Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

  Michael Worthington lay on his back, pressing the Nautilus’s weights above his chest, his eyes fixed up at the banks of fluorescent light fixtures that hung down from the ceiling of his storefront rehearsal hall. His naked body glistened with sweat as his muscular arms strained to press the load.

  The television on top of the bridge table was on. He listened as he strained. His bulging knapsack was on the floor; its reflection shone in the polyurethaned surface. On top of the table, next to the television, his saintly Valarie reposed in an open oversized suitcase.

  A ribbon of weather reports rolled across the bottom of the screen just as the newscaster read off the latest London gold price. “The time is now 7:42 A.M.,” the newscaster said. Grunting, his neck and chest straining, Worthington yanked the bar over his head and called out triumphantly, “Soon, Val, soon.”

  Sam Leventhal walked into the task force’s office and slumped into a chair. “Any coffee?”

  Moose reached into a soggy bag and pulled out a container. “I bought a few extra,” he said, handing it to the police commissioner. “It seems it’s always like this on the important ones, waiting, drinking coffee, bullshitting about the old days.”

  “That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way it will always be, I guess,” Vinda said, flipping through the case folder, looking for something he might have overlooked.

  “Any word from our friend?” the PC asked.

  Flipping through reports, Vinda said, “No.”

  Hagstrom looked over at Sam Staypress, a glimmer in her eye. “Commissioner, when you came on the Job, were you still able to flash the tin and get into the movies on the arm?”

  Vinda rolled his eyes; all bets were off during periods of nostalgia attacks while waiting in the Job, but there were boundaries. He looked at the PC and saw amusement in his eyes.

  Sam Staypress sipped his coffee, smiled at Hagstrom, and said, “We used the tin for everything in those days, didn’t we, John?”

  “I don’t remember,” Vinda said, going back to the folder.

  “I wonder what the new kids in the Job call getting things on the arm?” Moose asked.

  “Getting it on the Master Tin,” Vinda said, laughing.

  “The lingo might change, but it’s still the same Job,” Agueda said, looking at the Whip fondly.

  Sam Staypress looked up at the clock, turned to Vinda, and asked, “John, do you remember Louie Corona?”

  A broad smile spread across Vinda’s face; he looked up from the case folder and at the blank faces of Agueda and Hagstrom, and explained, “Louie Corona was one of the first gay guys in the Job to come out of the closet.” He glanced up at the clock.

  “Louie was one tough cop, but when he came out, the bosses in the Job didn’t know what the hell to do with him. The Job was top-heavy with crusty old-timers who believed in all that straight-arrow stuff, in public. Anyway, we were all assigned to Brooklyn North Detectives, and the Borough was having its annual retirement party. Louie shows up with his lover. Well, let me tell you, the brass didn’t know what to do. They all gathered at the bar, bitching about what nerve Louie had coming with his ‘friend.’” Vinda looked up at the clock.

  “Louie, who always had a lot of balls, prances over to the borough commander, a straitlaced old-timer by the name of Patrick O’Kelly, looks him in the eye, and says, ‘Would you like to dance, Pat?’”

  Everyone in the office laughed. Vinda looked up at the clock, went back to the case folder. The pages were open to the Fives on the bombing of The Women’s Register meeting. Reading them over, he was reminded of what Dinny’O had told May Gold. He hated the police and he was going to destroy them.

  He’s going to destroy them, he said to himself over and over, quickly flipping to the Bomb Squad’s reports on the plastic explosive, Semtex.

  Something clicked inside him, and he thought, I’ve been a complete fool—he has us all gathered here like lambs waiting to be slaughtered. Jumping out of his chair, he stared up at the clock and shouted, “The bastard is going to blow up the building!”

