Gelsey backtracked. Diana followed.
"This is ridiculous," Diana said. "We can't do it like this. Stop!"
"Okay, take a stand," Janek whispered. "Face her, let her approach."
Diana began to speak even before she was within confidential speaking distance:
"The buyer's gotta be satisfied, Gelsey. He won't buy a pig in a poke."
"Tell him to come here and look. Tell him to bring the money."
"He doesn't want to get out of the car." Gelsey sneered. "Is he a cripple?"
"You're out of line, pet."
"This is my party, Diana. Tell him he'd better hurry before I get bored and take a walk."
"He's paying us fifty K-twenty-five apiece. You don't push around a man like that."
"I bet he's paying a hundred."
"Don't you trust me, pet?"
Gelsey shrugged. "Twenty-five'll be enough to get me out of this crappy town. Go get it. I want to count it. Meantime-here's a peek."
She opened her palm, showed the prototype chip, clasped her hand shut and grinned.
Diana didn't know what to do. As Janek watched, he imagined her growing realization that this time she was not in control.
"All right," Diana said finally, without an attempt to conceal her bitterness. "I'll try to get him to come out."
As Diana walked back to her car, Janek felt he had enough to implicate her in an illegal purchase of stolen goods. Perhaps not as much as he would have liked, but enough to secure an indictment.
"Fade back a couple steps," he whispered. Gelsey retreated into the gloom. When Diana reached the curb, she glanced back just before getting into her car.
There followed a short intermission. Janek tried to imagine what was being said. Diana would describe the quick glimpse she'd had of the Omega, while Kane would contemplate his best next move. Janek believed he would view his odds as good. A police trap was a possibility, but the location wasn't particularly congenial for a trap and Gelsey's hesitancy could be understood in light of her disaffected former employee relationship with Diana. Janek believed it would also occur to Kane that Gelsey knew Kirstin had been killed and would therefore want to unload the chip with minimal risk. Anyway, the object that Diana had described was certainly the Omega. There were few people about, so it would be relatively safe to leave the car, throw a few bucks at the girl, take the chip, shoot her, then split.
Just as Janek finished his reverie, the limo door opened again. This time both Diana and Kane stepped out. Kane was carrying a paper bag.
He thought: The gun's were inside the bag. He watched Diana and Kane approach. "Take two steps forward," he instructed Gelsey. "Stand in the light. Then hold your ground."
As Diana and Kane crossed the World Financial Center plaza, and his own people moved with apparent languor toward their final positions, Janek felt he was watching something akin to the formation of a tableau vivant. There was a rigor to the design these players made that reminded him of paintings by De Chirico showing lonely figures on vast Italian squares. Except in the work of De Chirico, the Mediterranean sun always burned straight down and there were campaniles in the background, while here the scene was played out against a black sky and looming out-of scale office towers. Still, he felt the same strong ambience of ritual, inevitability and fate.
When each figure reached his final position, all motion stopped.
"Show it to him," Diana ordered.
Gelsey stared at Kane. "You killed Dietz."
"Never mind that, pet. Show him the goods."
"You let them think I did it. Why?" Gelsey demanded.
"What's this got to do-?"
"Everything!" Gelsey said. "Twenty-five isn't nearly enough, not for what he did to me." She turned back to Kane. "You want your little thingamajig, you're going to pay a lot more than that!"
Kane looked at Diana. "You said she was cool."
Diana shrugged. "You're pushing it, pet. Better back off before things get nasty."
"Kill me, too? Is that what you're threatening?" Gelsey turned again to Kane. "You killed Kirstin, didn't you?"
At this point Kane must have detected the artificial phrasing that creeps in when a wired witness attempts to provoke a suspect. Perhaps, glancing around the plaza, he was struck by the positions of the other people, and, in that instant, suddenly viewed the scene as false.
He's going to attack! The notion hit Janek a split second before he gave his order:
"He's going for her! Get him! Now!"
Janek flung himself out of the van, rushed across the plaza. Then everything seemed to happen at half-speed. From one side, Aaron, Ray and Sue charged in. From the other, the cop playing the homeless man and the four playing the night cleaning crew converged with drawn guns.
Diana screamed. Then, trying to run back to her' car in her heels, she tripped and fell onto the granite. Kane, seeing he was about to be tackled, pulled a small revolver from his paper bag and rushed at Gelsey.
He's going to take her hostage!
But Gelsey was no easy victim. She took off toward Janek and the van;
Kane, pursuing, was pursued in turn by the pack. Janek, gripping his pistol in both hands, leveled it at Kane. Gelsey feinted to the side and rolled. Kane slipped. In an instant the pack was on him, while Gelsey, panting, lay in Janek's arms.
"Block the limo," Janek yelled, for it was now moving from the curb.
Then he saw Diana, knees bloody from her fall, rushing after her own car, screaming at Kim to stop. A moment later the limo collided with an oncoming sanitation truck. The white car folded up. Diana, back down on the plaza floor, raged wildly at the night:
"God! What have you done!" It was always that way, Janek thought-they never blame the breakage on themselves, instead hurl the accusation at the heavens. And because they don't take responsibility for their crimes, they never believe they are guilty of committing them.
Kim was dead. Kane was silent. Diana was inconsolable. When Kane and Diana were properly booked and locked away, Janek drove Gelsey home.
When they arrived at her building a little after three A. M., she made no gesture to leave the car.
"So, is this it?" she asked, sitting still. "Case closed. We go separate ways?" "Is that what you want?" Janek asked.
"Of course not! You've been good to me. Better than almost anyone.
Even Dr. Z."
He looked at her. "So, do you think I'm the kind who gives up a friend just because a case is closed?"
She smiled. "Am I your friend?"
"Of course you are."
She nodded. "Thanks." She paused. "Can I call you when it rains, Janek?
Will you come?" "I'll come," he promised.
She smiled, kissed him quickly on the cheek, stepped out, then scampered up the wooden steps to her house. There she paused, waved, blew him another kiss. Then she disappeared.
As he drove back he glowed, holding the memory of her smile. But then, as he approached Manhattan, he began to -feel an ache. The dark forms of the towers reminded him of Mendoza. Entering the Holland Tunnel, he steeled himself. There was still that knot to be untied.
Through a Glass, Darkly At noon the following day he met his people at Special Squad. Though tired, they were still charged up by their success. He began by laying down new rules. They would be working on Mendoza. That meant new computer codes and passwords, filing cabinets with combination locks, a paper shredder, phone scramblers, regular electronic sweeps and new locks on the office door.
"Starting today we're the only ones in here. We clean our offices ourselves. All trash goes through the shredder. When we want to see someone, we meet him outside. When we order in food, we pay for it at the door. We don't answer questions about what we're doing, not from any one friend, lover or spouse. We're careful what we say, even in cars.