She’d been gone three years now, along with her witless philosophy degree from the University of Hallmark. Near the end, at her deathbed, he’d had to restrain himself from pushing aside the IV cords that entangled her like vines in a plastic rain forest, and asking her, If life was such a precious gift, then why the hell was He such a frigging Indian giver?
He hadn’t, of course. Despite her faults, she was his mother. She’d sacrificed for him. The least he could do was to let her die as deluded as she’d lived.
But now he no longer had to play charades. Let’s face it, he thought—in this insanely decadent modern mess called society, being negative and antisocial was downright proper. He wanted no part of the pointless mistake that humanity had become.
Take today, for example. Wednesday—matinee day for the Broadway musicals. All around him, idiots by the busload were milling mindlessly. In from their flyspeck towns and suburbs, clamoring to pay a hundred bucks a pop to watch even bigger idiots in Halloween costumes sing trite, sappy love songs. This was art? The best that life had to offer?
And it wasn’t just the hicks and suburbi-schmucks, by any stretch. Right around the corner on 40th, he’d passed the supposedly très hip, in-the-know New York Times reporters and photographers flocking into the paper’s new office building for another slave shift at the Ministry of Truth. Toe that Democratic party line, comrades, he felt like yelling at them. All hail, Big Brother, and even bigger liberal government.
He slowed his pace as he came to Madame Tussauds wax museum. Crowds of tourists were swarming around a life-sized Spider-Man doll in front of the building. He shook his head in disgust. He was passing through the land of the dead.
“Fifty bucks? For a Rolex?” he heard a southern voice cry out in the crowd. “Goddamn right you got yourself a deal!”
Ten feet ahead, a skinny young man with a shaved head was about to hand over his money to the West African sitting behind a folding table of fake watches.
The Teacher smiled. So many in his old unit had been from the South—good men from small towns who still believed in simple things like patriotism and manners and doing what a man had to do.
The Teacher didn’t intend to stop, but when he spotted the USMC bulldog tat on the kid’s forearm, he couldn’t help himself.
“Whoa there, buddy,” he said to the kid. “You really think you’re going to get a Rolex for fifty bucks?”
The young Marine gawked at him, half-suspicious and half-glad to be getting advice from someone who obviously knew this turf.
The Teacher slipped off his own Rolex Explorer and handed it to the kid, exchanging it for the bogus imitation.
“Feel how heavy that is?” he said. “That’s real. This one”—he flicked the fake into the con man’s chest—“is bullshit.” The heavyset African guy started to rise up angrily, but the Teacher stared him back down into his seat.
A sheepish grin split the young southerner’s face. “Lord, what an idiot I am,” he said. “Just two weeks back from a year in Iraq, you’d think I’d have learned something there.”
He handed back the Teacher’s Rolex. But instead of taking it, the Teacher just stared at it. He remembered buying it for himself when he was twenty-eight.
Screw it, he finally thought. You can’t take it with you.
“It’s yours,” the Teacher said. “Don’t worry, no strings attached.”
“Hu-uh?” the young man stammered. “Well, thanks, mister, but I couldn’t?—”
“Listen, jarhead, I was here when they knocked down the Towers. If everyone in this city wasn’t such a piece of crap, they’d celebrate you and every other soldier who lays his ass on the line in the Middle East, like the American heroes you are. Giving this dirty old town some payback is the least I can do for you.”
Look at him, he thought. Mr. Generous all of a sudden, acting like a Boy Scout.
He was tempted to upend the table of watches into the glowering con man’s lap, but now was the wrong time. Maybe he’d come back this way again, he thought as he strode on.
Chapter 31
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, holding a freshly bought, hundred-seventy-five-dollar bouquet of pink and yellow roses, the Teacher entered the vast lobby of the Platinum Star Hotel on Sixth Avenue.
He almost stopped to genuflect toward the quarry loads of glowing white marble that covered the floors and the thirty-foot walls. The ceiling was graced by a Renaissance-inspired painted canvas, along with sparkling crystal chandeliers the size of tugboats. He shook his head in awe at the crown moldings that looked like they were made of gold.
