by J. S. Carol
‘Hey there, Alex.’
‘Is this Agent Carter?’ King whispered.
‘It is. And please call me Brad. Now, before we go any further, I want to assure you we’re doing everything possible to get you guys out of there. Are you injured?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘I need to ask some questions. Is that okay with you, Alex?’
‘Sure.’
‘What’s going on in there?’
‘The bomber has started shooting people. Two people are dead so far. This guy’s a complete psycho.’
‘Any idea who the victims are?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘That’s okay, Alex, you’re doing great. You’re still in the restroom, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How much can you hear from where you are?’
‘Not much. I can hear when there’s shouting, but there’s not much of that. The rest of the time all I can make out is the odd word.’
‘How many bad guys are out there?’
King had assumed there was only one, but there could be more. He thought about what he’d heard and weighed it against what little he knew. He was pretty sure that the guy with the bomb was working alone.
‘There’s only one.’
‘Tell me something about him. Anything.’
‘His English is really good, if you know what I mean.’
‘Like he was born in the US?’
‘If he wasn’t, then he’s lived here for a while.’
‘Could you make out any sort of accent?’
‘No.’
‘That’s fine, Alex. You’re doing great, buddy. Real good. How’s the battery on your phone?’
Even before he looked, he knew it would be low. He never remembered to charge the damn thing. He took the phone from his ear and glanced at the screen. The phone was practically running on empty. ‘I’m probably okay to talk for another ten minutes.’
‘In that case I’m going to hang up now, but keep your phone switched on so I can get hold of you.’
‘Okay.’
‘And, Alex, I meant what I said. We’re going to get you out of there.’
‘Sooner would be better than later.’
‘I’m hearing you, buddy. Sit tight, okay?’
The line went dead and King stared at the phone. We’re going to get you out of there. That’s what the FBI guy had said. We’re going to get you out. He just hoped that Carter was a man of his word.
8
A distant telephone started ringing and JJ’s head snapped up. She wasn’t the only one. Everyone was looking to see where the noise had come from. The sound was as insubstantial as a mirage, but that didn’t make it any less real. Judging by the ringtone, this was a landline rather than a cell phone. It was an old-fashioned sound, and heart-achingly lonely, a stark reminder that the world they used to inhabit was both so close, and so far.
‘Where’s the telephone?’ the bomber asked Tony.
‘It’s in my office.’
‘Is it cordless?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bring it to me.’
Tony hauled himself to his feet and the bomber put a hand up to stop him.
‘Don’t even think about answering it.’
Tony hurried down the stairs, moving gracefully for someone who was carrying so much extra weight. JJ couldn’t get used to his New Jersey accent. Whenever he opened his mouth, she still expected him to sound like a stylist from a high-end hair salon. Compared to some of the adjustments she was being forced to make, this one was relatively minor. The sound of the ringing telephone got louder, and a few seconds later Tony reappeared on the lower level. He hurried up the steps and handed over the phone. The bomber checked the display, then held the phone up so Tony could see the screen.
‘Do you recognise this number?’
Tony shook his head.
‘My guess would be the cops or the FBI. It’s about time they made an appearance, don’t you think?’
Tony said nothing. The phone rang twice more, then suddenly stopped. The bomber tossed it casually onto a nearby table, where it landed with a clatter.
‘Okay, folks, on your feet.’
This time there was no hesitation. Everybody rose as one. They were moving like robots, limbs stiff and jerky. Ed Richards was one of the last to stand. His eyes were haunted, his spirit shattered. Natasha Lovett didn’t look much better. Survivor guilt was written all over the director’s face.
‘One at a time, I want you to come over here. We’ll start with you, Mr Head Sheep.’
Richards sleepwalked over and stopped beside the pile of clothes. The bomber produced a red marker pen from his pocket, flipped the lid off, swept the actor’s fringe aside, then wrote ED on his forehead in big capital letters. It looked like the letters had been written in blood. Natasha was next. The bomber wrote NAT on her forehead. Red showed up black against her skin and was barely legible.