  As it had done every morning for the past ten years, the coffee kicked in eight minutes after Andy Fowler finished the container. He got up and walked into the small toilet in the back of his office and dropped his trousers. Sitting on the “throne,” gazing out into his kingdom of boilers, steam pipes, and ducts, he listened to the joyful rush of steam and metallic scrapings that signaled the beginning of a new workweek. Then, during the middle of a grunt, he saw that there was something askew in his kingdom. Tied around one of the support columns was a sign that read, DO NOT REMOVE.

  What the hell was that all about? he wondered. Nobody but nobody does anything down here without first coming to see me.

  Vinda rushed out into the corridor and pushed the fire alarm. Bells and klaxons sounded throughout the building. He dashed back into his office, dialed 911. As soon as the operator came on the line, he said, “Code Red-One. No drill. My authority, Lieutenant Vinda.”

  “Bomb threat, no drill, your authority, Lieutenant,” the operator confirmed.

  “Yes.”

  “Code Red-One, Code Red-One” blared out over the loudspeaker system.

  Leventhal grabbed Vinda’s shoulder. “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m not sure,” he said into the PC’s face, “but I don’t want to gamble with any more lives. I’m the idiot who gave this guy the perfect setup.”

  Throughout police headquarters, policemen and civilians stopped whatever they were doing, looked at the person next to them, and walked to the nearest exit. Floor wardens went to the elevator banks and directed people to use the stairs instead of the elevators. On the ground floor, members of Headquarters Security rushed to open all exit doors.

  Communications Unit operators transmitted the following message to their divisions: “Communications Unit will be going off the air temporarily. Units on patrol will communicate through their own commands by land line and portable radio.”

  Auxiliary radio operators assigned to each borough command rushed from department buildings to waiting RMPs that would speed them to secret backup radio facilities scattered throughout the city.

  Andy Fowler hitched up his trousers and went outside to investigate the sign around the column. Going over to the closest one, he yanked down the sign, and an expression of terror came over his face. Running to the next one, he ripped off the sign and exclaimed, “Oh God!”

  He ran back into his office and dialed 911. When he heard the prerecorded message announcing that Communications was going off the air, he switched on the loudspeaker, heard the Red-One, and ran back outside.

  Emergency Service and fire units cordoned off Police Plaza, as streams of people flowed from headquarters. A Bomb Squad station wagon squealed to a stop inside the frozen zone. The driver, Detective Ben Sirbo, and his partner, Detective Jack Hourigan, got out and began lugging out the black valises containing the tools of their trade. Hourigan, who was sliding out the last valise, stopped what he was doing and asked his partner, “If you wanted to take out the Big Building, how would you go about it?”

  Sirbo pondered the question a second or two and said, “Saddle charges of plastic explosives around the main support columns. I’d plant the stuff Sunday night when the building is practically deserted, and set the timers for early Monday morning before anyone could find them.”

  They looked at each other and exclaimed in unison, “The basement!”

  “All of you, out of here,” Vinda ordered.

  Agueda, her face twisted with concern, asked, “What about you?”

  Vinda’s face reflected the anger and shame he felt. “I brought this guy to our front door. Least I can do is make sure this floor is clear. Once I do that, I’m out of here.”

  “It could be too late then, John,” Leventhal said.

  “Look, Commissioner, I’m the Whip. Now out of here, all of you.”

  The detectives hesitated. The PC scowled at Vinda and told the detectives, �
��Out. All of you, now.”

  Moose and Hagstrom tugged Agueda out of the office.

  “Now you, Sam,” Vinda said. “They’re going to need the PC on the ground.”

  The police commissioner had no sooner left when an Emergency Service cop and a fireman lugging an axe rushed in. “Get out of here!” the cop shouted. Vinda showed them his shield and said, “I gotta make sure this floor is clear.” He refused to let anyone die because of his stupidity.

  “This place might go any second, Lieutenant,” the fireman said.

  The Emergency Service cop went to say something to Vinda, but restrained himself and made a fatalistic shrug instead. He turned to the fireman, asking, “Can you take out that window?”

  “Sure,” the fireman said, and began to smash the window glass with his halligan tool.

