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  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I finally said.

  “I would. But he has caller ID. So, what’s the story, Detective? Does nobody know nuttin’?” she said, her cultured voice dropping into passable New Yorkese. “Or is nobody tawkin’?”

  “Why don’t you choose the answer you like the most,” I advised, turning away.

  “Hmmm. Speaking of choices, I wonder if my editor will like biggest security blunder in world history for the headline? Or maybe nypd drops ball then stonewalls?” the Times reporter said. “That’s kinda catchy. What do you think, Detective Bennett? Too New York Post?”

  I winced, remembering what Will Matthews had said. He wouldn’t like it if I were the one to single-handedly bring more bad press for the NYPD.

  “Listen, Ms. Calvin,” I said, turning. “Let’s not get off on the wrong foot here. I’ll talk to you, of course, but strictly off the record. Agreed?”

  The reporter nodded quickly.

  “You basically know as much as we do at this point. We’re in contact with the kidnappers, but they have yet to give us their demands. As soon as we know, and I get permission, I’ll give you all the information I can, all right? But we are in crisis mode right now. If the psychos inside have a radio or a TV and get tipped off about what we’re going to do, then people will die. Very important people.”

  When I turned, I saw Ned Mason waving frantically at me from the door of the trailer.

  “We all have to come together on this,” I yelled over my shoulder as I began to run.

  Chapter 37

  MASON HANDED ME the ringing cell phone just as I made it to the doorway.

  “Mike here,” I said.

  “Mike. Hey, buddy,” Jack said. “What’s up with letting the phone keep ringing like that? You falling asleep on me? If I didn’t know what a sweet guy you were, I might get the impression you were busy plotting against me or something.”

  “Thanks for releasing the president,” I said sincerely.

  “Ah, don’t mention it,” Jack said. “It was the least I could do. Say, listen, the reason I’m calling is, I’ve got those demands together, and I was thinking of maybe e-mailing them to you. That all right? I’m usually a snail-mail kind of guy, to tell you the truth, but you know how much of a zoo the post office is around the holidays.”

  The pseudocasual way Jack was speaking to me was starting to grate on my nerves. My negotiation training was mostly based on calming dangerous people who were actually distraught, people who had snapped, had gone over the edge.

  But Jack was nothing but a cocky wiseass… killer?

  In the parlance of the NYPD, with apologies to mixed-breed dogs, criminals-human beings who have forgone their humanity-are referred to as “mutts.” As I stood there with the phone in my hand, I reminded myself that’s all Jack was. A smart mutt, a sophisticated mutt maybe, but a mutt all the same.

  I checked my anger by visualizing cuffing him, dragging him by the scruff of his neck past the people he was terrorizing. It was going to happen, I knew. Just a matter of time, I thought as I was handed an e-mail address by a tech cop.

  “All right, Jack,” I said. “Here’s our address.”

  “Okay,” Jack said after I gave him the specifics on the NYPD Web site. “We’ll send the stuff over in a minute or two. I’ll give you a little while to absorb things and then call you back. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  “Oh, and Mike?” Jack said.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “I’m really appreciating all the cooperation. We all do. Things keep running this smooth, it’s going to turn out to be a real holly, jolly Christmas,” Jack said, and hung up.

  Chapter 38

  “HERE IT IS,” one of the youngish cops in front of a laptop at the back of the trailer called in a high-pitched choirboy’s voice, “the demands are coming in.”

  I raced to the rear.

  Then I couldn’t believe what I was seeing as I looked at the screen. I was expecting a number, but what appeared looked like a long, fairly sophisticated spreadsheet.

  Down the left-hand margin were the full names of the thirty-three hostages.

  Next to each name was a ransom between two and four million dollars followed by contacts: the names of the hostages’ lawyers, agents, business managers, spouses, and all of their respective phone numbers.

  At the bottom of the sheet was a bank routing number and specific, very clear instructions on how to wire the money via the Internet into the account.

  I absolutely couldn’t believe this bullshit. The hijackers, instead of negotiating with us directly, were going straight to the source-namely the wealthy hostages themselves.

  ESU lieutenant Steve Reno cracked his knuckles loudly behind me. “First they take us out of action,” he said angrily. “Now they make us their errand boys.”

  Steve was right. These hijackers were acting like we didn’t exist. They were acting the way a kidnapper in a concealed location would-not like ten to a dozen guys surrounded by a battalion of heavily armed law enforcement, NYPD, and FBI.

