Sommers, fidgeting with a pair of sunglasses, spoke in a quietly assured voice.
“Mr. Carroll, one thing you probably should understand about this territory down here. For reasons of morale, in order to keep my men fully efficient and organized, this bust has to be mine. I have to make the calls. These are my men. You can understand that, I hope?”
Carroll didn’t break stride. His face showed nothing. Almost all policemen were fiercely, irrationally territorial— something he knew from personal experience.
“Sure thing,” he nodded. “This is your bust All I want to do is talk to our drug dealer friend afterward. Ask him how he likes the nice Florida weather.”
Chapter 19
THE SOUTH OCEAN BOULEVARD neighborhood was pretty much 1930s Spanish and Mediterranean in style: it was a six-block cluster of pastel blue and pink million-dollar estates. Carroll had the impression of everyone and everything lying dormant around him. People still sleeping peacefully at twenty past eight flagstone patios sleeping, red clay courts sleeping at the Bath and Tennis Club, putting-green lawns and candy-striped cabanas and swimming pools—all sleeping, as if everything had been placed under a pleasant narcoleptic spell.
Clark Sommers spoke in a steady drone as they rode alongside the glittering, bluish-green ocean. “Real estate dealings on South Ocean here aren’t exactly handled by Century Twenty-One. Most sales are actually arranged by Sotheby’s, the big antiques outfit. Owners in Palm Beach, they think of their homes as valuable works of art.”
“Reminds me of my neighborhood in New York,” Carroll said.
Agent Sitts suddenly spoke up from the back seat His long, well-tanned arm pointed between Carroll and Sommers. “That’s our people up ahead there, Clark.”
Gathered together at one of the quiet, perfect palm tree and sea grape intersections were six nondescript blue and green sedans.
The cars were parked in clear sight Several of the FBI men were checking pump-action shotguns and Magnums out on the street.
“There goes the neighborhood,” Carroll muttered. “I hope Sotheby’s not showing any houses real early this morning.”
The seven-vehicle caravan began to drift slowly up South Ocean Boulevard. Carroll glanced out at the peaceful neighborhood. Every house was set back from the street, isolated by closely cropped, bright green lawns that looked as if they’d been spray-painted on by meticulous gardeners.
A Miami Herald paperboy rode by in the opposite direction, mounted on a chugging mo-ped the same impossible blue color as the sky. He braked to a stop, scratched his crewcut and stared.
One of the FBI men signaled for him to keep going.
“That’s it Number 640,” Sommers finally spoke up again. “That’s where our friend Diego Alvarez lives.”
Carroll tucked the loaded Magnum back into his shoulder holster. His stomach was rocking and rolling and the speed was lighting fires throughout his nervous system.
The FBI cars turned single file down an impressive side street off South Palm. They parked one after the other in front of two adjacent Spanish-style estates.
Car doors clicked open and shut very quietly.
Carroll slipped into step with a dozen or so gray-suited FBI agents. They trotted back toward the Alvarez place.
“Remember what I said back at the airport Mr. Carroll. I give all the orders. I hope the capture of this guy’s going to help you get what you want but don’t forget who’s running the show, okay?”
“I remember.”
Handguns and shotguns caught the hard, bright glint of the early morning Florida sun. Carroll listened to bolt-action apparatus slamming into ready. The FBI agents looked like young professional athletes, as they fanned out in the manner of a dance team.
Combat was full of visual paradox.
Carroll could see peaceful gulls rising from the sea, lazily sliding west to check the early morning sunrise party at the Alvarez house. Being a seagull seemed like a pretty good idea right now, but he had never been much for vocational planning.
The ocean wind was pleasantly warm. It carried a curious scent of salty fish and orange blossoms. The sun was already intense, too blinding to look at without a hand shade.
“Elegant house Diego has for himself. Run about three, three point five million with Sotheby’s. When I give the signal we’re going to put men in every wing of the villa.”
