Firing Line td-41

by Warren Murphy

  He brought the department out on strike.

  Soon after, Solly and Sparky arrived.

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  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The mayor had set up a crisis headquarters in City Hall, and when he arrived there after eating Szechuan food in Chinatown, he asked a woman outside City Hall, "How'm I doing?" She hit him on the head with her umbrella. He arrived at the crisis center shaken, careful enough to ask his aide, "How are you doing?"

  "Terrible," his top aide said. He was a swarthy Latin-looking man with a rumpled suit and a greasy tie who wanted to stay in office just long enough to buy a restaurant. "Goddam, alarm boxes are going off all over the city, and nobody's answering them."

  "What's burning?"

  "Nothing yet. They're all false alarms."*

  "You sound like you've got it under control. Fm going out to mingle," the mayor said. He had been out of the building only a few minutes when the fires started.

  Solly Martin and Sparky McGurl drove through New York's nighttime streets. They headed east down 81st Street.

  "This block'd go in minutes," Martin said. The

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  boy didn't answer, and Solly looked over at him.

  The kid had a book of matches and a paper bag

  that their pastrami sandwiches had come in. He was tearing strips of paper from the bag, lighting them and tossing them out the car's open window. "Stop that," Solly growled.

  The kid looked at him, first with a flash of anger, then turning it to a smile. "Just practicing, Solly," he said.

  "You don't need any practice."

  The kid kept smiling. "No, I guess I don't."

  "And besides, you burn nothing without a contract," Solly said.

  "You don't," the boy corrected. But he put the bag and the matches back into the glove compartment.

  Solly looked back into the street, in time to swerve to avoid a big Gordon setter who seemed intent on proving that sexual intercourse between dog and parked car was possible. The kid was changing. He had been hanging on Solly like a father or a big brother, but now he had the look of somebody ready to spread his wings and go on his own. The kid hadn't been the same since the fire in St. Louis.-

  "Still thinking about that guy?" Martin asked him.

  "Yeah," Sparky said. "I don't know. When I saw him, first I was scared. But then it was like I'd been waiting for him. Like I was always waiting for him."

  "You ever-see him before?" Martin asked.

  The kid looked out the window and shook his head. "No. I mean, not really. But it's like he was familiar, you know, like I seen him before but

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  didn't really see him, like, you know what I mean."

  "No."

  "It's like I lived before and so did he, and like, we were supposed to meet because like we had an appointment. It was weird."

  "Well, we're rid of him. Never see him again,"

  Solly said.

  Sparky shook his head in disagreement. "I don't think so," he said. "I don't think so."

  Solly was glad they were back in New York. The kid was acting strangely. But this firemen's strike was made to order for them. One big score and Solly would retire, and the kid could spend the rest of his life setting fire to supermarket carts for all Solly cared.

  The fires started in Harlem, where groups of teenagers decided that the way to improve the quality of their housing was to live in the street, so they began to torch their own apartment buildings.

  Soon dozens of buildings were ablaze. In the absence of a fire department, policemen were trying to man fire equipment and fight the fires, after first extorting from the mayor a promise of triple time fox overtime. The same youths who had set many of the fires were pitching in, trying to put them out.

  The reports crackled in over the all-news radio station in Solly Martin's car.

  Solly swore.

  He and Sparky were driving down what was left of the West Side Highway. The problem with driving this high-speed elevated thoroughfare was that a driver had to get off the road every six or eight blocks as he came to a section of the road that was

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  sealed off because it was falling apart. Solly drove down to 11th Avenue, drove at street level for a few blocks, then was able to get back up on the West Side Highway.

  They were moving south along the Hudson River toward downtown. Solly swore again at the radio.

  "Goddamn amateurs," he said. "There won't be anything left for us to burn, if they keep it up."

  Sparky smiled and pointed out the window, straight ahead, toward downtown. "There's something that belongs to us," he said.

  Solly followed the direction of the kid's gesture. He smiled, too, as he saw what Sparky meant.

  The twin towers of the World Trade Center, the tallest buildings in New York City, jutted up into the sky like two upended silvery packs of gum.

  "They're fireproof," Solly said.

  "Not to me. I can make anything burn."

  "Kid. I think you got it"

  The mayor came back to crisis control center shaken. His city was burning up. From Harlem in the north to Chinatown on the south, from river to river, fires were exploding all over the city. The mayor had called on the state to mobilize and send in the National Guard; he had authorized police overtime to man fire equipment; he had called on private citizens to form bucket brigades to help fight fires. He had tried to call in the sanitation workers, too, but their leader had asked the mayor how much he expected a garbageman to do for $29,000 a year. The mayor had to promise them quadruple time before the union leader said grudgingly that he would tell the men and let them decide themselves.

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  "Maybe I should call the teacher's union," the mayor said.

  His aide shook his head.

  "Why not?"

  "They won't even give out milk in classrooms. You think they're going to fight fires?"

  "It might be a welcome change from not teaching," the mayor said.

  "You're wasting your time," his aide said. "Try the governor again about the National Guard."