  The Emergency Service cop set his tool chest down on a desk and removed a length of soft braided nylon rope and a thick pair of work gloves. Paying out the rope, the cop said, “This is fast rope, Lou. The military use it to rappel cliffs and swoop down out of helicopters. A person who is good at it can travel fifty feet a second.”

  Securing one end of the rope to a desk, he continued, “We’re on the eleventh floor, eight-foot ceilings, add another two feet for flooring, giving us ten feet a story, or a hundred and ten feet to the ground. We can be down in about two and a half seconds.”

  With the rope now secured, he tossed the other end out of the huge hole the fireman had made in the window and asked, “Wanna give it a shot?”

  “I’ve seen fast rope used in training exercises at the range,” Vinda said, shoving his hand into a glove.

  Wind from the hole in the wall tunneled the room, tossing and swirling things about.

  “Remember, Lou,” the cop said, as he and the fireman looked around anxiously, “if you have to slide down, use your hands and legs as brakes, and don’t go too fast or you’ll lose control.”

  “I’ll remember,” Vinda said. “Come on, guys, let’s make a fast check of the floor and then get out. We better use the rope. If my guess is right, we’re not going to have time for the stairs.”

  “You look familiar, lady,” the taxi driver said to his fare.

  “I have that kind of face,” Jessica Merrill said, wishing he would shut up. She abhorred garrulous New York cabdrivers, preferring to be left to the inventiveness of her own thoughts. How could the police believe that Michael was that awful killer? He’s strange—no, he’s very strange, I’ll admit that—but a killer, no, no, no.

  Looking out the window at the passing scene of upended garbage cans, dirty streets, clogged traffic, hawking peddlers arrayed along Canal Street, and drunken windshield cleaners staggering through traffic with filthy squeegees, she thought, Life in this town really sucks. Turning away from the window, she sat back and listened to the soft music playing on the taxi’s radio.

  Andy Fowler, kneeling, with sweat trickling down his armpits, gingerly gripped the tip of the detonator with his fingertips and began gently sliding it out of the Semtex.

  Ben Sirbo threw open the boiler room door, causing Fowler to gasp. Sirbo plunged into the room, followed closely behind by his partner, Jack Hourigan.

  “There are eight of them!” Fowler shouted to the detectives.

  The telephone rang exactly at eight as Vinda and the other two men returned to Vinda’s office. Vinda snapped it up. “Hello?”

  “Morning, laddie.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Are all your detectives there with you?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Tell me, laddie, did you ever see the fright in a person’s eyes as the life was throttled out of them?” The brogue was gone, replaced by Worthington’s real voice. “You murdered my wife. We sinned against Him, but I received absolution because I gave him brides to serve Him in Valarie’s place.”

  “Tell me where you are, Frank.”

  A cold silence on the other end. Then: “Frank is dead.”

  “Michael Worthington, then.”

  “I wish I could be there to see the terror in your eyes as you tumble into hell.”

  Sirbo and Hourigan ran from girder to girder, deactivating the charges. There were four left. They were running to them when the first explosion blew them off their feet. Fowler was hurled to the ground. Chunks of concrete and plaster rained down on them, causing a dust storm inside the confined space.

  The second explosion hurled down slabs of mortar. “Get into my office!” Fowler screamed, tugging Sirbo and Hourigan by the arms, gagging from the choking dust.

  Vinda heard the rumble in the bowels of the building. The floor and walls shook; the office’s glass front shattered. Vinda forced himself up off the floor and stumbled over to the window. The Emergency Service cop and the fireman went first, both of them handling the rope with practiced ease.

  Vinda leaned out for the seconds that seemed like hours that it took first one, then the other, to reach safety. Taking hold of the rope with his gloved hands, he backed out of the window, rappelling off the façade just as another explosion rocked the building, making him dangle helplessly. His legs frantically locked around the length of rope beneath him as the wind battered him against the brick façade of One Police Plaza.

