“Why?” I yelled. “Why the hell are you doing this?”
“You’re Catholic, right, Mike? Of course you are. What New York Irish cop isn’t? Did you hear the Gospel today? Did you listen to the Gospel? If you had, you wouldn’t be asking me that question.”
The Gospel?!
“Take me, then, Francis. Take me in place of the kids. Whatever you need to do, you can use me instead.”
“That wouldn’t work, Mike. You’ll see. It will all be revealed to you. To everyone. It’s not long now. I’m almost at my final destination. Our final destination. This is almost over. Relieved? I am.”
He sobbed then. Funny, but I didn’t feel sorry for him at all
, despite his obviously fragile emotional state.
“This is the worst thing anyone has ever done. But that’s okay. I’m probably the only one strong enough to do it.”
Chapter 85
MOONEY ZIPPED THROUGH the Lexington Avenue traffic quickly, but not too quickly. Cutting off a FedEx truck, he skillfully made a hairpin right onto 57th Street.
He hadn’t planned to carjack the taxi. He actually had a rental car parked in an underground lot behind St. Edward’s. But when he saw the taxi just sitting there in traffic, as if waiting for him, he seized the opportunity.
He now had the two students gagged and double-cuffed down on the floor. Mason was blond, and Parrish had reddish-brown hair, but the two seniors could have been brothers. Handsome, athletic-looking, and oh-so-elite in their Burberry shirts and Polo ties.
The question wasn’t where they’d be going to college, Mooney knew. The question was, which Ivy League school? An eye-popping twenty-five percent of the students at St. Edward’s went on to Ivy League schools. In some city public schools, fewer than twenty-five percent even graduated.
The inequality didn’t end there, of course. Parrish’s father was CEO of Mellon Zaxo, the household-product giant. He’d been the third-highest-compensated executive in the United States the year before, with over one hundred and thirteen million dollars in salary and stock bonuses. Mason’s dad was the North American chief of Takia, the monolithic Russian natural gas corporation. He’d just squeaked into the top ten by raking in a paltry sixty-one million.
This, while the average American household income topped off at fifty-three thousand. While regular people went without health insurance and lost their houses in banking subprime swindles.
A groan came from the backseat.
“One more stop, now, fellas,” Mooney called to them.
A short stop, he thought, but vitally important.
He slowed as he arrived at the Four Seasons Hotel on the corner of 57th and Park Avenue. The opulent fifty-two-story I. M. Pei–designed midtown landmark was a favorite with movie stars and billionaires.
A handsome college-age doorman in a nineteenth-century-inspired uniform and a top hat raced out through the brass revolving door.
Popping open the taxi’s rear door, the hotel worker stood there in his ridiculous footman’s uniform, staring stupefied at the two students handcuffed on the floor of the backseat.
Mooney leaned through the divider and pressed the Beretta to the doorman’s square jaw.
The male-model look-alike took a wad of ones from his pocket.
“Take it, bro. All yours,” he said.
Mooney pistol-whipped the bills out of the young man’s white-gloved hands.
“Get in now,” he said.
“What?” the doorman said. “Get in? Me?”
“Yes, get in the front seat or I’ll put a bullet in your chest. How’s that for a tip? I won’t tell you twice,” Mooney said as he unlocked the front door.
Chapter 86
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Mooney let out a sigh of relief as he reached Canal Street. He made a left and then a quick right two blocks east onto Mott. He stomped down on the accelerator, barreling the Chevy taxicab down the narrow, winding Chinatown street.