JJ tried not to fidget, tried not to stare. Her gaze kept being drawn to the two piles next to the bomber. One for shoes, one for clothes. They reminded her of some old Auschwitz photographs she’d seen where the victims’ belongings had been heaped into neat piles on a warehouse floor. Shoes, spectacles, suitcases, toothbrushes. She looked away and saw the bodies of Elizabeth Hayward and the accountant. They were lying awkwardly where they’d died, discarded like trash, limbs at odd angles, eyes wide open. It was the eyes that got to her the most. Empty, unblinking and staring at nothing.
The bomber worked his way along the line until he reached JJ. He waved her across. It was only six strides, but those six strides felt like a mile. JJ kept her head down the whole way. Her breathing was rapid and echoed loudly inside her ears. She stopped walking. The bomber tilted her chin up. He kept tilting until she met his gaze, then brushed the hair from her forehead. His touch was surprisingly tender but it still made her want to squirm. She was close enough to smell his deodorant again, to smell the stale sweat it hid. She wondered if he could smell her fear.
‘Name?’
‘Jody Johnson.’ She stated her name in a blank voice. No emotion, no inflexion.
The bomber inked four letters onto her forehead. J-O-D-Y. She felt the tip of the pen glide across her skin. Greasy, shiny, wet. The smell made her think of her schooldays back in Illinois, those long-ago days of innocence when all that had mattered was who your favourite singer was, and who you wanted to make out with. How on earth had she got from there to here?
Everything went fine until it was Simone’s turn. The supermodel walked over slowly and cautiously, just like everyone else had. She stopped in front of him, just like everyone else. The bomber looked her up and down, then asked her name. Simone answered in halting syllables. Her Norwegian accent was more pronounced than JJ remembered. Probably due to the stress.
‘Do you work here?’ the bomber asked her.
‘No. I’m a model.’
‘I don’t remember seeing your name on the reservations list.’
A sudden flash of how this was going to play out filled JJ’s head. Simone was going to tell the bomber all about King, and then he would go looking for him, and when he found him he’d kill him. And then he’d probably come back and kill Simone, too. And JJ would have both their deaths on her conscience because she’d told Alex to bring her here today.
‘She’s with me.’
JJ blurted out the words without thinking. She hoped to God that Simone wasn’t as dumb as she looked. If she said the wrong thing now, it wouldn’t be the model who wound up dead, it would be her. The bomber studied JJ closely, his cold, grey eyes crawling over her. This is it, she thought. Any second now he’s going to see I’m lying, and then he’s going to shoot me.
‘I can explain,’ Tony said.
JJ turned and looked at him. What the hell was he doing? It was like they’d both temporarily lost their minds. She opened her mouth to say something and the bomber raised his hand.
‘No. This I want to hear.’ He tur
ned back to Tony. ‘Okay, including the corpses, I count sixteen customers here, yet there were only fifteen names on the reservations list. How does that work?’
‘I owed JJ a favour.’ Tony’s voice was distorted by his broken nose, the syllables all mushy. ‘She phoned me last night and asked if she could bring Simone along. I said it would be okay. That’s why her name wasn’t on the list.’
‘It must have been a pretty big favour. From what I’ve heard, it’s easier to get through the gates of heaven than it is to get in here.’
‘It was a big favour.’
‘Care to elaborate?’
‘I will if you want me to, but I’d rather not.’
‘That embarrassing, huh? Okay, let’s hear it.’
‘Allegedly, I was caught with a rent boy. Jody helped smooth things out.’
‘That was good of her. So did it actually happen? And I want the truth.’
‘Yes.’
