Step on a Crack (4 page)

JOHN ROONEY MADE a face like the Grinch as his limousine finally stopped in front of the churning crowds at St. Patrick’s. As Hollywood ’s current lead box-office-grossing actor, he’d come to appreciate the loyal fans who turned out for events of any kind. Most of them were just regular folks who wanted to show their support and appreciation. And he’d certainly take them over the paparazzi leeches. Any day, anywhere.

But now as he looked out at the rapacious faces and the raised picture phones, he was a little wary. Standing room only at a funeral, even at a high-profile ceremony, was a little too close to creepy.

Fortunately for him, the church side of Fifth Avenue was VIP only. Rooney exited onto the street behind Big Dan, his security guy. There was already a line of press-legitimate newspeople for the most part-stacked along both sides of the stairs and entrance.

With effort, he managed not to turn when someone from the crowd across Fifth yelled, “WUZ UP, DORK?” the catchphrase from his latest comedy hit.

But he couldn’t quite resist the inviting looks on the faces of the press column along both sides of the cathedral entrance. Adrenaline burst into his bloodstream as a firefight of camera flash packs blistered his eyes. He looked up at the gray sky and scratched his head.

Then Rooney unleashed the day’s first high-kilowatt smile.

“I don’t know if this is such a great idea, guys,” he said casually. “Anyone hear if there’s lightning in today’s forecast?”

He quickly scanned the ranks of mostly grinning newsies, then stopped the next joke in his throat as he spotted offended alarm on the face of some pretty brunette standing near the entrance. She was right, of course. What an attention slut he was. Grandstanding at a funeral.

Rooney made his face go somber, and then he entered the church.

He could see people in the back pews turning and nudging one another as he gave his invitation to the red-coated security guard.

Yep, it’s me. I’m here,
Rooney thought, irritated. That was one aspect of fame that had gotten old real fast. In a real-world setting, a restaurant or an airport, having people gawk at you was simply uncomfortable. It was as if people wanted something from him, but what? He didn’t know, and he suspected they didn’t either. People thought stars wore sunglasses to disguise themselves, but really it was to avoid eye contact.

Rooney turned back toward the church entrance as he heard cameras
pop
and
click
like an angry swarm of metal crickets.

Well, look who’s here!

Linda London, twenty-year-old reality TV socialite, had arrived at the same time as Mercedes Freer, twenty-year-old bubblegum pop diva. That the two ladies were sharing the same slab of sidewalk was news enough, Rooney knew. But what was really creating a frenzy was the fact that they were both wearing the same micromini black-widow outfit and veil.

To make things a little more interesting, seventies rock legend Charlie Conlan climbed out of
his
stretch and walked up the church’s stairs a few feet from the potential catfight. The tall, hopelessly cool icon had to be close to sixty now, but he still looked real good. He shook Rooney’s hand in the vestibule.

Charlie had written and performed three magical songs for a children’s movie Rooney had starred in the year before. They’d gone on a brief promotional tour together. The whole time, Conlan had never stopped smiling; tipped every waiter, doorman, and limo driver they came across; and signed autographs for any and all. Even the paparazzi seemed to like him.

“Friggin’ circus, huh?” Charlie said in his patented gravelly voice. “You one of the clowns, Johnny?”

“If I am, then you’re the ringmaster,” said Rooney, laughing as the cameras went off again.

Another loud cheer rose from the crowd. Out on the street, Eugena Humphrey was exiting her trademark pink Lincoln Town Car limousine.

“Now, now, people,” the charismatic “Queen of LA” talk show host chided the crowd. “This is a funeral, not the Emmys. Let’s have a little respect,
please
.”

Amazingly, the crowd quieted right down.

“Eugena rules,” someone said, and that seemed to be the God’s honest truth.

NEW YORK TIMES
REPORTER Cathy Calvin didn’t know where to look for the day’s next startling image. She turned as the First Lady’s hearse appeared over the northern rise of an emptied Fifth Avenue. It was led by a nine-strong V formation of NYPD parade-speed Harleys, their mufflers popping smartly in the cold hush of the world-famous street.

It was as if a contingent of the cathedral’s statues had come to life when the honor guard broke rank in the vestibule and marched slowly out onto the sidewalk.

The guard arrived at the curb the moment the hearse did.