Once in a while, the assholes got things right.
He hurried to the check-in desk, looking flustered, and placed the flower arrangement on the marble counter right in front of the cute brunette clerk. He could see that she was impressed.
“Please tell me I’m not too late,” he begged her with clasped hands. “They’re for Martine Broussard. She hasn’t checked out yet, has she?”
The young woman smiled at his nervous suitor act, and tapped at the keyboard in front of her.
“You’re in luck,” she said. “Ms. Broussard is still here.”
The Teacher put on a look of ecstatic relief. “Thank God.” Then he asked her earnestly, “Do you think she’ll like them? Too over the top? I don’t want to come off as desperate.”
“She’ll like them, believe me,” the clerk said. “They’re gorgeous.”
The Teacher bit at his thumbnail anxiously.
“We only met two days ago, and I know it’s crazy, but this morning I woke up certain that if I let her leave without telling her how I truly feel, I’d never forgive myself. But I want to surprise her. Where would be the best place to wait so I don’t miss her?”
The clerk’s smile widened. She was in on this with him now, happy to be part of true love in the making.
“The couches over by the elevator,” she said, pointing at them. “Good luck.”
The Teacher took a seat, with the bouquet in his lap. His hand edged inside his jacket to the small of his back, where both of his pistols were holstered inside his belt. He chose the .22 Colt and eased it around to his front.
Less than five minutes later, a musical ding signaled an arriving elevator, and one of the gleaming brass doors opened. The Teacher stood as five stewardesses stepped out, all with Air France logos on their knotted blue silk scarves. They could have been models. Or maybe actresses from the kind of movies the hotel made you pay extra for.
The sight of them made him feel like his stomach was filled with helium. He was dizzy at the thought of what he was about to pull.
Martine Broussard was in the lead. Six feet tall, aggressively beautiful, with long hair trailing behind her like blond satin as she strode, preening, out onto the marble as if it were a Victoria’s Secret runway.
The Teacher stood and rushed to meet her, thrusting the flowers forward.
“Martine! Here, I got these for your birthday!”
The statuesque blonde stopped, eyeing the bouquet in confusion.
“My birthday?” she said, pronouncing it “birzday.” “What are you talking about? That is not for three months more.” Her gaze shifted to the Teacher’s face. “Do I know you, monsieur?” But a flirtatious look came into her eyes. Same as the desk clerk, she liked what she saw.
The Teacher held his breath while his hand snaked the .22, barrel-first, into the bouquet. Everything was suddenly quieter, slower, incredibly peaceful. Had he ever felt this untroubled? This free? He felt like a fetus floating weightlessly in its mother’s womb.
Flower petals exploded into the air as he squeezed the pistol’s trigger. The bullet hit her just below her left eye. She dropped to the marble floor without even a twitch, blood pouring down her face.
“Did I just say your birthday?” the Teacher growled. “I’m sorry. I meant your funeral.” He fired twice more into her exquisite bosom.
The other flight attendants stampeded away, screaming. He tossed the flo
wers onto Martine’s corpse, reholstered the .22, and backed toward the lobby door.
Chapter 32
THE HOTEL DOORMAN, at his post outside, actually held the door open as the Teacher strode through it. Obviously, he hadn’t heard the muffled shots, but now he paused and stared in at the panicked, screaming Frenchwomen.
“Call the cops quick!” the Teacher yelled at him. “Some nutcase in there has a gun.”
The doorman took off running into the building. The Teacher walked fast but smoothly, covering ground but not attracting attention. As he passed the fountain outside the hotel, he took the Treo from the pocket of his jeans and brought up his list.
“Air France Stewardess” disappeared with a peppy little press of his thumb.
Then, out of nowhere, he heard the shriek of brakes behind him. Car doors thunked open, along with the unmistakable static burst of police radio chatter.
Don’t even turn around, he told himself. Keep moving. Blend with the crowd. No way could the cops have a description of him yet.
