by Paul Batista
“I hope,” Roland said, “that the TV stations capture that. It might brighten things up more than I will.”
Irv Rothstein, on the rear-facing seat directly across from Roland, said, “Weave the bike riders into your speech. Something like these people are vital and undaunted.”
“Or maybe, Irv, they’re just crazy.”
Roland leaned forward to see the lead rider, a woman. Although all the riders had helmets and were thin and hard to differentiate, she had a special, powerful litheness. “By the way, Irv, is the doctor there yet? I want to talk to him before we go on the air.”
“Dr. Hauser?”
“The one who did all that work with the wounded people. As the kids would say, that was some brave shit.”
“He didn’t want to show up with you.”
“Did you scare him, Irv? Haven’t I told you to learn to make nice-nice?”
“No, I was smooth. He told me he was more interested in being a doctor than a celebrity.”
“Did you tell him he can raise the spirits of this city? We need at least one man in bright shining armor.”
“He was adamant. I asked if he’d speak to you.”
“Get him on the line for me. I’ll talk to him right now.”
Gina had sat quietly beside Roland since the convoy pulled out of the warehouse building where the command center was hidden. She held up her right hand. “Mayor, don’t do that.”
He turned to look at her. “We might have time to get him down here.”
“We don’t want him down here.”
“Come again?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
The convoy made the turn through the iron gates surrounding City Hall. Knowing that cameras were trained on him, Roland jumped athletically out of the back seat of the SUV as if on a campaign stop. He was smiling. But his movement triggered acute pain. He shook the hands of the police officers who were guarding the plaza in front of City Hall. He walked up to the microphones on the top step, looked out at the television cameras, and spoke.
***
After the press conference, the mayor, Irv Rothstein, and three other staff members, his political and campaign cadre, watched the replay of the press conference. Just as it was ending, Irv said, “You sure did good.”
Roland nodded. He had been well-prepared, not through the angry and discordant voices he had heard at the command center, but by his own half hour, in private, thinking about what he wanted to convey. And he could see in the video that, in fact, he’d succeeded in delivering that balance of reality and optimism he sought. The broadcasters who summarized the conference spoke about his reassurance, his message of sternness in hunting down the terrorists and preventing further attacks, the need for vigilance and calm, and the steady scaling back of the lockdown to begin to restore essential services.
“You did good,” Irv repeated.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE INTERSECTION OF Wall Street and Broad Street in front of the now-closed New York Stock Exchange was one of the oldest in the city. The intersection was created in the 1600s when virtually all of Manhattan north of the Battery was forest and Broad and Wall were only winding trails. The intersection was wide, more of a plaza than just the crossing of two streets. Looming over the northern side was the immense statue of George Washington in front of the Federal Building as he took the first presidential oath.
Over the last five decades, Wall Street had gradually and radically changed. As recently as the 1960s it was still the street of America’s financial power. It was lined with the imposing buildings that housed the headquarters of the world’s largest banks. Their big corporate flags hung over both sides of the street, a daily ceremonial display of America celebrating its capitalism. The buildings also housed the offices of what were always called the “Wall Street law firms,” the legal institutions that carefully served the interests of the banks in whose buildings they were housed.
But over the years those banks and law firms had steadily abandoned Wall Street and migrated to midtown, first to Park Avenue between 50th and 57th Streets and then west to Times Square when it was renovated and made into a corporate theme park, a kind of urban Disneyland. In the wake of the migration uptown, Wall Street now had health clubs, European clothing stores, and fancy cafés. Instead of the institutional bank flags and American flags overhanging the narrow street, there were now banners advertising the health clubs, stores, and Starbucks.
On the morning after the bombings at the Met and the rocket assault at the World Trade Center Memorial, there was no one in the normally packed intersection. The area from Trinity Church at one end of Wall Street to the East River at the other end was cordoned off as a crime scene after the killing of Officer Cruz.
It was in 1920 at the intersection of Wall and Broad that a horse-drawn fruit wagon exploded on a morning when the same intersection was crowded with office workers. Although the statue of George Washington was untouched, heavy fragments from the powerful explosion not only killed dozens of people but tore holes in the monumental stone facades of the bank buildings. Left as a memorial, those deep gashes in the stone facades were never repaired. You could still touch the gashes almost a century later.
***
Forty-five minutes after the press conference and only moments after Roland Fortune had reviewed the video of that conference, his cell phone, the one to which only Gina Carbone and six other people including Sarah Hewitt-Gordan had access, rang. Roland picked up the vibrating phone.
It was Gina. “There’s been an explosion at the corner of Wall and Broad.”
“Jesus, Jesus. How many people did they get this time?’
“Not sure. Maybe none. The place was empty.”
“What happened?”
“There’s a sports club right next to the George Washington statue. Our information is that explosives were put near the windows of the club, hidden in gym bags that were probably placed there before yesterday or even last night. They were detonated from a remote source today.”
“My God, Gina. When is this going to end?”
