Her Name Will Be Faith (44 page)

"NABS,
not half an hour ago."

"No, I was watching a film about… say, ma'am, when
are they
expecting the storm to
hit?" His eyes were wide with alarm.

"Maybe
tonight, maybe tomorrow morning."

"Oh!
Then there's plenty time." He smiled.

"There
isn't," Jo scolded. "Do you know how many people live in
Manhattan? Maybe seven million. Can you imagine
the traffic jams when
they all decide to leave together? There could
well be a panic."

Washington
stroked his chin and slowly nodded. "Guess you could be
right, Mrs Donnelly. And that warning was put out
by that Richard
Connors, I guess. He'd know what's going on. And he's a
friend of yours,
too.”

So
you must know what's going on as well, Jo thought, having seen Richard coming
here at odd hours of the day, and night. But that wasn't
important, at this minute. "Yes," she
said. "He does. Washington, I
think you should wake everybody in
the building, and tell them to leave. And then leave yourself."

"Oh, I couldn't do that, Mrs Donnelly,"
Washington protested. "I
couldn't
leave anyhow until I was sure the building was evacuated, and
I
couldn't leave even then. Suppose somebody was to break in?"

"Washington, no one can expect you to sit here
throughout a hurricane,
surely. Okay, so you
have to see everybody off the premises, but then surely you can go. Ring the agents
and find out."

"At
one o'clock in the morning? There wouldn't be anyone there, Mrs
Donnelly. But I'd better go wake those folks up.
They ain't going to be
too pleased, either."

"And be sure you leave yourself the moment you
can," Jo said severely.

"Yeah. I guess I could wake the old lady now and
tell her to pack a
bag," Washington
decided. "Yeah. You say that storm is coming straight for us?"

"Yes,"
Jo said. "Straight for us." She staggered down the stairs with the
bag to join the children in the Mercedes.

Assistant
Commissioner McGrath yawned, stretched, and looked at his watch. "Christ!
It's gone midnight."

The waiting police captains seated around the table
exchanged glances;
they could have told him
that half an hour ago. It was his innovation, to hold these Friday night
sessions when every conceivable important case or public event coming up the
following week was reviewed in detail, numbers of men required on the spot
allocated, and responsibility determined, so that every man would arrive at the
office on Monday morning knowing exactly what he had to do – but they did
drag on.

"Any
coffee left?" the AC asked, and then got up to walk to the window
and look out at Park Row. "Brother, is it raining
out there." He blinked
at the lightning flash which cut across the
sky. "And doing everything else as well." Someone placed a fresh cup
of coffee in his hand, and he
turned back to
face his men. "Anything left before we wrap it up?"

"Just
the Garcia case," said Captain Harmon.

"Hell, yes, I'd forgotten that. When do we get
Garcia back from
Cleveland?"

"He arrived this afternoon. He's downstairs in the
cells now. We're
going to charge him
Monday."

"Any
trouble with Cleveland?"

"A
few grumbles. But I pointed out they only have a trafficking charge. We have
extortion and murder in addition to narcotics, and our warrant was signed
before theirs. So they agreed we should have first crack."

"Will
the murder charge stick?"

"Probably not, given Garcia's reputation for getting
rid of witnesses.
But I think we have him
on the narcotics."

McGrath
pointed. "If we can't fry the rat, I want him put away for so
long he'll have forgotten which way Manhattan
faces when he comes out.
Got me?"

"We'll
put him away, Chief," Harmon said soothingly.

"Just
so long as you do. Keep me posted, every inch of the way. Okay. Let's call it a
day."

The
men started to get up, and the telephone rang. Captain Wright picked it up,
listened. "It's the eighth precinct. For you, Harry."

Captain Jonsson took the phone, listening, brows slowly
gathering into
a frown. "So the
weekend is starting early," he remarked, then listened
some more. "Okay," he said at last,
"I'm coming over. Put some extra
men out. I'll be right
there." He replaced the phone. "There's something
strange going on. My people say the streets are
suddenly getting real
busy, and there's been some trouble after an
accident."

"What do you mean, busy?" McGrath demanded.
"In the middle of
the night?"

"People
leaving town," Jonsson explained.

"In
the middle of the night?" McGrath asked again, incredulously.

"Going
away early for the weekend," Wright suggested.

"That's
what I thought," Jonsson said. "But there could be more to it than
that. Lieutenant Lancing says there's damn near a riot going on because some
character has skidded and blocked a road. Seems people are shouting they have
to get out of town before Faith gets here."

"Who
the hell is Faith?" Wright demanded.

"Faith," McGrath muttered. "Ain't that
that hurricane out in the
Atlantic?"

"Hell, yes," Jonsson said. "Well, look,
Chief, I'd better get down
there."

The phone was ringing again, and another message arrived
from
another precinct, telling of crowds and
agitation in the streets.

"Fucking
shit!" McGrath took over the phone himself. "Get me the Hurricane
Centre in Coral Gables. I want to speak to the man himself,
Eisener. Sure I know what time it is, and I don't
give a damn. Get him
on the line." He replaced the phone. "All
of you guys get back to your
precincts and
put extra men on the streets. We could have a major traffic
snarl up.
And somebody find out who started this alarm."

