The narrow streets were quiet and empty and he loved this time of day for collecting his thoughts, or sometimes for not thinking at all. Abel Sante was musing on the death of a young woman earlier today, a patient of his, twenty-six years old. She had a loving husband and two beautiful daughters. He had a perspective about death that he thought was a good one: Why should leaving the world, and rejoining the cosmos, be any scarier than entering the world, which wasn’t very scary at all.
Dr. Sante didn’t know where the man, a street person in a soiled gray jacket and torn, baggy jeans had come from. Suddenly the man was at his side, nearly attached to his left elbow.
“Beautiful,” the man said.
“I’m sorry, excuse me?” Abel Sante said, startled, coming out of his inner thoughts in a hurry.
“It’s a beautiful night and our city is so perfect for a late walk.”
“Yes, well it’s been nice meeting you,” Sante said to the street person. He’d noticed that the man’s French was slightly accented. Perhaps he was English, or even American.
“You shouldn’t have left her apartment. Should have stayed the night. A gentleman always stays the night — unless of course he’s asked to leave.”
Dr. Abel Sante’s back and neck stiffened. He took his hands from his trouser pockets. Suddenly he was afraid, very much so.
He shoved the street person away with his left elbow.
“What are you talking about? Why don’t you just get out of here?”
“I’m talking about you and Regina. Regina Becker, the painter. Her work’s not bad, but not good enough, I’m afraid.”
“Get the hell away from me.”
Abel Sante quickened his pace. He was only a block from his home. The other man, the street person, kept up with him easily. He was larger, more athletic than Sante had noticed at first.
“You should have given her babies. That’s my opinion.”
“Get away. Go!”
Suddenly, Sante had both fists raised and clasped tightly. This was insane! He was ready to fight, if he had to. He hadn’t fought in twenty years, but he was strong and in good shape.
The street person swung out and knocked him down. He did it easily, as if it were nothing at all.
Dr. Sante’s pulse was racing rapidly. He couldn’t see very well out of his left eye, where he’d been struck.
“Are you a complete maniac? Are you out of your mind?” he screamed at the man, who suddenly looked powerful and impressive, even in the soiled clothes.
“Yes, of course,” the man answered, “Of course I’m out of my mind. I’m Mr. Smith — and you’re next.”
Chapter 55
GARY SONEJI hurried like a truly horrifying city rat through the low dark tunnels that wind like intestines beneath New York’s Bellevue Hospital. The fetid odor of dried blood and disinfectants made him feel sick. He didn’t like the reminders of sickness and death surrounding him.
No matter, though, he was properly revved for today. He was wired, flying high. He was Death. And Death was not taking a holiday in New York.
He had outfitted himself for his big morning: crisply pressed white pants, white lab coat, white sneakers; a laminated hospital photo ID around his neck on a beaded silver chain.
He was here on morning rounds. Bellevue. This was his idea of rounds anyway!
There was no way to stop any of this: his train from hell, his destiny, his last hurrah. No one could stop it because no one would ever figure out where the last train was headed. Only he knew that, only Soneji himself could call it off.
He wondered how much of the puzzle Cross had already pieced together. Cross wasn’t in his class as a thinker, but the psychologist and detective wasn’t without crude instincts in certain specialized areas. Maybe he was underestimating Dr. Cross, as he had once before. Could he be caught now? Perhaps, but it really didn’t matter. The game would continue to its end without him. That was the beauty of it, the evil of what he had done.
Gary Soneji stepped into a stainless-steel elevator in the basement of the well-known Manhattan hospital. A pair of porters shared the narrow car with him, and Soneji had a moment of paranoia. They might be New York cops working undercover.
The NYPD actually had an office on the main floor of the hospital. It was there under “normal” circumstances. Bellevue. Jesus, what a sensational madhouse this was. A hospital with a police station inside.
He eyed the porters with a casual and disinterested city-cool look. They can’t be policemen, he thought, Nobody could look that dumb. They were what they looked like — slow-moving, slow-thinking hospital morons.
