by Levi, Steve;
The joyous procession followed her a whole two blocks before life got complicated. Getting to the Aurora Borealis Garage was not hard. Getting in was another matter altogether. The automated gate created the first obstacle for the press of the press. Cars could only enter one at a time, every car being required to wait for the vehicle in front to pluck a ticket from the dispenser before the gate would go up and the car would enter the garage.
The wait was made even longer because the gate came down behind every vehicle as it went through. The proceeding vehicle then had to wait for the gate to come all the way down, then the driver had to push the entry button, wait for a paper ticket to come out and then wait again for the gate to lift. It was a time consuming process.
It took the reporters less than five seconds to see what was going to happen. If they had to sit in their cabs to get into the mall parking garage, they’d lose Ayanna. If they left their cabs, they wouldn’t be able to get back to them to follow Ayanna if and when she left the Mall. The only alternative for the reporters was to leave their cabbie with a cell phone and call when they knew where Ayanna was going.
It was as though everyone came up to the same conclusion at the exact same second. Instantaneously all cab doors opened and reporters flooded out, chasing Ayanna up the incline into the skywalk to the mall. The plug of humanity clogged the walkway and jammed the escalator. Everyone in the Mall looked toward the head of the pack expecting to see a celebrity in town. All they saw was a small woman with a leather fanny pack who could easily have just been a member of the public caught up in the frenzy.
With a determined step, Ayanna headed for the hallway leading to the Women’s Restroom on the fifth floor. Unless someone had actually been in the hallway, it was deceptive. From the food courtyard, it appeared to be a long hallway with Men’s and Women’s Restrooms at the back flanking a bank of phones. The phones were clearly visible from the court yard but there was not enough room in the hallway to accommodate the reporters. The moment Ayanna headed into the hallway, it was assumed she was going to be using the phones. By the time she had made it halfway down the hall, the television cameras were set up, peering unblinkingly at the bank of phones. Ayanna snapped into the focus of the collective lens just as she reached the phones.
Then she did something totally unexpected. To the shock and horror of the reporters, Ayanna walked right by the phones, pushed through the emergency exit and headed downstairs.
Then the alarm for the entire mall went off.
Mack Sennett could not even have orchestrated what happened next. The Keystone Kops had been graceful compared to the stampede to make it to the stairwell. The crush of reporters did exactly what the extortionists had expected them to do: plug the hallway and Emergency Exit. By the time some of the reporters were able to extricate themselves from the mob pushing on the door, Ayanna was on the second floor re-entering the mall.
In the meantime, the alarm had not raised a single eyebrow in the mall among the shoppers. There was a moment of indifference among shoppers and then, finally, at the urging of all retailers, the customers were asked to leave the building. By the time Ayanna entered the second floor, there was a general migration underway moving toward the exits. She made the front door of the Williwaw Steakhouse well ahead of the press. By the time the first of the reporters made it onto the second floor, all anyone could be see was Ayanna’s back as she disappeared into the restaurant. With so many people headed out, there was no way for the press to catch up with her. She was out the restaurant’s Emergency Exit and across the street before the press made it to the front door of the restaurant. By the time the press got down to the street, the mass of humanity from customers having to leave the mall was so great she could easily have been swallowed by the mob.
She wasn’t in the mob. She was across the street in the Knik Inlet Bookstore.
As she approached the pay phone in the back of the bookstore, the phone was ringing. This time there was no small talk. She was told to exit the back of the store, cross the alley and come out on Fourth Street and take a cab.
“Where do I tell the cabbie to go?” asked Ayanna.
“I’ll call you on your cell phone,” said the voice. “Now move. We don’t want any reporters now, do we?”
This time Ayanna didn’t argue. She went out the back door of the book store and cut across the alley and emerged on Fourth Avenue just in time to catch a cab.
“I wonder who gave him my cell phone number,” Ayanna mused as the cabbie looked at her, waiting for instructions. “The airport,” she said. “Just take it slowly.”
Chapter 31
“Gerry, my dear, are you ready for your rendezvous with destiny?” Gerry nearly jumped out of her shoes with relief. “I thought you’d forgotten me!”
“Not a chance, love. This game is far from over. Now, be a good little girl and take your cameraman and go to the Park Strip. Set up on the 9th Street side somewhere between H and I streets. Make sure you are set up because things are going to happen very fast so don’t delay.”
This time the voice did not stay online to banter.
Chapter 32
“I need some salmon in the round,” the Fisherman said as he stood at the counter. “I know it’s a little odd but my wife’s family is from the Philippines,”
“I understand perfectly,” said the clerk. “I think we’ve got two in the freezer right now.”
The Fisherman opened his wallet to pay cash. “I’ll pick them up tomorrow. Can you take them out of the freezer so they’ll be thawed by then? Then I’ll pick them up, OK?”
“Not a problem. Do you want them in plastic bags?”
“Nope. I’ll have an ice chest.”
“Fine with me. What time?”