JJ went very still. Tony was playing hard and loose with the truth. The stuff about the rent boy was all true, but the story about Simone was only half true at best. JJ had called Tony last night, that much was accurate. But what she’d actually asked for was a table for Simone and Alex. Tony had okayed this, but clearly that information hadn’t made it onto the reservations list. She held her breath and prayed that Tony didn’t get caught in the lie. He’d stepped up to protect her and Alex. It was one of the bravest things she’d ever seen. It was also one of the dumbest.
The bomber held Tony’s gaze for a second, then turned and stared at Simone. JJ didn’t dare look at the model, not even a glance. Another thought hit her from left field, one that made her stomach plummet. Simone had been on the lower level when the bomber had come in. If he remembered that, then this whole house of cards was about to come crashing down.
JJ could feel her heart beating. She could feel the blood pounding around her body. She wasn’t particularly religious, but she said a quick prayer anyway, figuring that it wouldn’t do any harm. Her mom had been an occasional Catholic, which meant that JJ had been dragged along to church from time to time. Christmas and Easter, mainly. Even before Tom’s death, she would have described herself as a lapsed Catholic. Afterwards, she’d parted company with God for good. She could still remember how to pray, though. She knew all about guilt, too.
The bomber started moving. This is it, JJ thought. Someone else is going to die. Instead of reaching for his gun, though, he took a step forward and wrote SIMONE on the model’s forehead. He glanced at JJ, then dismissed Simone and called the next person forward. JJ only started breathing again when Simone was safely back with the other hostages.
Last up was Kevin Donahue. The movie producer was pushing sixty and didn’t look well. His skin was grey and his eyes were sunk deep into their dark sockets. With his shirt off you could see his ribs. JJ guessed cancer. The bomber asked Donahue for his name, wrote KEV on his forehead, then dismissed him.
‘Everyone on the floor.’
JJ sat down. Her hands were in her lap, fingers entwined so they wouldn’t take on a life of their own and rub the ink from her forehead. The letters etched onto her skin itched like a healing tattoo. She wanted rid of them. She wanted to scrub at them until every last trace was gone.
It suddenly occurred to her that she might inadvertently have saved King’s life. The bomber said that he’d seen the reservations list. Would he have recognised Alex King’s name, if it had been on there? Probably. After all, King was a big deal at the moment. And would the bomber have noticed that the actor wasn’t here now? Again, it was likely. The fact that this had all been arranged at the last minute was playing in their favour. As far as the bomber was concerned, King didn’t exist.
JJ glanced around at the other hostages. Richards looked in a bad way. And no wonder. The accountant had died because of him. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he might as well have done. It was an impossible choice, yet somehow he’d made it. So, why had he picked Natasha? Was it because she was a woman? Or was it that he knew her? A third possibility was that this was a case of famous people sticking together. Maybe it was as simple as that.
She had assumed that the bomber had chosen Natasha and the accountant at random, but now she was starting to wonder. This was the second time he’d picked on Natasha. Maybe it was a coincidence, but that explanation still didn’t sit well. And if it wasn’t a coincidence, why Natasha? And why pick on the accountant? Maybe she was overanalysing, but even if she was, they were questions worth considering.
If this wasn’t a coincidence, then it meant that Natasha had been targeted. It was possible. If the bomber had access to the reservations list it would be easy to run checks on the lunch guests. Thirty minutes on Google and he’d know everything worth knowing about everyone in the room. Like Wiesner used to tell her, knowledge was the only power that really mattered. If the bomber had been checking them out, then that implied a certain amount of premeditation. Which, in turn, led back to the question of why the hell he was doing this.
JJ glanced up. The bomber was clearing a space on one of the tables. She watched him take a laptop from his backpack and switch it on. He rubbed his head and face through the balaclava, then reached into the backpack again and came out with a bottle of pills. He shook a couple of tablets into his palm and dry swallowed them.
For the next couple of minutes he was totally absorbed by what was happening on the screen. It was as though everything else had ceased to exist. JJ couldn’t see what he was watching, but she could hear enough to know that he was surfing the news channels. CNN, Fox, TRN. She heard the clipped tones of a British reporter, which meant the story had already gone international. No great surprise there. Nothing travelled faster than bad news.
