Step On A Crack

Chapter 30

I WAS STILL in the command center bus, discussing negotiation strategy with Martelli and Mason, when the cathedral doors were flying open for the second time.

It felt like someone had dumped a tray of ice down the back of my shirt when I saw who it was coming out.

Jesus. What were they up to now?

A stunned-looking Stephen Hopkins came stumbling onto the flagstone plaza, and then the doors quickly closed behind him. They’d released Hopkins? But why?

Another completely unexpected move from the hijackers, I thought with a queasy feeling. It was great that they had released the former president, but the way in which they were doing things was all over the place, impossible to predict. Was that the idea? I doubted it.

A spontaneous, thunderous cheer ripped from both the police and the crowd of civilians beyond the barricades.

“Move in,” I heard Commander Will Matthews say. “Pick the president up. I repeat. Move in and get him out of there. Now!”

The words were hardly out of the borough commander’s mouth before half a dozen ESU cops nearly gang-tackled the former president and rushed him around the sanitation truck barricade at 50th Street.

I stood, just staring at the cathedral through the trailer window. The spooky gothic arches, the pale granite walls, the dark stained glass, and now Stephen Hopkins released unharmed.

How was I supposed to come up with a way to solve this thing? I thought of Maeve and my kids. I’m not usually one to make excuses, but didn’t I have enough on my plate? I needed another crisis?

Paul Martelli’s hand found my shoulder. “You’re doing the best with a horrible situation, Mike,” he said as if reading my mind. “It’s the losers inside who are responsible for this quagmire. Not us. Don’t forget that.”

“Hey, did you hear the one about the multiagency manhunt for the rabbit in the forest?” Ned Mason said from the corner of the trailer.

I looked up at him. I guess it was joke time.

“No,” I said politely.

“They sent the CIA in first, right?” Mason said. “CIA comes back, says their operatives report there is no rabbit and no forest. Then they send in the Friggin’ Blithering Idiots, and all of a sudden, the forest is on fire and they report that the rabbit had pyrotechnic tendencies and that they saw him with a Zippo. Know what happened when they sent the NYPD into the trees?”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me,” I said with a weary attempt at a smile.

Mason just kept talking. He was even scarier than I remembered him being.

“Two detectives go in and come back out five minutes later, pulling a handcuffed bear with a huge black eye who keeps saying, ‘All right, all right. I’m a rabbit.’ ”

Martelli looked at Mason as I rolled my eyes.

“That joke wasn’t half bad,” Martelli said. “It was all bad.”