by Robert Pobi
Lucas nodded down at the big weapon. “What the hell is that?”
Dingo pulled it out, modeling it for Lucas with a classic attack pose. “Found it in the garbage. It’s a Conan sword, man. Cool, huh?”
Lucas smiled. Then laughed. “You are nothing else if not consistent.”
“You really know how to hurt a guy.” There was something he wasn’t saying.
“What is it?” Lucas asked.
Dingo looked as if he were deciding whether or not to share a secret. Then he put the big broadsword back in the umbrella stand and said, “I haven’t seen you like this before.”
“Like what?”
Dingo nodded at the Arts and Crafts mirror beside the door. “Peaceful.”
Lucas glanced at the oak-framed image of himself, then turned back and stuck out his hand. “Thanks again for shoveling and checking up on Erin and the kids.”
Dingo shook in the sideways grasp they had developed and, with a serious tone, said, “Just try to look a little tired when you go inside.”
Lucas slipped back out into the cold.
Going down icy steps was always more difficult than going up, and he was glad he hadn’t put the Modelo away. The one thing that messed with his balance was booze. Not that he couldn’t function after a few drinks, but all the spills he had taken with the new leg had happened under the influence. And of course a little Johnnie Walker Black Label was responsible for the course he was now famous for. So he tended to lay off the sauce these days. He had never been a boozehound, not even back in his salad days, so it wasn’t something he missed all that much. Every now and then, he and Erin had a beer on a summer evening. And a couple of times a year, they actually finished a bottle of wine. But other than those few anomalous blips, he lived in a dry county.
He unlocked the back door with the security key, and Lemmy came ripping down the hall, a windmill of too much enthusiasm and not enough self-control. Lucas leaned forward, putting his weight on his left leg, and absorbed the dog’s impact. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I missed you, too, dummy.”
“Lemmy not a dummy,” a tiny voice said.
Lucas lifted his vision, making sure to move his head so his eyes would stay in line, to see Alisha coming toward him. Erin and the rest of the kids were behind her—his personal army of cheerleaders, big smiles, and happy faces. Even Erin looked happy. “Hey, guys.”
“Hey, yourself, Mr. Man,” Erin said, and the kids rushed forward to hand out hugs. Even Maude gave Lucas a quick tentative squeeze, and the significance wasn’t lost on him.
Erin stayed in the doorway to the mudroom, leaning against the doorjamb, her hip popping out. She was happy about something. “We were waiting for you to order in some supper. We thought Chinese would be fun.”
“China-eeze! China-eeze!” Alisha hollered and gave the side of Lemmy’s snout a big kiss. “Lemmy love China-eeze, too?”
“You betcha, kiddo,” Lucas said. He finished kicking off his boots and hung his parka on an empty hook amid the children’s candy-colored snowsuits, pants, and jackets. “What’s the special occasion?” He hoped it was Maude’s exam results. Anything better than an F was worth celebrating.
Erin’s crossed arms dented her breasts and added another jolt of femininity to the equation her popped hip had started. She nodded at Maude. “Guess who aced her math exam today?”
“Congratulations!” he said.
Maude started an embarrassed smile and looked down.
Lucas wouldn’t let her go into herself on this one. She needed encouragement. “That’s the best news of the day. Chinese it is.”
“It was only a B-plus.” Maude kept her eyes on the floor.
“Are you kidding? Awesome,” he said, pulling out a word he usually detested. “Do you know how many people would love to get a B-plus in math?”
She looked up. “You really think so?”
Lucas wanted to sweep her up in a bear hug, but he kept his distance. “Maude, I am so proud of you! This calls for extra wontons and that peanut sauce you love so much.”
“And sesame beef?”
“And sesame beef.”
She gave Lucas a hug, and as quickly as it began, it was over. She moved back beside Erin.
“What do you say, Alisha? Should we go order some Chinese food?”
Erin went to dig out the menu while the kids began to sing, “China-eeze! China-eeze!” in a dinnertime chant.
