"A chopper's possible," she said, "but I'd have to talk to my boss about it."
"Then you go talk to him, Eileen."
"I feel pretty sure he can arrange it. . ."
279
"I sure hope so, Eileen." "But I know he'd expect..."
'"Cause I'm gettin' pretty goddamn impatient here . . ." "Well, this is really the first time ..." ". . . an' I'd hate to see anythin' happen to this little girl here, hmm?"
"I'd hate to see anything happen to anybody, believe me. But this is the first time you and I have really talked, you know, and ..."
"Why don't you come up here on the porch?" he said.
"You think I'm crazy?" she said.
He laughed again.
"No, come on, I won't hurt you. I mean it, come on."
"Well..."
"Come on."
"How about I just stand up first?"
"Okay."
"But you'll have to show me your hands. Show me there's nothing in your hands, and I'll stand up."
"How I know what you got in your hands?"
"I'll show you my hands, too. Here, see?" she said, and raised both hands above the porch deck and waggled all the fingers. "Nothing in my hands, okay?"
"How you know I won't show you my hands and then dust you anyway? Jus' pick up the piece again an'..."
"Well, I don't think you'd do that. Not if you promise me."
The first time she'd heard this in class, she'd thought it was ridiculous. You asked a terrorist to promise he wouldn't blow you away? You asked some nut just out of the loony bin to promise he wouldn't hurt you? She had been assured over and over again that it worked. If they really promised you, if you got them to say the words "I promise you," then they really wouldn't hurt you.
"So can I see your hands?" she asked.
"Here's my hands," he said, and stepped around the window frame for just an instant, waggling his fingers the way she just
280
had, and then ducking back out of sight again. She thought she'd seen a grin, too. "Now stan' up," he said.
"If I stand up, will you promise you won't hurt me?"
"I promise."
"You won't hurt me?"
"I promise I won't hurt you."
"All right," she said, and stood up.
He was silent for a moment, looking her over. Fine, she thought, look me over. But this isn't the old man all over again, you aren't eighty-four years old and senile, you're a killer. So look me over all you like but . . .
"Put your hands on the windowsill where I can see them, okay?" she said.
"Matter, don't you trust me?" he said.
"I trust you, yes, because you promised me. But I'd feel a lot better if I could see your hands. You can see mine," she said, holding them out in front of her and turning them this way and that like a model for Revlon nail polish, "so you know I'm not going to hurt you, isn't that right?"
"It is."
Still not stepping out from where he was hidden.
"So how about showing me the same consideration?" she said.
"Okay, here's my hands," he said, and moved into the window frame beside Dolly and grabbed the sill with both huge hands.
"Clear shot," the sharpshooter said into his walkie-talkie. "Shall I take him out?"
"Negative," Brady told him.
"What I'd like to do now," Eileen said, "is go back to my boss and ask him about that helicopter."
"Sure is red" Whittaker said, grinning.
"Yeah, I know," Eileen said, shaking her head and smiling back at him. "I'm pretty sure he can get you what you want, but it might take some time. And I know he'll expect something from you in return."
"Whutchoo mean?"
281
"I'm just saying I know what he's like. He'll get you that helicopter, but one hand washes the other is what he's going to tell me. But let me go talk to him, okay? See what he says."
"If he s'pects me to let go Dolly, he's dreamin'. Dolly stayin' with us till we on that jet."
"What jet?"
"Dolly tole you we . . ."
"No, not me. Maybe she told the other negotiator."
"We want a jet to take us to Jamaica."
Eileen was thinking he'd been standing there in the window for the past three, four minutes now, a clean shot for any of the Tac Team sharpshooters. But Sonny was still somewhere in the darkness of that room. And Sonny was strapped with a nine-millimeter auto.
"Why Jamaica?" she asked.
"Nice down there," he said vaguely.
"Well, let me talk to him, okay? You're asking for two things in a row now, and that's gonna make it a little harder for me. Let me see what I can do, okay?"
"Yeah, go ahead. An' tell him we ain't foolin' aroun' here."
"I will. Now Mr Whittaker, I'm gonna turn my back on you and walk over to the truck there. Do I still have your promise?"
"You have my promise."
"You won't hurt me."
"I won't hurt you."
"I have your promise then," she said, and nodded. "I'll be back as soon as I talk to him."
"Go ahead."
She turned away, giving him no reason to believe she was frightened or even apprehensive, turned and began walking swiftly and deliberately toward the Emergency Service truck, the word police in white across the back of her blue poplin jacket, trying not to pull her head into her shoulders, thinking nonetheless that any minute now a spray of bullets would come crashing into her spine.
But Whittaker kept his promise.
282
It was Carella who'd reahzed the perps had blindsided themselves. Boarded up the windows on three sides of the house. And if all those windows were boarded, they couldn't see out. Which meant that three sides of the house were accessible to the police. This was what he'd told Brady.
They had finally got a floor plan from the realty company that had sold the house to a Mr and Mrs Borden some twelve years ago, long before a housing development had been planned for the area. It looked like this:
Outside entry down to cellar
Back stairs from cellar
According to Dolly, when the owners of the house converted from a private residence to a rooming house, the living
283
room and dining room were both refurnished as bedrooms, and what had once been the sitting room was now a sort of public room with a sofa, two easy chairs, and a television set on a stand. The kitchen and its adjoining pantry and laundry room - what had originally been called the sink room - were the only rooms on this floor of the house that remained as they'd been since its construction back before the turn of the century. There was only one large bathroom in the house, on the second floor.
At the rear of the house, there was an outside entry that led down to the cellar.
Carella pointed this out, too.
One of those sloping things that kids just loved to slide down, two doors on it that opened upward and outward like wings. Observer number four, working the inner perimeter at the rear of the house, reported that whereas the window to the left - his left - of the cellar doors had been boarded over, the doors themselves seemed not to have been touched. They were fastened by a simple padlock in a hasp.
It was Carella's thought that if they could get into that cellar, they could then come up the stairs to the kitchen entry and move through the house to where Sonny and Whittaker were holding the girl in the front room. From either of the doorways that opened into that room, they would have a clean shot at anyone inside, including whoever might be backed against the rear wall, as they suspected Sonny was.
Brady wanted the girl out of the house first.
No assault until the girl was out.
He told Eileen to go back to Whittaker and tell him they couldn't get him a chopper, but they could bring a limo around to the back door if he let the girl go at the same time. His thinking was to split up the pair. Get Whittaker to send Sonny back to the kitchen entry while the girl was coming out the front door. Time it so that Carella and Wade would be at the top of the cellar stairs when Sonny came back to check on the limo. No assault until they knew for certain Dolly was out of