A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror (35 page)

“Stop that man!” he heard behind him. Not that far behind. “Stop him! Stop! Thief!”

The doors swung dead ahead. He heaved against the push bar and careened outside. People all over were stopping, turning, pointing. His leg throbbed. There was no place to hide. A police car sat at the corner, pale blue and white, a rack of lights on the roof, the uniformed cop looking straight ahead.

Lou stumbled to the trashcan at the curb, yanked off the plastic lid, and ran with it toward the police car. Then he whirled and flung it at the cruiser’s window.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Maggie stood still in the kitchen long after she’d hung up the phone. It
was
Lou she was just talking to; but from the way he spoke, it might as well have been Dan Rather. She sensed almost immediately that it didn’t matter what she said to him because he wasn’t listening, as though he was reading from a teleprompter. She could visualize the gears turning behind his eyes, calculating how much she knew and how much he should say to her.

She’d thrown out the business about the terrorists on the bridge as a means of picking up on some indication that he might give, some hint or something. But he’d slid right over it. And though she knew her instincts were almost always right on, this time she wasn’t sure. At least now she knew he was alive and somewhere in the city. The calmness that had grown inside her this morning was still there.

The boys were in the living room, wreaking havoc on her houseplants. She went to the front window, and lightly pushed the curtain aside. She saw the white van parked exactly where it had been before. She herded Jory and Kirk up the stairs to the bedroom. They ran to the bed and immediately turned it into a trampoline. She flicked on the closet light and combed the row of business suits for Lou’s dark blue, the one he wore to all client meetings in combination with a white shirt and striped tie.

“Find your toy box in the hall closet, Jory. You and Kirky go play in your bedroom now.” The boys jumped down from the bed and ran for the toys.

Mag laid the suit on the crumpled bedspread. Did Lou mean it when he talked about going away from this place? Why did she have this feeling that he was talking in some kind of code? What did he really mean? He had never talked about moving before. Why now? She glanced out the window at the van, bit on the knuckle of her index finger, and narrowed her eyes.

What else would Lou need along with the suit? A shirt, tie, socks, underwear? What in heaven’s name was the reason for meeting the limo in Battery Park of all places? Maybe she’d just take the things to him herself. But if he’d wanted that... No, he didn’t want that.

She pulled a red-striped tie from the rack and tucked it into the side pocket of the suit. She tossed underwear in the general direction of the bed and was rustling in his sock drawer for a good pair when her hand touched something hard. What was this?

She picked up the videotape that was nestled in the middle of Lou’s jumble of socks. The label read: “Halloween 1991 Attn: Bill Severence.”

She broke into a trot in the hallway and crushed under foot a plastic brontosaurus that had skittered out of the boys’ bedroom just as she was passing. She nearly fell headlong down the stairs. She plucked the remote control for the television from the lamp stand by her reading chair, powered up the TV, pushed the tape into the slot on the VCR, and pressed the Play button. Then she fell to her knees in front of the set.

Static filled the screen. Then Lou appeared, holding a
New York Times
. The camera zoomed in to find the front-page headline and the date. Lou’s full form filled the screen again before the camera gradually moved to his face. He spoke slowly and clearly.

“My name is Louis Christopher. I live in Glen Rock, New Jersey, and work for Pierson Browne, the brokerage firm. I’m now at a hideout in New York. I have just finished a reconnaissance of the Bear Mountain Bridge, which I intend to attack with napalm tomorrow, October 30, as the leader of a mock-terrorist group. I was told that the purpose of the attack is to provide the president of the United States, Jordan Bliss, an opportunity to rekindle America’s admiration of him as the architect of
Operation Desert Storm
and protector of the nation. The target was chosen for its proximity to New York and the media opportunities that it presents just before Election Day. The president is supposed to board a helicopter and fly up to the bridge, like the cavalry coming over the hill, just in time to stop the attack. Patricia Buck of Pierson Browne, who is a presidential campaign consultant, recruited me. Also involved are men known to me as Stanfield and Copeland. I have made a copy of this tape and have arranged to have it sent to a major political correspondent in the event that I, or any member of my family or friends, come to harm.”

“Oh, thank God,” Maggie said to herself. “It’s not Patty Buck.”

“What’s Grandpa doing on the TV, grandma?” Jory asked, standing just behind her.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The plastic lid flew through the air in a clean arc, collided with the cruiser’s side window, and spun off like a penny pitched into the gutter. The cops in the car initially froze in their seats in disbelief, and then turned to look out the side window at him. The cop on the far side opened the door and slowly emerged with his pistol drawn. He crouched behind the car and pointed the weapon directly at Lou’s face.

“Don’t wiggle, buddy, or you’re a dead man.”

His leg was on fire and twitching. Lou wanted desperately to turn around to see if Stanfield was behind him, but he didn’t dare move. He felt embarrassed, like a little boy caught in the act of throwing tomatoes against the barn wall. His face was hot and flushed. Tension in his neck and shoulders rushed out of him like air from a balloon. He felt relief for the first time since he’d left home to start the operation. He was caught. They could identify him to the world. He would be tried and convicted. It was clear. He hadn’t wanted this. But he realized now that it was better than death.