  A commissioner of the agency that built and operated the World Trade Center pushed his way into crisis central.

  The mayor saw him and smiled. "How'm I doing?" he asked.

  "We're doing terrible," the commissioner said. "All of us. We've got to talk."

  "Over here," the mayor said. His aide watched as the two men went to the side of the room. He walked over to join their conversation.

  "I just talked to some guy on the phone," the commissioner said. He was a balding, sweaty man. "He's going to burn down the World Trade Center."

  "There's always an unless," the mayor said. "What's the unless?"

  "Ten million dollars. That's what he wants."

  "What do you think?" the mayor asked. "Probably a crank."

  "I don't know what to think. I don't think he was a crank."

  "You want to pay him?" the mayor asked.

  "Where am I going to get ten million dollars?"

  The mayor laughed. With a stranglehold on the revenues of all bridges and tunnels leading into

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  and out of the city, the economy of the World Trade Agency was as sure as Saudi oil reserves.

  "Raise tolls again," the mayor said. "What do you want me to do?"

  The commissioner kept rubbing his hands together as if trying to wash them of some psychic dirt. "Protect our buildings. They're not paid for yet."

  "Sure," the mayor said. "What do you want? I've got six Boy Scout troops I can mobilize. Maybe the League of Women Voters will come out They can carry water in their pocketbooksT"

  He was interrupted by his aide. "Mayor, I think you ought to take this call."

  The mayor nodded. "Wait," he told the commissioner.

  He picked up the telephone and pressed a button. "This is the mayor," he said. He listened and said, "But you can't do that." He looked at the two men standing in the corner and shook his head. Then he looked at the tel
ephone, as it obviously had gone dead in his hand.

  He came back and whooshed a large sigh. "That was your arsonist," he told the commissioner. "He said he knew I must have heard about it by now. Ten million dollars or the twin towers get melted."

  The aide said, "Can he do it? I thought those buildings were fireproof."

  "He said he can do it," the mayor said. "Get the police over to the Eastern Marine Terminal on FDR Drive," the mayor said.

  "Why?"

  "He said that's a fireproof building, too, and he's putting it up, just to show us he can do it."

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  The aide raced to a telephone, picked it up, and began talking.

  The commissioner shook his head. "You've got to settle this strike," he told the mayor.

  "Sure. Give them off the first day of deer-hunting season?"

  "Give them any goddamn thing they want," the commissioner said. "This is big."

  "You going to give your cops deer season off?" the mayor asked.

  "They haven't asked for it. But you've got to," the commissioner said. He wiped his brow with a wet handkerchief. 'This is important."

  "Some things are more important," the mayor said. He looked toward his aide, who put the telephone down slowly as if not believing the message it had brought him.

  He came back, his face drained of color.

  "The worst?" the mayor said.

  "Yeah," said the aide. "We were too late. The police said the Marine Terminal's rubble. It went up like a match, and the flames were so hot, it's like the stones almost melted. Five, maybe six, dead inside."

  "Give in," said the commissioner. "Give in. Settle."

  "Get out of here," the mayor said. "You make me

  sick."

  As the night wore on toward midnight, fires were blossoming all over the city, and as Remo and Chiun's plane angled in toward John F. Kennedy Au-port, they could seem the sky glowing over the city.

  In a rented car, driving into Manhattan, Remo listened to the news bulletins on the radio:

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  • The National Guard was moving in, the governor authorizing it after finally having been located at the opening of a new Beautiful People disco.

  • The mayor was asking the public to mobilize and help fight the fires in the city. "I know they will respond," he said.

  • The press did not know why, but the twin towers of the World Trade Center had been sealed off by agency police. All train service into the building had been stopped, and no one was being allowed into the area housing the mammoth structures.

  "What do we do now?" Chiun asked.

  "The mayors at City Hall," Remo said. "We're going there. It looks like the World Trade Center is on Sparky's hit list"

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  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The kid had flipped. Solly Martin knew it when he had to drag the young boy out of the blazing East Side Marine Terminal. The building was falling around him; there were the screams of the burning and dying, and Sparky McGurl had wanted to stay there and wait for the cops to arrive so he could incinerate them, too. When Solly had dragged him back to the car, the kid's eyes were flashing with excitement. The excitement of death. Martin drove instantly downtown, then through the Holland Tunnel from New York into Jersey City. They made a left hand turn near the Holiday Inn, then headed south toward the decaying heart of the old city.

  At burned-out City Hall, they made another left-hand turn and drove back toward the water, toward the Hudson River and the New York skyline. Exchange Place, busy during the day with the work of responsible stock firms and a handful of boiler rooms that specialized in selling worthless stock over the telephone to people who shouldn't even have been allowed to have a telephone, was dark and empty. They parked their car against a wooden timber that acted as a retaining wall to

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  prevent cars from rolling into the murky waters of the Hudson, here so decayed and volatile that they could have peeled off a car's paint before it touched the mud of the shallow bottom.

  "What are we doing here?" Sparky asked. His voice was annoyed and demanding.