Flashbulbs popped as they ceremoniously slid out the American flag-draped casket from the long black car.

Two Secret Service men in dark suits appeared from the crowd and completed the line of pallbearers as the former First Lady’s body was effortlessly raised to shoulder height.

The soldiers and agents stopped at the top of the stairs, just behind the former president and his daughter, as a low, violent rumbling began to the south.

A moment later, a group of five F-15s appeared low in the slot of downtown sky. As they swooped over 42nd Street, the most western aircraft suddenly broke rank and arced upward and upward as the remaining planes roared over the cathedral in the “missing man” formation.

The pallbearers waited until the last echo of the jet engines’ thunder had dissipated from Fifth Avenue ’s stone-and-steel canyon, and then began to enter the church carrying Caroline Hopkins.

The high skirl of the lone bagpiper didn’t start until the former president passed over the church’s threshold. It was as if the whole city was observing an impromptu moment of silence as the familiar strains of “Amazing Grace” began.

Cathy Calvin looked out over the crowd, and the
Times
reporter knew she had the lead she would never write. People were taking off their hats, had their hands over their hearts, and were singing along with the hymn. Everywhere, jaded New Yorkers were weeping openly.

But that wasn’t the biggest shock to her.

No, the big surprise was when Cathy Calvin, seen-it-all reporter, put her hand up to her own cheek and realized she was crying, too.

SEND-OFF LIKE THAT almost brought tears to your eyes, the Neat Man thought as he stared through binoculars from his swivel chair in the back of his black van.

Gaw-damn, he thought, and was grinning so hard it was starting to hurt his cheeks.

Tears of joy.

The van was parked near 51st and Fifth Avenue, kitty-corner to the grand cathedral, and for the last hour, through the one-way tinted window at the van’s rear, he’d been watching the nonstop parade of arriving celebs and dignitaries.

It was one thing to predict something, the Neat Man thought as the church’s entrance doors closed behind President Hopkins and his entourage of inspired toadies.

Quite another to watch your each and every prediction come incredibly true.

He lowered the binocs to rip a baby wipe from the top of the plastic canister at his feet. His red hands stung wonderfully when he started scouring them. He usually carried a supply of soothing Jergens hand lotion to counteract the chafing, but he’d forgotten it in all the excitement.

About the only thing I missed,
he thought, smiling as he dropped the used wipey onto the mound at his feet and raised the binoculars again.

He scanned the perimeter of the church’s wide block, lingering at each security post with his high-resolution Steiner 15×80 field glasses.

There was a line of Manhattan Task Force beat cops scattered about the front of the church with the press, and an NYPD Emergency Service Unit truck blocking the side streets at each corner.

The baseball-hat-wearing ESU police commandos had intimidating Colt Commando submachine guns strapped across their chests, but there were coffee cups in their hands, and cigarettes. Instead of being vigilant, they were standing around goofing on one another, telling lies about what they would do with all the overtime they were raking in.

Question: Were they that stupid? the Neat Man thought. Answer: Yes, they were.

His cell phone went off when the bagpiper’s screech started winding down. The Neat Man lowered the binoculars and raised the phone to his ear.

The excitement of what was about to go down hissed along his nerve endings.

“All clear, Jack,” the Neat Man said. “It’s a go. Now make us proud.”

IN THE NAVE of the cathedral, “Jack” bit the antenna of his just-closed cell phone nervously as he gazed out at the dozens of Secret Service agents and private security and cops stationed around the church.

Would this scheme actually work? he thought for the thousandth, no, make that the hundred thousandth time. Well, no time like the present to find out. He holstered the phone and headed for the 51st Street exit.

Seconds later, he hustled down the marble stairs and unhooked the latch that was holding open the two-foot-thick wooden door. A female uniformed NYPD cop smoking a cigarette in the threshold glanced at him. She looked irritated.

“In or out?” Jack said with a smile. Though he was on the short side, he was capable of turning on the charm when he wanted. “Service is starting. We got to close ’em up.”

In the predawn security meeting, law enforcement personnel had been told to give the church security force deference in all matters concerning the ceremony.

“Out, I guess,” the cop said.

Good choice, flatfoot,
Jack thought, pulling the heavy doors shut and snapping the key off in the lock.
Choose life.

He hurried up the stairs and around the ambulatory along the back of the altar.

