Worst Case

  I frantically waved over the Hostage Rescue and Bomb Squad guys.

  “Where to now?” Emily said with a pained look on her face as we hopped back into her car. “I’m running out of gas.”

  “Financial district. Where else?” I said. “Mooney just showed up at the Stock Exchange.”

  Chapter 88

  SHACKLED TO THE three young men with high explosives, Francis X. Mooney stutter-stepped through the grand lobby of 11 Wall Street. Though the dozen NYPD and private Stock Exchange officers stationed there had guns trained at his head, they parted before him as he led his captives toward the metal detectors.

  The officers kept pace half a step behind them like paparazzi with guns instead of cameras.

  Francis’s heart beat in a way he’d never experienced before, like a bass drum at the end of a German opera. Fear and ecstasy commingled in his blood into something terrible and wonderful, something entirely new. He knew Quinn’s kid had been the deciding factor. He’d done the impossible. He was actually inside the New York Stock Exchange!

  The Parrish boy tripped on some of the det cord and fell. Francis turned with a smile and gently helped him up off the polished stone.

  “It’s not much further now, son. I promise,” he said.

  Around the corner in the middle of the right-hand wall, he halted by the door he wanted. It led up some stairs to a door to the balcony above the trading floor where they rang the opening bell.

  He’d been here once before. A client of his was going public with his biotech company, and Mooney had been invited to attend the ceremony. He’d stood behind the executive, smiling and clapping obediently, as the old-fashioned plate bell clanged the new trading day.

  How many men had he helped to amass staggering amounts of unfair wealth? he thought. Too many to count. That’s why he was here. He was making up for that. For all of it.

  He turned and faced the officers at his heels.

  “We’re going through that door now. Alone. After I’m inside, I’m going to seal it with explosives. Follow and everyone dies. Thank you.”

  Mooney opened the door, pulled the three young men through, then sealed it with PE-4. The explosive was pretty much useless because it wasn’t attached to a detonator, but how would they know that? It would deter them enough.

  The yelling from the cavernous trading floor was palpable as they opened the door at the top of the stairs. He led the boys out onto the end of the balcony.

  On the pompous granite walls hung huge American flags and neon blue NYSE banners. Every three feet, it seemed, was some kind of computer screen. On them scrolled the relentless march of numbers showing the ever-changing stock bids.

  Below was pandemonium, a confusing mosh pit of men and women in business suits and colored smocks. They were yelling and typing into small computers hanging around their necks as they crowded by the carousel-like stock-trading desks. He stared down at the pathetic scurrying, the little ants scrambling for their crumbs. They’d thank him for this.

  Mooney stepped up on the podium that stood by the balcony’s railing for the celebrities who rang the opening bell. He flicked the microphone on and thumped it with his taped-up hands.

  “Stop!” Mooney yelled out over the trading floor.

  A scary hush went through the chamber as traders and brokers stopped what they were doing and craned upward.

  Mooney was weeping again. He was surprised to see that some of the traders on the floor had ashes on their foreheads. Were they really ready to share in the world’s suffering? To sacrifice themselves?

  He took a deep breath.

  Time to find out, he thought.

  Chapter 89

  THE MIDTOWN TRAFFIC had never seemed more impassable while Emily and I tried to carve a path downtown. Minute after precious minute slipped away as we screeched and slanted our way down Lexington through Turtle Bay and Murray Hill, the Flat Iron district, Gramercy Park, Union Square.

  “So many neighborhoods, so little damn time,” I yelled with my ear cocked to the radio for the worst.

  We were coming into SoHo when my phone rang. Was it over?

  “Mooney just forced his way inside the Stock Exchange,” Chief Fleming told me.

  “Wh—, wh—, what?” I screamed. “How the hell did he manage that!”

  I couldn’t believe it. The security around the Stock Exchange had to be the highest in the city, maybe in the world. It seemed like all of southern Manhattan was one huge blockade after 9/11.