Chapter 33
The instant a line of outside light from under the massive door pierced the gloom of the warehouse interior, there were 89 passengers and a crew of 6 ready to exit. Not just ready to exit, quite literally chomping on the bit. This was not just an escape in the romantic sense of the term. It was a life-or-death matter. It also might be, again quite literally, a once-in-a-lifetime chance. It was more than escape; it was survival.
The instant the door rose to waist level the crowd surged out of the warehouse, those in front dipping their heads as the door came up. By the time the door was six feet and rising, the crowd was half out of the door.
Chapter 34
Chief of Detectives Heinz Noonan was dressed as if he were exactly what he was. He had an old uniform in Anchorage, in the days when he weighed less, his hair was browner and his crow’s feet shallower. It had been for some kind of a law and order conference or speech and Lorelei had insisted he leave the uniform at her parent’s house.
“You never know when you might need a uniform in Alaska,” she had said but both of them knew full well what she really meant. The bulky uniform in an Alaska closet was more space for her clothes in their Sandersonville closet. Noonan had not cared one way or the other, particularly since it had always been hard for him to throw out old uniforms. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the collection he had, but someday he would figure it out.
Today, however, the uniform was a blessing. After he had left Ayanna to make the drop, Noonan had put in a call to his Department and gotten the green light to visit the Alaska Crime Lab. The Lab, barely a decade old, was the pride of law enforcement community. Prior to the crime lab, every piece of evidence needed for trial was sent to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia. Because Alaska had a 45-day rule, every piece of evidence being used in a trial had to be processed within 45 days of its seizure. This meant a bloody towel had to be sent across the United States to Virginia, examined, processed and analyzed then make it back to Alaska within 45 days. With other states sending their evidence as well, the lab was more of a criminal evidence train station than a crime detection superstation.
As each state established its own crime lab, fewer and fewer pieces of evidence had to be sent to Virginia.
Alaska, the last state to build a crime lab, was pleased only the most arcane of evidence actually had to leave the state now. DNA and ballistics were sent out of state, of course, but even the most sophisticated tox screens could be done locally.
“We are quite proud of our crime lab,” the public relations flack told him.
“You should be. It’s a fine facility.” Noonan said in spite of the fact he was still sitting in the Visitor’s Room. To himself, Noonan thought, I guess I can’t be important since I’m meeting with Public Relations, not the Director.
“You come highly recommended, Chief,” the flack went on. “Your request went straight down our food chain.”
“Well,” Noonan feigned a look of concern, “I’m helping the Anchorage Police on an important case. I’m a food chain kind of guy. I just want to make sure my boss knows what I’m doing. He gets very angry when he gets taken by surprise.”
“I know the feeling well,” said the flack as he rolled his eyes. “Your Commissioner called our Director and he called me. Directly. I was ordered to provide you with what you wanted.”
“Did he tell you what I wanted?”
“This.” The flack handed Noonan a very small plastic pill bottle. “I was specifically ordered to give it to you and ask no questions. So I won’t.”
“Ask questions or give it to me?”
The flack quickly handed Noonan the bottle. “Oh, you are funny, sir. Here’s the bottle. I do need you to sign a form, however.”
“Always the forms. Not a problem. Do you have a pen?”
The flack handed Noonan a sheet of paper and a pen. Noonan looked at the paper and signed.
“I’ll bet there are at least 100 people a week who wished it would be this easy,” said the flack as he poked the sheet of paper with the pen.
“It would save a lot of money,” replied Noonan, “but it would upset the legal system like you would not believe.”
Chapter 35
“I don’t like this,” said Ayanna into her communicator. “We’re being set up again.”
“Where are you to go?” asked the AIC, his voice a buzz on the cell phone.
“9th and F,” she responded. Ayanna was sitting in the back seat of a taxi, hunched over so no one could see her. By now every one of the reporters she had ditched at the Aurora Borealis Mall would be out scouring the city streets for her. Unfortunately she would not be hard to find. Already she could hear the chatter over the taxi radio as the reporters tried to pin down which cab she was in and where it was at that moment. Her cabbie, a black woman, oblivious to the chatter, didn’t know who Ayanna was but assumed she was hiding from an angry husband.
“I can take you to the AWAIC Shelter,” the cabbie had said as Ayanna slipped in the back of the cab and lay down on the seat. “They help women in trouble with their boyfriends and husbands.”
“No,” she had said. “Just take me to 9th and F.”
“That’s the park strip, girl.”
“Just drive.”
Now, over the radio, Ayanna was hearing the cabs, one at a time, confirm where they were and who their passenger was. When her cabby’s turn came, he looked at her over her right shoulder. “I won’t give you away, girl” she said. “You get your life together, hear? No need to take guff from no man and then hide in the back of a cab.”
“Are you there yet?” the AIC came over Ayanna’s cell phone.
“Not yet.”
“That’s on the Park Strip. Get out and I’ll get the chopper airborne.”
When she got out at 9th and F the cabbie was still concerned. “You sure you don’t want to go to AWAIC, girl?”