One of them was pushing around a stainless-steel cart with two bum wheels. It was a wonder that any patient ever made it out of a New York City hospital alive. Hospitals here were run with about the same personnel standards as a McDonald’s restaurant, probably less.
He knew one patient who wasn’t going to leave Bellevue alive. The news reports said that Shareef Thomas was being kept here by the police. Well, Thomas was going to suffer before he left this so-called “vale of tears.” Shareef was about to undergo a world of suffering.
Gary Soneji stepped out of the elevator onto the first floor. He sighed with relief. The two porters went about their business. They weren’t cops. No, they were dumber and dumbest.
Canes, wheelchairs, and metal walkers were everywhere. The hospital artifacts reminded him of his own mortality. The halls on the first floor were painted off-white, the doors and radiators were a shade of pink like “old gum.” Up ahead was a strange coffee shop, dimly lit like a subway passageway. If you ate in that place, he thought to himself, they ought to lock you up in Bellevue!
As he walked from the elevator, Soneji caught his own reflection in a stainless-steel pilar. The master of a thousand faces, he couldn’t help thinking. It was true. His own stepmother wouldn’t recognize him now, and if she did, she would scream her bloody lungs out. She’d know he’d come all the way to hell to get her.
He walked down the corridor, singing very softly in a reggae lilt, “I shot the Shareef, but I did not shoot the dep-u-tee.”
No one paid him any mind. Gary Soneji fit right in at Bellevue.
Chapter 56
SONEJI HAD a perfect memory, so he would recall everything about this morning. He would be able to play it back for himself with incredible detail. This was true for all of his murders. He scanned the narrow, high-ceilinged hallways as if he had a surveillance camera mounted where his head was. His powers of concentration gave him a huge advantage. He was almost supernaturally aware of everything going on around him.
A security guard was riffing with young black males outside the coffee shop. They were all mental defectives for sure, the toy cops especially.
No threat there.
Silly baseball caps were bobbing everywhere. New Jork Janquis. San Francisco Jints. San Jose Sharks. None of the ballcap wearers looked as if they could play ball worth spit. Or harm, or stop him.
The Hospital Police Office was up ahead. The lights were out, though. Nobody home right now. So where were the hospital patrol cops? Were they waiting for him someplace? Why didn’t he see any of them? Was that the first sign of trouble?
At the inpatient elevator, a sign read: ID REQUIRED. Soneji had his ready. For today’s masquerade, he was Francis Michael Nicolo, R.N.
A framed poster was on the wall: PATIENTS’ RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES. Signs started out from behind fuzzy Plexiglas everywhere he looked. It was worse than a New York highway: RADIOLOGY, UROLOGY, HEMATOLOGY. I’m sick, too, Soneji wanted to yell out to the powers that be. I’m as sick as anybody in here. I’m dying. Nobody cares. Nobody has ever cared.
He took the central elevator to four. No problems so far, no hassles. No police. He got off at his stop, pumped to see Shareef Thomas again, to see the look of shock and fear on his face.
The hallway on four had a hollowed-out basement feel to it. Nothing seemed to absorb sound. The whole building felt as if it were ma
de entirely of concrete.
Soneji peered down the corridor to where he knew Shareef was being kept. His room was at the far end of the building. Isolated for safety, right? So this was the high-and-mighty NYPD in action. What a joke. Everything was a joke, if you thought about it long and hard enough.
Soneji lowered his head and started to walk toward Shareef Thomas’s hospital room.
Chapter 57
CARMINE GROZA and I were inside the private hospital room waiting for Soneji, hoping that he would show. We had been here for hours. How would I know what Soneji looked like now? That was a problem, but we would take them one at a time.
We never heard a noise at the door. Suddenly it was swinging open. Soneji exploded into the room, expecting to find Shareef Thomas. He stared at Groza and me.
