She doesn’t know. She doesn’t open it. She puts it on the table.
She picks up the phone. She doesn’t say anything.
“Lizzie?”
She avoids looking at Alex, but notices that on the couch next to him-and next to the remote control-is the gun he had yesterday.
“Lizzie? Lizzie? You there?”
“Yeah.”
She stretches across the table, over the back of the couch, and reaches down for the gun.
The window is to her right.
She must be plainly visible.
“Lizzie, listen to me very carefully, okay?”
“Have you done it yet?”
“What… sorry?”
“Glass-Steagall. Have you reinstated it yet?” She pauses. “You stupid motherfuckers.”
She drops the phone on the floor. She raises her other hand, points the gun at the window, and pulls the trigger. The sound is alarmingly sharp, and in the recoil her arm and shoulder yank back really hard. Unlike the earlier and more discreet incoming shots, this one shatters the windowpane completely.
Lizzie’s shoulder is sore, and she rubs it for a moment with her free hand.
When she’s done, she picks the bag up from the table. She walks over to the door and kicks it a couple of times, grunting loudly.
Then she opens it.
Holding the bag up and pointing the gun directly in front of her, she heads out into the narrow hallway and the oncoming steel-gray blur of Kevlar vests, ballistic helmets, and M4 assault rifles.
In the cab on the way down, Ellen tries to plot out the next three weeks in her head. The first one-assuming this siege thing doesn’t drag on too long-will be talking to Frank Bishop and, hopefully, to Lizzie. The second week will be back up at Atherton, excavating the Coady connections and gathering local detail, and then maybe, if it becomes necessary, a Coady-related schlep down to Florida for the rest. The third week will be at home on an intravenous coffee drip getting the story written for the next Parallax deadline.
Her agreement with Frank Bishop-informal, and yet to be tested-will be key here. To make it work she’ll have to help him first.
Devise some kind of a strategy.
As the cab turns onto Delancey Street, her phone pings. It’s a text from Max.
You watching Hannahoe?
She composes a reply-No. In a cab.-but then decides not to send it. She doesn’t want to be distracted by calls or texts. She’ll get back to Max after she’s met with Frank.
At the barrier on the corner of Orchard she asks a uniformed officer if she can speak to a Detective Lenny Byron. The officer turns away and relays the request into his radio. After a few moments he turns back and tells her that Detective Byron will be along to see her in a few minutes.
She thanks him, and looks around.
Traffic is passing normally on Delancey, but there are a lot of extra parked vehicles-squad cars, trucks, trailers. There are a lot of people gathered on the sidewalk, too, mostly civilian onlookers, locals, the evacuated. There’s a good deal of curiosity and neck-craning and disgruntlement. She can see up Orchard Street, and there’s another, smaller group of people at the next set of barriers, just before Rivington. These are mostly cops, Bureau and Homeland personnel, journalists, tech crews.
After a couple of minutes, a guy in a crumpled suit and an invisible cigarette sticking out of his mouth wanders down.
Ellen has met a lot of NYPD detectives in her day, and they tend to fall into fairly set categories, the assholes, the plodders, and the ones you can actually have a decent conversation with. Only problem is you can never tell beforehand. Unless you have an indication. The fact that Frank Bishop apparently has this guy on his side is indication enough for Ellen.
And that’s how it turns out.
A minute or so later, they’re both strolling back in the direction of Rivington and parsing recent testimony in the Connie Carillo murder trial. The sun is nudging its way out from behind a passing cloud bank, and Ellen has already spotted Frank Bishop.
It is a moment of virtual tranquility.
And then a shot rings out.
It’s somewhat muffled, but it’s unmistakable.
Byron runs on, everyone else moving at the same time, sucked forward.
But just as quickly, all movement ceases, and there is an eerie silence.
The scene suspended, everyone left hanging.
Frank Bishop leans over the barrier, his head in his hands, Byron at his side now.
Ellen stands watching.
Then the silence is broken, this time by a sustained burst of gunfire. It comes from the same direction, from inside, and is louder, fuller, more comprehensive.
Still only a couple of seconds.
But enough to change everything.
11
WALKING FROM THE DOOR OF THE BUILDING OVER TOWARD FRANK, Detective Lenny Byron gives a quick shake of his head. He’s pale, and his eyes look hollowed out.
He mouths, “I’m sorry.”
Frank stares at him in disbelief, barely able to breathe now, his chest like a brick, his gut twisting into knots. He holds on to the barrier with both hands, squeezing so hard it feels as if either the metal or his bones should crack.
There is a moment when his voice comes close to making a sound, to releasing something, a scream or a howl, but the moment passes. And then it’s too late. Frank knows what this is, even if he can’t control it-his systems are shutting down, his emotions seizing up, grief and despair retreating, burrowing into dark, silent recesses.
Almost immediately, too, stuff begins to happen around him, distracting stuff, like the Rivington and Stanton Street barriers being pushed aside to make way for the extra personnel that are now appearing-technical units, crime scene, bomb disposal, paramedics-a whole security apparatus whose function, it seems, is to disassemble, to debrief.
To obliterate.
Frank and an openly howling Deb soon get swept up into a separate debriefing process that involves being talked to, or talked at, in various locations, at various times-and, most disconcertingly, in various tones-by a parade of uniformed officers, special agents, and PTSD counselors. What the process does not involve, however, is any kind of response to their repeated requests for information.
For confirmation.
For a chance to see their daughter’s body.
That-it soon becomes apparent, as they are drawn ever farther away from the scene-is simply not going to happen. And despite whatever armory of legalistic-sounding bullshit Lloyd Hackler is able to draw on, the firewall phrase “national security concerns” proves to be impenetrable.
But what strikes Frank about this-about the notion of juxtaposing that phrase with his daughter’s name-is just how preposterous it seems.
A part of him wants to laugh.
Which actually feels like something he might be able to do, in the absence of other, more appropriate responses-crying, say, howling, trembling uncontrollably, lashing out.
He doesn’t laugh, though, or do any of these things. Instead, he moves through the hours like a zombie, dealing with the authorities, with Deb and Lloyd, talking on the phone to John (after Deb calls him), accepting Deb’s invitation to stay with them tonight (because where else is he going to stay), and ending up in their apartment on Eighty-sixth Street, with people dropping by all the time, people he knows vaguely, people he doesn’t know at all, then watching Deb break down, watching her recover, and watching her break down again.
Unable to sleep that night, he stares at the ceiling for six hours.
At around noon the next day, he and Lloyd drive out to JFK to pick up John. This forty-minute car journey should be awkward and emotionally charged, as it’s actually the first time the two men have ever been alone together, but instead it’s nothing. It’s preceded by a testy encounter between Lloyd and some of the photographers and reporters camped out on Eighty-sixth Street, and is followed by an interminable wait in the overcrowded arrivals area.