34
Rikers Island, New York
The Robert N. Davoren Complex
Across the bay, LaGuardia was unusually busy, even for a Friday night. The increase in traffic was no doubt to make up for lost time that the ice age was eating up, and the tower was using the break in the weather to launch as many flights as possible. It had been stop-and-go like this all winter, but it had been insane for the past hour with both passenger planes and private jets alike in constant rotation—landing, taking off, and taxiing around the snow-swept circuit board of runways and lanes. The deicing crews were in full swing, and even from this distance, the steam from their high-pressure guns was louder than the takeoffs and landings. The sky overhead was dappled with lights.
Mark Lupino, the tactical squad leader for the prison, turned away from the airport, bringing his attention back to the interior of the guard tower. There were a few cheap decorations in the booth, including a three-foot light-up plastic Santa that one of the guards had brought from home. The rest of the stuff was broken and sad. Then again, maybe it was just his mood. Lupino had enough shit to do without having to orchestrate drills to demonstrate the readiness of his men. And the apex piss-off in the whole deal was that this was nothing more than a bid to earn his warden a few gold stars from a pencil pusher whose ultimate goal was to be named the security chief of New York City. It was impossible to work for the Department of Corrections and not get roped into the political tug-of-war that was as intrinsic to the prison island as its despair, violence, and destroyed opportunity.
Thing was, if Lupino didn’t want to round out nearly ten years of work with a dead-end clerical position in the bowels of the administrative offices, he had to keep his warden, Arnold Rosenberg, happy. Which, when he thought about it, was the basic operating system on Rikers; everyone had to answer to someone higher up the predator ladder. It started with the fags in the block who had their teeth knocked out and were forced to wear mops on their heads and ended with the wardens, who only answered to the chief of security for the island.
Here, the pecking order was carved in bone. And since Warden Rosenberg was smart enough not to bother showing up for mind-numbing crap like performance drills in the snow, it was left up to Lupino to put on his dancing shoes and boogie to whatever tune they needled up on the jukebox. So here he was, locked in the tower with a guy who had his hair arranged into one of those architectural marvels popularized during the last presidential election. Life was grand.
He checked his watch and wondered when the security stooge—whose name was Mickey Cardel—would give the nod. The unusually frigid temperatures were wreaking havoc with all the HVAC systems on the island, and the guard tower felt like a good place to store raw meat. Lupino took a sip of his coffee before the top skinned over with ice and he’d have to go at it with a screwdriver. At least it wasn’t snowing.
And then the snow started back up.
“Mr. Cardel, would you like to get started?”
Cardel looked up, let out a sigh, and nodded a might as well. “I guess.” His delivery was as bland as his appearance—resting firmly in the transition between boring and nonexistent.
“May I take that as a confirmation?” Lupino was used to asking bureaucrats to sign off on their orders; in the public sector, the one thing you could always count on was finger-pointing if things went wrong. And if there was one certainty, it was precisely that—things going wrong.
Cardel checked his watch, thumb-tapped some notes onto his iPad, and nodded with the even lack of enthusiasm that permeated his every action. “Sure.
”
Lupino wondered how the guy got laid, if at all.
He turned to the security camera recording in the corner and said, “Countdown to start”—he reached for the emergency alarm—“now,” and he dropped his gloved palm onto the big red button. He turned back to the fish tank window facing the concertina wire encircling the yard.
The entire prison lit up in a Japanese karaoke bar cacophony of epileptic seizure–inducing strobes accompanied by sirens.
Lupino eyed the clock; the entire exercise would ultimately come down to a few seconds on either side of a pass/fail line. The drill was no secret; state regulations mandated that every security institution conduct a live drill once a month.