His hair was dyed silver-gray and combed straight back. He looked like a man in his fifties or early sixties — but the height was about right. His light blue eyes widened as he looked at me. It was the eyes that I recognized first.
He smiled the same disdainful dismissive smirk I’d seen so many times, sometimes in my nightmares. He thought he was so damn superior to the rest of us. He knew it.
Soneji said only two words: “Even better.”
“New York Police! Freeze,” Groza barked a warning in an authoritative tone.
Soneji continued to smirk as if this surprise reception pleased him no end, as if he’d planned it himself. His confidence, his arrogance, was incredible to behold.
He’s wearing a bulletproof vest, my mind registered a bulge around his upper body. He’s protected. He’s ready for whatever we do.
There was something clasped tightly in his left hand. I couldn’t tell what. He’d entered the room with the arm half-raised.
He flipped a small green bottle in his hand toward Groza and me. Just the flip of his hand. The bottle clinked as it hit the wooden floor. It bounced a second time. Suddenly I understood… but too late, seconds too late.
“Bomb!” I yelled at Groza. “Hit the floor! Get down!”
Groza and I dove away from the bed and the caroming green bottle. We managed to put up sitting chairs as shields. The flash inside the room was incredibly bright, a splintered shock of white light with an afterglow of the brightest yellow. Then everything around us seemed to catch fire.
For a second or two. I was blinded. Then I felt as if I were burning up. My trousers and shoes were engulfed in flames. I covered my face, mouth, and eyes with my hands. “Jesus, God,” Groza screamed.
I could hear a sizzle, like bacon on a grill. I prayed it wasn’t me that was cooking. Then I was choking and gurgling and so was Groza. Flames burst and danced across my shirt, and through it all I could hear Soneji. He was laughing at us.
“Welcome to hell, Cross,” he said. “Burn, baby, burn.”
Chapter 58
GROZA AND I stripped the bed of blankets and sheets and beat out our burning trousers. We were lucky, at least I hoped we were. We smothered the flames. The ones on our legs and shoes.
“He wanted to burn Thomas alive,” I told Groza. “He’s got another firebomb. I saw another green bottle, at least one.”
We hobbled as best we could down the hospital corridor, chasing after Soneji. Two other detectives were already down outside, wounded. Soneji was a phantom.
We followed him down several twisting flights of back stairs. The sound of the footrace echoed loudly on the stairway. My eyes were watering, but I could see okay.
Groza alerted and clued in other detectives on his two-way. “Suspect has a firebomb! Soneji has a bomb. Use extreme care.”
“What the hell does he want?” the detective yelled at me as we kept moving. “What the hell’s he going to do now?”
“I think he wants to die,” I gasped. “And he wants to be famous. Go out with a bang. That’s his way. Maybe right here at Bellevue.”
Attention was what Gary Soneji had always craved. From his boyhood years, he’d been obsessed with stories of “crimes of the century.” I was sure that Soneji wanted to die now, but he had to do it with a huge noise. He wanted to control his own death.
I was wheezing and out of breath when we finally got to the lobby floor. Smoke had seared my throat, but otherwise I was doing okay. My brain was fuzzy and unclear about what to do next.
I saw a blur of hectic movement ahead, maybe thirty yards across the front lobby.
I pushed through the nervous crowd trying to exit the building. Word had spread about the fire upstairs. The flow of people in and out of Bellevue was always as steady as at a subway turnstile, and that was before a bomb went off inside.
I made it onto the stoop in front of the hospital. It was raining hard, gray and awful outside. I looked everywhere for Soneji.
A cluster of hospital staff and visitors were under the front awning, smoking cigarettes. They seemed unaware of the emergency situation, or maybe these workers were just used to them. The brick path leading away from the building was crowded with more pedestrians coming and going in the downpour. The umbrellas were blocking my vision.
Where the hell had Gary Soneji gone? Where could he have disappeared to? I had the sinking feeling that I’d lost him again. I couldn’t stand any more of this.
Out on First Avenue, food vendors under colorful umbrellas stained with dirt were peddling gyros, hot dogs, and New York-style pretzels.
