Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

And no Maeve.

I put the cup of coffee down and picked up one of the printouts of the demands, my fingers shaking slightly as they went down the list of contact numbers.

The great and glorious NYPD—acting as messengers.

Chapter 39

JOHN ROONEY LIFTED his chin off his hands when something hard poked into his ribs. He glanced over and saw Little John, holding out his billy club.

“Hey, prima donna,” he said. “I’m getting bored. Time for you to get up on that altar and give us a little holiday entertainment. Whattaya say, guy?”

“I’m really not in the mood,” Rooney said, dropping his head back down.

Rooney’s teeth clicked together loudly when Little John gave him a love tap on the chin with the end of the club.

“Here’s your motivation,” Little John said. “Get up there and make me laugh like a hyena. Or I’ll shatter your Oscar-nominated skull open.”

My God, Rooney thought as he arrived up on the altar and stared out at the other hostages. Some of them were still crying. Just about every face was filled with wide-eyed terror.

Talk about a hard crowd to work. Plus, he hadn’t done stand-up since he’d broke into film eight years ago. And even then, all his jokes had been rehearsed ad nauseam in front of the bathroom mirror of his studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.

Little John, sitting in the back row, made a c’mon gesture with his baton.

What the hell could be funny about any of this? But what choice did he have?

“Hey, everybody,” Rooney tried. “Thanks for coming this morning. Heeere’s Johnny!”

He heard somebody, a woman, give a real laugh. Who was that? It was Eugena Humphrey. Good for her!

Then Rooney felt something in him flick like a circuit breaker.

“Eugena, hey, how YOU doin’, honey chile,” he said, mimicking the opening tagline from her morning show. She really started cracking up now, along with a few more people. Charlie Conlan was grinning broadly.

Rooney faked checking his watch.

“Talk about a long frickin’ Mass,” he said.

There were more laughs.

“You know what I really hate?” Rooney said, stalking back and forth now in front of the altar. “Don’t you just hate it when you go to a friend’s funeral and you get kidnapped?”

Rooney chuckled along with the cackles, maximizing the pause for effect. He was rolling pretty good now. He could feel it all through his nervous system.

“I mean, there you are, all dressed up, a little sad about the person gone—but a little happy that it’s not you, then wham! Wouldn’t you know it? The monks at the altar whip out sawed-off shotguns and grenades.”

Almost everybody was laughing now. Even a few of the hijackers in the back were cracking up. The laughter rolled like a wave off the stone walls.

Rooney started doing a Gregorian chant and then imitated whipping out a gun. He made a terrified face and ran and hid behind the altar. “Here, take my diamond earrings so I can jet,” he said, imitating Mercedes Freer to a tee. Then he rolled around on the marble floor, holding his face and whining like a hurt Chihuahua.

When he glanced at the crowd, he could see smiles everywhere. At least his routine was relaxing everyone a little. At the back of the chapel, he spotted Little John doubled over, holding his sides.

Keep laughing, asshole, Rooney thought, getting up off his knees. I got a million of ’em. Wait’ll you hear the one about the kidnapper getting the electric chair.

Chapter 40

FROM THE BACK of the chapel, former rock-and-roller Charlie Conlan pretended to laugh at John Rooney’s shtick as he studied the hijackers one by one.

There were six of the jackals along the rear rail of the chapel. The big one, Little John, was there, but the leader, Jack, along with another five or six others, seemed to be away somewhere else in the church.