  “Right after he snatched the St. Edward’s kids, the son of a bitch took the Exchange’s security chief’s kid from his doorman job at gunpoint. Then Mooney tangled himself, the students, and the doorman all together with the missing det cord and explosives. Dennis Quinn, the security chief, was manning the employee entrance when Mooney showed up, threatening to blow up his kid right on the street if Quinn didn’t let him inside. Quinn let him in. What the hell else was he supposed to do? It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  It sounded like Emily removed the muffler when she scraped the Crown Vic up onto the curb in front of Trinity Church six minutes later. Hopping out, I almost knocked down Chief Fleming, who was standing next to the NYPD Critical Incident bus, parked across the length of Broadway.

  “Mooney’s blocked himself off in the balcony above the trading floor where they ring the opening bell,” my boss said over the wail of sirens that seemed to be coming from every direction. “He also just called nine-one-one. He’s made an offer. He says he’ll exchange the St. Edward’s students for their fathers. We have thirty minutes to get them here. We’re contacting them now.”

  My head spun. Mooney was willing to exchange the kids for their fathers but not for me? Emily and I scrambled to put it together.

  “You kidnap two rich kids, bring them down here, and now you want their fathers?” Emily said. “Why not just grab them? Mooney’s a proven freaking mastermind at snatching people.”

  How did any of it make sense? And what the hell did the son of a bitch really want?

  “What about the people on the trading floor?” I said.

  “A lot of them got out. But there’s still maybe three hundred financial workers holed up behind the trading desks. Except for the stairwell to the balcony, he hasn’t sealed any doors, thank God.”

  Chief Fleming led us down the block toward the employee entrance at the corner of Broad and Wall. Task force uniforms and tactical cops had taken up positions on both sides of the street. Beneath the giant American flag on the face of the landmark building, scared-shitless-looking brokers and traders in colored smocks and ID necklaces were being evacuated north up Broad Street.

  “Snipers?” Emily said.

  “That’s the rub,” my boss said. “He’s got the detonator taped to his hands. Even with a head shot, Mooney could still manage to pull the trigger.”

  We hurried back up to Broadway once the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team truck arrived. Even superstoic Chow seemed subdued as he stared down the world-famous narrow trench of Wall Street.

  He pointed to an overhead satellite map of the Financial district he already had up on the PowerPoint screen.

  “All right. First thing we need to do is get that giant flag down off the front of the building. My sniper observers are heading into this office building across Broad Street here. These long windows between the columns on the edifice of the Exchange look onto the trading floor. I place the balcony where Mooney is holed up about fifteen feet to the right of this central window. If we can get him to move maybe even ten feet back, we can blow out the window and angle a shot at him.”

  “What about the fact that the detonator is taped to his hands?” Fleming said.

  “We’re going to use an extremely high-velocity Barrett M107 fifty-caliber sniper rifle. Coupled with a nonincendiary sabot round, we should be able to minimize collateral damage. We’ll go for the detonator itself before he gets a chance to set it off.”

  Emily and I stared at each other, shaking our heads in
dismay. What were the odds of coming away from this thing without more loss of life?

  “I know,” Chow said. “It’s not pretty by any stretch, but it’s the only tactical play we have.”

  Chapter 90

  THAT DISMAL NEWS was still ringing loudly in our ears as the St. Edward’s students’ fathers showed up in a squad car.

  Tall and fair with graying executive hair, Howard Parrish looked like a CEO out of central casting. I recognized his face from the tabloids due to a very messy divorce he’d gone through the year before. Edwin Mason, short, dark, and wearing glasses, had more of a professorial air in his jeans and sports coat.

  “What the hell is this about, my boy? Tell me this instant!” Parrish said by way of greeting as he stepped onto the NYPD’s Critical Incident bus.

  “Howard’s right. Could someone please give us the straight story?” Edwin Mason said with a pleading calm.