No Soneji anywhere.
I kept searching, frantically looking up and down the busy, noisy street. I couldn’t let him get away. I would never get another chance as good as this. There was an opening in the crowd. I could see for maybe half a block.
There he was!
Soneji was moving with a small clique of pedestrians headed north on the sidewalk. I started to go after him. Groza was still with me. We both had our weapons out. We couldn’t risk a shot in the crowds, though. Lots of mothers and children and elderly people, patients coming and going from the hospital.
Soneji peered to the left, the right, and then behind. He saw us coming. I was sure he’d seen me.
He was improvising his escape, a way out of the extreme and dangerous mess. The sequence of recent events showed deterioration in his thinking. He was losing his sharpness and clarity. That’s why he’s ready to die now. He’s tired of dying slowly. He’s losing his mind. He can’t bear it.
A Con Ed crew had blocked off half the intersection. Hard hats bobbed in the rain. Traffic was trying to maneuver around the roadwork, nonstop honkers everywhere.
I saw Soneji make a sudden break from the crowd. What the hell? He was running toward First Avenue, racing down the slippery street. He was weaving, running in a full sprint.
I watched as Gary Soneji spun quickly to his right. Do us all a favor, Go down! He ran along the side of a white and blue city bus that had stopped for passengers.
He was still slipping, sliding. He almost fell. Then he was inside the goddamn bus.
The bus was standing-room only. I could see Soneji frantically waving his arms, screaming orders at the other passengers. Jesus, God, he’s got a bomb on that city bus.
Chapter 59
DETECTIVE GROZA staggered up beside me. His face was smudged with soot and his flowing black hair was singed. He signaled wildly for a car, waving both arms. A police sedan pulled up beside us and we jumped inside.
“You all right?” I asked him.
“I guess so. I’m here. Let’s go get him.”
We followed the bus up First Avenue, weaving in and out of traffic, siren full blast. We almost hit a cab, missed by inches, if that.
“You sure he’s got another bomb?”
I nodded. “At least one. Remember the Mad Bomber in New York? Soneji probably does. The Mad Bomber was famous.”
Everything was crazy and surreal. The rain was coming down harder, making loud bangs on the sedan’s roof.
“He has hostages,” Groza spoke into the two-way on the dash. “He’s on a city bus heading up First Avenue. He appears to have a bomb. The
bus in an M-15. All cars stay on the bus. Do not intercept at this point. He has a goddamn bomb on the M-15 bus.”
I counted a half a dozen blue-and-whites already in pursuit. The city bus was stopping for red lights, but it was no longer picking up passengers. People standing in the rain, bypassed at stops, waved their arms angrily at the M-15. None of them understood how lucky they were that the bus doors didn’t open for them.
“Try to get close,” I told the driver. “I want to talk to him. Want to see if he’ll talk anyway. It’s worth a try.”
The police sedan accelerated, then weaved on the wet streets. We were getting closer. We were inching alongside the bright blue bus. A poster advertised the musical Phantom of the Opera in bold type. A real live phantom was on board the bus. Gary Soneji was back in the spotlight that he loved. He was playing New York now.
I had the side window of the car rolled down. Rain and wind attacked my face, but I could see Soneji inside the bus. Jesus, he was still improvising — he had somebody’s child, a bundle of pink and blue, cradled in his arm. He was screaming orders, his free arm swinging in angry circles.
I leaned as far as I could outside the car. “Gary!” I yelled. “What do you want?” I called out again, fighting the traffic noise, the loud roar of the bus. “Gary! It’s Alex Cross!”
Passengers inside the bus were looking out at me. They were terrified, beyond terror, actually.
At Forty-second Street and First, the bus made a sudden, sweeping left turn!
I looked at Groza. “This the regular route?”
“No way,” he said. “He’s making his own route up as he goes.”
“What’s on Forty-second Street? What’s up ahead? Where the hell could he be going?”
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