by Mike Bogin
Callie turned onto her side to face him. “And what did Eamonn have to say about all this?”
“He drove it out to the docks on the roof of the Torino. Once we had it in the water and it floated, he never made anything of it. He used to call it our ‘curragh.’ I think the Big Man would have come along with us, except he’d have sunk the thing the minute he got in.” Owen pictured he father lifting the little boat off the car roof and carrying it up over his head down the dock.
“We took that little boat out past La Guardia with the airplanes taking off and landing right over us. We ran it way out past Little Bay and even across to Kings Point. Heck, we ran that little boat all the way across to City Island one time. I forgot all about that! We ran out of gas and ended up sweeping this guy’s whole parking lot to get the money to refill. I can’t believe I forgot that.”
Callie could picture Casey sneaking off to imitate his dad. “Don’t you ever, EVER, tell that story to my boys, Owen Cullen,” she warned. “Casey would be out in the middle of the friggin ocean. You don’t tell that story!”
“Don’t worry,” he teased. “No boats. Let’s get them a wave runner!”
* * * * *
Friday, July 13
From any high point along Central Park West in the 70s, the view encompasses The Lake and Castle, the Sheep Meadow and the Boathouse roof, the lights along the top of the Summer Stage, the terraces overlooking West Drive. A balcony on Central Park West runs six thousand dollars per square foot.
Deliveries and doormen, a constant flow of flower arrangements and every possible combination of foods and wines, sofas and artworks, decorating and redecorating. A delivery for Stenkel, 6D. Acknowledgment in the form of a passed clipboard. Signing in and “go ahead.” This deliveryman used his own pen. Afterward, the security attendant thought he might have remembered a brown hat.
* * * * *
He rode the elevator to the roof. The fire escape would get him back down to the alley. From the top, he could see across the park down the fronts of a dozen buildings along Central Park West. Each block ran one hundred meters from corner to corner. There were two terraces per floor on six floors. Two buildings per block. His range per side equaled 2.5 city blocks. Sixty visuals direction north, each visual on a potential target. Longest range, 2.5 blocks = 1,500 meters at that first level above the street. When a cigarette was lit there, from the rooftop the cigarette brand on the table was easily identifiable in plain view through his scope. Dunhill.
* * * * *
Edward Meier stood in his Scottish tartan waist-jacket, inhaling deeply holding the cigarette with the tips of his middle and forefingers pressed against his lips. “No, no, no,” he complained. “I would NEVER have brought the exhibition to MOMA. It’s meant to be cutting-edge, to exude the contemporary avant-garde. They’ll place everything under perfect lighting and in comes the same pseudo-chic mob that shows up for every opening. No thinking. No reaction. I swear you might as well take a standing dump. It’s about as tempting as sugar-free chocolate pudding, and the pudding is more cerebral.”
Everyone seated at the table beside Meier waited for him to inhale so that they might get their chance to speak.
“I love your shoes, Skippy,” remarked the hostess. Meier responded with a half-curtsey then lifted his right toe and extended the Gucci’s for everyone to see.
* * * * *
Shooting techniques range widely. A good sniper can herd targets together by taking perimeter aim first, sometimes even gaining multiple victims per fire as one bullet passes through several bodies. Shooting into a flock of birds: if you take out the lead bird, the flock will scatter. But when you take out the rear bird first, and then the next bird, and the next ahead of it, you can shoot right through the formation before the lead bird knows it is alone.
Once the first screams were heard, the noises would draw more targets to the outside railings. The natural reaction would be to stretch over to search out whatever was going on nearby. Just when they should be running inside, he was going to draw them out and center them within his field of view. One target per floor. He would leave the birds in formation, spreading from high to low elevations while leaving maximum targets in place. The fifth floor would not hear or identify anything from the second floor.