Carroll remained silent. These were Sommers’ men. This was Sommers’ little planet where he reigned supreme. Carroll looked at the FBI man for a moment then finally took his handgun out again. He pointed the massive black barrel upward, a safety precaution where people were concerned, though not seagulls.
Just then, as Carroll knelt in a sniper-shooter’s crouch, the heavy wood door of the Alvarez house came flying, crashing open. The door banged hard against the pink stucco front wall.
“What the fuck?” Clark Sommers whispered out loud.
Chapter 20
FIRST A BLOWZY white-haired woman in a tattered Maranca shirt stumbled outside. Then came a dark, well-built man bare chested in white trousers. All across the front lawn automatics and revolvers clicked off their safeties.
Then Diego Alvarez suddenly began to scream at the FBI men. “You motherfuckers! I shoot this old lady, man. She jus’ innocent old lady. My cook, man. Put down all those motherfucker guns!”
Sommers was suddenly quiet. His beach-hero tan seemed to be fading.
Carroll glared in the direction of the drug dealer. The dark eyes of the man were frantic, desperate. There were flecks of saliva at the corners of his mouth. Then he turned to Sommers and said, “We have to take him. No matter what, we have to take him.”
Sommers continued to be deadly quiet. He didn’t even look over at Carroll.
“We have to take Alvarez. There are no other options.”
Sommers barely glanced at Carroll. His look still said, You’re a New York City cop, this is my backyard, we do things my way down here. Carroll had a vision of Alvarez escaping, and it was an exasperating vision. That was a possibility he had to prevent Sommers didn’t know what was involved here.
Diego Alvarez was awkwardly pulling the fat cook toward a red Cadillac parked outside the garage. The drug dealer had on white flare-bottom trousers. He was almost black in skin tone, as well-muscled as a pro fighter. The cook’s eyes were as wide and round as coffee saucers.
Carroll tried to sort through the chaotic confusion of the moment. If he controlled his breathing, he could usually concentrate better, which was something he’d learned during his combat days.
He had an idea—one solution that came to mind.
Carroll waited for Alvarez to eye-check the FBI agents on the far left. As he did so, Carroll smoothly slid behind a flower-decked wall which concealed him from the drug dealer.
He waited a few seconds to see if he was missed, then continued hustling down behind the flowered wall, back through the side yard between Alvarez’s and the house next door. Sparkling clean garbage cans stood in a neat silver row.
A green watering hose snaked up the walkway to a swimming pool with a floating rubber horse which looked ludicrous to Carroll as he started to run. He stopped when he was back out on the street where the FBI team had parked their cars.
A very disturbing thought entered his mind as he climbed into Sommers’s Grand Prix.
He never would have done this if Nora was still alive.…. Never in a thousand years would he have tried this stunt.
Even as he had the thought, which cut deeply, Arch Carroll eased the FBI sedan to the corner, where he made a sweeping right turn, then a quick left onto South Ocean.
A block ahead, he saw Diego Alvarez backing into the Cadillac. He was still holding the white-haired cook against his bare chest. He was screaming wildly at the FBI men, his words lost now in the sea breeze.
Carroll kicked down hard on the accelerator. The sedan’s engine twitched from first into third gear.
The car licked forward with a screech from the
expensive radial tires put on for precisely this kind of breakneck situation.
Suddenly, Carroll’s back arched, and his lungs sucked in a deep burst of air.
Don’t think about this. Get it over with now.
His gun lay on the car seat right beside him.
The speedometer read thirty, forty, fifty.
Then the front wheels struck the concrete curb loudly with a jolting crunch. The car’s front end leaped at least three feet in the air.
All four wheels were off the ground, and the vehicle moved in slow motion because slow is the speed at which a car flies.
Carroll double-pumped the sedan’s brakes at the last possible moment.
“What the hell—” An FBI man yelled and dove to one side of the lawn.
“Holy shit!” He heard another high-pitched policeman’s shout.
Diego Alvarez fired three wildly aimed shots at the careening Pontiac and at Carroll himself inside the car. The sedan’s windshield shattered, spitting glass fragments into Carroll’s face.