“That’s him!” somebody screamed.
The Teacher tossed a quick glance over his shoulder. Across the plaza, the hotel doorman was pointing directly at him. The two uniformed NYPD cops climbing out of their radio car drew their guns.
Damn! He’d figured the doorman, like all the others, would be too stunned to move that fast. Okay, no biggie. Escape Plan Two coming right up—the Rockefeller Center subway entrance at the southern end of the block. He broke into a sprint.
Suddenly, from everywhere at once, dozens of police vehicles were converging, cutting off both ends of the street. Off to his right, a heavy Emergency Service Unit truck slammed, fishtailing, up onto the sidewalk. A SWAT cop jumped out and dropped to one knee, throwing his M16 to his shoulder.
Son of a bitch! It was like they were appearing out of thin air. Then he suddenly realized it was because of 9/11. He’d never thought about how much that had changed cop response.
He forced his pumping legs to their maximum speed and did the only thing he could—dove headfirst right into the pit of the subway stairs.
Luck was with him. Instead of landing on the concrete stairs, he collided with an elderly couple who were coming up. His momentum flattened them to a backward sprawl, and he used them like a human toboggan to ride to the bottom. He got up running, grinding his boots into their wailing, pathetically thrashing bodies as he took off. He rounded a corner, hopped a turnstile, and sprinted across a platform.
The Rockefeller Center station, one of the largest in the entire subway system, was a virtual catacomb of passageways and exits. It had four tracks, two island platforms, and more than fourteen exits to the street. As a special bonus, there were also entryways into the Rockefeller Center concourse, an underground maze lined with shops that stretched for blocks in every direction.
As he ran, the Teacher yanked his T-shirt out of his jeans to cover his pistols, then ripped off his Tucci jacket and tossed it by one of the exits. There was no worry about leaving a trail—someone would grab it and be gone within seconds. He hit another flight of stairs and lunged down them four at a time, racing toward the metallic screech of an approaching V train.
He got to the second car just as the doors bonged open. Yes! he thought, jumping on.
But a sudden thunder of footfalls down the stairwell he’d just exited made his head swivel.
“Stop that train!” he heard a cop yelling. More voices joined in. “Yo! Yo! Driver, stop! Stop!”
Bing bong. The subway’s driver, sitting in his compartment at the front of the train, closed the doors as if absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary. You had to love this goddam city. Everybody was insane. The train pulled forward, humming.
The Teacher wiped sweat from his eyes and looked at the passengers in the half-full car. They all had their heads buried in a newspaper or a paperback. Never get involved. Damn right. He turned to stare at the tunnel lights that flashed outside the windows as the subway whizzed past, constellations of blue shooting stars.
-Unbelievable—he was free again. Unstoppable! The hand of Destiny itself really was guiding him. There was simply no other explanation.
Just as he’d decided that, the door at the rear end of the car rattled opened. Two transit cops stood there, breathing heavily. One was a heavyset, older white man, the other a black female so young she had to be a rookie. Both had their hands on the butts of their Glocks, but the weapons were still undrawn.
“Freeze!” the old flatfoot yelled, but he still didn’t draw. What the hell was he waiting for? An engraved invite?
It took the Teacher less than a second to draw both of his own guns simultaneously from the small of his back, the .22 in his right hand and the .45 in his left.
Now the passengers paid attention to him. Wide-eyed, some shrieking, they flattened themselves down onto the seats or dove to the floor.
“Listen to me,” the Teacher yelled across the car. “I like cops, I swear. I’ve got no beef with you, and I don’t want to hurt you. Let me go. That’s all I want.”
The train was coming into the 51st and Lex station. Maybe the driver finally realized that something was up, because it made a sudden lurch. Thrown off balance, the two uniforms reacted by finally going for their Glocks.
“I said no, damn it!” the Teacher roared. Left-handed, with the .45, he shot the male officer in the knee, then the groin, and then the head. At the same time, with his right hand, he emptied the last four rounds of the .22 into the space just above the female cop’s Sam Browne belt. Had to get around those pesky Kevlar vests.