  “Your boys are being held hostage in the Stock Exchange by a man named Francis Mooney,” I said bluntly. “He’s the man who’s responsible for abducting and killing several wealthy young adults in the past four days.”

  Parrish’s face went hypertension-tomato-red.

  “That damned school sent home a bulletin just yesterday about beefed-up security. How could this be allowed to happen? And why my boy? There’s hundreds of kids at that school. Why mine?”

  “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?” Mason said, looking steadily into my eyes. “You’re leaving something out.”

  “There is more to it,” I said. “Mooney contacted us a few minutes ago. He said he’s willing to do an exchange. Your boys for you.”

  “For us?” Parrish said, bamboozled. “You mean he wants to hold us hostage instead? Why?”

  “In addition to being obviously unstable, Mooney has a radical-left history that goes back to the sixties,” Emily said. “Bottom line, he’s extremely dissatisfied with wealthy people. There’s a whole quasi-political motive wrapped up in his actions. At least, that’s what he seems to believe.”

  “Goddamn liberals!” Parrish said, his voice cracking. “The goddamn liberals are actually going to kill my son!”

  Mason took off his glasses and put them back on again.

  “Does why really matter, Howard?” he said wearily. “Our boys are in real trouble.”

  “We’re doing all we can to resolve this,” I cut in. “It’s entirely up to you how you want to play things. We can’t force you to exchange yourselves. We can’t even advise it. There’s no way to guarantee your safety. But if you volunteer, we won’t get in your way. In fact, during the exchange, we might be able to create an opportunity to resolve things.”

  “Volunteering isn’t a choice,” Mason said after a second. “My wife died six years ago. My son is the only thing I treasure in this world. Send me in.”

  Chewing on a pinkie nail, Parrish stared at the bus floor between his wingtips, deliberating for a few moments.

  “Yes, okay,” he finally said. “Me, too. Send me in, too, of course.”

  Chapter 91

  MY HEART WENT out to the two CEOs as we exchanged their coats for bulletproof vests. Many parents believe that they would gladly give up their lives for their children’s, but these men were actually being given the choice. The simple, staggering courage they were showing blew me and every other cop in the room away.

  “I don’t want to die, Edwin,” Parrish said as his eyes welled with tears. He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to anyone there. “But hey, I’ve led a good life. Been really, really fortunate. I always tried to do my best. And if I do go, at least my money will go to my boy and a good cause: the AIDS Research Alliance.”

  “Well said, Howard,” Edwin Mason agreed, squeezing Parrish’s shoulder. “That’s the right way to look at things. My dough is destined for Amfar. Millions of people will benefit from what we achieved.”

  Wait a second, I thought. Charities again? Something suddenly occurred to me.

  “Who does your legal work, Mr. Mason? Who did your will?” I said.

  “Ericsson, Weymouth and Roth,” Mason said.

  I don’t know whose eyes went wider at the mention of Mooney’s firm, Emily’s or mine.

  “That’s funny. Small world. Mine, too,” said Parrish.

  Emily and I faded into the corner of the bus.

  “Charities? Wills?” she said. “This is definitely connected. Mooney was the head of Trusts and Estates, wasn’t he?”

  “Wait a second. Damn it!” I said. “There was something Mooney said in our last conversation. Something about the Ash Wednesday Gospel.”

  I whipped out my cell and speed-dialed Seamus. Sometimes having a priest in the family came in handy.

  “Listen up. I need your help here, Seamus,” I said. “No monkeying around. Today’s Gospel. Read me today’s Gospel.”

  “Don’t tell me you weren’t listening? Remind me to box your ears next time we meet, ye heathen. Okay, I have it right here. Let’s see. Matthew six, one to four: ‘Beware of your practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them. For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give alms, do not sound the trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say unto you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret, and your Father who sees what is in secret will reward you.’”

  “Wait a second. Read that back about the alms.”

