Night Fall jc-4

by Nelson DeMille

  “Darling, that is my thirty-eight caliber, eight-inch barrel Police Special.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  I stood outside the Central Park South entrance to the Plaza, and looked down the street. It was 8:11A.M., and no sign of the patrol cars.

  I glanced back through the glass doors and saw Kate and Jill standing near the entrance of the Oak Bar, waiting for me to give them a signal to come outside. With them was Patrolman Alvarez.

  Across the street was a line of hansom cabs waiting for customers. The doorman said to me, “Can I get you a taxi, sir? Or are you waiting for a car?”

  “I’m waiting for a horse.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was a beautiful day, and I realized I hadn’t been out in the sunshine and fresh air since Sunday morning.

  It was now 8:13, and the patrol cars from Midtown North should have been here if they’d hustled. This is the point in a pickup that’s the most dicey-between the safety of wherever you were holed up and the street where you’re waiting for your people to arrive.

  At 8:15, three police cars, without lights or sirens, appeared up the block. I signaled to Kate, then stepped off the curb and put up my hand. The lead car flashed his lights and accelerated, then came to a quick halt in front of me. The other two cars stopped at close intervals. I showed my creds to the two cops in the first car and said, “WTC, North Tower, as instructed, no bells or whistles. Loose formation. We’re shooting for an eight-thirty, eight-forty arrival.” I added, “Keep an eye out for company, and don’t stop for anything but a traffic light.”

  They both nodded, and the female officer in the passenger seat said, “We’re all briefed.”

  “Good.”

  Kate, Jill, and Patrolman Alvarez were out on the sidewalk now, and I said to Jill, “Your car is here, madam.”

  She smiled and said, “I’ve never ridden in a police car.”

  I didn’t want to say “You’ll get used to it,” but I did say, “As discussed, we’ll all meet in the lobby of Windows on the World. You’ll have at least two patrolmen with you at all times.”

  Jill said to me and to Kate, “I’ll see you there.”

  Jill, I thought, looked composed, and I hoped she stayed that way if it got ugly later. I signaled to Alvarez, and he escorted Jill Winslow into the backseat of the middle car, then returned to where I was standing, as instructed.

  Kate and I looked at each other. There wasn’t much left to say at this point, so we just kissed, and she said, “See you later.” She got into the lead car.

  I stood there with Patrolman Alvarez and asked him, “Are you feeling mean this morning?”

  He smiled. “Yes, sir.”

  I took the videotape ofA Man and a Woman out of my jacket. It was the one that Jill had recorded over, but it didn’t have the jacket on it. I handed it to Alvarez and said to him, “Guard this with your life. And I mean your life.”

  He put the tape in the oversized back pocket of his pants, which was made to hold his memo book, and he said to me, “Did you ever hear of anyone taking anything from a New York City cop?”

  I slapped him on the shoulder and said, “See you there.”

  Alvarez got into the backseat of the middle car, next to Jill.

  I walked to the third car and got in. From the trail vehicle, I could see what was going on, and from the lead vehicle, Kate could make any changes to the plans, if necessary. Jill, in the middle car, with Alvarez and two other cops, was in the protected position.

  The cop riding shotgun in my car was a sergeant, and he said a few words into his portable radio. The lead car made a U-turn on Central Park South, which not many people can get away with, and off we went in a three-car convoy.

  I said to the sergeant, “What’s the route?”

  He replied, “We’re going to shoot over to the West Side, unless you have a preference.”

  “Sounds good.” I said to him, “Do you understand that some folks might want to fuck with us?”

  “Yeah. They can fuck away all they want.”

  “Everybody on this detail knows the drill?”

  “Yup.”

  “So, what do you think of the FBI?”

  He laughed and said, “No comment.”

  “How about the CIA?”

  “Never met one.”

  Lucky you. I sat back in the seat and looked at my watch. It was 8:21, and depending on traffic, we’d be maybe fifteen minutes late, which was fine. Nash, the control freak, and his breakfast club would be at least fifteen minutes early anyway, thinking we’d be early. They could sit and sweat into their caffe lattes.