Sixty terraces. Fourteen occupied. Six seated at tables. Eight standing, champagne and martinis. Excluding servants, sixty to seventy, with movement inside and back out. To the nearest block, corner windows facing south revealed up to ten more inside. Pass. Candlelight dinner for eight, cocktail dresses, silk jackets, first building south end, second block, fourth floor. Scope to barrel. Re-sight. Candlelight magnified. Silver hair, cream cloth, ascot tie (dark blue?). Bolt. Chamber. Lock. BRASS. The downward impact lifted his target right over the rail and down onto the sidewalk below. He hadn’t expected that.
Regrouping inside a second, he shifted to the fifth floor, second building north, first block. Movement to the north rail. Four clean visuals looking down to the next building. Backless dress, center mass. Bolt. Chamber. Lock. BRASS. Her body dropped like a falling goose. Same range, male leaning above. Bolt. Chamber. Lock. BRASS. (Impact carried him backward over railing.) The grain loads must have been hot. Two over the rail?
First floor, fifth building, champagne reception, white dinner jacket leaning, overlooking Central Park West. Black hair graying along the temple. Perspiration. Bolt. Chamber. Lock. BRASS.
Sirens. Horse police crossing street. Movement to railings. Closest building, sixth floor. Five along rail. Outside placement, away-side. Emerald green. Right shoulder, necklaces. Bolt. Chamber. Lock. BRASS. Movement. Hero at sliding door, waving everyone inside. Center chest. Bolt. Chamber. Lock. BRASS.
Six casings. Count. Recount. Six. Twist, pull, scope. Release, twist, stock. Strap overhead, across chest, under shoulder. Tug gloves, tighten Velcro. Corrosion on ladder railing. Avoid. Light touch. Grip. Never slide. Steady. Touch, grip, shift. Six seconds each floor, six floors to base ladder, base ladder to alley. Center weight bag. Release. Drop. Loose knees. Squat. Rise. 19:44. Engagement. Egress. Less than three minutes.
* * * * *
The response was well-practiced, immediate, substantial, and utterly useless. Mid-Town North dispatched thirty-two uniformed officers to Central Park West. Inside four minutes, the entire Major Crimes detective squad joined them, followed close-on by the Chief of Police and Deputy Chiefs, who dumped their cars in the street and ran toward the impromptu command center forming in the foyer as blood off the balconies poured like water after a torrential rain. The Chief threw his red-stained hat into the corner and listened for input with his bald head bare.
“Chief, our sound meters triangulated the shots. They came from a rooftop. We have the mapping overlay coming in. Could be any one of three buildings, we’re not yet certain. Working now on correlating to the exact street address.”
The Long Island shootings had already brought on heat. The shooter had touched the lives of people whom law enforcement was supposed to be protecting; wives and ex-wives were terrorized and blaming that tension on influential husbands who were picking up their phones. Dominoes were falling. Now this.
“Get out every visible asset,” the Chief ordered. “Maximize our footprint right down to every reserve officer. Right now, people need to see us!” Fuck the technology…right now he needed feet on the street. Cameras and gunshot detectors weren’t going to calm this down. Not five more dead, not in their own homes right on Central Park West!
SWAT, black uniformed, faces covered, automatic rifles with scopes and wire swing-stocks, fanned through three buildings. Their silhouettes appeared on the rooftops all along Parkside. From W 85th to Columbus, Circle Central Park West was sealed tight. Six shots.
Uniforms cleared ambulances through, walking ahead of them on the sidewalk to get around the sea of parked police units.
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Five fatalities. One surviving victim, critical, collapsed lung, hemorrhaging.
Before Owen had reached the car, a text came in from Al Hurwitz, who was a passenger inside the car being driven by Ed Gonzalez. Get back to me ASAP. Formal request can follow. Inside one minute, Owen was out of the house and had mounted his flasher on the roof before turning the ignition key. He had no intention of slowing for stoplights. Five fatalities. Sniper. I KILL RICH PEOPLE. Sonofabitch.
Emerson Elliot’s voice was broadcasting from his home studio twelve minutes later. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX broke into broadcasts while lead anchors raced to studios. Voiceovers from helicopters, cameras zooming in to closed streets, ambulances, and SWAT snipers on rooftops. One of them within two feet from what later would be identified as the shooter’s fire point.
