by Paul Batista
“Why didn’t you say that? Leaders ask questions, they probe, they ask, what if?”
“Are you telling me, Mr. President, what leaders do?”
“I’m telling you that this lockdown will continue until I decide it will end.”
Roland said, “We barely know each other. You learned how to play basketball at Stanford. I learned on a cracked tar court on 106th Street that had hoops but no nets. I learned that if some guy elbowed you, you elbowed him back. You learned that when gentlemen played every elbow throw was accidental and called for an apology. So what I know from what I learned as a kid is that in this city if this lockdown continues several hundred thousand people will start to move and overwhelm the tunnels and the bridges.”
“I’ve ordered General Foster to place Marines and Special Forces troops to take over all exits and entrances to Manhattan.”
“I can’t tell you how idiotic, dangerous, that is, Mr. President. You’re living in the world of Alice in Wonderland.”
At that moment a heavy hand, forceful and persistent, slammed against the closed door. One of the enormous agents pressed the earpiece more deeply into his ear. He listened intently. “Mr. President,” he finally said, “it’s Judge Lazarus. He says it’s essential that he see you.”
Without glancing at Roland Fortune, Carter said, “Unlock the door and let the scarecrow in.”
Lazarus carried an iPad. Without speaking, he held the iPad between the president and the mayor. On the screen was the image, as clear as a Hollywood production, of an Arabic-accented man speaking perfect English saying that ISIS had just exploded to infinity the president of the United States. And next on the screen was the stunning image of the extraordinarily handsome, troublesome Gabriel Hauser, in a wire cage, as he was immolated above the Hudson River.
Wordlessly, Carter watched the whole scene as transfixed as a teenager by a horror movie. With the scene unfolding, Roland first wondered if he too was watching a Hollywood movie scene. And then he dwelt on how Gabriel Hauser didn’t make a sound. As a teenager in high school studying modern American history, Roland had seen a film of saffron-dressed Buddhist monks on fire in Saigon to protest the Vietnam War. What had struck him most about the newsreels was that, in all-consuming flames, the monks, too, had never made a sound. Now, in this horrific image, Gabriel Hauser also was silent even as his body first became a torch entirely on fire and then diminished. It soon became a smaller and smaller mound of ash as the flames had less and less to consume.
Roland, squeezing with both index fingers the corners of his eyes so as not to cry, said, “Just four days ago I wanted to meet this man to thank him for his bravery.”
“The gods of fortune,” Lazarus said to Roland, “were on your side that that meeting never took place. The Angel of Life worked with the people who just torched him.”
Carter, who had no visible reaction to the video, said, “And, Mr. Mayor, this just happened in the very city you now want to open, is that right?”
“You don’t know very much,” Roland answered. “What you just so calmly saw didn’t take place in Manhattan. This island’s borders are broken. These men took this doctor to a blockhouse in the Hudson River hundreds of yards from the Manhattan waterfront. It’s equally accessible from New Jersey. You’ve never lived here, so you’ve never noticed those blockhouses in the river near the Holland Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel.”
“At the moment, Mr. Mayor, I’m more concerned about my authority to act. I will not let you take that away from me.”
“That’s crap, Mr. President. People are dying. What are you going to have General Foster’s soldiers do when hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children begin to walk and drive to the exits at the Triboro Bridge, the 59th Street Bridge, the Queens Midtown Tunnel? Push them back? Fire warning shots? Use tear gas? Why not just shoot some? Hosni Mubarak thought that was good strategy.”
At that moment, Lazarus held his iPad aloft between the two angry men. “Are you two worried about authority? Take a look at this. We have a rogue woman who is showing the world she has more authority than either of you.”
***
The iPad’s screen displayed Gina Carbone while she spoke, standing at the curved iron railing that ran along the high edge of the esplanade of Carl Schurz Park. Behind her was the gleaming light on the surface of the East River. Much further beyond her were the dense, dark, low-lying expanses of the Queens waterfront.
Surrounded by high-ranking uniformed NYPD police officers, she said to the dozens of reporters who were kept behind an impenetrable barricade ten feet in front of her, “The first point and most important by far is that the president of the United States is alive and completely unharmed. For obvious reasons he is at an undisclosed location in Manhattan.”
Even though her face was in intense sunlight, Gina neither blinked nor squinted. She spoke and bore herself steadily with the utter repose of a news broadcaster.
“Elite snipers of this great police department were put in place on First Avenue as soon as Mayor Fortune and I learned that terrorists had information that President Carter was making an unannounced visit to Manhattan to witness firsthand the steady, lethal degradation of the evil forces that have terrorized this besieged city since Sunday.”
“I want to arrest this woman,” Lazarus said to Carter and Fortune as he steadily held the iPad for them, “right now.” Gina was speaking no more than one hundred yards from where they stood in the foyer. “This,” Lazarus said, “is treason. Who does she think she is?”
Gina continued, “What I can tell you at this moment is that suicide bombers, a man and a woman who we believe were experienced U.S.-grown ISIS terrorists, stood directly opposite each other on First Avenue waiting for the decisive moment when the unmarked presidential convoy was to pass between them. At that point, at that moment, their tactical plan was to detonate enough explosives strapped to their ankles, legs, stomachs, and chests to create an inferno.