“Step up to the car with your hands in the air, slowly. Now lean up against the door there,” the cop said, shoving Lou from behind. It was the frisking routine he’d seen a hundred times on TV.

“All right, let’s break it up now and continue on your way. The show’s over. Move along,” the other cop said. The dialogue sounded like something they might have learned from
The Commish.

Lou ducked into the cruiser’s back seat. A steel screen spanned the front-seat backrest, sealing him off from the officer behind the wheel. The other officer sat beside him.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” It was the older, heavier one in the back with him. His hat was off and his gray, speckled hair stood up on his head like a million corkscrews. His breath was stale.

“What difference does it make?” Lou asked, letting a long sigh escape. “I just felt like it.”

“You just felt like it. What’re you on, buddy?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m not on anything.”

“What do you say, Sal. Think we ought to haul him in or what?”

“You feel like writing it up?”

“Hell, no!”

“Then tell him to get the fuck out of the car.”

“Call it in. Tell ’em to check on a Louis B. Christopher, Glen Rock, New Jersey,” the old one said, going through Lou’s wallet.

“They’re not going to have any record of me. I can tell you that,” Lou said.

“You just keep your fucking gob shut.”

“Go on and call it in. This guy might have escaped from Bellevue or something.”

“Fuck it. Let’s just run him in and let them talk about it.”

At the 17th Precinct on 53rd Street, they confiscated his belongings and bagged them in a manila envelope, and then shut him in a room without locking the door. It was bare except for a chair on either side of a plain oak table that sat in the center beneath a single, long, fluorescent light on the ceiling. He’d never been in a big-city police station before, but this one looked exactly as he expected it would. Outside the room, he could hear telephones ringing and feet shuffling. Obviously, the cops didn’t know what to do with him. They’d just let him cool his heels for a while until someone could sit down and talk to him. Meanwhile, they’d do some routine checks on him.

Lou wasn’t going to volunteer any information. He was sure that it was just a matter of time until they found out about him and the bridge.

The door opened after he’d been sitting there alone for about forty-five minutes. It was another old cop, about sixty, with pure white hair. He wore a wrinkled, civilian suit. His shoes were scuffed and dirty around the soles. His tie was loose around his neck and deeply and colorfully stained—apparently with everything from coffee to salsa—creating a disgusting, burnt umber blotch in the bed of flowers.

“Hello, Mr. Christopher. I’m Strachan”—he pronounced it
Strawn—
“That’s spelled with a ‘ch’ in there even if it doesn’t sound like it. How’re you doing in here?”

“I’m all right, officer,” Lou said, with his chin in his hand and elbow resting on the table.

“What’re you doing in town today, Mr. Christopher?”

“I’m just looking around in the stores.”

“Did you drive in or what?”

“No, I came in on the train.”

“You stop in at one of the bars around here, maybe in the station?”

“No.”

“My men say you were acting sort of strange.”

“I wanted to get their attention real fast, and I did.”

“What did you want to do that for?”

“I was being chased. I was about to get robbed in a Grand Central men’s room, so I ran out onto the street.”

“And you threw something at the cruiser.”

“Yeah. That’s all I could think to do.”

“Why didn’t you say something about this to the men at the scene?”

“I was out of breath. And they weren’t in any mood to accept an explanation like that. Besides, I was afraid I was going to get shot, right there.”

“It was a long ride down to the station here.”

“I guess I was so relieved to get away and to be safe that I thought I’d wait until things quieted down a little.”

“What’s wrong with your leg, Mr. Christopher?”

“I pulled a hamstring in a touch football game yesterday.”

“Uh-huh. It would be the first hamstring injury that bled. I can’t force you to show me the injury, but would you like to show it to me?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Lou said.

“How come you decided to come in to the city on Election Day, of all days?”

“I can’t give you a good answer for that. All I know is I’m sorry I did come in. That’s for sure.”

“You’re married, Mr. Christopher.”

“Yes, I sure am.”

“You got a couple of kids.”

“Yeah. They’re not kids anymore.”

“But you thought you’d spend your day off cruising around the city.”

“I wasn’t exactly cruising around.”

“I thought that’s what you said.”

“No, I didn’t say I was cruising around. I said I was looking around in the stores.”

“I have to tell you that I don’t believe you when you tell me shit like that. I think I’m going to have to keep you here for a while until I can check into this a little further. Now, you’ve got the right to call your lawyer, you know that.”

Lou didn’t say anything. He knew that he should be protesting and carrying on about it being true, everything he’d said, but it just wasn’t in him. The cumulative effects of two days without sleep were creeping into his body.

He was having a difficult time holding his eyes open now that he was in a warm place, out of the air. The tension had escaped his body. Now he was apathetic and vulnerable. He wasn’t going to say anything.