“The Schlitz hit the fan tonight,” Elliot shouted into his jaw mike. “Right here along rich man’s row.”
Emerson Elliot’s show was webcast live and text-posted to Facebook. Crazy Thumbs reluctantly set up the link to the Bullets for Billionaires fan page. One million, four-hundred sixty-two thousand hits and change. The numbers were there, but Crazy Thumbs had to wonder if Emerson Elliot was all there. Nine days ago he had been in the middle of a multiple-fatality shooting. Now, while more people were getting shot, EE was sounding like a cheerleader. Crazy Thumbs even considered whether EE was suffering from PTSD. What they ought to be doing was taking a couple weeks’ vacation time and replaying “Best Of” tapes. Crazy Thumbs had hinted at that enough times that EE, who picked up everything, had to know. But far from going to tape, EE was broadcasting from the home studio, too, and Crazy Thumbs had to stay in the guest suite so he would be available to fire up their broadcast night or day.
“This isn’t suburbia or vacationland we’re talking. Tonight, this is right here, Central Park West.” Elliot’s voice sounded momentarily sympathetic for the victims.
“Being filthy rich isn’t all great all of a sudden,” he reflected aloud. “Bullets came to where you live. Take off your designer outfits and leave the Maybachs at home, people. Somebody out there is calling bullshit on all that.”
EE had the sense that it was all inevitable. “Lo and behold. I KILL RICH PEOPLE. I ask you, New York. Hey, I ask the whole country, do YOU feel scared? If you aren’t dripping money, does any of this mean anything to YOU? How many of you live on Central Park West?”
Maybe it had to come to this, EE realized. “You aren’t going to hear that question on ABC or NBC or CBS or Fox! Maybe this guy, crazy as he has to be, maybe he’s actually fighting for the rest of us, for the ninety-nine-point-nine percent. We are sick of watching politicians who won’t call the rich on anything. Maybe corporations are obligated to maximize profit for investors, but when did that become the obligation of this government? Did you vote for that? I know I didn’t. Who voted to let the rich keep squeezing everybody else until there isn’t anything left to squeeze!”
Fuck management. Fuck the sponsors… they always came back. Push the boundaries.
The police cordon allowed a white, sixteen-wheel diesel trunk through and up Central Park West, reaching forty before breaking hard at the corner of West Road beside the Park. Inside, servers and telecommunications equipment were engineered to for full mobile capacity without interruption. Its occupants were belted in to wheeled seats that magnetically secured to the floor during motion. Twelve-inch flat screens mounted along the roofline were angled down to offer a 360-degree visual of everything surrounding the trailer.
Al Hurwitz saw the unmarked truck moving through NYPD barrier, knowing what was inside instantly. Behind the non-descript exterior, the truck was a mobile command center streaming satellite data, likely drone data, too. Al scanned over the sea of red, blue, and white flashing lights, searching for Chevrolet Suburbans. NYPD and FBI deployed figurative fishing nets for eight square blocks and across Central Park. While the rest of them were netting blind, NSA was spear-fishing directly on point. NSA men inside the truck would be receiving real-time satellite and drone imagery. If they, FBI and NYPD, didn’t have the data, they would have to follow NSA’s seagulls to find the fish. Al followed the various units, watching for any squads displaying NSA in bright yellow lettering. None. But he did spy a mixed unit, four plainclothes personnel following a six-man squad in SWAT gear, no evident insignia.
It took the sixteen-wheeler longer to arrive in traffic than it took to locate the shooter’s position atop the roof. Audio monitors pinged the block the moment shots were fired. Now, the same nighttime visual tools that were weak for facial scanning, zeroed straight in on the gun flashes. Heat reception imagery supported weapons discharge identification day and night, with greater accuracy set against cooler night air. With 24X pixilation at surface, unenhanced imagery could read 16-point fonts. A single figure, dressed head-to-toe in black, was clearly displayed sighting down onto Central Park West.
