Another part of the excitement had to do with the video itself. Watching it on a sixty-inch screen in this exclusive chamber was a very different experience from watching it on a vintage television set in a stuffy little swing room with a patrolman snoring on a cot not twelve feet away. The tape seemed more vibrant here. The tape seemed more immediate.
Moreover, Hawes was watching it through Honey’s eyes as well, and Honey was reacting not merely to its immediate unreeling but to the expectation that it would be aired on the Five O’Clock News, not an hour and a half from now. When the two masked perps came down those mahogany steps, she actually grabbed Hawes’s hand and squeezed it. When the left-handed perp hit the black dancer, she yelled, “Oh Jesus
“Do you know how many people will be watching this?” she asked. Her eyes were glowing. She could hardly sit still.
“How many?” he said.
“Thirty million.”
“That many watch the local news?”
“Who’s talking local? We’ll air it here in the city at five, and then give it a second shot when we go network. At six-thirty tonight, every man, woman, and child in the United States will be seeing it! Oh
Oh, wow, he thought.
THE TWO PATROLMEN riding Adam Four in Majesta’s One-Oh-Four Precinct had been briefed at roll call before relieving on post at a quarter to four. They knew they should be on the lookout for a black Ford Explorer with the license plate number KBG 741, but they had no expectation of ever finding it. Most stolen vehicles ended up in chop shops ten minutes after they were boosted.
So they drove along relatively peaceful Sunday afternoon streets in a neighborhood that used to be Italian but was now largely Muslim, more worried, to tell the truth, about some fanatic blowing up a movie theater or a local bar than they were about finding a suspect Ford Explorer, when all at once, and lo and behold, there it was!
“Check it out,” the driver said.
The cop riding shotgun opened his notebook and glanced at the license plate number he’d scribbled into it at roll call.
“That’s it,” he said, sounding surprised.
“I’m gonna play the Lotto tomorrow,” the driver said, and got on the pipe to his sergeant.
AT FOUR-TWENTY that afternoon, Barney Loomis signed himself and Carella into the Rio Building downtown on Monroe Street, led him through the vast and silent Sunday afternoon lobby, and then into an elevator that whisked them to the twenty-third floor.
The reception area was vacant and still.
The Bison Records logo—a big brown buffalo on a black platter—stared down at them from behind an empty desk. Loomis touched four numbers on the code pad alongside the entrance doors, and then led the way down the hall. The walls were decorated with Bison recording artists. Carella recognized only Tamar Valparaiso among them.
Loomis’s private office had two vast windows that looked out at the city’s skyline. There was a huge black desk, black leather and chrome chairs, expensive audio equipment, a huge flat-screen television set, a bar in wood that matched the desk, and what appeared to be a genuine Picasso on one of the walls.
“What time will this man be here?” Loomis asked.
“I told him four-thirty.”
“Will he know what to do?”
“Oh yes.”
Curt Hennesy arrived at four-thirty-five. The security guard downstairs called up to make sure it was okay to let him in—even though Hennesy was a Detective/Third who’d showed his shield and his ID—and Loomis was in the reception area to meet him when he got off the elevator. He was carrying two rather large aluminum suitcases, which he set down while Loomis punched in the four-number code again.
“Fort Knox here,” he commented.
“Well, the music business,” Loomis said.
Hennesy picked up the suitcases again, and followed Loomis down the hallway to his office.
“You in charge here?” he asked Carella.
“Carella,” Carella said. “Eighty-seventh Squad.”
“Hennesy,” Hennesy said. “Tech Unit. What do you want done here?”
“Tap and Tape, Trap and Trace,” Carella said.
“Can I see your court orders?”
Carella fished them from his inside jacket pocket. Hennesy read them silently.
“Piece of cake,” he said. “Do you have a private line, Mr. Loomis?”
“Yes?”
“Is it likely your caller’s going to use that number?”
“There’s no way he would know that number.”
“Mmm, not so peachy apple pie after all,” Hennesy said. “What you’re saying, to reach you he’d have to call the main number here, is that it? Bison’s number?”
“Yes. I suppose so. Yes.”
“And the call would go through the switchboard, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, unless you want me to rewire your entire setup so that every call Bison gets is switched directly to your office…”
“No, I wouldn’t want that.”