His eardrums felt like they were bleeding from the thunder of the unsilenced .45, like a pack of cherry bombs had gone off inside his head. But a blizzard of endorphins whirled through his skull as well. What a rush! Like nothing in the world.
The train came to a shuddering halt, its doors opening automatically. A businessman waiting on the platform started to step into the car, but stopped dead at what he saw, then scurried away.
The Teacher was about to do the same, when a gunshot exploded behind him, and a stinging sound whipped past his left ear. He spun back around and stared in disbelief.
It was the lady cop. She was down on the floor of the train with Swiss cheese for a tummy, yet still trying to line him up in her shaking gun sights. What courage under fire!
“That’s magnificent,” he said to her sincerely. “You should get a medal. I’m really sorry I have to do this.”
He raised the .45 and aimed it at her terrified face.
“I really am,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 33
I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT! What the hell was going on in this world? As we were wrapping up the task force meeting, we got word that there’d been not one, but two more shootings in midtown. Preliminary reports said that a civilian and two transit cops had been shot, around Rockefeller Center, by the same assailant.
Our assailant. There wasn’t much doubt about it by now.
Even with my siren cranked, it took me most of forty minutes to get through the gridlock from headquarters to the frantic crime scene at 51st and Lexington.
Right off the top, it was impossible not to notice the NYPD chopper hovering above the Citicorp building. The throb of its rotors seemed to keep time with my heart as I waded through the crowd that was seething around a completely blocked-off 51st Street.
A sergeant let me under the yellow tape beside the 51st Street subway stairs. His serious-as-cancer face told me something I didn’t want to know. The echoing metallic squawk of police radios and sirens seemed to be coming from everywhere at once as I descended into the hot, narrow stairwell.
A train was stopped in the tunnel. There were maybe two dozen cops standing on the platform alongside one of the front cars. Inside it, I saw spent shell casings on the bloodstained floor. I could tell at a glance that several rounds had been fired.
The crowd of cops parted as a team of paramedics wheeled a stretcher out of the
train car. Hats were quickly taken off. A hulking Emergency Service cop next to me blessed himself. When the stretcher neared, I followed his example, shaking my head hard to fight the sudden numbness in my chest.
The victim was the female rookie transit cop. All I knew about her was that her name was Tonya Griffith, and that she was dead. I couldn’t even see her face because of all the blood.
I asked another transit cop about Tonya’s partner, and found out that he was en route to Bellevue.
“Likely?” the big ESU guy inquired. As in, likely to die?
The transit cop didn’t answer. That meant, affirmative.
“Son of a bitch,” the ESU cop said, clenching his fists violently. “Son of a fucking bitch.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Everything had changed from an hour ago. The shooter had killed one, probably two, of our own. The stakes had skyrocketed.
Now it was personal.
Chapter 34
I FOLLOWED THE STRETCHER up to the street as the EMTs carried Tonya Griffith to an ambulance and put her inside. The driver slammed the rear metal doors, climbed in, and hit the roof lights. Then he seemed to think better of it, and turned them off before slowly pulling out into traffic. There was no rush on the way to the morgue.
As I watched the ambulance roll toward the Chrysler Building, I found myself thinking about taking that job at ABC. I’d had enough of shootings and death. At least, that was sure how I felt at that moment.
Detective Terry Lavery came stomping up the stairs behind me.
“Just spoke to the precinct captain, Mike,” he said. “The shooter disappeared. They scoured the area under- and aboveground, stopped buses and taxis on Lex and Fifty-first, but not a trace.”
The ESU cop had said it all. Son of a bitch.
“Witnesses?” I said.
“About a dozen. Mostly they glued themselves to the car walls when the shooting started, but their descriptions match closely. Tall Caucasian male with black hair and dark sunglasses, wearing jeans and a graffiti T. He actually used two guns, a .45 and a .22. One in each hand like Jesse James.”