She caught her breath.
"Whittaker's poking his head out, looking around ..."
She waved to him. Let him know she was here. Everything according to plan, right? Soon as you've got the pilot, you let the girl go, and I'm waiting here for her. He did not wave back. Come on, she thought, acknowledge my presence. Let me know you see me. She waved again, bigger movements this time, more exaggerated. He still did not wave back. Just took a last look all around to make sure nobody was waiting out here to ambush him, and then began running for the helicopter.
"He's on his way to the chopper!" she shouted into the walkie-talkie. "Girl's still inside the house, hold steady. Inspector?"
"Yes."
"Who calls the play?"
"I do. Just tell me when the girl is clear."
"Yes, sir."
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Silence.
"He's just about there now." More silence.
"He's behind the pilot now. Signaling to the door. The girl's out! Dollyl" she yelled. "This way! Over here!" "Assault One, go\ Brady shouted.
They would later, in a diner near Headquarters downtown, over coffee and doughnuts as another hot day dawned over the city, try to piece together what had happened next, assemble it as they might have a jigsaw puzzle, pulling in separate pieces of the action from various perspectives, trying to make a comprehensive whole out of what seemed at first to be merely a scattering of confused and jagged pieces.
The girl was running toward her.
Purple hair like a beacon in the night.
"Dolly!" she shouted again.
"Hey! Red!"
She was startled for a moment, his voice coming out of the darkness near the helicopter where he stood behind the pilot. She turned to locate his voice, taking her eyes off the girl for just an instant.
"I liedl" he shouted.
And the girl exploded in blood.
They broke out of the cellar the instant Brady gave them the green light. Sonny had just released the girl and was poised for flight inside the side door, like a runner toeing his mark while waiting for the starting gun. The starting gun came from behind him, a shot fired from Wade's thirty-eight, catching Sonny in the right leg and knocking him off his feet before he could step out onto the porch. They were all over him in the next ten seconds, Wade kicking the nine-millimeter out of his hand as Sonny tried to sit up and raise the gun into a firing position, Carella kneeing him under the chin and slamming him onto his back on the linoleum-covered floor in the narrow corridor. Green linoleum, he would remember later. Yellow
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flowers in the pattern. Green and yellow and Sonny's wide-open brown eyes as Carella put the muzzle of his gun in the hollow of his throat. Jagged pink knife scar down one side of his face. "Do it," Wade whispered.
The girl came stumbling forward, rosebud breasts in the lavender blouse erupting in larger red flowers as the slugs from the assault rifle ripped into her back and exited in a shower of lung and blood and gristle and tissue, spattering Eileen in gore as the girl fell forward into her arms.
"Oh dear God," Eileen murmured, and heard the shots from inside the helicopter as the sharpshooter fired twice and only twice, but twice was more than enough. The first bullet took Whittaker at the back of his neck, ripping out his trachea as it exited. The second shot caught him just above his right cheek as the force of the first bullet spun him around and away from the pilot. He was dead even before the shattered cheek sent slivers of bone ricocheting up into his brain.
Behind the barricades, even The Preacher stopped chanting.
"Do it!" Wade whispered urgently.
There was sweat in that narrow corridor, and fear, and
anger, and every sweet thought Carella had ever had for his
father, every emotion he'd ever felt for him, all of these
burning his eyes and causing his gun hand to shake violently,
the muzzle of the Police Special trembling in the hollow of
Sonny's throat, great gobs of sweat oozing on Sonny's face,
Wade's face close to Carella's now, all three of them sweating
in that suffocating corridor where murder was just the tick of
an instant away. "Do it," Wade whispered again, "we all alone
here."
He almost did it.
Almost squeezed the trigger, almost pulled off the shot that would have ended it for Sonny and might have ended it for himself as well, all the anger, all the sorrow, all the hatred.
But he knew that if he heeded those whispered words Do it
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- and oh how easy to do it here in this secret place - he would be doing it not only to Sonny, he would be doing it to himself as well. And to anyone in this city who had ever hoped for justice under law.
He swung himself off the man who had killed his father.
"Up!" he said.
"You shot me, you motherfucker!" Sonny yelled at Wade.
"Up\" Carella said again, and yanked him to his feet and clamped the cuffs onto his wrists, squeezing them shut hard and tight. Wade was looking at him, a puzzled expression on his face.
"I'm gonna bring charges," Sonny said. "Shootin' me, you motherfucker."
"Yeah, you bring charges," Wade said. He was still looking at Carella. "I don't understand you," he said.
"Well," Carella said, and let it go at that.
13
He called his brother-in-law from the diner and told him he'd be picking him up on the way home. When Tommy asked why, he said, "Because you have twin daughters, and I think you ought to go see them."
Tommy said Wow, gee, twin girls, holy moley, wow.
In the car on the way to the hospital, Carella told him he knew Tommy was doing cocaine.
Tommy said Wow, gee, cocaine, holy moley, wow, where'd you get that idea?
Carella said he'd got the idea by following him to a house on Laramie Street, which incidentally the police had under camera surveillance, that's how he'd got the idea.
Tommy was about to do the wow-gee number a third time, but Carella cut him short by asking, "Who's the woman?"
Tommy debated lying. The car was moving slowly through heavy early-morning traffic, Carella at the wheel, Tommy beside him. He took a long time to answer. Trying to decide whether he should wow-gee it through or come clean. He knew his brother-in-law was a detective. This wasn't going to be easy.
"She works in the bank with me," he said at last.
"I'm listening."
"It goes back a couple of months."
"We've got time."
Tommy wanted him to understand straight off that there
wasn't any sex involved here, this wasn't any kind of an affair, Angela had been wrong about that, although she'd been right about there being another woman. The other woman's name was Fran Harrington, and this all started when they'd traveled out to Minneapolis together, this must've been shortly after Labor Day last year . . .
"I thought you said a couple of months," Carella said, turning from the wheel.
"Well, yeah."
"Labor Day is the beginning of September. That isn't a couple of months. That's almost a year."
"Well, yeah."
"You've been doing coke for almost a year."
"Yeah."
"You goddamn jackass."
"I'm sorry."
"You ought to be, you jackass."
He was furious. He gripped the wheel tightly and concentrated on the traffic ahead. The automobiles were moving through a shimmering miragelike haze. The first day of August, and summer seemed intent on proving that July hadn't been just a fluke. Tommy was telling him how he and Fran had gone out there to deal with a customer who was on the edge of defaulting and how they'd been able to work out a method of payment that was satisfactory to both him and the bank. This was a huge loan; the man leased snow-removal equipment, which in the state of Minnesota was as essential as bread. So both he and Fran were tickled they'd been able to work it out, and Tommy suggested they go have a drink in celebration. Fran said she didn't drink, but maybe they could scare up something better. He didn't know what she meant at first.