"It
was a television broadcast," said Captain Luther, who had just
returned from checking with the duty officer.
"That forecaster from
NABS, Connors,
went on the air just before midnight and issued a
warning that Hurricane Faith is coming straight
at us, with winds of 170
miles an hour."

"Holy Jesus, why wasn't I told at once?" McGrath
bawled. "That
crazy
character… he was down here asking damn silly questions a
couple of days ago, and then telling the world we didn't
have any plans to deal with a hurricane. A hurricane! In New York! Shit! He
wanted us
to plan an evacuation of the city. An
evacuation. Christ!"

"Well,
Connors apparently told everyone to do just that," Luther said.
"He predicted all kinds of damage, suggested
that the city might just
about be blown flat."

"New
York?" Wright asked in consternation.

"For Jesus' sake, where'd he get the authority to do
something like that?" McGrath bawled. "After that broadcast Thursday
night I called
the Mayor and asked him
if he wanted us to take any steps, and he said to forget it, those weather boys
are just a bunch of alarmists."

"Maybe
it's a hoax," someone suggested.

"But how the hell did he get it across to so many
people?" asked
someone else. "You
mean to tell me there are actually people watching television at
midnight?"

"Sure there are," Luther told him. "Enough
to get scared and start
waking their
neighbors."

"For
Christ's sake," McGrath bellowed into the phone. "Get the
Commissioner. And the Mayor. Sure, wake them up, if you have to. We
could have a problem." He grabbed his other
phone as it buzzed. "Oh,
Dr
Eisener, John McGrath, NYPD, here… Pretty good. Say, I'm sorry
to wake
you up like this… oh, you were up anyway? Well, that's great. Say, about this
Faith thing… great balls of fire. You mean that fellow
Connors could be right? . . Oh, you didn't see it? Well, it seems he's
issued some kind of 24-hour warning that New York
should be evacuated,
on his own
authority… 24 hours is right? . . Maybe less? Christ
Almighty… Ah… Yeah… Yeah, that's what's bugging us.
I mean,
they always have veered before…
Yeah… Yeah, sure, we can handle
it… Yeah…
Thanks a million, Dr Eisener. Keep us posted." He
replaced the
phone. "Seems that thing
could
hit us."

"Could?" Harmon inquired. "Or
will?"

"Well, Eisener says it could still do anything, and
he agrees with me
that
it should start to veer off to the northeast any minute now; seems
it's
picking up speed. But he thinks there's a real risk it might not turn
off until after making a landfall, somewhere like
Atlantic City, which
would put us in
the dangerous quadrant. He thinks Connors did the right
thing. Well, hell, I sure don't agree with him.
I'm gonna lock that guy
up for causing a public nuisance."

"J. Calthrop White," Luther said. "He owns
NABS. He'll have put
Connors up to it. He has
a running war going with City Hall anyway."

"I wouldn't mind locking that bastard up as
well," McGrath growled.
He
banged on the telephone. "Come on, come on, get me those numbers."

"Well,
they're all asleep, Mr McGrath," the girl protested.

"So wake them up. And come to think of it, wake J.
Calthrop White
up
as well. Tell him I want a word. And somebody go out and get
Connors. Come on, get off your asses. Move. We could have
a panic in
the streets."

Jo started the engine, lined the Mercedes up, punched
the red button on
the wall, and waited for
the steel doors to go up – and remembered
Marcia! She had been
going to call again, and had completely forgotten about it. But she couldn't
abandon her sister-in-law down in Greenwich Village, which was definitely less
than fifty feet above sea level and liable to be flooded out if Richard was at
all accurate in his prognostications. Anyway at this hour of the morning it
would only take ten minutes to get down there and pick up her and Benny, or at
least tell them what was happening.

Though
she knew the weather had been deteriorating all evening, she was unprepared for
the density of rain that hit the automobile as she topped the ramp on to the
street. And there were far more vehicles about too, than she had expected,
nearly all heading north – it took her several minutes to edge into a
stream, and then across it.

"Mom, this is terrible. Can't we wait till it
clears? I'm cold." Owen
Michael shivered and
curled down in his seat.

"I'm
freezing," Tamsin put in.

"In July? Forget it," Jo told them. But now
at last turned south, she flicked on both heater and demister, leaning forward
to peer through the
dazzle
set up by the lights of the oncoming traffic: the condensation was
clearing as the heat got to it, but the screen was
empty of water for only
a brief second
at a time, with each rapid sweep of the wipers. "Nana's
rug is on
the back seat. Wrap it round your legs, Tamsin."

"How
come she always gets the rug?" Owen Michael grumbled.

"Because you're bigger and stronger," Jo told
him, wishing he'd shut
up and let her
concentrate. The combination of rain, traffic and repeated
red lights stretched the journey to Greenwich
Village into twenty minutes,
and one
glance at the empty square of concrete beside Benny and Marcia's
house,
where they always kept their car, told Jo that they still weren't in.