He removed his glasses and wiped the lenses and replaced them.
The sound of a Klaxon began to fill the air.
It leaned farther and farther...
Then, like cutting a marionette’s strings, it collapsed fast. His apartment was about a half mile away and it took a second or two for the sound of the collision to reach him.
“Shit,” Harrow gasped, grabbing his phone and dialing 911, even though he was sure dozens if not hundreds of calls were already being made.
A voice nearby startled him. “Shit!”
He glanced up. Rimbaud was looking over the cloud of dust in the distance. He squawked once more. “Shit. Uh-huh. Shit.”
Jenny had made a joke when Martine was born.
“You ever notice the smell? It’s Eau d’Hospital.”
And Ron Pulaski had inhaled and said, “Yeah. They all smell alike. Don’t do a start-up that sells it. I’d think it’d be a limited market.”
Pulaski was aware of the same scent now as he walked, head down, along the corridor of the general administration wing.
He was in East Side General Hospital illegally. At least where he presently was, in the guts of the place. He could, of course, spend as much time in the visitor area as he wished. But strolling through the security door with the expired NYPD ID card and a silver badge that was a souvenir Brad had bought in the gift shop of one of the big movie studios after a tour? Nope. Not good. He wasn’t in uniform — that would be an offense too far, he judged — but was in a dark suit and white shirt. A tie that he wore maybe three times a year.
So, a silver-badge detective. Probably no one would know that was a contradiction.
He’d signed in, but the scrawl was illegible, as was the lettering in the
It took a moment to let the anger dissipate.
A pleasant nod to some nurses, two round men in good moods. He passed a lunchroom, a copier room, several meeting rooms... and then he came to the site of his second impending crime:
He stepped into the large room — easily fifty feet long, twenty wide — and saw that it was unoccupied. He sat down at a nearby workstation and clicked on the computer. Medical files were stored here digitally as well as the original hard copies, he learned. To find them you first typed in the patient’s name and date of birth, then the date of their admission. This called up the digital file and also gave the location of the physical file itself.
A strident warning against violating patients’ privacy rights under HIPAA appeared. But that went away by itself after two seconds.
Now for the hunt.
He’d expected layers of frustration and challenge.
A knotty gut, sweating brow and palms.
None of that.
No passwords were required and in less than a minute he found exactly what he needed.
Twenty minutes later, he strode from the hospital, a dozen sheets, folded letter size, sitting in the right breast pocket of his wedding-graduation-funeral suit jacket.
Feeling good about the operation.
Now for the other part of his mission: a trip to a junkyard in Queens.
He was thinking about the best way to get there when he became aware of a vehicle slowing beside him.
A glance to his right, at the beat-up white van.
His eyes took in the driver’s window and he stopped fast, seeing two things simultaneously. One was the ski-masked driver.
The second was the muzzle of the weapon pointing his way just before it fired.
“There’s an issue, Mr. President.”
Secret Service agent Glenn Wilbur, a tall broad-shouldered man in an impeccable suit, was looking into the second bedroom of the suite.
William Boyd glanced up from his daughter’s luggage, which he’d been helping her pack. There were only so many stuffed animals and Disney sweatshirts and pairs of Uggs that would fit in a single gym bag.
He nodded to the living room and joined the agent, out of earshot of his family. His wife was on the phone, lost in a conversation, probably about campaign plans for the forthcoming election. She was his de facto campaign manager and a damn good one. If he won in November, it would mostly be because of her.
“Go ahead.”
“Those cranes?”
“The attacks, right.”
“Another one just came down.”
“Jesus. I’ll draft a statement. Anyone hurt?”
“Four people in cars in serious condition. No one killed.”
“You think this is a security issue. For us?”
“We’ve discussed it, the team. The chatter is your infrastructure bill’s making you a lot of enemies. And the crane that just came down? It did block the Holland Tunnel.”
“Our route to Newark?”
“Yessir. The George Washington Bridge’s parking lot. Everybody’s diverting to it now. We’ll have to use Exit Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“Scramble Marine One. There’s a helipad near the U.N. We’ll be there in a half hour.”
“We’re close to the Verrazzano. Why not move Air Force One to JFK?”