  “‘That your alms may be in secret,’” Seamus said.

  That was it!

  I grabbed Emily as I slapped the phone closed.

  “I got it! Mooney’s giving alms in secret!”

  “Giving what?” Emily said, confused.

  “Alms. Charity. Don’t you see? In every case, the family had a philanthropic bent. And in every case, the child was the sole beneficiary of mega wealth. When Mooney learned he was going to die, he concocted this whole thing as a way to cut out the child and donate as much money as he could directly to charity!”

  Emily stood there with her mouth open.

  “That clever little weasel. That explains the deal with the tests he gave the kids. He was trying to see if they were socially conscious enough to be allowed to inherit their parents’ wealth. That explains why he let the Haas girl live. But how does that help us now?”

  “I’ll tell you how,” I said. “Mooney doesn’t want to exchange the fathers for the kids. He’s not going to exchange anything. Mason and Parrish are both single. Once Mooney sees the fathers, he’s going to kill all of them. The fathers, the sons, and himself. The money won’t even have to wait for the fathers’ natural lifetimes to expire in order for it to go to charity. It’ll happen right now.”

  Carol Fleming came over.

  “What’s the story, guys? Are we sending the fathers in or not?”

  “No way, boss,” I said. “But I think I have a plan.”

  Chapter 92

  “LET’S TALK ABOUT the horrors of the modern world that the greed in this room has helped to create,” Mooney said into the balcony microphone.

  “Let’s go over the crimes that all of you here have helped to perpetrate. The environmental travesties, the worker exploitation and deaths, the public corruption and tax evasion. Do you care about the black lung and asbestosis that your corporate masters inflict on their workers? The pollution that your holy shareholders and investors condone?”

  Mooney looked down at their blank faces.

  “I was like you. I slaved for the corporate machine, protecting it from the law in ways regular people will never be privy to. Protected illegal price fixes and unethical policies against millions of regular working-class people. I saw crimes of unthinkable magnitude. I saw pristine waterways irrevocably befouled with pollution. No one was held responsible. No one went to jail. Why is that? Can anyone tell me?

  “By the
way, I can see that many of you here are grossly overweight. But what percentage of the world’s population is starving as we have our little talk here? Anyone have the answer? Don’t be shy.”

  Chapter 93

  IT TOOK US five minutes to confer with my boss and the Hostage Rescue Team chief Tom Chow. Chow made the final arrangements over his tactical mic as Emily and I pulled on ceramic bomb vests.

  “What’s the story now, Detective?” Howard Parrish said as we emerged from the bus. “We’re not going in now? What about my boy?”

  “Something new has come to light. It’s our best chance to resolve this thing without any more innocent people getting hurt. We’re going to do the best we can, sir,” Emily said.

  “That’s not good enough. Fuck that! I want my son alive. If you can’t guarantee that, then I want to go instead of him. I demand to!”

  I stopped and held the executive by his elbow.

  “Listen to me, Mr. Parrish,” I said. “I guarantee you that I will bring your son back to you alive.”

  We walked away.

  “What the hell are you doing, Mike? How can you make a promise like that?” Emily said under her breath as we headed down Wall Street toward the Stock Exchange entrance.

  “Easy,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “If things go south, I won’t be around for him to yell at me.”

  Chow met us at the security barricades and briefed us a final time while we walked through the maze of steel.

  “Everything is in place,” he finally said, stopping by the Exchange’s door. “The rest is up to you two.”

  Emily and I passed the metal detectors in the huge empty lobby. We walked silently, thinking our own thoughts as we stepped down the hall.

  “Good luck, Detective Bennett. This works, I’ll buy you dinner,” Emily said as I stopped by the door that led to the balcony stairwell.

  “Hope you brought your American Express card, Agent Parker,” I said as she continued on, heading for the trading floor. “Because if this works, I’m planning on about fifteen before-dinner drinks.”