God shed his grace on thee.
Cut to a wide shot. Slowly the Zodiac slips out of the picture.
RAY CHARLES
He crowned thy good,
With brotherhood,
Cut to a close-up as The Chameleon dials his phone.
RAY CHARLES
From sea to shining sea.
Cut to a wide shot. The Statue of Liberty, a powerful beacon of freedom, is dominating the frame. The yacht, a symbol of greed, money, and injustice, looks insignificant in her presence.
CHORUS (MAJESTIC FINISH)
…shining sea.
The sound track is filled with the thunder of timpani and the crash of cymbals as the music reaches a crescendo, and the yacht EXPLODES into a fiery hell.
“So…what do you think, Charles?” Gabriel asked, still kneeling at Connor’s side.
“I knew you could get off the ship with one of the Zodiacs,” Connor said. “I just didn’t know you knew.”
Gabriel stood up and took a small bow. “Research. But I meant what do you think of the whole thing with the Statue of Liberty and ‘America the Beautiful’ playing counterpoint against a guy who’s blowing up a hundred people?”
“I’d like it a lot better if I wasn’t one of the hundred.”
“Charles, you asked me if you could read it. I broke a rule and showed it to you. The least you could do is subtract your personal conflict of interest and give me more of a professional opinion than ‘I don’t want to die.’”
“Okay,” Connor said. “Am I correct in assuming you had something to do with the bomb that killed Brad Schuck at Radio City?”
“I had everything to do with it.”
“I saw the video. Nice. The blast, getting away from the cops-that worked. But your script reads like Amateur Night. The Statue of Liberty is ‘a beacon of freedom’? The yacht is ‘a symbol of greed, money, and injustice’? It’s like you got the big box of cliches and you’re trying to use them all.”
“It’s stage direction,” Gabriel said. “The audience never sees it. It’s only there to help the producer understand what the writer is thinking about.”
“And it reads like you either think the producer is stupid, or you’re so insecure that you have to spell out the message for him, or you can’t decide if it’s a popcorn movie with bombs going off and bodies piling up or an art house film condemning the evils of Hollywood.”
“Wow, you got some balls,” Gabriel said. “I’d have bet anything you’d suck up to me and try to get me to turn you loose.”
“That’s not who you are. You can smell a phony a mile away. The only way to deal with you is to give it to you straight.”
“Thanks. I said this from the get-go. You’re my kind of guy. Another time, another set of circumstances, we’d be best buds. And Lexi-she would’ve just adored you.”
“But you’re still going to kill me.”
“Charles, we’ve gone over this before. I’ve been flexible shooting this film, but this is a critical scene. I can’t undo the script. My hands are tied.”
“Actually, it’s my hands that are tied, but let’s not split hairs.”
Gabriel smiled and tucked the script pages in his pocket. “I will never forget you, Charles Connor.”
“Likewise,” Connor said. “Just answer me one last question.”
“Anything.”
“Your alter ego in the film is The Chameleon. What’s your real name?”
“Gabriel. Gabriel Benoit. Why do you ask?”
“Because one of these days you’re going to go straight to hell, Gabriel. And I want to be able to track you down as soon as you show up and beat the shit out of you for all eternity.”
Chapter 86
A lot of sharp-eyed New Yorkers can spot an unmarked police car. That’s because most of our plain brown wrappers look a lot like our blue-and-white units, minus the department logo and the big letters on the doors that scream NYPD.
Unmarked boats are a whole different ballgame. The one that was waiting for us at Pier 17 was the water equivalent of a Ferrari Testarossa. Her name was
Kylie and I jumped on the sleek, fifty-foot motor yacht, and I swear she was moving before my feet hit the deck.
Jim Rothlein, who is blond, tan, and built like a
Jim and I had worked together twice before. One was a homicide; the other a suicide. His team had dredged both bodies out of the river. I introduced him to Kylie.
“Since when did you guys get into Water Ops?” Rothlein said as we climbed onto the bridge.
“Today’s our first day. Since when does NYPD have a budget to float this beauty?”
“She’s a loaner from the Port Authority Task Force. She used to belong to some hedge fund guy in Jersey until the market tanked and he decided to supplement his income with a little cocaine trafficking. The PA nailed him on his first run. They seized the boat, and we get to use it until they auction it off next month.”
“Did Cates tell you what’s going on?” I said.
“She told me enough to know you’re stark, raving, out-of-your-gourd nuts,” Rothlein said. “Do you know anything about the boat you’re about to risk your lives on?”
“I’ve been on it three or four times,” Kylie said.
“And how much of that time did you spend in the engine room?” Rothlein asked. “Because I doubt if he’s going to be planting a bomb in a champagne bucket on the promenade deck.”
“You’d be surprised the places some people plant bombs,” a voice said. “Hi, I’m Jeff Ordway, and as you can tell by my outfit, I’ll be your bomb tech this evening.”
Ordway was tall, lean, with an ingratiating smile that was contrasted by his dead serious eyes. He was dressed in thick black canvas military fatigues and a tactical vest loaded with more paraphernalia than Batman’s utility belt. As bulky as it was, it was a lot more streamlined than I expected.
“Where’s your Kevlar moon suit?” I asked.
“Captain Cates said your bomber was an amateur,” Ordway said, “so I figured there’s no point wearing an extra hundred pounds of gear on the open water just to disarm a device I could defuse in my sleep.”
“Let me show you guys what you’ll be looking for,” Rothlein piped up. He walked us to a console and turned on a TV monitor. The screen came alive with the image of a vast space filled with high-tech equipment that could have belonged to NASA, but which I assumed was the guts of Shelley Trager’s yacht.
“Where’d you get that?” I said.
“The manufacturer’s website,” Rothlein said. “Every one of these two-hundred-footers is customized, but that’s just the living quarters. The engine room doesn’t change.”
“If our boy is determined to rip it apart six ways to Sunday, I’m thinking these are the most likely places he would plant his explosives,” Ordway said, pointing out half a dozen vulnerable spots.
“Let me give you a quick tour of the whole enchilada,” Rothlein said.