  Most meetings are mind-fucking games, and this one was going to be an orgy.

  We made our way through traffic, and within ten minutes, we were heading south on Joe DiMaggio Highway, also known as Twelfth Avenue, and while we’re at it, West Street. Whatever, it ran along the Hudson River, and it was a nice drive on a sunny day. The three-car convoy was weaving around traffic, and making better time than the civilians, who’d get a ticket for driving like that.

  It was about a five-mile run down to the Trade Center, whose Twin Towers I could see long before we got there.

  In my jacket was the video store tape ofA Man and a Woman, which I’d put inside the cardboard case from Jill’s tape that said, “Property of the Bayview Hotel-Please Return.” If the Feds had any kind of warrant when I got there, they could serve the warrant on me, or Kate, or Jill, and try to take the tape, or us-or the tapeand us-to another location. But they couldn’t serve a warrant on Patrolman Alvarez, even if they had a clue that he had the X-rated version of the tape.

  In any case, I didn’t think Nash and company wanted a major scene in a public restaurant where about three hundred people would be having breakfast. But maybe, if I was in one of my perverse moods, I’d give them my R-rated version ofA Man and a Woman.

  I looked through the windshield, and I could see the patrol car with Jill and Alvarez, but I couldn’t see the lead car with Kate. Traffic was moving, but it was erratic, and a lot of truckers were driving badly this morning.

  I looked at my watch. 8:31. We’d just passed the 30thStreet Heliport, and the Chelsea Piers were coming up. About another three miles at this speed, and we’d be pulling up to the Vesey Street side of the North Tower at about 8:45, give or take.

  I actually wasn’t expecting any problems on the ride there, or during the walk into the lobby, or in the elevator that went directly to Windows on the World on the 107thfloor. In fact, I didn’t expect any problems at the breakfast meeting, which was basically a show-and-tell, to see whose dicks were bigger, and whose balls weighed the most.

  I know how Nash’s mind works, and the guy is patient, cunning, and sometimes smart. He wanted to see who I showed up with. He wanted to hear what I had to say. He wanted to get a reading on Jill Winslow, and he wanted to see if we actually had the tape with us. Nash wasn’t going to bring anyone to that meeting who wasn’t already part of a conspiracy, so there wouldn’t be anyone there from the attorney general’s office, unless it was someone who was in on this, or an impostor, which is part of the CIA culture. I mean, Ted Nash often poses as an FBI agent, and when I first met him, he said he was an employee of the Department of Agriculture. Then, for a while, he made believe he was dead. And sometimes he poses as a possible ex-lover of Kate Mayfield. The only time he’s not acting is when he’s being an asshole.

  Maybe, too, Nash, because he was a sick prick, had invited Mark Winslow to breakfast for the purpose of messing with Jill’s mind. Same with Bud Mitchell, who I was fairly sure would be there.

  In any case, the breakfast meeting was, for Nash, a voir dire-a look-and-talk. The problem would come after the meeting, at which time, I was sure, Nash would make his move. Or, to put it another way, it was like the banquet where you invited your enemies to sit, talk, and eat, then killed them afterward. Actually, breakfast was my idea, but you get the point.

  Nash must know, if he had half a brain, t
hat I would mobilize some muscle for this, and that the muscle would be NYPD. Therefore, he had a counter-force waiting in the wings. But as the sergeant in the front of me had said, “They can fuck away all they want.”

  I understood, of course, that I was having a personal problem with Mr. Ted Nash, and that some of this had to do with that. But even if I didn’t know the guy, or even if I liked him (which I didn’t), I don’t see how I could have handled this any differently.

  The sergeant in front said to me, “My instructions are to wait for your meeting to end, then take you and your party out of the building into the patrol cars. Correct?”

  “Correct. This is where you might run into some Federal types with different plans.”