The inmates had shoveled the yard twice that day; if they wanted the privilege of outdoor time, they had to work for it. The last crew had been ushered inside an hour ago, and Lupino had spent the interim answering questions from Cardel’s checklist. The center was host to the island’s juvenile offenders—roughly a thousand kids who decided that bad decisions were better than difficult ones. The complex didn’t have a yard proper, at least not like seven of the other eight prisons on the island, and tonight’s drill was focused on the triangular patch of asphalt that bordered the main wall—a stone barrier that faced LaGuardia across the bay.
The drill wasn’t an entirely empty gesture; every time his squad went through the motions, they got a little better. It wasn’t that he disapproved of the exercise—it made sense on all kinds of levels—but he found it too simple a test; telegraphing that they would have a drill defeated the purpose. But the suits in the upper echelons of the DOC had decided that advance knowledge was the most effective way to ensure good grades.
The manual stated that his men had to be suited up and out on the field in less than five minutes even.
There were two things that made tonight’s drill unusual. First, Cardel was present (which meant that things had to go well); and second, the tactical squad would be armed with the new departmental AR-15s. Contrary to popular belief, there are very few firearms on regular duty in prisons, and even during riots, they are rarely employed. The fallback tends to be shotguns with rubber bullets, and those come out only after tear gas, shields, and nightsticks have failed to be persuasive. The last thing any corrections officer wants is a loaded firearm falling into the hands of a rioting inmate. But the politicians were well into a might-makes-right approach to prison reform, and Lupino’s budget had been massaged accordingly; hence the arrival of assault rifles to their violent little corner of the world.
A big jet, this one an Air Canada 737, came in low over the yard, vibrating the coffee in Lupino’s hand, reminding him to take a slug. It was cold and bitter, and he spit it back into the mug. What he wanted was for this to be over so he could get back to the nuts and bolts of his job. After that, he’d head home, maybe stopping by his girlfriend’s place for a glass of wine and a little dirty talk. Eva was no rocket scientist, but she was fun and shaved her good parts. And she smelled a lot better than this place.
The big orange second hand on the clock above the window swung past the four-minute mark, and Lupino dropped his eyes to the double security door that opened onto the yard. His guys had sixty seconds to open the door or they’d get a fail; two fails in a year and Lupino would have to sit down with a review board. More stooges. More questions. More fucking drills. More lost time, cold coffee, and boredom.
Eight seconds had ticked off when the block opened its mouth and the tactical unit burst through, splitting left and right, their big polycarbonate riot shields linked like Roman centurions. The men spilled into the yard in perfect formation, each man protecting the flank and back of the one in front, two rows of eighteen ballistic-nylon and Kevlar-clad gladiators ready to face destiny.
Lupino noted the time, looked over at Cardel, who was nodding in approval, and picked up the phone. A voice from the guard station answered, “Security desk.”
“Kill the alarm.” And before the phone was back in the cradle, the lighting and siren faded out in one final quack.
“Four minutes, twenty-seconds,” Cardel said in even monotone.
Lupino hit the breakers on the switchboard under the window, and the yard went supernova with bright halogen floodlighting, turning the space into a bubble of daylight within the storm. The light bounced off the snow coming down, and if you forgot you were in a prison, the view was almost relaxing. Lupino snapped the top button of his DOC parka and stepped out onto the walk.
The cold hit him like a small heart attack, and his eyes watered. He rubbed his sockets with gloved fists and stepped to the edge of the catwalk, nodding down at Don Sweeny, leader of the tactical squad. Sweeny’s men stood behind him, still in formation, their shields locked in place, rifle muzzles covering imaginary rioters. Lupino didn’t know another human being he trusted more in the joint than Sweeny; he was small, but he made up for it with a complete lack of fear. More than a few inmates had misinterpreted his size as weakness and ended up in the infirmary; a few who wouldn’t take no for an answer ended up in the subway-tiled morgue in the basement. Lupino had been around guys like him for years. Back when he had been with the ATF, traipsing across the country in a never-ending war against homegrown zealots, guys like Sweeny had been the mainstay. Eight years of a backward-thinking government had stifled some of their power, and they were put under the heading of old-school, their tactics frowned upon. But once the Democrats had been forced out along with their politically correct tunnel vision, things had begun to swing back, and shit was once again getting done.
