“You have to believe we’re not going to hurt you,” he said.
“I believe you,” she said. “What is it you want?”
“Just to get you back home safe and sound,” he said.
“I mean…howmuch do you want?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Who do you expect to pay it?”
“Barney Loomis.”
He knew Barney’s name. He was going to ask Barney for the money, however much it was, unless he’d already asked him. This had to be an inside job. It had to be someone familiar with…
“I’ll be calling him tomorrow morning. We’ll arrange an exchange as soon as possible.”
An exchange, she thought. Me for the money.
How much money? she wondered.
“Everything will be fine,” he said. “You have to believe me. We don’t want to hurt you, and we don’t want any trouble. Just don’t scream, and don’t do anything foolish, okay?”
“I won’t do anything foolish,” she promised.
“Cause no one will hear you, anyway,” he said. “There’s no one for miles.”
She said nothing. Was he lying to her?
“Let’s get you something to eat, okay?” he said.
“I have to pee,” she said.
THERE WAS Apalpable air of excitement in the small dark screening room.
Honey and Hawes sat side by side on cushioned movie-theater seats, six rows of them, eight seats to the row, cup holders on the arms of each seat. They were sitting in the third row. Hawes felt privileged. This was a room reserved for top brass. That was part of the excitement. He was a mere flatfoot being treated like a VIP by a beautiful television celebrity.
Another part of the excitement had to do with the video itself. Watching it on a sixty-inch screen in this exclusive chamber was a very different experience from watching it on a vintage television set in a stuffy little swing room with a patrolman snoring on a cot not twelve feet away. The tape seemed more vibrant here. The tape seemed more immediate.
Moreover, Hawes was watching it through Honey’s eyes as well, and Honey was reacting not merely to its immediate unreeling but to the expectation that it would be aired on the Five O’Clock News, not an hour and a half from now. When the two masked perps came down those mahogany steps, she actually grabbed Hawes’s hand and squeezed it. When the left-handed perp hit the black dancer, she yelled, “Oh JesusChrist! ” And when he slapped Tamar, she winced and turned her head into Hawes’s shoulder. He almost came in his pants.
“Do you know how many people will be watching this?” she asked. Her eyes were glowing. She could hardly sit still.
“How many?” he said.
“Thirty million.”
“That many watch the local news?”
“Who’s talking local? We’ll air it here in the city at five, and then give it a second shot when we go network. At six-thirty tonight, every man, woman, and child in the United States will be seeing it! Ohwow, Cotton!” she said, and impulsively leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.
Oh, wow, he thought.
THE TWO PATROLMENriding Adam Four in Majesta’s One-Oh-Four Precinct had been briefed at roll call before relieving on post at a quarter to four. They knew they should be on the lookout for a black Ford Explorer with the license plate number KBG 741, but they had no expectation of ever finding it. Most stolen vehicles ended up in chop shops ten minutes after they were boosted.
So they drove along relatively peaceful Sunday afternoon streets in a neighborhood that used to be Italian but was now largely Muslim, more worried, to tell the truth, about some fanatic blowing up a movie theater or a local bar than they were about finding a suspect Ford Explorer, when all at once, and lo and behold, there it was!
“Check it out,” the driver said.
The cop riding shotgun opened his notebook and glanced at the license plate number he’d scribbled into it at roll call.
“That’s it,” he said, sounding surprised.
“I’m gonna play the Lotto tomorrow,” the driver said, and got on the pipe to his sergeant.
AT FOUR-TWENTYthat afternoon, Barney Loomis signed himself and Carella into the Rio Building downtown on Monroe Street, led him through the vast and silent Sunday afternoon lobby, and then into an elevator that whisked them to the twenty-third floor.
The reception area was vacant and still.
The Bison Records logo—a big brown buffalo on a black platter—stared down at them from behind an empty desk. Loomis touched four numbers on the code pad alongside the entrance doors, and then led the way down the hall. The walls were decorated with Bison recording artists. Carella recognized only Tamar Valparaiso among them.
Loomis’s private office had two vast windows that looked out at the city’s skyline. There was a huge black desk, black leather and chrome chairs, expensive audio equipment, a huge flat-screen television set, a bar in wood that matched the desk, and what appeared to be a genuine Picasso on one of the walls.
“What time will this man be here?” Loomis asked.
“I told him four-thirty.”
“Will he know what to do?”
“Oh yes.”
Curt Hennesy arrived at four-thirty-five. The security guard downstairs called up to make sure it was okay to let him in—even though Hennesy was a Detective/Third who’d showed his shield and his ID—and Loomis was in the reception area to meet him when he got off the elevator. He was carrying two rather large aluminum suitcases, which he set down while Loomis punched in the four-number code again.
“Fort Knox here,” he commented.
“Well, the music business,” Loomis said.
Hennesy picked up the suitcases again, and followed Loomis down the hallway to his office.
“You in charge here?” he asked Carella.
“Carella,” Carella said. “Eighty-seventh Squad.”
“Hennesy,” Hennesy said. “Tech Unit. What do you want done here?”
“Tap and Tape, Trap and Trace,” Carella said.
“Can I see your court orders?”
Carella fished them from his inside jacket pocket. Hennesy read them silently.
“Piece of cake,” he said. “Do you have a private line, Mr. Loomis?”
“Yes?”
“Is it likely your caller’s going to use that number?”
“There’s no way he would know that number.”
“Mmm, not so peachy apple pie after all,” Hennesy said. “What you’re saying, to reach you he’d have to call the main number here, is that it? Bison’s number?”
“Yes. I suppose so. Yes.”
“And the call would go through the switchboard, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, unless you want me to rewire your entire setup so that every call Bison gets is switched directly to your office…”
“No, I wouldn’t want that.”
“I didn’t think so. So let’s see,” he said, thinking out loud. “The call still has to go through the switchboard. Your operator doesn’t have to know anything, it’s business as usual. Okay, so she puts the call through to you here, right. Let me get to work here,” he said, and took off his jacket, and looked for someplace to hang it…
“I’ll take it,” Loomis said.
…and opened one of the aluminum suitcases.
“What I do most of the time,” he said, taking from the suitcase an assortment of tools which he was about to put on Loomis’s polished desk top before he saw the alarmed look that crossed his face, and spread them on the carpeted floor instead, “I usually install wires in places the wise guys hang out, you know? We get a court order same as for a search warrant because that’s what we’re doing, we’re seizing conversations, even if it’s from bad guys talking. You ever hear of Stephen Sondheim?” he asked.