Gina was tempted to say she lived in the world of facts, not predictions. “We’ve covered some ground, Roland. They may not be as smart as they think they are. We think this first explosion at the Met might have gone off before they all left the scene.”
“So some of them were killed, too? Is that what you’re saying?”
“We have a DNA bank with some of the DNA from people we were interested in, traces left on cigarettes or plastic coffee cups that these people threw out on the streets. We’re trying to match the DNA from some of the bodies with what we have in the bank.”
“So, what, Gina? Let’s assume you find a match and that one of the dead men is a guy you had under surveillance. Unfortunately dead men tell no tales.”
“But we also think there’s a live one who may have been caught off guard when the first explosion happened at the museum.”
“Who?”
“His name is Silas Nasar. He owns an electronics company, five or six of those cheap stores that rip off tourists. But he’s also, we believe, one of those guys who loves any and all electronic devices. The stores might be a front. We think he’s got tons of money and he’s able to develop really sophisticated communications devices all over the world.”
“And you think he was near one of the wagons?”
“He wasn’t selling any pretzels, but it appears he was in the vicinity, possibly making sure all was in place before he made himself scarce.”
“Where is he?”
“He was taken to Mount Sinai. You know that film of the Angel of Life? Dr. Hauser?”
“Who doesn’t by now? The aloof Dr. Hauser.”
“Silas was the first guy treated by the doctor on the museum steps.”
“How do you know that?”
“Enhanced videotapes. Right down to the ability to see a birthmark on Silas’ face. It’s his distinguishing feature. It’s shaped like Japan.”
&nbs
p; Even though he was in an air-conditioned room, Roland began to sweat profusely. The pain in his shoulder and back, controlled only by the Vicodin that he had not wanted to use before the press conference, had a powerful resurgence. The painkiller’s cottony cushioning of his brain and body seemed to reach a certain point and rapidly dissolve. He found the envelope in which he carried the pills in his suit jacket and shook them out onto the table in front of him. He gestured to Irv Rothstein for water.
Roland said, “Have you found him? He must be in a hospital somewhere, unless he died.”
“We have surveillance video from the emergency room at Mount Sinai. Believe it or not, the Angel of Life was with him again. We have it on the tape.”
“What are you saying?”
“Not certain,” she answered. “But they were together for a little over five minutes. They talked. And they exchanged something, what it is, is not clear. What is clear from the enhanced video at the museum is that the Angel took something from Nasar there. And something—a bracelet, a watch, who knows—went back and forth between them a few hours later.”
Roland said quietly, “I’m still listening, Gina.”
“Our people think they knew each other.”
“Where was Nasar moved?”
“He did what you did. He checked himself out. Some friends of his came to get him.”
“When I did it a doctor named Edelstein had to sign the release papers, too. Who signed Nasar’s?”
“Why don’t you take a guess?”
“Don’t tell me: Dr. Hauser?”
“It’s his name on the form.”
“You must have video of Nasar leaving and once outside getting into a car or van with license plates.”
“The video ends when he leaves the lobby. For some damn reason the outside cameras were down.”
“When the fuck, Gina, are we going to catch a break?”
She went silent for several seconds, and Roland took two, not one, of the potent Vicodins. “The attacks,” she said, “have been getting less lethal. Whoever did the explosion at Wall and Broad had to know that few people, or none, would be there.”
Roland, who had studied the history of the city he loved, said, “I think you might be missing something. There’s a symbolism in the attack there. That is the exact intersection where anarchists blew up a horse-drawn wagon in 1920. There were many people killed. Horses, too, it was still that era. The men who did it were never found. Not a single arrest. No punishment, no retribution. A devastating wound to the city and never any closure of the wound, except for the passage of years. Now nobody remembers it.”
“These guys can’t be that smart,” Gina said. “They don’t know history, they know the Koran, they know killing.”
“Is that so, Gina? So far they’re much smarter than the president, Harlan Lazarus, the general, you and me are.”
“I’m not going to let anybody spook me,” she said.
“I’m not spooked, I’m worried. They seem to have mastered the art of doing terrible things at times and places of their own choosing.”
He realized he sounded petulant and angry. He didn’t want to lapse into those rare moments of rage and anger he had felt toward Harlan Lazarus and the general in the last twenty-four hours. “I’m sorry, Gina, I didn’t mean to get testy.”
She waited. “Not a problem, Roland. The pressure is on, it’s hard to prepare yourself for what things like this will make you feel and how you’ll react. And especially for you.” She paused again. “Sarah was a beautiful lady.”
Somehow he had never expected Gina to say anything about Sarah. They had briefly met once or twice. They were worlds apart. “Thanks, Gina. I need to separate my pain and grief over her from my pain over what’s happened to this city.”
“You have to take care of yourself, Roland. People were in a panic yesterday when there wasn’t any word as to how you were and where you were. Have you had a doctor look at you today?”
“Not yet.”
“Make believe,” she said, “I’m your Italian mama. Go see the doctor.”