  "Leave it to me," Solly said. He took a flashlight and a screwdriver from under the front seat, jammed them into his belt, then both left their car.

  A wooden kiosk marked the entrance to the Port Authority Trans-Hudson subway, which went under the river from his spot in New Jersey to New York. The subway station, in keeping with the Port Authority's commitment to equality for New Jersey, was possibly the dirtiest and ugliest in the United States. Going down into it gave the impression of entering a coal mine.

  The kiosk door was locked. A sign posted read:

  ALL TRAIN SERVICE CANCELLED.

  TRAINS TO NEWARK AT JOURNAL SQUARE.

  Solly peered in through the dirt-crusted window. The building was dark. The old metal and wood door pulled open easily after Solly stuck the screwdriver into the lock. They both stepped into the darkness.

  They stopped to listen, and when they heard no sound, Solly flipped on his flashlight for a brief instant. He saw the steps leading down at the end of the long entrance hallway.

  "Follow me," he whispered. "And be quiet."

  They walked down three flights of steps, pausing at every landing to listen, and then they were in another long hallway. At the end of it, Solly saw the turnstiles marking the entrance to the tubes. The Port Authority indicated its priorities by hav-

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  ing kept the turnstiles still working, the faint red glow from their automatic coin-demanders creating an eerie halo around the entranceway. Solly and the boy slid under the turnstile, and Solly again flipped on his light. He saw a sign that read: wtc— world trade center—and they turned right, down another flight of stairs. They were on a subway platform. They paused, listening.

  When he was sure the platform was empty, Solly led the youth to the edge of the platform. He flashed his light, as they jumped down onto the wooden timbers that transversed the tracks. They began to walk to the left.

  Solly leaned over to the boy. "Next stop, World Trade Center," he said. The boy giggled as they walked off in the dark into the tunnel that led under the Hudson River to the twin towers in New York.

  A New York City police squad of two captains, three lieutenants, and four sergeants, all supervising one patrolman, stood guard outside the crisis control center in the City Hall building.

  The patrolman stood at the door. The nine superior officers sat in chairs, watching him carefully for even the smallest hint of inefficiency or insubordination.

  The patrolman stopped Remo and Chiun when they appeared at the door. Remo showed his FBI identification.

  The patrolman looked at it, then called toward the group of sergeants.

  "Sir?"

  The sergeant with the least seniority came over.

  "Yes, patrolman?"

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  "This man's from the FBI. Here's his identification."

  The sergeant fondled it. He nodded several times, then took it back to the other sergeants. He showed it to the sergeant with the next most seniority, who fondled the ID, nodded, and passed it on to the senior sergeant. The three sergeants huddled. They took turns fondling the ID card. Finally, the lowest-seniority sergeant carried the card to the lieutenant with the least seniority.

  "Hey," Remo called. "Is this almost a wrap?"

  "Procedures," the ranking sergeant called. 'They have to be followed."

  The lieutenants were now in heated discussion, apparently deciding who was going to take the FBI card to the two captains for evaluation.

  Remo walked over to the three lieutenants and took the card back. He motioned for the four sergeants to join him. He motioned for the two captains to come over. When all nine had assembled, he held up the card.

  'This is an FBI card. It belongs to me. The Oriental gentleman is with me. We are on government business. We are going inside."

  "Do you have approval?" one of the captains said.

  "I do now," Remo said. He
put the card back into his shirt pocket. His hands flashed in the air. Later, the patrolman would say that he hadn't seen anything, but suddenly all nine officers were holding their faces. Their noses hurt.

  'That's just a touch," Remo said. "You understand. Now I've got approval, right?"

  "Right," said nine voices.

  Thank you."

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  Remo went back to Chiun. The patrolman moved aside.

  "We've got approval," Remo said.

  The patrolman winked.

  Inside the room, the mayor sat with his head resting on his hands, as if trying to wring a headache out of it.

  "Another string of fires, up along York Avenue," his aide called to him.

  The mayor shook his head. "Call the firemen. Tell them to go back to work."

  The aide said, "You can't do that. It'll kill you politically."

  "And if I don't, there are going to be bodies stacked up all over this city," the mayor said. "Tell them they can have deer season off. They can have duck season. They can have frigging mongoose season. I'm gonna get their asses later, but they've got to go back."

  The aide started to protest, but the mayor barked, "Do it." Then he looked up and saw Remo.

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "What's the ransom demand on the World Trade Center?" Remo asked.

  "Ten million dollars."

  "You going to pay it?" Remo asked.

  "No. I'm waiting for them to lower their demand to deer season off. That I can give them."

  "Is the Trade Center agency going to give them the money?"

  "No," the mayor said. "Who are you, anyway?"

  "I'm from Washington," Remo said. "This is my assistant." He nodded toward Chiun. Chiun glared at him.

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  "I am his teacher," Chiun corrected. "Everything he knows I taught him. Except how to be ugly. He came by that naturally."

  "You sound like my mother," said the mayor.

  "I bet you never write her," Chiun said.

  "Will you two stop?" Remo said. "We've got business. The arsonists are going to call back?"

  "Yes," the mayor said.