  He said to me, “I had a situation like that once-Feds wanted this guy on a drug charge, and I had an arrest warrant for the same guy on the same charge.”

  “Who got the guy?”

  “We did. But the Feds got him later.” He added, “In the end, they get their way. You know, the FBI always gets their man, blah, blah, blah. But in the beginning, on the spot, we get first dibs.”

  “Right.”

  He asked me, “Where to afterward?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Anyplace but the Federal Detention Center.”

  He laughed.

  I looked out the window at the river and the Jersey shore. Tomorrow, or this afternoon, I expected to be at the ATTF offices at 26 Federal Plaza with my feet up on Jack Koenig’s desk, and his office filled with good guys. The FBI, for all my personal problems with them, were straight shooters, professionals, and very letter-of-the-law men and women. As soon as this case got transferred from John Corey’s part-time, off-duty hobby to the FBI, I could go on vacation with Kate. Maybe she wanted to see where I’d spent a month and a half in Yemen.

  The traffic got snarled around the Holland Tunnel, and I said to the guys in front, “Do you have the middle car in sight?”

  The driver replied, “Not anymore. You want me to call them?”

  “Yeah.”

  He called both cars, and the lead car with Kate replied, “We’re here. Parked on Vesey and going into WTC North.”

  “Ten-four.”

  The second car reported, “We’re turning off West. ETA about two minutes.”

  “Ten-four.”

  I looked at my watch. It was 8:39. We should be about five minutes from the Vesey Street side of the big pedestrian plaza that surrounded the Trade Center complex. A few minutes walk to the North Tower lobby, then up the high-speed elevator to the lobby of Windows on the World. I said to the sergeant, “I need both of you to come with me.”

  He nodded and said, “We got one guy from the lead vehicle watching the cars. We’re with you.”

  “Good.”

  We turned onto Vesey Street, and at 8:44 we pulled up beside two double-parked patrol cars. I got out, and the two cops with me followed. They spoke to the cop watching the vehicles, who just got off his portable radio, and he said to us, “Two civilians”-meaning Kate and Jill-“with four officers inside.”

  I climbed the steps from the sidewalk to the raised plaza and began walking toward the entrance of the North Tower. It was 8:45A.M.

  As I crossed the busy plaza, I heard what sounded like a low rumble off in the distance, and I could see a few people around me looking up. The two cops with me also glanced up, and one of them said, “Sounds like an aircraft coming in too low at Newark.”

  We continued walking, then I stopped and turned around to see what everyone was looking at.

  Coming from the north was a huge two-engine passenger jet flying much too low directly over Broadway and coming toward me. The engines got very loud, and the aircraft accelerated as if the pilot had pushed the throttles forward.

  I glanced back over my shoulder and looked up at the North Tower of the World Trade Center, confirming that the tower was higher than the aircraft and that the aircraft was headed into the tower.

  People around me were screaming now, and several people dropped to the ground.

  A woman next to me said, “Oh, my God…”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  The sun had been up for an hour or more, but the sunlight was obscured by smoke from the burning fires.

  From up here on the balcony of my apartment, facing south, I could see where the two huge plumes of black originated, and I could also see the glow of the emergency floodlights, illuminating the blackness where the Twin Towers had stood until yesterday morning.

  Sometime in the night, I’d lost my jacket during the search-and-rescue operation, and my remaining clothes and skin were black with an oily soot that I knew stunk, but that I couldn’t smell any longer.

  I looked at my watch, rubbed the soot off the crystal, and saw that it was 7:32. It was hard to comprehend that almost twenty-four hours had passed. There were periods through the day when time seemed to pass quickly, and what I thought was an hour was many hours; but time seemed frozen through the night, which seemed endless, even after the sun rose.

  I coughed up a glob of black into my blackened handkerchief, and stuffed it back into my pocket.

  I had understood what was happening before it actually happened because of the business I was in, but most of the people around me, including emergency service personnel, and the two cops I was with, thought it was an accident. When the second aircraft hit the South Tower at 9:03A.M., everyone understood the unbelievable.

