Professionals.
He needs to get with the program.
He looks over at Jessica and smiles, or at least tries to.
She’s about to say something when her phone rings. She rolls her eyes and answers it.
As she’s talking, he decides to try Blanford’s cell one last time.
It goes to message.
Damn.
They’re at Fifty-second.
“Paul?” He looks over at Jessica. She’s still talking. He turns to the right, facing the window. “Paul, it’s Craig,” he whispers. “What the fuck is going on? Are you really sick or has he gotten to you? It’s Jimmy Vaughan I’m talking about. But you had to have known that, right? Well, let me tell you this.” Rapid flick of the head toward Jess, then back. “If Jimmy goes on being allowed to take this stuff, he will fucking eat you alive, do you hear me? He’ll end up destroying your company, or worse, buying it back. And believe me, Paul, you do not want Jimmy Vaughan in your life, running things. Find this leak, find it now, and plug it.”
He presses END CALL.
Shit.
He overplayed his hand there, didn’t he? But the pressure of all this is getting to him.
He puts his phone on silent and slips it into his jacket pocket. He reaches a foot over and nudges Jessica in the leg. She looks at him and nods.
“Gotta go, sweetie,” she says into the phone. “See you in a bit.” She puts the phone away and looks out the window.
They’re swinging around the median.
“That’s quite a crowd,” she says, beaming.
Howley looks out the window, too, at the flashing lights and the photographers, at the security guys and the onlookers.
“Damn right,” he says, the red carpet just sliding into view now.
He reaches a hand out to Jessica.
“You ready?”
On the periphery there is mild curiosity. A few people in a passing MTA bus crane to see. A man in a car, stopped at lights, beeps his horn. Pedestrians on Forty-ninth and Fiftieth glance, then glance away.
Closer in, under the canopy, it’s a different story. On either side of the red carpet, which leads from the curb through the central entrance and right up into the lobby, there are security barriers. These are draped in white. Thickset guys in black, with earpieces, parade up and down, scanning the area for trouble, never smiling, exuding a kind of dumb, steroidal menace. Behind the barriers, on either side, there are photographers and onlookers. The real action for the photographers-as far as Frank can make out-is probably inside, in the main lobby. That’s where the posing and the interviews will take place, the serious media work. The photographers out here, he’s guessing, are bottom-feeders, only a notch or two above the onlookers.
People like him.
As each car pulls up-all either SUVs, town cars, or limos-there is a directed flurry of attention. The assembled photographers and onlookers wait to see who gets out, then react accordingly. If it’s some middle-aged couple, tanned and moneyed-looking, as most of them have been so far, the reaction is muted. If it’s anyone with the remotest whiff of celebrity to them, the reaction tends to be pretty wild.
“This way! Over here!”
“Look at me!”
In the ten minutes he’s been standing at the barrier-having slowly wormed his way in, the nudge of an elbow here, an excuse me there-he has barely recognized anyone.
Which is a cause for concern.
He thinks he saw Ray Sullivan, secretary of the treasury, and he’s fairly sure he saw one of the lesser Bush brothers, Marvin or Neil. He saw the actress Brandi Klugman, who caused quite a stir, and a Fox News guy whose name he can’t remember. There were one or two others he half recognized, as well as several he didn’t.
And they keep coming…
But standing here now, Frank is feeling a little anxious.
A little anxious? A lot anxious.
What if he misses his opportunity? What if Craig Howley doesn’t show? What if he got here early and is already inside?
Every muscle in Frank’s body, every atom, is tensed up and ready for this. It’s all that’s left of himself, he realizes, as he eddies ever farther out to sea, beyond reason or logic, any access to his emotions long since abandoned. But it’s okay, because when the broad-shouldered security guy who’s been standing directly in front of him for the last few seconds moves to the right, it’s like a curtain being drawn back.
And there he is…
The door of the limo opens, and out steps tall, balding, moneyed-looking Craig Howley, unmistakable from his TV interview and a hundred magazine and Google images. By his side is the elegant Jessica-the driving force, apparently, behind this whole event.
Some short, stocky guy in a tux is there to greet them. There’s a little banter, a little glancing around, and then the couple join hands and turn, with Howley on the right, to head inside.
As they move forward, each second shattering in his mind like a pane of glass, Frank reaches into his jacket pocket for the Glock. He draws it out, inserting his finger right in over the trigger to make sure that he’s ready-to make sure that the various safety mechanisms deactivate when he pulls it.
He looks up.
Howley is nearly level with him now.
Given the crowded, confined space he’s in, it’s sort of an awkward maneuver, but Frank brings his arm up to his chest and then quickly extends it, all the way out, aiming at Howley’s head.
He fires once, then a second time.
The loud cracks are followed almost instantaneously by a collective intake of breath, and in the nanosecond before he is mobbed to the ground, Frank sees a streak of something, it’s red and stringy, spurt from the side of Howley’s bare head, which itself jerks and twists awkwardly off to the left.
Pinned to the ground now, face down, Frank closes his eyes. With both arms yanked back almost to breaking point, with a knee lodged sharply between his shoulder blades, and with voices roaring in his ear, and everywhere, he offers no resistance.
There is a degree of pain in all of this. He surrenders to it.
Even from three or four blocks away, Ellen can see the revolving lights of the police cars.
And of an ambulance.
There’s one crossing Park now, arriving east on Forty-ninth.
She’s ready to throw up, but fights it really hard, taking deep breaths and rolling down the window.
After another block, with the traffic ahead starting to get backed up, she thinks… what’s the point?
“Pull over, please,” she tells the driver. “Now. Here’s good.”
She pays and gets out.
At Fifty-first Street, she crosses to the east side of the avenue. The tension in the air here is palpable, and as she moves closer to the scene, the hubbub of a few hundred animated conversations soon begins to overwhelm even the roar of the traffic. She gets to the edge of the crowd, which has extended back now to the corner of Fiftieth, and just stands there, trying to see what’s happening.
She pretty much knows what has happened, though, doesn’t she?
No need to be told.
She makes eye contact with someone, a woman in a business suit, and throws her an interrogative look.
Woman shrugs. “Don’t know. Some guy got shot?”
Without turning, someone else, a lanky kid in front of them with a huge pair of cans around his neck, says, “Yeah. One man down. They got the shooter.”
Ellen nods, still feeling the urge to throw up.
A few minutes later, the ambulance takes off, followed shortly thereafter by at least three police cars.