“One of our snipers, when the convoy was just a block away, dispatched a single round that struck the female in the head, killing her instantly and without igniting the weapons of mass destruction she wore. Our second sniper, who as a Navy SEAL in Iraq had made at least ninety long distance kills, fired at the male suicide bomber on the east side of First Avenue. For reasons that are not entirely clear to us, that kill shot also hit the bomber, delivering a mortal round, but the remarkable quantity of explosives he wore somehow detonated.”
A shrill voice rang out from beyond the barrier: “When will we see the president?”
“That is the president’s decision.”
The same insistent voice called out: “Then, Commissioner, how do you know what you’ve just told us?”
“I saw him. He’s a remarkable man. Calm, determined, undisturbed. He’s a consummate leader.”
Gina paused. Confidence and beauty radiated from her, a powerful presence. “I have more information for you, for the world. But first, as a former soldier myself, and because at the outset of these awful days I promised you only truth, I do have to report that at least four brave men who were part of the motorcade were killed. We know who they are and will give you that information when their families are notified.
“And there are other truths I’ll share with you. When the second suicide bomber, a human death machine, exploded, there were also severe losses in a popular playground near where these animals were standing. Dozens of innocent children and their parents were killed and maimed. I will have more information for you on that when, as I’ve assured you from the start, I have the truth about this unspeakable, cowardly brutality.”
Gina then gripped the stem of the microphone as if it were a weapon. “Cowards make mistakes. You all witnessed the brutal immolation of Dr. Gabriel Hauser just minutes ago. Immensely brave elements of the NYPD’s Special Forces know who these killers are and are incapacitating them even as we speak. This is not Syria. This is not Iraq. This is not Yemen, Libya, Nigeria. We now have these people
in our sights. They will face swift and certain justice. The nightmare is coming to an end.”
She paused. The cameras tightened on her powerful face.
“That is the truth I promised you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE CONFERENCE ROOMS inside the ugly, Soviet-style brick U.S. attorney’s office at One Saint Andrew’s Plaza in downtown Manhattan were utilitarian and windowless. There were many of them. There were no water containers in any of them, no wastebaskets, no coffee, no pens, no pencils, no paper. They each had identical furniture: long laminated tables whose surfaces were lacquered to resemble dark wood and seven or eight lightly upholstered chairs on four ball-bearing shaped wheels.
Yet despite the identity of the rooms, Tony Garafalo had the sensation that this was precisely the same one he had sat in seven years earlier when he was first arrested before he was convicted and sent to jail. Just as now, he was placed in the chair at the head of the table, but then, unlike now, separate handcuffs affixed his wrists, hands, ankles, and arms to the frame of the chair. This time, for some reason, he had complete freedom of movement. He could roll the chair backwards or forwards. He could lean into the table or away from it. He could make gestures. The one thing he was not allowed to do was stand and walk around.
And then, as now, there were at least eight other people in the room. Two of them were assistant U.S. attorneys, the lawyers who were just assigned to lead the investigations of Gina Carbone and Tony Garafalo. Seven years earlier, the assistants were both men in their mid-thirties. Like almost all assistant U.S. attorneys in Manhattan, they were graduates of Ivy League law schools. They had then spent two or three years as law clerks to federal judges, and then another three or four years with huge New York City law firms before moving for another four or five years to assignments as assistant United States attorneys: a standardized sequence of credentials that each of the assistants hoped would end in the ultimate lifetime prize—partnerships in their early forties in one of the legendary New York City law firms.
And then, as now, the other six or seven people in the room were anonymous law enforcement agents, all armed with visible holstered pistols. Seven years ago the only law enforcement agent who was a woman was Gina Carbone, with the rank of inspector. Tony Garafalo had known her since he was ten. They were raised on the same working-class block on Staten Island. Each winter both their parents’ lawns were decorated with identical smiling Santa Clauses in red stocking caps urging on identical, bulb-illuminated plastic reindeer.
And both of their uncles were soldiers in the Gambino family.
For two years, when he was thirty and she was in her early twenties before she unexpectedly enlisted in the Army and Tony Garafalo had long ago earned the nickname “Tony the Horse” because of the heft and size of his penis, they were lovers. When Tony was manacled in this same room, he first learned that Gina was a member of the team of FBI, IRS, Postal Service Inspectors, and NYPD officers who formed the combined squad that had investigated and taken him down. He didn’t acknowledge knowing her; and he mentioned nothing about the fact that the last time he had fucked her was as she leaned against the trunk of his Corvette the night before she left for Fort Knox to start her Army basic training. He also kept to himself that years ago when she came she was a screamer, not a moaner.
In fact, seven years ago, despite volleys of questions from everyone in the interview room, he hadn’t said a word to anyone. Nothing, nada. There were hours of questions about what he knew, what he had said, what he had done, where he lived. He didn’t even concede what his name was. The only words Gina spoke were, “That’s Tony Garafalo.”
