I didn’t like it. I knew people were freaking out and needed to know what was happening, but this was nuts. It never failed. Every time these things happened, the circus atmosphere seemed to get worse. Less thought and emphasis seemed to be placed on the incredible human pain inflicted on the victims and their families and more on the hysterical contagious excitement generated by the knowledge that Something Big Is Happening.
I found Chief Fabretti with Lieutenant Bryce Miller on the sidewalk near the precinct’s front door.
“Just about to call you, Mike,” Fabretti said. “The mayor changed his mind about the briefing. He’s going on any second now, and he needs to, and I quote, wrap things up with his speech people.”
“His speech people, of course,” I said, nodding, as I looked out at the media horde. “You think this is the right approach here, Chief? Little on the splashy side, isn’t it?”
The mayor’s buddy, Bryce Miller, jumped in. “Mayor insisted it be outside,” he said. “Not holed up in a bunker somewhere. There’s a lot of scared folks out there. We need to project calm. It’s important people understand that everything’s okay. That we’re in control of things.”
In control of things? I thought, cocking my head. We are? I wanted to say.
CHAPTER 18
A MOMENT LATER, accompanied by a barrage of camera clicks and flashes, the mayor, Carl Doucette, came out of the precinct with his five-man police security detail.
Normally a glad-handing, life-of-the-party type, the new mayor—tall, with curly gray hair—looked somber, serious, almost nervous as he stepped to the podium and took out his prepared statement. If he was faking looking shaken up, he was a fine actor, I thought.
“As everyone probably has heard by now, very early this morning there was a massive explosion in the number one train tunnel beneath Broadway in Washington Heights,” Mayor Doucette began.
“Three people have been killed that we know of, and I’d like to say first that our hearts go out to those victims and their families. We are still very much in the process of investigating the explosion, but from our initial review, we can say definitively that this was not a utility malfunction, nor was it industrial in nature.”
The clicking of the cameras increased as he looked up from his notes.
“At this point, we can only conclude that this was an intentional act, of what exact nature we cannot say. It seems as if a flammable material was pumped into the tunnel at some point last night, and that the built-up material was ignited with one or perhaps two explosive devices, causing catastrophic damage to a large segment of the tunnel as well as to the Hundred and Sixty-Eighth Street and Hundred and Eighty-First Street subway stations.
“This part of the tunnel is ten stories down, one of the deepest in the entire system, and we have engineers still assessing the risk of further collapse. Though we are planning to bring back train service on a rolling basis this afternoon into the evening rush, people can expect that number one train service will be down in both directions for well into the foreseeable future.”
He paused again, took a breath.
“But though our train service is shut down,” the mayor said, staring at the cameras now with a calm and steady seriousness and intensity he’d never before displayed, “I want to let whoever committed this cowardly, murderous act know once and for all that the spirit of this city and its citizens will never be shut down.”
There was a smattering of spontaneous applause.
“We will continue as we have always done, and you will be found and brought to justice.”
“Yeah!” somebody with a deep voice called out from the media pit, and more people began to applaud.
“Try as you will, neither you nor anyone else will ever be able to shut down our city or the American people.”
Maybe doing a big press conference like this was a good idea after all, I thought as the clapping increased. I hadn’t voted for the mayor, because he seemed soft on crime, but he was surprising me. Watching him operate up close for the first time, I could see he was a natural leader with an ability to lift people’s spirits.
The mayor smiled gently as he raised his hands to wave down the applause. He brought the microphone in a little closer to himself as a chant of “USA! USA!” started from somewhere.
The mayor smiled at the chanting and was waving his hands for calm when there was a glow of something pink behind his head.
It was rose-colored, a strange, halolike mist that I first thought was some kind of weird television lighting, because as it appeared, the side of the mayor’s head suddenly looked like it was covered in shadow.
But then the tall mayor staggered oddly forward and to his left, and my mind finally caught up to my unbelieving eyes.
I watched in horror as the mayor dropped straight down behind the podium like a bridge with its pilings blown out.
CHAPTER 19