Her Name Will Be Faith (55 page)

"What the hell..." Bert had heard it too, and
jumped out of bed.
"Somebody's
breaking in!" He nearly lost his balance as the building shook, but he
grabbed a towel to wrap around his waist and unlocked
the
bedroom door, to be driven back by the blast of air that came
gushing into the room.
"Shut that goddamned street door," he bawled down the stairwell; the
little hotel, set well back from the Coney Island beach front, was a walk-up.

"Hey, who's there?'
came a shout back. "Your name Bert Bennett?"

"Yeah. So what?"
Bert demanded.

"Your
sister-in-law sent us down. She thought you'd left with everybody
else,
but when we got to counting heads up at Prospect… say, you guys
deaf, or what? You didn't
hear everyone else leaving?"

Florence had got out of bed
as well, and, wrapped in a dressing gown,
stood
at her husband's shoulder, gazing down the stairs at the patrolman,
his
cape and hat glistening wet, listened, too, to the sound of the surf, so close,
closer than she had ever heard it, almost drowning out the whine of the wind.
Suddenly she was gripped with a deathly fear.

"You mean… everybody's
gone?" Bert was asking in bewilderment. "This place was full."

"All
of Coney Island was evacuated two hours ago," the patrolman
told him. "Christ,
you guys must've been dead. Come on, we have to get the hell out of here."

"I'll just get
dressed," Florence said.

"Lady,"
the patrolman said. "You're gonna have half the Atlantic
Ocean
inside that bedroom within half an hour. You coming now, or not?
Because I sure as hell am
leaving now, and I ain't coming back."

Florence
looked at Bert, and they ran down the stairs together, gazed
in horror at the street,
over which several inches of water were pouring,
while at the intersection… even as they watched, a wave came bubbling
down
the alleyway, sweeping before it a garbage collection of shattered
deck chairs, plastic bottles and boxes, discarded
sun hats and shoes, and
several drowned cats and dogs. "Oh,
Jesus," Florence whispered.

"The beach… ?"
Bert asked.

"The
beach ain't there any more," the patrolman said. He pointed,
and
they splashed round the corner, away from the sea, to where a patrol
car was parked. Inside was
another officer, using his radio. He stared at them in amazement. "What
the hell...?"

"That dame was right,"
his partner told him. "Would you believe it, Charlie? These two were in
bed. In bed!" He opened the rear door and bundled the two almost naked
bodies inside.

"Well,
they have to be the last," Charlie said. "We're under orders to
get the hell out of 
here and rendezvous with the others at Prospect Park."

"Prospect?"
Bert asked. "Say, we have to get home. We need some
clothes."

Charlie
gunned the motor and turned the patrol car; water was swirling
around its axles.
"Home being where?"

"We live in the Bronx," Florence told him,
breathlessly, hugging her dressing gown around herself.

"Well,
you can forget that," the patrolman told her. "All the bridges
and
tunnels are closed. They're setting up an emergency center at Prospect
Park. They'll take care of…
oh, Jesus Christ! Charlie!"

The patrol car had slowed through a larger than usual
surge of water coming down the street, and the engine coughed and died.

"Fuck it!"
Charlie opened his door and got out, throwing up the engine
hood; he was knee deep in water. But the rain was
falling so heavily there
was no chance of anything under there drying
out in a hurry.

"We're gonna have to walk it," the patrolman
said.

"In this?" Florence asked.

"Like this?" Bert put in.

The patrolman grinned.
"Maybe you're better off than us, at that.
Let's go." He opened the door for them, and they splashed out.

"I can't," Florence
protested. "I can't. I'm freezing. And I'll cut my
feet to ribbons."

"Lady," the
patrolman said. "Look." He pointed. "That row of houses over
there is all that's standing between us and the whole goddamned ocean. You
reckon… oh, Holy Jesus Christ!"

Even
as they looked, the houses in front of them started to collapse, as
if
struck by a series of large bombs, windows and doors flying out beneath the
impact of the sea, which was now assaulting them with 20-foot waves.