“Overview this with colorization,” the tech lead ordered. The replay was slowed down to frame/second speed. Enhanced lumens to a green fade, auto-corrected to optimize. His tech rolled his eyes. Drones or satellite source, against night vision there was no such thing as colorization. Colorization? How about just ordering the sun to shine?
Zero facial input. The downward angle against the shooter’s hat revealed no exposed hair, skin at face, neck, wrists. Adult male. One-hundred-eighty to two-hundred pounds. Nike shoes. The swoosh showed clearly. Average height range. Bolt-action rifle. One shot. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Six shots, six hits, forty-one seconds. Cool, precise, focused, yet rapid intervals revealing indiscriminate target selection. Random, even. He stopped the image and turned back. The outstretched arm showed lighter shading between jacket sleeve and glove as the shooter retrieved his casings. White, possibly Arab. Not black skin. Movement to the fire escape ladder. Scaled to the fixed measurement of the inverted u-shaped ladder rails (42 inches), shooter between 70 inches and 73 inches tall.
The men inside that truck directed an active engagement team to the spot before even recognizing that the images were distinct. NYPD SWAT was already deployed into positions where both forces would collide.
“Rooftop, SE corner directly across from Command. Go! I repeat. Go!”
Ed Gonzalez watched with apprehension while two more six-man teams, black uniforms, disgorged from two black Suburbans to deploy at a canter toward the building directly across from the truck. Three law enforcement agencies, maybe more, were rushing with guns drawn into an unknown situation. Too many people giving orders. Gonzalez could feel the situation red line into a perfect recipe for friendly fire.
The twelve helmeted, heavily-armed men broke into a primary team of six and two secondary squads that moved toward spots to the north and west sides of the building. The building doorman watched out the glass front door as the primary team moved inside, securing the lobby. Additional three-man squads rushed into the stairwells, blocked the parking garage doors, and tracked upward toward the roof.
“Stand down,” Gonzalez insisted within himself. “Stand down!” Gonzalez had seen too many overheated squads converge on a target without having the skills and coordination to communicate and identify good guys and bad guys. NSA was moving in against the NYPD SWAT sniper. In split-second decision-making, that was the way to get good men dead.
Two FBI forensics teams grouped along W 68th beside the First Church of Christ. Al Hurwitz and Major Gonzalez followed one team toward the roof, preparing to bang heads with NSA. Al, who had never carried a firearm, asked why they all had guns drawn. The only people they would be shooting would be one another. They should all be calming down. Put the damned guns away.
NSA did not yet have forensics in place, which Al hoped would mean a window for the Bureau to fit through.
Turner was busy directing the second team to the victim vans gathering bodies for transportation to the City Morgue. “Get to t
he first loaded van and take control of it. Get in there and extract the slug. Do whatever what you need to do. Get it, and then run it against Sag Harbor and Sands Point. Get that confirmation. Get it now.”
NYPD sniper teams scanned rooftops, never knowing that the shooter’s location had been determined. FBI never relayed a situation update to NYPD. Two-hundred-plus officers, guns drawn, rushed through the darkness, moving floor by floor through a dozen residential buildings along Central Park West. Uniforms were scouring park-side, moving trunk to trunk along the tree-line like they were advancing under fire. Starting at The Dakota, detectives started canvassing for witnesses. Somebody had to have seen something!
Owen left his car at the corner of Broadway and Columbus Circle, running the remainder of the way to 68th. He arrived fully an hour after the last shot was fired. Al Hurwitz and Major Gonzalez stood on the rooftop thirty feet back while the FBI forensics team mapped, photographed, dusted and sprayed the rooftop.
“No suspects, no arrests. The shooter is long gone,” Al told him. Anybody who could get in and out from Sands Point was not going to be caught along Central Park West.
* * * * *
Black body bags carried on gurneys came out of gilded elevators. Midtown North, Midtown South, and elements of five precincts in all were deployed on highest alert. Central Park West on shutdown, everyone inside the park cordoned to selected exits and screened with baggage-checks perched on the sharpened edge of the Fourth Amendment.