All the channels were running the exact same story. There had been a terror attack on an exclusive LA restaurant. There was a suicide bomber and there were hostages, maybe as many as forty. The LAPD and the FBI were on the scene and they were negotiating with the bomber. Even though al-Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the attack, the situation was being likened to the ISIS attack on the Bataclan in Paris. This in turn led to plenty of lurid speculation about the sort of hell the hostages were going through.
JJ listened with a mounting sense of disbelief. The reporters didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. There had been no negotiations, there were nowhere near forty hostages, and al-Qaeda and ISIS didn’t have a damn thing to do with any of this. The reporters were filling the gaps with speculation and dressing it up to look like fact. They couldn’t have got things more wrong if they’d tried. What worried her most was that the media view was indicative of what the cops were thinking, albeit a distorted, more sensationalised version. She knew only too well how that one worked. This raised two questions.
What were the cops thinking?
And, more worrying, how wrong had they actually got it?
9
‘We are now going over to Rob Taylor, our man on the ground at Alfie’s.’
Caroline Bradley stared directly into the camera, grim-faced and serious. She’d changed from a red suit to a black one because Seth had felt that red was too frivolous for a story of this magnitude. He counted down from three and the picture on the main monitor switched to the live feed from the scene.
‘Thanks, Caroline.’ Rob sounded a little out of breath, like he’d been running. It was all an act, but it worked brilliantly, adding a real sense of urgency to the proceedings. ‘If you look behind me you can see that there are more than a hundred law enforcement officers on the scene. In addition, I’ve seen a couple of SWAT teams, agents from the FBI’s LA field office, bomb disposal experts, firefighters and paramedics. This is quickly turning into a full-scale emergency situation.’
Rob’s head suddenly snapped to the left and the camera followed his gaze. A horde of reporters were pushing towards a small, hastily erected podium. The picture bumped and jolted as he broke into a run. Seth had to smile. It was another nice touch, one that cranked
the drama up another couple of notches. You couldn’t train someone to do this. You either had it or you didn’t, and Rob Taylor had it in spades.
The camera zoomed in on Aaron Walters, the head of the LAPD’s public information office. Walters was in his late forties. He had neat salt-and-pepper hair, a greying moustache, and a politician’s face. Today he was wearing his best uniform. His buttons were shining, his shoes gleaming. Everything about his body-language said ‘trust me’. Seth had met the PR guy a couple of times and wouldn’t trust the brown-nosing, back-stabbing son of a bitch as far as he could spit.
Walters stepped up to the lectern and faced the crowd. His gaze moved from left to right, taking in the cameras, mikes and reporters. A strained silence fell. It was the sound of a crowd of news hounds doing their best to contain themselves.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to read a short statement. At 13:26 today, we received a 911 call regarding an incident at Alfie’s. We mobilised immediately and our first priority was to secure the scene, which we have now done. Everyone in a three-block radius has been evacuated. Because of the nature of the situation, the LAPD is working in close co-operation with the FBI’s LA field office to ensure that this matter is brought to a swift conclusion. We would urge you to tell your viewers to please just stay away from Alfie’s and the surrounding area. Any questions?’
A flurry of hands shot into the air. Walters pointed to Rob.
‘Rob Taylor, TRN. Is this an al-Qaeda attack?’
‘At this point we’re not ruling out that possibility.’
‘Don’t evade the question. If this is al-Qaeda our viewers have the right to know. According to my sources, the terrorist is wearing an explosive vest. Alfie’s is a high-profile target. The MO is classic al-Qaeda, isn’t it?’
‘Like I said, at this stage we’re not ruling out that possibility.’ Walters was suddenly interrupted by a barrage of questions. He put his hand up for silence. ‘However,’ he added, ‘I must emphasise that the terrorist angle is just one angle that we’re exploring right now.’