But today, in what may have been the same ugly and sterile room, he wanted to talk. The two assistant U.S. attorneys, both in their mid-thirties, weren’t the same as those from seven years earlier; those two had left to whatever rewards or fates they reached. Tony, handsome as a movie star, stared at the two new assistants with nothing but the contempt that was bred into his DNA and his life experience, just as he knew that Gina Carbone had the same breeding and background, only that she had skillfully learned to conceal them and only at times glaringly, laughingly, revealed to him when they had been alone many times during the last two years. One of the new assistants who faced him was a dapper young black man, caramel colored and with effete steel-framed glasses. Incredibly to Tony, the other assistant was an Asian woman: Tony thought for a minute that he would break the ice by asking her for an order of lemon chicken and noodles.
“Mr. Garafalo,” the African American assistant said, “I’m obligated to tell you that you have a right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present. And that anything you may say to us can and will be used against you.”
“Let me ask you a question, Mr. Clark? That’s your name, isn’t it?”
Horace Clark nodded. “Same name that I had when I introduced myself to you three minutes ago.”
“Haven’t you guys learned how to use tape recorders and video equipment and all that stuff? I don’t see anything like that.”
“We don’t record interviews,” Clark answered.
“Even the Podunk PD records interviews these days. Andy of Mayberry would be doing it. Fuck, even cops wear cameras when they’re out on the street.”
“It’s federal policy not to have recording devices during interviews. You must surely know that, Mr. Garafalo, you’ve had experience with this process before.”
“So you still rely on the miracle of 302s?” Tony asked.
Form 302 was the government form, in use since the era of J. Edgar Hoover, on which FBI and other government agents wrote in sometimes vivid narratives the results of conversations they had with witnesses, defendants, and others. Tony used the words the miracle of 302s because, even though he had once sat for hours with FBI and other agents without ever saying a word, there were at least five agents who testified against him at trial who used their 302 reports to recount his incriminating statements.
During his trial, Tony had whispered to his lawyer, the legendary Vincent Sorrentino, “This is all made-up shit. I never said a word to those fuckers.” In return, Sorrentino, cupping his right hand over Tony’s left ear, had quietly said, “That’s why we call them form 302F, with F as in fiction.” Sorrentino had added, “Don’t worry, I’ll rip up their asses and their 302s on cross.” And Sorrentino had.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Tony told Horace Clark. “It’ll give you guys all day tomorrow to pick up some overtime when you write your 302s.” Tony Garafalo through the years had built up a way of fostering camaraderie with law enforcement agents, many of whom were born and raised in the same kinds of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island in which he had been raised. Tony was a man of many roles—if he’d become an actor, he could play convincingly a suave gangster, a compassionate priest, a lawyer or the leader of one of those evil empires in the action movies with computer animation that had become so popular in the years since his prison term ended.
All of the agents, men with Italian, Irish, and Polish names, either smiled or laughed when they heard him say “the miracle of 302s.” The two assistants didn’t laugh or even smile.
Gently adjusting the thin frames of his glasses, Horace Clark asked, “Mr. Garafalo, do you know the name Gina Carbone?”
“The name?” Tony smiled at the serious Horace Clark. “I know the person, too.”
“Do you know the Gina Carbone who is the current commissioner of the New York City Police Department?”
“Sure I do.”
“How long have you known Commissioner Carbone?”
“My math isn’t great. I’m fifty-four. I was ten or so when she was born. Our families lived on the same street. I even remember going to her baptism.” Tony glanced at the Asian Assistant, whose only words so far had been to introduce herself as “Assistant U.S. Attorney Yvette Yang,” a name that had tempted Tony to think of her as Yo Yo. “You know what a baptism is, don’t you?”
She ignored him
. In front of her at the table was a yellow legal pad at the top of which, as Tony could see, the only words were “Interview Notes with Anthony Garafalo” and the date.
“Did there come a point in time when you and Commissioner Carbone became friends?”
“That’s a really complicated word, Mr. Clark. She was my friend when she was baptized. Our families were, as I told you, close. I saw her almost every day for years. I do remember that when I was eighteen or so I played a lot of heavy-duty American Legion baseball. I told the coach to get a uniform for her and make her the first girl bat boy. She really, really wanted that. She kept on asking me to help get her that job. So the team made a little uniform for her that was just like ours and she became the first bat girl, not just for our team but in all of the other American Legion teams we played from all around the country.” Tony paused and smiled. “The coach, you know, would have made my eighty-five-year-old grandmother the first bat grandmother if I asked. I was so good I was being seriously scouted by the Pirates, the Red Sox, and the fucking San Diego Padres at the time. Gina, by the way, was a great bat girl from day one. She got to loose foul balls and picked up dropped bats faster than any bat boy I ever saw.”
“So you were friends then, too? She was about ten when you were twenty or so,” Clark said.
“Well,” Tony said, “there’s that problem with the word friend. She wanted to be on the team. If I hadn’t been at her baptism, if I didn’t know her and her family, if she had just been a little girl from the neighborhood begging the star of the team, which was yours truly, to be the first bat girl, I’d have ignored her.” Tony glanced around the room. “In my world friends help friends. Does that happen in your world, Ms. Yo?”
“My name is Ms. Yang, Mr. Garafalo.”