***
Roland Fortune sat quietly for several minutes after the call ended. He had no idea where Sarah’s body was. Where had her purse with her license and credit cards been when the blasts tore the roof garden to pieces, or where had those vicious concussions of air and stone and dust blown the purse if she had been holding on to it? Without the purse to identify her, her body could have been taken anywhere, along with the other dead in and around the museum whose names were not yet known. So somewhere in the torn city, he thought, was the shattered body of the woman who just three hours before she died had passionately rose up over him in bed as she straddled him, her naked body absolutely perfect in the dim early morning light in the colonial-era bedroom in Gracie Mansion.
A former choir boy at the decaying and now abandoned Church of Saint Andrew in the South Bronx, Roland Fortune kneeled on the floor next to his desk and recited, in the Latin he had learned at parochial school, Pater noster, qui es in caelis; sanctificetur Nomen Tuum...
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
GABRIEL HAUSER WAS on the stairwell as he left his apartment building to return to Mount Sinai when six men—four in combat-style uniforms and two in suits—blocked the way.
Gabriel said, “Can I help you?”
“Just get out of the way, sir.” Gabriel recognized one of the big blond men who had stood silently behind Detective McDonough three hours earlier in his apartment.
“I asked you what’s going on.”
“I need you out of the way, sir.”
Gabriel stretched out his arms and touched both sides of the stairwell, blocking passage, knowing the gesture was futile, almost comical.
The group of big men didn’t stop climbing the steps. As they continued, two of the men in uniform came forward, grabbing Gabriel by the knees and arms and lifting him back up the steps. Gabriel was strong and agile but realized these men were experts in the dark art of overpowering and controlling other people. They had the training of Navy SEALs or Army Special Forces.
As soon as they released their grip, the lead agent said, “Sir, if you do one more fucking thing, we will put you in cuffs and take you away to where nobody will ever find you.”
Gabriel didn’t move as the bulky men passed by him to the door of his apartment. He heard one of them murmur, “The fucking faggot loved it when we grabbed him.”
Gabriel’s rage made him shake.
Cam appeared in the doorway, impeccably neat as ever, his expression at first quizzical and somewhat annoyed, as if he expected to find boisterous teenage pranksters on the landing in front of the apartment. And then his expression changed to fear, a reaction that Gabriel had never witnessed.
The lead agent, who clearly believed no one would ever question his authority, said, “I need you to step aside, sir.”
Seeing the fear in Cam’s face and knowing that as a teenager in the Deep South Cam had several times been beaten by local boys in pickup trucks, events that Cam later referred to as his “Matthew Shepard moments,” Gabriel lunged forward. The startled men didn’t react at first. Even serious drug dealers when confronted by agents with weapons and search warrants tended to become docile. They were startled by a well-dressed doctor who vaulted toward them and pushed the lead agent in the back, making him stagger to the side. The man was momentarily startled and then he was furious, with deadly hatred in his eyes so much like the expression Gabriel had seen in Afghanistan from infantrymen suddenly under attack. “You fucking queer,” he shouted as he regained his footing. He reached beneath his jacket and his swift hand emerged with a pistol.
Cam was crying.
Gabriel feinted to his left, and the big man stumbled when he missed Gabriel’s head as he swung toward it with the pistol in his hand.
Gabriel laughed at him in the second before two other men, suddenly recovered from the shock of Gabriel’s resistance, tackled him. Under their weight, Gabriel fell to the floor. Stron
g hands flipped him over as other strong hands wrenched his arms behind his back and put plastic handcuffs, tightly, on his wrists. His face was pushed to the floor. Then Gabriel heard Cam screaming, “Leave him alone, leave him alone.”
Gabriel also heard Oliver’s barking escalate, wildly. He heard, too, one of the men grunt. “Fuckin’ dog bit me.”
Another voice, authoritative and loud, said, “Shoot the fucker,” and a gun with a silencer fired, a thud. Oliver whimpered and wailed, obviously injured. Cam screamed. “Don’t, please don’t, what did you do? What did you do? Don’t hurt him. He’s just a dog.”
They spent an hour in the apartment, opening every drawer and door, scattering clothes out of Gabriel’s and Cam’s meticulously ordered closets. Even though Gabriel lay facedown in the hallway, he heard them say repeatedly to Cam, “Where’s the damn bracelet? Where did he put it?”
Cam didn’t answer. He sobbed continuously. Gabriel’s mind was not fixed on the pain in his wrists and arms but on the image of his beloved partner who he was certain was on the floor trying to soothe Oliver, who sustained a constant whimper.
One of the men pulled back Gabriel’s long hair and asked, “Where did you fucking put it?”
Gabriel said, vehemently, “Go fuck yourself, Jack.”
As the sound of the ransacking subsided and finally stopped, Gabriel heard one of the men speaking on his cell phone. “Not here, no sign of the thing, ma’am.” The man paused, listening. “Everywhere, we went through everything.” Another pause as the man listened and then said, “He attacked me. I want to bring him in, ma’am.” He listened again. “Not a problem, ma’am.”