The car was back on all four wheels again, bouncing over the lawn, and over a red tiled walkway. Suddenly it was skidding helplessly on the turf.
Carroll’s foot stomped down full force against the gas pedal again. At the last possible instant before contact, he tucked his head down.
He held the steering wheel in a vise grip, held on as tight as his arms and hands possibly could.
The bounding FBI car crashed broadside into Diego Alvarez’s cherry-red Cadillac. The convertible crumpled. It slid sideways like a hockey puck floating on ice and smashed into the side of the garage.
Half a dozen FBI officers were instantly sprinting across the front lawn.
They got there before the two interlocking cars had actually stopped moving.
Revolvers, riot shotguns, M-16 rifles were thrust inside the Cadillac’s open front windows.
“Don’t move, Alvarez. Don’t move an inch,” an FBI man screamed. “I said don’t mover
Carroll grunted, then he pushed himself painfully out of the wrecked Pontiac. He roared out Diego Alvarez’s name at the top of his voice, surprised by his own intensity.
He was still yelling when he grabbed the shirtless drug dealer out of the hands of the FBI agents.
“Arch Carroll, State Department Special Terrorist Force! You have no rights! You hear me? … How did you know about Green Band? Who talked to you? You look at me!”
Diego Alvarez said, “Fuck you!” He spat into Carroll’s face.
Carroll shuffled a little to his left, then hit the drug dealer with a sharp-looking right hand delivered to the mouth. Alvarez fell to the ground, already out cold.
“Yeah, fuck you, too!” said the former Bronx street-kid still lurking somewhere inside Carroll. He wiped the dope dealer’s saliva from his cheek.
Clark Sommers’ mouth fell open, creating a surprised O at the center of his face. A few other Florida FBI studs just shook their heads.
At the FBI office on Collins Avenue in Miami, Diego Alvarez was taken inside a small interrogation room where he told Carroll everything he knew.
“I don’t know who they are, honest, man. Somebody jus’ want you down here to Florida,” he said with almost believable sincerity. Because he had been busted with three hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine, and because his prospects of freedom looked grim, he didn’t have much to gain by lying. Carroll studied the man as he spoke.
“I swear it. I don’t know nothin’ more, man. But I got a feelin’ somebody playin’ some kind of games with you. They set me up, my big mouth. But somebody playin’ wit’ you…. Somebody jus’ want you come here ‘stead of someplace else. They playin’ wit’ you, man. They playin’ wit’ you real good.”
Carroll suddenly wanted to put his head down on the interrogation table in front of him. He’d been used, and he had no idea why. All he knew was that whoever was doing it was smart. They were telling him: See, we can manipulate you—any which way we like.
Carroll eventually wandered outside the Miami FBI building and leaned against the warm-baked white stucco wall.
He tried to let the Florida sun soothe his weary brain. He thought that Miami might be a better climate for playing Crusader Rabbit than New York.
He was relatively certain about a couple of disturbing things.… The Green Band group, whoever they were, knew who he was, and that he would be assigned to the investigation. How did they know? What should that tell him about who they might be? … They seemed to want him to know how superior, how well organized they were. They wanted him to be a little in awe—and frankly, right now anyway, he was.
On the plane home, Eastern—the wings of man—Arch Carroll had two beers, then two Irish whiskeys. He could have gone for another two Irish, but he’d promised his rabbi Walter Trentkamp—promised Uncle Walter something he couldn’t quite remember. Finally, he slept the rest of the way home to New York.
He had a real nice dream on the flight, too. Carroll dreamed that he quit his job with the DIA’s antiterrorist division. He and the kids and Nora went to live on the nicest, sugar-white beach in Florida.
Chapter 21
BEFORE THE BREAK of dawn on Sunday morning, Caitlin Dillon waded through a river of ice and slush that rose four inches above her ankles.
Once she successfully emerged on Fifth Avenue, the Director of Enforcement for the SEC’s Division of Trading and Exchange hailed a cab which reluctantly ferried her down to the 14th Street Police and National Guard Barricades.