  The crowd in the street behind the police barricade let out a collective gasp at the sight of his desperate struggle. Agueda buried her face in her hands, unable to look. Hagstrom slid a comforting arm around her, as she watched Vinda fighting for his life.

  Another explosion seemed to lift the building up off its foundation and slap it back down. The structure disappeared inside a whirl of smoke and debris; flames shot up out of the base of the cloud of dust and smoke.

  Gusting winds quickly blew the smoke away; the building sagged inward. Vinda had been slammed repeatedly into the brick; he had a gash across his forehead, and blood streamed down over his face and clothes. Fighting not to lose consciousness, he brushed his eyes across his arms in order to clear his vision, took a deep breath, and swung his body into the rope, scissoring it between his legs. Inhaling deeply, he relaxed his grip slightly and plummeted down. He was going too fast; he jammed on the brakes just as another gust hit him, twirling him around and entangling him in the rope. Hog-tied, he fought to untangle himself. He was still far from the ground.

  Firemen rushed to set up a huge air mattress under the dangling police lieutenant.

  Emergency Service policemen armed with automatic weapons stood inside the frozen zone, helplessly watching Vinda’s plight.

  Agueda broke away from Hagstrom’s embrace and ran over to them, demanding, “Shoot the rope, cut it so he’ll fall into the bubble.”

  “We can’t fire these weapons without the express orders of a captain or above,” one of the cops told her.

  “Nonsense!” Agueda shouted at him. “He’ll die up there unless we get him down.”

  Moose and Marsella ran over to them. “They won’t shoot him down!” Agueda told her partners.

  Moose and Marsella drew their revolvers, took aim, and began firing single-action at the swaying rope. Agueda drew her weapon and joined the firing line.

  Hagstrom ran up to the Emergency Service policemen, thrust an angry finger into one of their faces, and shouted, “He’s one of ours, you assholes!”

  Startled by the ferociousness of her challenge, the Emergency Service cops looked at each other, and one of them said, “The hell with it.” He unslung his weapon and leveled it at the rope; the others followed suit.

  Soon a fusillade of lead stitched across the façade above Vinda, shrapneling him with shards of brick. And suddenly the rope snapped, hurling him downward toward the air bubble.

  “You’re Shirley MacLaine,” the taxi driver told his passenger, regarding her in the rearview mirror. “I rekernize ya from da movies.”

  “I’m not Shirley MacLaine. I’m just a woman about to miss her flight because of the awful traffic,” she said, suddenly aware of the news bulletin interrupting th
e music: “Police headquarters in lower Manhattan has just been rocked by a series of explosions, believed to have been caused by bombs. As yet there are no reports on the number of casualties. Stay tuned for further reports.”

  Jessica fell back into her seat, her eyes falling to the Vuitton carryall wedged between the seats. Michael had given it to her as a birthday present one year. They had just finished their first film together. Michael and that Rambo friend of his, Otto Holman, were always talking about guns and explosives. They seemed to live for the shootout scenes.

  Then another bulletin came over the radio concerning the explosion at police headquarters. Michael and his damn explosives, she thought impulsively, and a flash of horrific clarity caused her to bite her clenched fist. “It was Michael,” she whispered.

  With a burst of sudden determination, she opened her pocketbook, thrust a ten-dollar bill through the security grille to the driver, and said, “I’ll get out here.”

  She shoved open the door, grabbing her carryall. Dodging through traffic and angry horns to the other side of Canal Street, she broke into a trot when she reached the sidewalk, abandoned her luggage, and ran toward police headquarters.

  Michael Worthington leaped up off the Nautilus machine, his eyes riveted on the newscaster who had just interrupted the game show with a special bulletin. A remote camera at the scene panned over the sagging building. Worthington clenched his fists when he saw that the building was still standing. He listened intently.

  “Emergency crews will not be able to search through the rubble for survivors of this tragedy until a determination is made if there is danger of immediate collapse. There are unconfirmed reports of many dead and injured.”