"What's the plan once they get to the airport?"
"I don't know," Carella said. "I just work here."
They listened outside the door at the top of the steps. In just a little while, if all went well, Sonny and Whittaker would be coming down the hallway outside that door. The minute Sonny turned the girl loose, Carella would be face to face with the man who'd killed his father.
The sharpshooter crouched low in the cabin on the right-hand side of the aircraft. Below, a lone police officer wearing luminous orange trousers and jacket was running out from the inner police perimeter.
"Who's that?" Whittaker asked at once.
"He's unarmed," Eileen assured him. "He'll be signaling to the pilot, telling him where to put the ship down. We don't want any mistakes."
"I want him out of there soon as it lands."
"Inspector?" Eileen said into the walkie-talkie.
"Here," Brady said.
"He wants that man out of there as soon as the chopper touches down."
"He's got it," Brady said.
"Did you hear that?" she asked Whittaker.
"No."
"He'll get out of there as soon as the ship lands."
"He better."
Dolly was still sitting alone in the open window. The other two were somewhere in the darkness of the room beyond. Eileen was talking to no one she could see. But she was certain Whittaker could see out of the room; he had spotted the man in orange running toward the cleared sandlot on the side of the house.
"Ain't nobody leavin' this house till that man's back where he belongs," he said from out of the blackness.
"Don't worry about it. He's signaling now," she said. "You can't see him from where you are, but he's signaling to the chopper."
The sharpshooter could see the man below swinging a red torchlight in a circle over his head. The sliding door on the right-hand side of the ship was open. The pilot would bring the ship down with that side facing the house. The moment Whittaker was in place, using the pilot as a shield, facing the police line out there, the sharpshooter should have a clean shot at the back of his head. The pilot hoped.
"Hedgehog, this is Firefly, over," the pilot said.
"Come in, Firefly."
"We've got your man sighted, ready to take her down."
"Take her down, Firefly."
"Ten-four."
A police code sign-off, even though this was air-to-ground radio traffic and a wilco might have been more appropriate. Neither the pilot up there preparing to land and be seized by an armed killer whose head the sharpshooter might or might not succeed in blowing from his body, nor Chief of Patrol Curran, talking to him from the ground, had exchanged anything but landing instructions. These days, nobody knew who was listening on what frequency, and there was still a sixteen-year-old girl in that house.
"Coming in," Eileen said.
"I'm sending Sonny back to the kitchen with the girl," Whittaker said. "He yells loud enough, I can hear him from back there. Minute he tells me the chopper's down, I'm headin' back myself. Ress is up to you whether anybody gets hurt or not."
"Just about down," she said.
"You hear me?"
"I heard you."
"Move it on out, Sonny."
The leaves on the bushes outside the house shook violently as the chopper skids came closer to the ground. Over the roar of the ship and the rush of the wind, Eileen said into her walkie-talkie, "Sonny's heading toward the kitchen now." With all that clamor, she hadn't expected Whittaker to hear her, but he had.
"Why you tellin' him that?" Whittaker shouted over the noise.
"We don't want any mistakes, you know that." Into the walkie-talkie, she said, "Chopper's down, Inspector, better get that man out of there," but this was really for the benefit of Carella and Wade, who were standing on the landing just inside the cellar door.
"Diz!"
Jesus!
His voice sounded as if it was right at Carella's elbow, just outside the door!
"Move it, bitch!"
Running by in the corridor now, past the door.
"Ow!"
The girl's voice.
"I said move it! Diz! Can you hear me, Diz?"
"You don't have to poke me with the damn …"
"Diz!"
A bit further away now. Yelling from the kitchen, Carella guessed. Visualizing the floor plan in his head, the narrow corridor running from the outside porch to the kitchen. Sonny Cole, his father's murderer, standing in the kitchen, yelling to his partner at the front of the house.
"Diz! It's down, I can see it! It's on the ground! Diz, can you hear me?"
They could not hear anyone answering him.
But there were footsteps again, coming back toward them in the corridor outside. Carella kept the walkie-talkie pressed to his ear, fearful of a sound leak that would give away their position. There was sudden laughter just outside the door, startling him again.
"We goin' to Jamaica," Sonny told the girl, laughing, his voice high and shrill.
That's what you think, Carella thought.
"That was Sonny jus' then," Whittaker said. "He says the chopper's down."
"He's right, it is," Eileen said.
"So I'm headin' back there now." He sounded almost sad to be leaving. "You sure you got this all straight in your head?"
"I hope so," Eileen said.
