street. A near-frenzied mob was trying to get the latest news feed from the giant TV at the CBS studios across from the Plaza. The sidewalks along Lex were clustered with office workers standing out in front of the modern glass towers. Urgently jabbering into cell phones and thumbing BlackBerrys, they seemed to be waiting for evacuation instructions. There even seemed to be an early-rush-hour exodus of people pouring into Grand Central Station.
Maybe that had something to do with this, I suddenly thought. Maybe the killer wanted to create as much fear as possible.
If so, he had to be pretty pleased right now, because his plan was coming along just fine.
I didn’t want to add my department Chevy to the clot of police vehicles already blocking Bellevue ’s ER entrance, so I parked near a rear loading dock and went in through the back.
Ed Korzenik, the veteran cop who’d been shot, was still in surgery. Miraculously, the bullet to his head had just grazed his skull. It was the.45 hollow point in his bladder that they were trying to deal with.
Ed had a large family, and many of them were there in the waiting room – wife, mother, brothers, and sisters. Seeing them, with their grief and devastation, gave me a sudden urgent need to call home.
My eldest son, Brian, answered. Of course he didn’t have a clue about what I was doing, or even what was happening on the streets, and I was glad of it. We talked sports, the Yankees, what was going on at Jets camp. He’d be turning thirteen soon, I realized with near disbelief. My God, I’d have a house full of teenagers soon, wouldn’t I?
I hung up with a smile on my face. That conversation was by far the best twenty minutes of my day.
Chapter 40
Next, I decided to do something I’d been planning on since this morning – take a spin by the New York Times to talk with Cathy Calvin. It was time for us to have a little sit-down. Or, I guess, smack-down would be more precise. I wanted to know a couple of things. Mainly, where the hell did she get off making up theories and implying that I was her source?
After fighting my way through the crosstown traffic to 42nd Street, I remembered that the Times wasn’t there anymore. I had to think about it before I could place them in their brand-new corporate headquarters on 40th.
I informed the security guy in the shiny new lobby that I was there to see Calvin. He looked up her name and told me she was on the twenty-first floor.
“Wait a second,” he said, as I headed for the elevators. “I need to give you your pass.”
I flashed him my gold shield, clipped to my tie.
“Brought my own,” I said.
The twenty-first floor was deeper than I’d ever been in enemy territory. Along its halls, my shield earned me looks that were divided among shocked, nervous, and dirty. I found Calvin at a cubicle, typing furiously on a keyboard.
“More lies for the late city final?” I said.
She swiveled around toward me, flustered. “-Mike – hey, great to see you.” She put on a friendly smile, but I shut her down cold.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t even start about how GQ I look. Just tell me why you’re trying to get me fired. Mad because I wouldn’t spill my guts?”
Her smile disappeared. “I’m not trying… to get you fired,” she stammered.
“I don’t care if you want to make up an unrevealed source. That’s a personal decision. But when you imply that the source is me, it becomes my business.”
“How dare you accuse me of making up something!”
I had to hand it to Calvin on one count – she knew that the best defense was a good offense.
“So you’re saying I did tell you about the killer?” I said. “When was that, exactly? Maybe you have a tape recording or notes to refresh my memory?”
“God, how conceited you are,” she said witheringly. “Did you ever consider just once that maybe there were other sources in the world besides you?”
“So who? Who else could have given you all that ‘it’s just one killer’ and ‘changing outfits to avoid capture’ crap?”
Her face suddenly took on an uncertain expression. “Look, I don’t know if I can talk about this,” she said, standing. “I need to clear it with my? -”
I put a hand on her shoulder and sat her back down again, not roughly but not too gently either. “I’m trying to catch a killer here,” I said. “You better tell me what you know. Everything. Right now.”
Calvin bit her lip, then closed her eyes. “It was him.”
“Him? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I gripped the arms of her chair and leaned my face close to hers. “Open up, Cathy. My patience has worn real thin these last couple of days.”
She was shaken now, I saw with grim satisfaction.
“The killer,” she whispered.
I stared at her in disbelief, feeling like I’d been punched in the face.
“He e-mailed me yesterday afternoon,” Calvin said. “Said he wanted to set the record straight, so there wouldn’t be any confusion. I thought he was just a kook, but then he started describing everything. The what, when, where, and even why.”
I stifled my outrage long enough to get some information. “Tell me the why,” I said. I already knew the what, when, and where.
“He pushed the girl under the train and killed the Polo clerk and the Twenty-one maitre d’ because, quote, ‘He’s out to teach this goddamn hole some manners,’ unquote. He also said that regular, decent people didn’t have to worry, but if you were an asshole, your days were numbered.”
“Who the hell do you people think you are, withholding this from the NYPD?” I said. “You can’t possibly be this stupid.”
“Calm down, Mike. My editors have been meeting all day to decide whether we should bring it to you guys. Last I heard, they were leaning toward full disclosure. And here. This will sweeten the deal.” She took a printed sheet of paper off her desk and held it out to me. “It’s his ‘mission statement,’ as he called it. He wants us to publish it.”
I ripped the paper out of her hand.
Chapter 41
THE PROBLEM
Some people say the problem today is materialism. I disagree. There is nothing inherently wrong with things, nothing wrong with having money, or with being beautiful or appreciating beauty.
What is wrong is flaunting your things, your wealth, your beauty.
That is the disease.
I love our society, our country. Never before in the history of man has a nation been dedicated to human freedom. But human freedom requires dignity: respect for oneself and for those around them.
In that sense, we have grossly veered off course. Most of us know deep down that the way we behave is wrong. Yet because there are rarely any consequences, we go through with committing our daily acts of disgrace