  I’d spent the first hours after the attack looking for Kate, but as the enormity of the tragedy and the loss of life became evident, I just looked for anyone who might be alive in the smoldering rubble.

  I remembered the last radio transmission of one of the cops, “Two civilians with four officers inside.”

  I had tried to call Kate on my cell phone, but all cell phones were down, and they were still down.

  As of 6:30A.M. this morning, when I’d left what had been the North Tower, no survivors had been found, and few were expected to be found.

  As surreal as the site had been, the trip back home had been more surreal. The streets downtown were nearly deserted, and the people who I did see looked like they were in shock. I’d found a taxi about twenty blocks north of the site, and the taxi driver, a man named Mohammed, cried when he saw me, and cried all the way to East 72ndStreet. My doorman, Alfred, also cried when I got out of the taxi.

  I looked back at the billows of rising smoke, and for the first time I felt tears running down the grime on my face.

  I vaguely remember riding up the elevator with Alfred, who had a passkey, and I remember entering my apartment. After nearly two months away, it looked unfamiliar, and I stood there for a few seconds, trying to figure out why I was there, and what I should do next. Then I walked toward the balcony door because I could see the black smoke outside, and I was drawn to it because it was more familiar than my home.

  As I passed through the living room, something on the couch-a blanket-caught my eye, and I walked over to it. I knelt beside Kate, who was sleeping, wrapped tightly in the blanket, which covered everything except her blackened face and one arm, which lay on her chest. In her hand was her cell phone.

  I didn’t wake her, but watched her for a long time.

  I left her sleeping on the couch and went out on the balcony, where I now stood, watching the smoke, which seemed endless.

  The door slid open behind me, and I turned around. We looked at each other for a few seconds, then took a few tentative steps toward each other, then literally fell into each other’s arms, and wept.

  We sat, half asleep in the two chairs on the balcony, and stared out at the darkness that shrouded Lower Manhattan, the harbor, and the Statue of Liberty. There were no planes flying, no phones ringing, no horns honking, and hardly a soul in the streets below.

  It was difficult at this point to grasp the scope of the disaster, and neither of us had seen or heard any news because we’d been there where the news was happening, and aside from a few radios and too many rumors o
n the scene, we knew less than people living in Duluth.

  Finally, though I knew the answer, I asked Kate, “How about Jill?”

  Kate didn’t answer for a few seconds, then said, “I got to the Windows express elevator first, and decided to wait for her… she came into the lobby with Patrolman Alvarez and another officer… I put them on the elevator… then I decided to wait for you…”

  I didn’t reply, and Kate didn’t continue. A few minutes later, she said, “Before I put Jill on the elevator, she said to me, ‘Should I wait here with you until John gets here?’ And I said to her, ‘No, you’re in good hands with those police officers. I’ll be up in a few minutes.’” Kate said to me, “I’m sorry…”

  I said, “No, don’t be sorry.”

  I wondered, of course, who else had gotten up to the 107thfloor before the plane hit. What I knew for sure, because I had asked a hundred cops and firemen, was that almost no one on the upper floors had gotten down before the North Tower collapsed at 10:30.

  Kate said, “I stayed in the lobby to help, then the firemen ordered us out, and I looked for you… then the building collapsed… I remember running… then I must have passed out from the smoke… I woke up in an aid station… about midnight, I went back to look for you, but I’d lost my creds, and they wouldn’t let me through the cordon.” She wiped her eyes and said, “I checked the hospitals and aid stations… I kept calling your phone, and the apartment… then I walked home, and you weren’t here…” She sobbed and said, “I thought you were dead.”

  I took her blackened hand in mine and said, “I thought you were… in there…”

  I closed my eyes, and I could see that huge jetliner coming down Broadway, and I realized now that it must have passed right between the Federal Building at 290 Broadway and our offices across the street at 26 Federal Plaza. Everyone in those offices must have seen it, and I wondered if they understood that they were seeing the first shot in what was going to be a long war that would change us forever.