  “Let’s get some people in here to start calling those numbers and get this thing organized,” Commander Will Matthews said. “And give that account number to the Bureau. See if maybe they can get a lead for us.”

  I closed my eyes and tapped the cell phone against my head in order to jolt something loose. Nothing was coming, so I checked my watch. Mistake. Only four hours had passed. Based on how completely exhausted I felt, I would have guessed it was four weeks.

  Somebody handed me a coffee. There were cartoon reindeer and a smiling Santa on the paper cup. For a moment, I thought of how nice it would be when I finally got home. Christmas music playing softly as Maeve directed our ten elves in decorating the tree.

  Then I remembered there was no tree.

  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 mo
re 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.

  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.”

  “Pardon me for not chuckling along with you there, buddy,” Jack said coldly. “For some reason things don’t seem so funny on the side of the wall everyone’s pointing guns at.”

  “We all have our part to play, Jack,” the Neat Man said. His partner in crime, Jack, was a born worrier. Not his most attractive quality.

  “Yeah, well, if I was you, I’d make extra sure I didn’t screw up my lines,” Jack said with menace before disconnecting their private line.

  Chapter 42

  THE NEXT TIME I glanced up from the notes I was making on the negotiation with Jack, the command center’s small window to the outside had somehow become dark. The time had flown. Paul Martelli was busy talking on the phone beside me. Ned Mason was on the phone, too. A dozen or more other cops were working laptops, including Steve Reno.

  I stood up and palmed the low ceiling as I stretched pretty close to my full six two.

  The demands had been sent to the FBI’s New York headquarters downtown, at 26 Federal Plaza. The Bureau’s White Collar Crime Squad was crunching the numbers. The grand total of the ransom was nearly eighty million dollars.

  It was a massive sum for one person to pay, but if you broke it down to the two and a half million or so for each hostage, it wasn’t that outrageous.

  In fact, it was incredible how willing to pay these people seemed to be.

  Celebrity spouses and family members were giving me the numbers of their financial people almost before I had a chance to explain who I was. More than one Hollywood talent agency I spoke to didn’t hesitate to put up the firm’s money for their lucrative clients. Three investment banks were working overtime organizing all the wire transfers.

  One Beverly Hills lawyer actually asked for the hijackers’ number-to see if he could negotiate directly. Uh, Jack-Marv Begelman from California wants to talk with you.

  It irked me, but I had to agree with what Jack had said before giving the demands. The fat cats were more than willing to buy their way out of trouble.

  As I stepped outside the bus for some much-needed air, the first thing that hit me was the buzz-saw chattering of diesel generators. A half dozen portable crime scene light carts had been set up, and they illuminated the cathedral as if this were Times Square. For a second, the scene reminded me of another annoying NYC phenome
non: location shoots for movies-idling trailers, blocked-off streets, bright lights anywhere you looked.

  Time to hit the catering van, I thought. See if I could keep some food down.

  As I walked east along 50th, I could see that the sides of the cathedral were lit up, too. There should have been families strolling hand in hand down this block around now. Rosy-cheeked visitors from across the country and the world, sipping hot cocoa and smiling as they caught the candle glow from the famous stained-glass windows.

  On the northwest corner of the Saks Fifth Avenue roof, I spotted a motionless FBI sniper.

  The whole thing was totally insane.

  What was even crazier was that these maniacs thought they were going to get away with it.

  How? Every inch of the cathedral was being scoped out by snipers. Air traffic had been diverted, so even an unlikely helicopter escape couldn’t work. As Oakley, the HRT supervisor, had mentioned, the hundred-and-fifty-year-old church was built right on top of Manhattan bedrock. So there was no basement, no way to get out from underground.

  I tried to convince myself that the hijackers hadn’t thought the grand finale through, that Jack had put their escape plan in the cross-that-bridge-when-we-come-to-it file.

  But as I stood out on that cold, deserted street, all evidence pointed to the alternative. The boldness of their action, the confidence that we would do exactly as they said. It was looking more and more like the hijackers knew something about their exodus that we didn’t.

  I was rubbing my hands for warmth when my cell phone rang.

  I snatched the line to Jack, stiffening for the next ninety-mile-an-hour curveball that was more than likely heading straight for my forehead.

  Then I realized it wasn’t the police cell ringing but my own personal one. I rolled my eyes when I saw that the number on my caller ID was my grandfather Seamus.