” I said when I had him on the line. “I think we got ’em.”

Chapter 109

IT STARTED TO SNOW as we crossed over the city line, racing north on the Saw Mill River Parkway. Myself and an eight-vehicle convoy of FBI sedans and NYPD ESU trucks had already passed over the Harlem River and were now speeding through the Westchester woods, but it wasn’t to grandma’s house we were going.

We took the exit for Pleasantville and rolled west down toward the Hudson. At the very bottom, alongside the wind-scoured river, we stopped before high, harsh gray concrete walls decorated with razor wire. A barely legible sun-faded sign was bolted to the rock.

sing sing correctional facility, it said.

Nope, not grandma’s house, I thought. The Big House.

Infamous Sing Sing.

Up the River.

There was a distinct chill in the air as I got out and stood next to the prison walls. It was as if cold emanated from the place itself. I felt it get even chillier when an armed guard, in what looked like a miniature airport control tower above the wire, swung his sunglasses in my direction. The barrel of the M16 he carried across his chest seemed the only gleaming object for miles.

All this time we were running around trying to send the hijackers to the slammer, I thought, staring across the gravel parking lot at the maximum-security facility. And wouldn’t you know it, they were already here.

The print of the deceased hijacker in the car dealership had belonged to Jose Alvarez, a corrections officer who’d worked at Sing Sing prison until six months ago.

A call to the warden’s office revealed that a dozen men on the prison’s three-to-eleven tour had staged a sick-out the week of the hijacking.

Suddenly, so many things made sense to me. The tear gas, rubber bullets, and handcuffs, the street lingo mixed with quasimilitary terminology. The answer was right there in front of us, but it had taken Reverend Solstice’s suspicions and the memory of a prisoner at Rikers named Tremaine Jefferson, who had previously served time at Sing Sing, to set it free.

Prison guards, as well as cops, were capable of handling crowds and containing people professionally, and capable of being efficiently violent.

“Ready, Mike?” Steve Reno asked as he stepped in front of a dozen ESU SWAT cops.

“I’ve been ready since the minute I got to St. Pat’s that morning.”

Our suspects were inside the prison, on duty. To arrest them, we were going to have to go in, enter the belly of the beast. Though jail is one of the least favorite places cops like to find themselves, I was looking forward to this. I was especially looking forward to matching Jack’s face to his wise mouth. I was psyched, completely fired up.

Though the wind cutting off the choppy water was like a Mach 3, I was actually smiling. “Let’s go meet Jack,” I said.

Chapter 110

WE HAD TO CROSS a footbridge bonneted in razor ribbon just to get to Sing Sing’s main

gate. Though none of us was too happy about it, because firearms are under no circumstances permitted in maximum-security facilities, the dozen of us cops and Bureau agents had to check our weapons at the window of the arsenal before being buzzed inside.

“The men who staged the sick-out have already been summoned into the lineup room,” Warden Clark said as we arrived in the drab hallway outside his office.

An urgent-sounding squall ripped from Warden Clark’s radio as we were coming down a flight of stairs on our way to the muster room. The warden listened closely.

“What is it?” I said.

“A-Block,” the warden said. “Something’s happening. A lot of screaming and yelling anyway. Probably nothing. Our guests are always complaining about the service.”

“Are you sure all the men from the shift are there?” I said as we arrived at the mesh-windowed door of the muster room.

The warden looked intently through the wired glass at the nervous-looking uniformed corrections officers.

“I think so. Wait. No,” the warden said. “Sergeant Rhodes and Sergeant Williams. The two shift foremen. They’re not here yet. Where the hell are they?”

The shift foremen, I thought. Sure sounded like ringleaders to me. I thought about the message the warden had just gotten on his radio.