Now I was sailing off without an anchor.
“When do you suppose you’ll get around to telling me what this evening’s performance was all about?” Bea asked, snapping me out of my self-pity.
Leaning close so that I could be heard over the engines, I told her all I knew about why her son was a hostage.
We were met at the airport by a black-and-white and rushed to the scene or, I should say, the outskirts of the scene. The only people who were kept farther away were media and the public. We were only slightly closer than the media. Very slightly.
All attention was focused on the windowless face of a warehouse about a block away from us, all four sides of the square building lit up by police arc lights. A dull, ocher-colored building, hardly worthy of any notice, it now stood front and center, a solo act on a dilapidated stage.
The whole area hummed with the sound of generators, truck motors, voices.
We were in an older part of town, on a stretch of wide boulevard that was once a commercial district but was now falling into ruin. Easily a quarter of the buildings on this same block were abandoned. There were a couple of old hotels turned into low-income apartment buildings; almost all the other doorways had locked grating pulled in place. From where we were stationed, I could see two or three other warehouses mixed in with a storefront church, a pawnshop, a thrift store, and a used-record shop. Not much new merchandise for sale.
The Las Piernas Police Department had apparently reacted swiftly. The phone call from Samuel had ended just two hours earlier, and the neighborhood surrounding the warehouse was clearly under police control. On the inner perimeter a command post and primary negotiators’ area had been set up, and SWAT team members were already in position. Nearby, there were ambulances, a fire truck, a HazMat vehicle — for the hazardous materials team from the fire department — a bomb squad truck, and a number of other specially equipped vehicles. Some belonged to SWAT, others obviously contained communications devices.
All buildings adjoining the warehouse property were evacuated. Not many folks were displaced.
Pete, Rachel, and Jack were waiting for us in our area, one set aside for Frank’s close friends and family. Guarded by a pair of uniformed officers — whose job it was to keep us separated from press and action — I found it difficult not to feel that we were hostages of another sort. Forbidden to take part in the activities, Pete was distraught that Cassidy would not be handling negotiations. When I asked him who would be taking Cassidy’s place, he said, “Guy by the name of Lewis. He’s good, but….”
“Cassidy’s better.”
Pete nodded.
Henry Freeman came over to our area. He was looking tired.
“Hi, Hank,” I said.
He smiled. “You’ve been around Detective Cassidy too long. How is he?”
“Not too good, last time I saw him.”
“Don’t let Captain Bredloe know I said this, but I think he should have given him another chance.”
“Me too. But I guess we’ll have to accept Detective Lewis. You work with him, too?”
“Yes. If this lasts much longer, they’ll get someone to give me a break. That’s all they needed to do with Detective Cassidy.”
“Think Lewis will come back here to talk to us?” I asked.
Freeman ran a finger around the inside of his collar. “Not really,” he said.
“Well, I won’t second-guess him,” I said. “I’d prefer he stays busy helping Frank. Can you tell us anything about what’s going on?”
I heard a voice shout, “Freeman! Get your ass over here!”
Freeman turned red.
“Lewis?” I asked.
He nodded quickly and left.
Thirty minutes passed, with no apparent change in the activities. Feeling penned in, I told the others I was taking a walk over to the media corral and started to leave, only to be halted by one of our keepers. A little testy, I fished press credentials out of my purse, flashed them under his nose, and told him to live with it.
I approached the press gathering cautiously, thankful that attention was on the building, where a helicopter had moved in and was hovering overhead. I felt strange, maybe like the first salamander or whatever it was that originally ventured onto dry land. The water would never look the same.
Taking the plunge all the same, I walked up to Mark Baker, who, to my great fortune, was near the back of the pack. I tapped him on the shoulder — a reach — and he turned to look at me.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I whispered.
He frowned, but nodded and followed me. When we were beyond the outer perimeter, he said, “Look, I can’t get too far away from the action.”
“What action?”
“There’s a rumor that the roof is soaked with gasoline. SWAT team could smell it from other rooftops. Building was built in the 1930s, has a tar-paper roof. They’re saying the place could go anytime.”
I stared at him.
“Sorry — sorry. I didn’t mean to just say that—”
“You’re stealing my lines, Mark. I came over to offer you my humble and abject apology. My sincere and humble and groveling—”
