"Wow," Eileen said.
"Heineken and a Coke," the waitress said, and put down the drinks, and rushed off again.
"Anyway," Goodman said, "Julie started to think she was making some progress. For the past hour - this was now eight o'clock at night, she'd been on the door since two in the
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afternoon, they'd already sent out for pizza and sodas. The woman has asked for beer, but you know we never let them have anything alcoholic ..."
Eileen nodded.
". . . and she'd already fed herself and the- kids and was beginning to feel chatty and at least for the past hour she hadn't tried to throw anyone out the window. So Julie starts telling her about her own kids, the way Mary Beth did with that woman in the lingerie shop last week, and they're getting along fine, and Julie's got her convinced she isn't armed, takes off her jacket, pats herself down ... no guns, see? Nobody gets hurt, right? And then she takes a chance, she asks the lady to send out one of the kids, nobody's going to hurt her, the kids must be sleepy, they've got a cot set up down the hall, why doesn't she send out one of the kids? And the lady says Let me see again that you don't have a gun, and Julie shows her she doesn't have a gun, which is the truth, and the lady says Okay, I'll let you have one of the kids, and she opens the door and splits Julie's head in two with the cleaver."
"Jesus!" Eileen said.
"Yeah. So the ES cops stormed the door and killed the lady and that was the end of the story. Except that Brady got called on the carpet downtown, the Commish wanting to know what had happened there, a kid dead, a woman dead, a police officer dead, what the hell had gone wrong? If there was already a person dead when the hostage team got there, why didn't they just storm the door to begin with? Brady explained that we didn't work that way, whatever had happened before we got there didn't matter, it was a clean slate, our job was to make sure nobody got hurt after we were on the scene. Which the Commish must have thought was ridiculous because people had got hurt, there were three people dead and television was having a field day.
"The TV people were angry because Brady wouldn't let any of them near where the lady was contained - well, that's still a rule, no television cameras. So they began questioning the entire validity of the program. Almost wrecked it, in fact. All
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the hard work Chief McCleary had done getting it started, all the advances Brady had made when he took over, all of it almost went down the drain. The newspapers went after him, too. They'd all endorsed the incumbent mayor, who'd lost the election, and the new mayor had appointed a new commissioner and now the Commish was being blamed for what Brady had done, and naturally the buck stopped at Brady, it was his program, he was in command of the team. It was a hell of a mess, believe me."
Goodman was working on his lobster as he said all this. Delicately taking it apart with nutcracker, fingers, and fork, dipping the succulent meat into the butter sauce, chewing, popping a fry into his mouth, back to the lobster, working on the claws now, a gulp of beer, another fry, eating, talking.
"Brady blamed himself, of course, he's that kind of man. Got it into his head that he hadn't adequately trained Julie . . . which wasn't true, we've since learned there's only so much you can teach in a classroom. And, anyway, she was really a top-notch negotiator with a great deal of experience. Played it just the way she should have, in fact. Her bad luck was to come up against a lady who'd've snapped under any circumstances."
Goodman fell silent. Eileen watched him demolishing the rest of the lobster. Huge gulp of beer now. Another fry.
"Big family?" she asked.
"Just the three kids," he said.
"I meant you."
"No, I'm ... huh?"
"The way you're eating."
"Oh. No, I've always eaten this way," he said, and shrugged. "I get hungry."
"I see that."
"Yeah," he said, and shrugged again, and drained what was left of his beer. "Took him a long time to get over it," he said. "For a while there, he wouldn't have any women on the team at all. Then he hired Georgia ... I don't think you've met her . . . and Mary Beth. I don't know why he fired her, I thought
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she was doing a good job. Maybe he began feeling helpless again. A woman working the door, another woman contained, the entire situation a volatile one. Maybe he fired. Mary Beth because he was afraid something would happen to her."
"Mike ..."
Using the name again, getting used to the name.
". . . however you slice it, that's a sexist attitude. Has he fired any men!"
"One. But the guy had a drinking problem."
"Well, there you are."
"I'm not sure it's that simple."
"Do you think he'll fire me?"
"I don't know."
"Well. . . did he feel I was in danger yesterday?"
"You were in danger. He shouldn't have put you on the door. I argued against it, in fact. Sending in either you or Martha."
"Why?"
"Too early. Not enough observation yet, not enough training."
"But it worked out."
"Luckily. I don't think Martha would have been successful, by the way. It's a good thing the old man turned her down."
"Why do you say that?"
"Too eager, too aggressive. I'm not sure she'll ever make a good negotiator, for that matter."
"Have you told that to Brady?"
"I have."
"How about me? Do you think I'll make a good one?"
"You're already a pretty good one. You handled some things clumsily, but it was an enormously difficult situation. I like to call a spade a spade, Eileen. A police negotiator is a police negotiator and we should never lie about that, whatever the taker may want. Pretending to be a hooker . . ."He shook his head. "I told Brady I didn't like the idea. When he insisted we go ahead with it, I told him we should call Georgia, get her to come in. If we were going to lie to the taker, then we
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needed an experienced negotiator to pull it off. Georgia's done undercover work, by the way, decoy work, too. I'm surprised you don't know her."
"What's her last name?"
"Mobry. M-O-B-R-Y. Georgia Mobry."
"Doesn't ring a bell."
"She works mostly with Narcotics."
"No."
"Anyway, she could've handled it nicely yesterday. Trouble is she's on vacation. But... as you said ... it worked out."
"Luckily. As you said."
"Well. . . however."
"I was lucky, wasn't I?"
"I think it could have gone either way. We shouldn't have lied to him. If he'd found out..."
"I tried to keep it ambiguous. If that's the word."
"That's the word. But the fact is we were passing you off as a hooker. And if he once discovered we were deceiving him ..." Goodman nodded knowingly. "There was a little girl in that apartment. And a shotgun."
"Why'd Brady take the chance?"
"On you? Or the whole deception?"
"Both."
"You because the old man turned down Martha. Brady preferred her, she was his first choice. The deception? I don't know. He probably thought it would work. And if it might save that little girl's life ..."
"It did save her life."
"As it turned out."
"So why'd he want to fire me?"
"I'm not sure how his mind works. I've been with him for ten years now . . ."
"That long?"
"Yes. Why?"
"You look younger."
"I'm thirty-eight."
"You still look younger. Why'd he want to fire me?"
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"I don't know. It came as a total surprise to me. First he picks Martha over you, and then he agrees to your terms for working the door. So you get the old man and the kid out without anybody getting hurt, and he decides to fire you. Meshugge, do you understand Yiddish?"