“Four twenty!” Lupino yelled down and gave Sweeny a thumbs-up.
Sweeny raised his hand in the stand-down signal. The forest of rifles behind him dropped, and he heard the mechanical clatter of safeties clicking on.
And that was when the dome of Mark Lupino’s head detonated.
With his brain removed from the equation, his body slumped forward, over the rail, and slammed into the icy yard with a big splat. Whatever gray matter was still clinging to the inside of his skull puked out into the snow in one big steaming glop.
Then the sound came in, a high-pitched crack! like a jet engine blowing its rivets.
Inside the tower, Cardel watched Sweeny’s men rush forward. He snatched up the phone and barked, “Officer down in the yard! Accidental weapons discharge. We need a stretcher and a doctor! Now!”
35
The Upper East Side
When the kids finished chewing, singing, and talking their way through twenty-one folded cardboard takeout boxes and six Styrofoam soup containers, they chipped in with the cleaning. The younger ones collected the trash, and the older ones divided up the recycling before stuffing plates and milk glasses into the dishwasher. Once the subway-tiled galley was spotless, Maude and Damien got into a light saber fight with the chopsticks, and on any other night this would have been all Lucas needed. But he had too many distractions. He would usually have been planning his workload for the university; his TAs had to give the final papers an initial reading, and that would float him three days. He’d give it one full day and the year would be done. He didn’t anticipate many problems; the entire semester had passed without a single indication that any of his students were either extremely dumb or extremely smart, and the middle-of-the-road types very rarely surprised him. And his grad students were all of the self-sufficient variety, which was some kind of a miracle. No, the problem that was taking up a lot of his RAM was Kehoe.
What Lucas couldn’t understand was how Kehoe was letting politics shape the investigation. It was no secret that the current government wanted the world to be like they imagined, not as it actually was. But pushing this terrorist narrative simply because it fit their worldview was setting them up to look like fools. Not to mention wasting resources. And possibly lives.
Which brought him back to the man with the rifle. And his message; you don’t begin hunting human beings with the precision of an Apple product launch without having a core
message. Kehoe was right about that. But no matter how individual the shooter thought himself to be, in the end, it would be a variant of the same boring formula: refusal to accept that there is no such thing as fair.
He was brought back from the ether when Damien stabbed Maude in the stomach, complete with a million-watt sound effect. Damien danced around, a cosmic gladiator relishing the coup de grâce. But while he stood there, arms up and unable to defend himself, Maude lashed out with one of her chopsticks, dealing a final death blow to the heart. Damien’s expression turned from victory to shock, and he dropped to the floor in the throes of mock death, coughing, groaning, and trying not to laugh.
Lucas wanted to be here with the kids, in the now, not frozen between fear and what-next? Yet here he was watching the fate of the universe get decided—which, no matter how you looked at it, had to be a big deal—and thinking about the shooter.
“Okay, okay.” Lucas stood up, and Alisha froze, absorbed in Lucas’s prosthetic hand. “Before we all die of chopstick poisoning—”
“They’re not chopsticks! They’re light sabers!” Damien hollered from his deathbed.
“Chopsticks, light sabers, it doesn’t matter. You’re dead, and Maude feels bad about it.” Maude tended to get overemotional about any kind of wrong, even pretend ones. The guilt over murder—or was it that sneaky parry?—was setting in on her face. “I’ve been gone all day, and I could use a little walk. Anyone want to go for a walk?” At that, the dog began to dance in circles. “Except Lemmy, that is?”
Five hands shot into the air.
“A walk it is.”
* * *
Lucas’s booted foot had just hit the snow-covered sidewalk when the street went electric in red-and-white flashing lights.
The dog was growling, and Lucas turned to the kids. “Come here, guys.”