All I did was get their attention. A moment later, I backpedaled as they raised their weapons over the metal rim of the basket. I dove back into the hallway as the window and half of the empty courtroom’s wooden pews were ripped to shreds by automatic gunfire.
I peeked through the doorway a moment later when I heard a high-rpm hum. Through the shattered window, I saw the yellow basket on the move. The tower crane arm above it swung as it pivoted the metal rig away from the courthouse. I also saw, sitting in the basket between the armed men, a light-skinned black man in a prison jumpsuit.
The audacity of it was stunning, literally amazing. This couldn’t be happening, and yet it was.
They were really doing it, I thought, staring up at the basket as it started to ascend. As hard as it was to believe, it was happening before my very eyes.
Manuel Perrine was actually getting away.
CHAPTER 86
THE TEAR-GAS SMOKE was clearing as I ran down the hallway among the fallen cops. Half of them were shot up pretty bad.
“Gun!” I yelled to a burly black federal cop who was holding his hand over a bleeding thigh. I caught his SIG Sauer as I turned the corner, hit the stairwell door, and went up.
There were another ten floors to the roof, but I didn’t feel them. With my adrenaline pumping the way it was, I could probably have ascended the stairs on my hands. The next thing I remember, I was out on the roof and running across to the south side of the building.
I arrived at the edge just in time to see the crane dropping the yellow cage onto the roof of the building across from the courthouse. A moment later, as I was trying to get a bead on the men with my handgun, I heard the close sound of a helicopter. Turning, I thought it would be the overhead NYPD chopper, but incredibly, it was an NBC News chopper!
“Get lost, you idiots!” I screamed at it. “Get your damn scoop somewhere else!”
But I was wrong again.
The chopper swooped down and descended right onto the roof! It was part of the escape plan!
I started firing as Perrine and his gunmen clambered aboard the chopper. I emptied the SIG Sauer at the pilot’s-side door. I must have missed, because a moment later, the nose of the chopper lifted, and it swung in a lazy circle westward, over the courthouse, and disappeared behind the FBI headquarters on Federal Plaza.
I couldn’t believe it. Perrine had done the impossible.
The Sun King had gotten away!
IF THERE WAS any consolation in the wake of the whole fiasco, it was that no one had been killed. In addition to the federal cop, three other corrections officers had been shot, but they were all in stable condition and would survive.
I was livid. I’m talking bed-bath-and-beyond pissed. Obviously, the drug boss was able to buy off people everywhere outside and inside the justice system, probably even inside the damn courthouse itself.
Back downstairs in the street, I went immediately over to the construction site near the courthouse. The leader of the NYPD Hercules team was already there talking to the workers and the site’s general contractor, a man named Rocco Sampiri.
“He claims the tower crane operator was on a break,” the ESU cop said. “No one on the site saw who got into the basket.”
I stared at Sampiri. He looked pretty well groomed for a construction worker-silk-screened T-shirt showing off his tan, muscular arms, spotless designer jeans and boots. With his gold Rolex and tidy manicure, it seemed like the only work this musclehead really did was at the gym, lifting dumbbells while gazing lovingly at himself in the mirror.
“Really?” I said to Sampiri. “A guy climbs up three hundred feet into that cab and swings up a bandito SWAT team into the courthouse and no one saw? What kind of break was this? A nap?”
“That’s funny, Officer, but really, we didn’t see nothing,” Sampiri said, his steroid-deepened voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a barrel.
“Come on, guys,” I said, turning toward the laborers standing around. I pointed at the sky. “You know who that guy was who just got away? He’s a mass murderer who’s declared war on this country, no different from a terrorist. Please, anyone. I need some help here. Didn’t anyone see anything?”
In my peripheral vision, I watched Sampiri glare at his workers. They all seemed to put their heads down at the same time.
“See? Like I said. No one on my crew saw shit,” Sampiri said with a shrug. “We don’t know what the hell happened. Maybe you should be looking for this guy instead of busting our crank. He sounds really dangerous.”
I stared at the general contractor. I didn’t need to type “Rocco Sampiri” into an FBI database to come to the conclusion that he might’ve been involved in organized crime. Or to make the jump that the Mafia would be more than willing to help out Perrine for the right price. This musclehead had probably given the person who had swung the cage over to the courthouse a cup of espresso before he busted out Perrine. And he was actually smirking a little. Even with all this heat, Rocco couldn’t help but enjoy telling bald-faced lies to us idiot cops.
That’s when I guess you could say I lost it. It was the smirk that did it. There aren’t too many things I truly hate, but the Mafia is one of them. People acted like the Mob was cool-
“Okay, Rocco. You win. I guess I’m done here, then. Thanks for your help,” I said, turning.
“Actually, there is one more thing, Rocco,” I said, taking the collapsible baton off my belt and flicking it out by my leg as I turned around.
The next thing I knew, the metal baton and Rocco’s crotch had collided violently. I must have tapped something important, because he immediately went down on one knee like he was about to propose, tears springing onto his suddenly beet-red cheeks. I quickly slipped the baton into my pocket and put a hand to his gym- chiseled shoulder.
“Jeez, Rocco. You all right? You don’t look so good. Can I get you something? A glass of water?” I said.
“You son of a bitch,” he finally got out in a gasping voice, which was much higher than it was before. “You prick. Why did you do that?”
“I’m not sure, Rocco. Everything happened so fast, I didn’t see anything,” I said into his ear. “Weird, isn’t it? That I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-happened shit really seems to be catching around here.”
OVER THE NEXT couple of frantic hours, I tried to position myself front and center on the Perrine escape investigation, but my, oh, my, how the attempt failed.
Almost immediately, a young FBI special agent in charge by the name of Bill Bedford had taken charge of the scene. I’d heard about Bedford. Tara had told me that Bedford was an up-and-comer in the Bureau, a former running back at Duke University who never hesitated to plant a cleat or two between the shoulder blades of his blockers on the way to his touchdown dance.
After I introduced myself, Bedford took me into an empty courtroom on the Foley Square courthouse’s ground