It was packed-standing room only-with white-frocked priests.

The organ started and the casket appeared from under the choir loft just as he arrived at the south transept.

Jack jogged down the stairs to the 50th Street side entrance and closed and locked the thick door there, too. He refrained from breaking the key in the lock because they’d need this exit in about a minute.

Next order of business
. Jack took a deep breath.

Half of Hollywood, Wall Street, and Washington was now boxed inside the cathedral.

Quickly, he went back along the ambulatory. Beyond one of the massive columns, there was a leather bank rope. It blocked off a small, narrow marble stairwell at the rear of the altar. He stepped over the rope and descended.

At the bottom of the marble stairs was an ornate green copper door. The sign above it read: crypt of the archbishops of new york.

Jack stepped in quickly and yanked the door closed. He moved inside the crypt, then tightly shut the door behind him. In the dimness, he could make out the stone sarcophaguses of the interred archbishops arrayed in a semicircle around the rough-hewn stone walls of the chamber.

“It’s me, idiots,” he said in a low voice after another second. “Hit the light.”

There was a
click
, and the wall sconces came on.

Behind the stone caskets were a dozen men. Most were wearing T-shirts and sweatpants. They were big, muscular, and not very friendly-looking.

There were rips of Velcro as the men strapped on bulletproof Kevlar vests. Smith amp; Wesson nine-millimeter handguns in underarm holsters went on next. The black, fingerless gloves they put on were known as “sappers” and had cushioned lead shot over the knuckles.

Then the mysterious cadre pulled brown-hooded Franciscan monk robes over the Kevlar vests. Into the pockets of these were placed what looked like remote controls but were actually the latest in electric shock weaponry.

They slipped big-bored riot guns up the billowing sleeves of their robes. Half of the guns were loaded with rubber bullets; the other half with canisters of extremely caustic CS tear gas.

Last, the men pulled black ski masks over their faces. It was as if they were made of shadow when they flipped up the hoods.

Jack smiled approvingly as he threw on his own vest, robe, and black ski mask, then pulled up his hood.

“Lock, load, and strap your nuts on, ladies,” Jack said, smiling as he slowly pulled back the heavy door of the crypt. “It’s time to put the
fun
back into funeral.”

MOVIE STAR and comedian John Rooney felt the breath rush out of him as the honor guard finally arrived at the front of the church with the flag-draped coffin.

Throughout the procession up the center aisle, they had stopped for a long, motionless moment after each step, the organ thundering from above. It was as if the casket weighed so much they needed to pause in order to carry it, Rooney thought sadly.

As the pallbearers laid down the coffin, Rooney remembered his own father’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Say what you want about the military, he thought, choking up. Flat out, no one knew better how to honor the dead.

He turned to his right when he saw the line of cowled, brown-robed monks appear. They walked with the same solemnity of the honor guard as they approached the altar. He could see another line of them walking down the aisle to his left.

In the dimness of the church, you couldn’t see faces beneath the hoods. He knew there was going to be a lot of ritual and ceremony today, but this was a new one on him. If the military knew how to honor the dead, leave it to the Catholics to put the fear of God into the living.

The organ was reaching a crescendo when the monks spaced themselves out and stopped suddenly in the side aisles.

Rooney jumped when he heard a series of muffled blasts under the rumble of the organ. Then smoke, white and enveloping, came billowing from all sides.

What had been the austere VIP section looked like a mosh pit as the people in there panicked, clawing at one another to get out of the pews.

Rooney thought he saw one of the monks setting off a shotgun into the crowd.

No, he thought, blinking hard in disbelief. He must have banged his head. That couldn’t be right.

He opened his eyes as a uniformed cop stumbled up the center aisle with blood pouring out of his nose and ears.

Beside Rooney, his bodyguard, Big Dan, had a handkerchief to his mouth as he cleared the.380 from his belt holster. It looked like Dan was trying to decide which direction to point it when one of the monks appeared like an apparition from the smoke and jabbed the bodyguard in the neck with a square of black plastic. There was an ominous clacking sound, and Big Dan dropped his weapon and was down on the seat, shaking like some huge spirit-struck worshipper.

Then the organ died!

Fear slapped through John Rooney. With the music gone, he could hear the screaming, the panicked shrieks of thousands soaring off the high stone vaults.

Someone had just taken over St. Patrick’s!