“No,” Ayanna said as she handed her a twenty. “I’m fine. Just don’t tell anyone I’m here.”
“Your secrets safe with me.” The black woman shook her head and left.
The cab hadn’t covered more than a dozen feet when Ayanna’s phone buzzed to life.
“This is the end of the trail for you, Ayanna. Listen very carefully. I want you to cross the street and take the bike path across the Park Strip. That’s across, Ayanna, not along. I want you to take the bike path crossing the Park Strip. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Do not hang up this phone. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You are being watched. Now progress down the bike path. Good girl. You are doing just fine.”
“You are not going to be fine when I catch up with you.”
“First things first, love.”
Anchorage, by United States standards, was a very young town. It was so young, there were people still living in town who had been born in the tent city alongside Ship Creek. The city itself had been founded in 1915. There weren’t a lot of them, but enough the Chamber of Commerce or Rotary could always find an old timer to talk about the good old days and how Alaska had gone down the drain with oil and drugs and children who didn’t get to school on time.
Until the Second World War, Anchorage had a population of a little more than 4,000, almost all of them clustered between 9th Avenue and Ship Creek, the latter being the equivalent of First Street.
When the city had been laid out, it was designed so even a Norwegian could get around. To accommodate the large population of Scandinavians who had come to Anchorage to work on the railroad, the city planner had specifically not included the letter “J” as a street because of the confusion the letter would cause to Scandinavians. Starting at the base line of the tent city, all streets running north and south to the west were letter streets: A, B, C, D so on with the exception of J. Streets running north and south to the east were alphabetic: Barrow, Cordova, Denali so on with a “J” street included: Juneau. Streets running east and west started with First Street, in essence, Ship Creek, and proceeded to grow in numerical to the south.
The numbers did not grow very far. Only to 9th where the city’s landing strip was located. Because the city had so many pilots, the landing strip was necessarily lengthy. At both far ends of the landing strip were tie downs for the planes, mechanical shacks and, with the coming of the Second World War, Quonsets simply erupted from the earth like mushrooms on a wet lawn.
Because all land beyond the park strip was federal, there were lots of squatters. Some homesteaders but lots of squatters. It was an idyllic moment in Alaska history and then, with the surprise bombing of Dutch Harbor and the Japanese seizure of Kiska and Attu – the only square inches of American soil held by a foreign power since the War of 1812 – Alaska became the front lines. Overnight the Territory was on a war footing. Army and Air Corp personnel by the cargo plane full landed and turned Anchorage into an armed camp. When the Alaska-Canada Highway was completed, the in-migration flow increased fast enough for Anchorage to triple in size in five years. It went up by a factor of four the next decade. Between 1940 and 1960, the population went up ten times, to 44,000. Over the next 20 years, the population went up four times again and by 2000 had doubled again.
One of the growing pains Anchorage had to face was the desperate need for more land on which to build homes. The first and most obvious place to construct was the already cleared landing strip. This was quickly nixed by the City Council because moving the strip would mean an increase in cost to get cargo to local businesses – a constituency near and dear to the publicly-elected members – and it made sense to have the landing strip in the center of the growing town so passengers would be conveniently close to the strip whether they lived on the north or south side of town.
It was not until the 1950s the modern airport was built. Even as the last of the bush planes left the landing strip, the city’s founding Fathers and Mother’s did not want to see this last vestige of Alaska’s heritage be swallowed by claptrap, sheetrock and fly paper. So the old landing strip was preserved as the Park Strip, a ribbon of land one block wide running from L Street on the south to Barrow Street on the north. Over the years an elementary school was built on the eastern end of the park strip and, gradually, tennis courts
and a hockey rink began moving from west from the school. A massive flag pole was erected midway down the strip and there was a sprinkling of small buildings, flower gardens, a monument and some pathways the linked 9th Avenue with 10th. There were only three streets cutting the park strip.
Unlike the rest of the city, the Park Strip do not have one thing in common with every other street in Anchorage: overhead wires.
When Ayanna reached the center of the park strip on the walkway, she was told to stop.
“Face due west,” the voice said on her phone. “If you are not sure which way west is, put your back to the mountains.”
Ayanna did as she was told, vaguely aware there was at least one camera set up a block from her on the 9th Street side of the strip.
“Now. When I say go, you are to start running right down the center of the strip. Due west. Do not stop and do not look back. About twenty yards in front of you is a white handkerchief on the ground. You will gently place the bag of gems on the handkerchief as you pass. Make absolutely sure those gems do not spill and only slow down long enough to drop off the bag. Directly on top of the handkerchief. I repeat, directly on top of the handkerchief. Do not stop. I repeat, do not stop. You are to keep running as fast as you can until you come to the end of the Park Strip. Only then can you turn around.”
“Run?”
“Correct. At top speed. The only thing you have to do is put the bag of gems directly on top of the handkerchief. Then you are to increase the speed of your run and do not stop until you reach I Street. Then take a cab away from the area.”
“What if I . .” she started to say.
“Go!” said the voice and the line went dead.