This time Hegde spoke up.
“The APB also said that all GS agents have been directed to look for you and exercise extreme prejudice against you.”
Jon’s heart sank, but then the Indian man added, “Listen, man, I don’t believe everything I hear, especially when it stacks up so nicely, but I’m gonna have to take your gun.”
Hoping that the two cops might be objective enough to escort him and Shinsky to the Flatiron, or at least check into all of this more, he reluctantly handed his gun over to Hegde.
And then he caught the eye of a uniformed cop across the street who was looking right at him, and then down at his cell phone. The Blue Shirt gestured to a few of his friends spread across the street, and they all started trotting purposefully in his direction, hands on their guns.
“Oh, shit,” Jon muttered, backing away slightly, and then one or two of the approaching cops drew their weapons. Hegde and Dixon turned away from Jon and Shinsky and spread their hands to slow the others down, but the guns kept coming up and out, so Jon backed up more and thought hard about whether he could make it back into the restaurant without getting shot in the back.
Salvation came from the unlikeliest of places, as Shinsky suddenly decided to fulfill his own death wish. The addict/assassin screamed primally at the top of his lungs and barreled ahead into the middle of Hegde, Dixon, and the other oncoming cops. His wild charge effectively distracted them all for a few long moments, in which they riddled him with a hail of bullets while being careful not to shoot one another. In the time it took for his large lifeless body to finally crash down onto the asphalt, Jon had already disappeared inside the restaurant and sent up a quick prayer of thanks to the suicidal criminal.
Jon dashed down the stairs before any pursuers had even entered the pizzeria, used the key to get through the door in the basement, and made sure it was locked when he was on the other side. He was assuming that none of the cops pursuing him would have access to the underground, but just to make sure, he headed along the tunnel in the opposite direction from the Below where the explosion had taken place and found a dark spot to wait. He turned off his flashlight and watched to see if anyone came from the direction of the door, or from the ruined tunnel beyond it.
No one did, so Jon leaned back against a wall and thought for a moment. Then he pulled out the phone the Mayor had given him, and tried to call Hegde again. But the phone wouldn’t connect this time. He tried to call 911 and some numbers he knew outside of the city, but none of them worked. Finally, he saw the icon for Mayor King on the main screen and tapped that.
“Despite your best efforts,” he said when she answered the call, “I’m alive and well, and I will come to get you.”
“You shouldn’t have called those two cops and told them the suspect was still alive,” she said. “At least not on a device I control. But I was hoping you’d reach out to me…. I feel you deserve to know what’s happened since you did do the job I brought you here to do. You solved the case and gave me what I needed to get Render out of the race. Thank you.”
“So why does everyone want to kill me now?” Jon asked, though he could guess the answer.
“I confronted Render with the taped confession of the killer, and he agreed to back out of the referendum vote tomorrow, in exchange for secrecy about his involvement. Even though he wasn’t actually behind the murders, he would still be implicated in the public opinion because of his participation in the fraud. Render also demanded that Gant be spared any exposure…. He’s appalled at what his lieutenant did, but the man is a lifelong friend and Render wants him to be able to leave the city without prosecution.”
“And I know about the crimes both of them have committed,” Jon said, “not to mention yours in telling me to kill Shinsky. So you all need me out of the way, and it’s extra convenient for you to pin all the murders on me.”
“It’s nothing personal, Jon. You’re simply being sacrificed for the greater good. Isn’t that what you came here for… to make this city a better place?”
“What happened to Render’s commitment to protecting life in the city?”
“His love for his company and for Gant is greater than your one life, I’m afraid.”
“Not to mention his love for himself,” Jon said. “And what about your gratefulness to me, for what I’ve done?”
“I’m afraid my love for the city outweighs that consideration.”
“And yourself,” he responded angrily.
“Why don’t you just turn yourself in, Jon?” the Mayor said calmly. “If you don’t, we’ll have to find out who your girlfriend is, and make her an accomplice in your crimes. Which won’t be hard.”
Jon winced at the mention of Mallory, but was glad that King didn’t know her name yet. And the plan he was leaning toward began solidifying further in his mind.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Okay, have it your way.” The Mayor sighed. “With all of the MPD and GS wanting your blood, you’d better not show your face on the surface.”
“That’s why you left my phone on,” Jon said, looking down at it and realizing this for the first time. “And were hoping I’d call you. So you can track me.”
“Smart boy. Well, I have to write a speech to give in an hour, when Render and I will be making a joint announcement about his withdrawal, and about how all the scary theories about Dayfall were fabricated. Everyone will see that their fears were unfounded and the daylight presents no danger to the city, and they’ll all know that I can keep them safe as their Mayor for a long time. Thank God there’s no term limit anymore.”
“There’s always a limit,” Jon said, and hung up the phone.
He frantically studied the map of the underground for a few more moments, memorizing selective parts of it as well as he possibly could in a short amount of time. Then he dropped the phone on the cement below him and stomped on it violently until it was in pieces.
28
The most self-preserving option Jon had at this point was to use the underground key to try and get out of the city somehow, find some federal agents and leverage them in an attempt to get protection while he worked with them to bring down the Mayor and Render.
The problem was that the pyro killer named Williams had taken enough explosives out of the Below to blow up the whole Flatiron District. That meant a lot of cops and other civil servants would die, and even though he didn’t know most of them, he had taken vows to do everything in his power to protect them. He thought about what Halladay and Amira had done, how they had willingly sacrificed themselves for a lot of people they didn’t know. And he thought about the likely danger to Mallory, who was working in that area, and how great it would be to have the chance to get to know her better.
With all that in mind, the decision was not really that hard, and then it was just a question of how to get to the Flatiron. He didn’t want to head directly south in the tunnels under Broadway, because some of the lines were still in use, and there would be too many people and police and GS agents along that route. They all knew where he was right now, because of the call on the Mayor’s phone, so they would expect him to travel that route and “come to get her” as he had promised. So he decided to travel east along the 7 line, which was unused because its tunnel to Queens under the East River had flooded in the River Rise. When he reached the maze of tubes below Grand Central Station, he could switch to other unused tracks like the 4 or 5 lines, which also led down to the Flatiron District. From what he had been able to tell from studying the underground map, this plan would take him fifteen or twenty minutes out of his way, but would avoid the more significant dangers of the direct route.