City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(37)

They started up the dingy staircase. “Why is it always the top floor of a walk-up?” wheezed Hammer. “Why can’t they ever live in the basement?”

Lopez didn’t say anything. Hammer was overweight and didn’t work out, while Lopez was lean and fit and got up at five thirty every other morning to hit the gym. While he liked Hammer—the guy was easygoing—he was a little sorry to have drawn him as a partner, because the guy slowed him down. And he always wanted to stop for doughnuts. As a cop, Lopez wouldn’t be caught dead in a doughnut shop.

They trudged up the stairs. There were two apartments per floor, one in the front and one in the back. Apartment 5B was in the rear of the building. They arrived on the landing, and Lopez gave Hammer a few minutes to recover his breath.

“Ready?” Lopez asked.

“Yeah.”

Lopez knocked on the door. “Mr. Lasher? Police.”

Silence.

Lopez gave it a harder rap. “Mr. Lasher, may we come in? It’s the police. We just have a few questions, no big deal.”

“Police,” came the whispery voice from behind the door. “Why?”

“We just want to ask you a few questions about your former position with Sharps and Gund.”

No reply.

“If you wouldn’t mind opening up,” Lopez continued, “this won’t take long at all. Totally routine—”

Lopez heard the faint, metallic click of a break-action shotgun being closed and he screamed “Gun!” and hit the floor just before a massive blast tore a hole in the door. But Hammer was not so fast and took the charge squarely in the gut, the force of it punching him backward into the opposite wall, where he slumped down.

Scrambling to his partner, Lopez heard a second blast, hitting the wall above him. He grabbed Hammer under the arms and dragged him to safety out of the line of fire, around the corner to the landing, while at the same time unholstering his radio.

“Officer down!” he screamed. “Shots fired, officer down!”

“Oh fuck,” said Hammer, gasping, holding his hands over the wound.

The blood was just pouring out from between the man’s fingers. Lopez, crouching over his supine partner, pulled out his Glock and aimed it at the door. He almost pulled the trigger but stopped himself; firing blindly through a closed door into an unknown apartment was a violation of departmental rules of engagement. But if the motherfucker opened the door or fired again, he would take him down.

Nothing more happened; there was silence on the other side of the two dark ragged holes in the door.

Already he could hear sirens.

“Oh Jesus,” groaned Hammer, gripping his abdomen, crimson blossoming across his white shirt.

“Hang in there, partner,” Lopez said, pressing down on the wound. “Just hang in there. Help is coming.”





23

VINCENT D’AGOSTA STOOD on the corner of Ninth Avenue, looking down Fourteenth Street. It was a madhouse. The entire neighborhood had gone into lockdown, the target building evacuated; they had the ESU team and had deployed two negotiators, an armored cherry-picker, a robot, a K-9 unit, and a bunch of snipers, with a chopper circling above. Beyond the police barricades was practically the entire press contingent of the city—network television, cable, print media, bloggers—everyone. The shooter was still holed up in the apartment. So far they hadn’t been able to get a peep out of him, or even a glimpse. The armored cherry-picker was maneuvering into position and would soon have a clear shot, and four guys were on the roof, laying down Kevlar mats and punching holes through the membrane to lower cameras inside.

D’Agosta was coordinating the assault by radio, choreographing it like a ballet, with multiple lines of action, each one of which could resolve the standoff. The rational part of him wanted to take Lasher alive. He had gone from a person of interest to suspect number one in the Cantucci killing, and dead he’d be a lot less useful. On the other hand, the motherfucker had shot a cop. The primitive part of D’Agosta’s brain wanted to take the bastard out. Hammer was in surgery, critically wounded, might not even pull through.

What a disaster. Singleton had gotten his “progress,” all right. Who would have guessed that a relatively routine assignment would turn into this? He wondered what kind of shit rain was going to come down on him now; but he quickly shook off those thoughts. Just get through this with a successful outcome—then worry about fallout.

The sun had set hours before and a brutal wind was howling off the Hudson and blasting down Fourteenth Street, the temperature plunging. His radio crackled to life. It was Curry. “The negotiator has made contact. Channel forty-two.”

D’Agosta adjusted his headset to channel 42 and listened. The negotiator, speaking from behind a bulletproof shield, was talking to the shooter through the door. It was hard to pick up what Lasher was saying, but as the negotiation continued D’Agosta gathered pretty quickly that Lasher was one of those anti-government types who believed that 9/11 was perpetrated by the Bushes, that the Newtown massacre was a hoax, and that the Federal Reserve and a cabal of international bankers secretly ran the world and were in a conspiracy to take away his guns. For these reasons he didn’t recognize the authority of the police.

The negotiator was speaking in a calm voice, going through the usual routine, trying to get him to give up and come out, nobody was going to hurt him. Thank God the guy was alone in the apartment and didn’t have a hostage. Snipers were in place but D’Agosta had resisted his impulse to give them the order to shoot on sight. He could feel the pressure all around him to put into motion the string of events that would result in Lasher being killed. That would be easy enough, and no one would second-guess him.