From 14th Street, Caitlin was transferred by a snazzy police blue and white down into the smoldering chaos and confusion of the financial district itself.
The thirty-block ride went by amazingly fast. There were no working traffic lights below 14th Street. There was almost no other traffic on any of the downtown streets.
The sergeant driving the police car was as good looking as an actor in a Hollywood cop show. He had long blue-black hair curling over his uniform collar. His name was Signarelli.
“Never seen everything this bad.” The police sergeant revealed a nasal Brooklyn accent when he spoke.
“Can’t even call in to your normal communications desk. Nerve center they set up is always busy, too. Nobody knows what the Army’s doing. What the FBI guys are doing either. It’s completely nuts!”
“How would you handle it?” There was nothing patronizing in the question. Caitlin was always curious about the rank and file. That was one reason she made a good boss at the SEC. A second reason was that she was smart, so knowledgeable about Wall Street and the workings of business that most of her associates held her in awe. “If this was your show, what would you do, Sergeant?”
“Well… I’d hit every terrorist hangout we know about in the city. We know about a hell of a lot of them, too. I’d blow into their little maggot nests. Arrest everybody in sight. That way, we’d sure as hell get some information.”
“Sergeant, I believe that’s what teams of detectives have been doing all night. Over sixty separate squads of NYPD detectives. But the maggots are just not cooperating on this one.”
Caitlin arched her eyebrow, then smiled gently at the cop.
Predictably, he asked her for a date next, and just as predictably Caitlin turned him down.
With police and Army helicopters whirring overhead, Caitlin stood still and numb on the northwest corner of Broadway and Wall.
She allowed her eyes to roam across the most chillingly surreal scene she hoped to view in her lifetime.
What appeared to be billions of tons of granite block, of gray stone, shattered glass, concrete and mortar had crashed down onto Wall Street and Broad Street and Pell, and all the narrow, interconnecting alleyways. According to the latest Army Intelligence estimate, as many as sixty separate plastique bombs had detonated at 6:34 Friday evening. The police theory was that the bombs had been exploded by sophisticated radio signals. The signals could have been transmitted from as far away as ten to twelve miles.
C
aitlin craned her neck to gaze up at nearby No. 6 Wall Street.
She winced as she observed the sheared, swinging clumps of wiring: thick elevator cables dangling between the highest floors of the office building. Here and there, patches of sky shone through great yawning holes in the building’s walls. The overall effect reminded her of a doll house disemboweled, utterly destroyed by a child in a temper tantrum.
She stood all alone, shivering and cold on the stone portal of the New York Stock Exchange. She couldn’t stop herself from impassively staring at the abysmal destruction, the incomprehensible damage on Wall Street. More than anything, she wanted to be sick,
She saw an oil painting, a Yankee sailing clipper hanging absurdly in a district office with two of the room’s walls blown away.
In the foyer of an adjacent building, an overturned copier had apparently collapsed through several floors before striking the unyielding marble in the lobby. She could see the shattered screens of computer terminals and the melted remains of keyboards that reminded her of some nightmare art form. All over the littered, desolate street, police and hospital emergency vehicles were flashing bright red and blue distress signals.
Caitlin Dillon could feel a cold, deadweight pushing down on her. Her body was numb. Her ears buzzed softly, as if there had been a sudden drop in air pressure.
She couldn’t stop a disturbing feeling of nausea, of sudden weakness in both her legs.,
She understood what many of the others still didn’t— that an entire way of life had quite possibly been destroyed, here, on Friday night.
Inside No. 13, Caitlin was confronted immediately by noisy squads of secretaries typing frantically in the marble and stone entryway corridors. Stock Exchange clerks milled around with a kind of busy uselessness, carrying clipboards with a hollow show of self-importance, carting files from one office to another.
Caitlin took in the command post scene and then, as she stepped nimbly around broken glass and debris that had been shaken loose from the ceiling, she was surrounded by heavily armed policemen who demanded to see her identification.