‘Nah. It’s just with it being outside Grace Cathedral.’
‘What about it?’ Glenn’s heart was racing.
‘Well, they got that big funeral there on Tuesday.’
‘They’ve always got funerals, ain’t they?’ Glenn said, knowing this wasn’t true. Funerals at the cathedral were a rare event, reserved only for the great and the good.
‘It’s the one for that judge — you know, Junius Holmes?’ said the supervisor. ‘So just make sure you get to this today.’
Glenn exhaled with relief. ‘Don’t worry. I will.’
An hour later, Glenn and his crew had signs set up, traffic diverted, and were busy at work excavating the road outside Grace Cathedral. He took comfort in the familiar routine although his mind kept slipping back to his home and his wife and children, and what might happen to them if something went wrong.
There had been a couple of questions from one of the guys in the crew when they set to work but Glenn passed it off easily enough. Yes, the cracks didn’t look too bad, but their job was to repair what they were asked to repair. The guys on the crew had shrugged and got on with it, using a mini excavator to tear up the existing road surface and deposit the contents into the back of a dumper truck.
Glenn’s heart leapt when a couple of cops on mountain bikes cruised to a stop next to him. He knew them both — not well, but in his job it was impossible not to get to know at least some of the cops. The older of them, a guy in his late fifties with greying hair, propped his bike against the truck and sauntered over.
‘Didn’t know you guys were working here today,’ he said.
Glenn could feel his face flush. ‘Kind of a last-minute thing.’
‘No surprise,’ said the cop, hands on hips. ‘Lot of bigwigs’ll be here for the funeral. Guess they’ll want everything looking good.’
‘That must be it,’ said Glenn.
‘OK, man, see you later.’
The cop took his leave and Glenn got back to work.
About two hours later, all the prep work having been completed, Glenn looked up to see a man striding towards him wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and a hi-visibility vest. A construction worker’s hard hat rested on the man’s head and a red bandana shielded his mouth and nose from the dust. When the man pulled the bandana down, Glenn saw that it was Reaper.
He headed him off, worried that one of the guys on his crew might see him, but none of them even looked up. Nor did any of the hundred or so passers-by in the immediate area around the cathedral. But then, he reflected, guys doing their kind of jobs were pretty much invisible to the rest of the population.
‘Tell your guys to move on to the job you were supposed to be doing today,’ Reaper told him.
‘What?’
‘Just do it.’
Reaper stood in close to Glenn, who suddenly remembered the knife at Amy’s throat and her look of horror. ‘We’ll start work again at midnight.’
‘But the guys go home at six.’
‘You and me are going to finish up this job together,’ Reaper said. ‘You don’t mind doing some overtime, do you?’
61
Ty held the piece of paper up to his mouth and kissed it. Then he lowered it and studied the amount. They were waiting in line at the bank to deposit the cheques that had come through for services rendered to Uncle Sam.
‘That’s one hell of a lot of zeros,’ Ty said.
‘Yeah,’ said Lock.
Before she was killed, Jalicia must have pushed hard to make sure they got paid. Standing here now, with Reaper still on the loose, it felt like blood money.
Ty must have caught him staring somberly at the piece of paper. ‘Man, shouldn’t you be happy?’
‘Why? Because I have a lot of money?’
‘Well, yeah.’
Lock shifted his body so he was facing Ty. ‘Sometimes there are more important things in life than dollar bills.’
‘I’ll pretend I never heard you say that,’ Ty huffed, reaching over and grabbing a pen to endorse the cheque. ‘Look, I was shot and almost died for this, so, way I see it, I reckon I deserve every penny. I’m going to take that vacation I’ve been talking about. You should see if Carrie can get some more time off work, extend the romantic weekend you guys’ve been having.’
‘She’s busy covering the Junius Holmes funeral,’ Lock said, his eyes flicking to a TV in the corner of the bank where the ticker was announcing that the President would be in attendance.
‘When is it?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Then we could fly on Friday. Listen, Ryan, you need to chill the hell out.’
Lock squared his shoulders. ‘Not until I find Reaper.’
Back on the TV there was footage of the President at a press conference, the rolling banner reporting that he was making a statement about events in Asia and a new terrorist outrage in Pakistan.
Ty stepped up to the teller, a huge smile plastered over his face as he slid the deposit slip and cheque over the counter towards her. ‘Wanna come to Cancun this weekend?’ he asked her.
‘You are such an asshole,’ said Lock, as the teller smiled.
‘Hey, but at least I’m not a miserable asshole,’ Ty said, throwing the comment over his shoulder, then fixing his attention back on the teller. ‘My business partner thinks that somehow being unhappy all the time makes him deep.’
Sighing, Lock stepped up to the next teller and slid over the money he’d received. Something was nagging at him, though, as he glanced back at the TV screen to see the President departing the podium.
‘OK, I’ll speak to Carrie and see if she can take some time off — after the funeral.’
‘That’s more like it,’ said Ty. ‘What about you, baby?’
‘Thanks, but I’m engaged,’ the teller said sternly.
‘So you got one last chance to have some real fun,’ Ty protested, before Lock dragged him away.
They stood on the sidewalk outside the bank. It was a perfect day. Mid-seventies. No fog, just clear blue skies. On either side of them, office blocks sparkled in the late-fall sunshine.
‘Ty?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Reaper might not have been in that apartment, but he’s still here in the city.’
Ty put his hand over his eyes and made a show of looking around. ‘Where?’
Lock raised his hand to silence Ty. ‘What do you think it would take to really start a race war in this country?’
‘Right now? You refusing to shut the hell up.’
‘You kill a member of the Supreme Court, who cares, right?’ Lock said. ‘But you kill the President, our first black President… well, that’s like JFK and Martin Luther King all rolled into one.’
Ty turned to Lock, shock etched on his face. ‘Holy shit, man, are you crazy?’ He stepped back and spread his hands. ‘Say Reaper really does want to kill the President. There’s a world of difference between wanting to do something and being able to do it.’
‘That’s true,’ Lock conceded. ‘But say you want to assassinate someone specific. What’s the first thing you have to know?’
Ty shrugged an ‘I dunno’.
‘First you have to know where they’re going to be. And tomorrow, the President’s going to be right here, at Grace Cathedral, with his family.’
Ty was silent as he thought it through. ‘OK,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But how are they gonna do it? You know what security’s like around the President. He carries the biggest, most advanced security detail in the world. Killing a Federal Prosecutor, that one thing. Running over some little old judge who’s already a bazillion years old, that’s something else. But taking out the President?’ He clapped Lock on the shoulder. ‘Maybe you don’t need a vacation. You’re already tripping.’
62
‘Do you know how many threats against his life a President of the United States receives on a weekly basis?’ Coburn asked, kneeling down to tie an errant shoelace as Lock took in the ongoing work to the Federal Building where he had first met Jalicia.
‘A couple hundred?’ said Lock.
‘Times that by ten and you’re getting close. Now, you want to take a stab at how many threats this President gets on a weekly basis? Times that by ten. You want me to go on?’