Seth
Hatton was pleased with the turnout at the bank. Despite the massive
traffic
jams, the appalling weather, and the complete lack of co-operation
from
the authorities – added to the fact that it was a Saturday morning
– he and his senior
staff had been able to contact almost every employee…
and a good percentage of them had reached the office. Hatton did
not
think any of the other banks, or financial institutions, most of them
far larger than Hunt National, had managed to
obtain as good a response.
He had also been first off the ground with
moving records, thanks to J. Calthrop White. He didn't like the man, but he
certainly was a live wire.
And if JC hadn't
started acting like a madman at two o'clock this morning,
having his yes man, Kiley, actually ringing a
bank president at home and convincing him that he had to get down to the
office, they could have lost
a lot of business – especially as
other wealthy people had apparently awakened to the realization that the money
market was going to be in
utter
confusion for the next couple of days. They had even opened the
Stock Exchange, but down there the chaos was
indescribable. People
were
unloading so fast, any commodity or property share remotely connec
ted with the New York and New Jersey seaboards, that
millions were
being wiped off the
Dow. There would be several fortunes to be made
come Monday, if the storm was gone by then and the damage
not as
severe as people thought;
it would be a case of who could start buying
first:
Seth Hatton had that much in mind.

But meanwhile, business. He had all his top people on the
fax machines
and the computers,
and everyone else on the telephones, even pool
typists; it was a case of getting a line and keeping it
until cut off, and
then
getting it back again. The voices ranged across the huge office, some
shouting, some pleading, some speaking in low, confident
tones, some
almost in tears with frustration.

But a lot were getting through, despite the enormous
competition for
air
space; the truly amazing thing was that, realizing the extent of the
emergency, overseas banks had also pulled staffers in to
handle the
enormous amount of
transactions so suddenly required. "Hello! Is that
Barclays, London?… Oh, thank God! Say, are you the person
I was
speaking with earlier?… Hi,
there. That's right, Hunt National. I have
another one for you… yeah, to open an account and effect
an immediate
transfer… The name
is James Jonathan Jurgens, address Apartment
35, Park Avenue and 48th Street, New York, New York… Right.
The
amount is $687,000… That's
it… Yes, same as before. Open the
account
and send us the necessary documentation and signature cards…
Oh, sure, we'll probably want it all back next week.
Okay. Don't go
away."
Someone else, overhearing to whom the clerk was speaking, had
rushed up with another batch of papers. "I have a
couple more for
you…
Yeah… Okay, first… oh shit!" The clerk gazed at the phone
in
dismay. "I've been cut off."

"Keep
trying," his senior advised him.

But
the complaint was general.

"What's the trouble?" Hatton inquired, standing
on the mezzanine
outside
his office and looking down into the well of the bank.

"All
the phones are dead, Mr Hatton."

Hatton hesitated, and the lights flickered, then went out,
followed by
the
air-conditioning. The bank's doors were naturally closed, and the gloom and
heat was suddenly intense. "Well," he said. "I guess that's
that. Thanks a million, everybody. We've all done the best we could.
Now…
let's get the hell out of here."

"Yeah," said Assistant
Commissioner McGrath into his radio. "Yeah...
Yeah… Okay, that's it. You guys
pull out." He put the handset down,
looked at his waiting officers. "The tide's surging
right over the Battery
and starting to flood down Broadway. I've told them down there to get
out while they can, and it's time we did the same. And the Mayor." He
picked up the radio again.
"City Hall, City Hall, NYPD here. City Hall,
NYPD. For Christ's sake, why
don't they answer? I can see the God
damned building, can't I?" Not that he liked what he
saw when he looked
out
of his window. Apart from the flying debris and the upturned trees,
even as he watched a patrol car
came round the corner, sideways,
obviously being blown by the wind; he could see the
driver fighting to
regain control.
"Jesus," he muttered.
The car tipped on its side, went right
over, and came to rest against a wall.

"City
Hall."

"The
Mayor about, Mitch?"

"Right
here."

"Naseby,
McGrath, what's happening now?"

"This is it, Mr Mayor. The Battery's gone. Water's
on Broadway. That
means
it's only nine blocks from us. I guess we have to get out of here."

"Is
the evacuation complete?"

"Well, I guess not. We're doing the best we can, but
there's been some resistance to the idea. You know what these folks are like,
especially the
older
ones. Some of them don't even answer the door, and I just don't
have the men to go through every apartment building. Mr
Mayor, I want
you to pull your people out."

"I promised..."

"Sure you did. But this city is going to need you
just as much to put
it
back together again when this storm is finished; you can't do anything
about
that if you're dead, now can you?"

Naseby hesitated, then sighed. "Okay, McGrath, I
guess you're right.
Evacuate
now. We'll be doing the same. Is your mobile headquarters set
up?"

"Yeah, at the Plaza Hotel. We have an emergency
generator up there
too."

"Did
all the Telephone Exchange people get out?"

"'So
far as I know."

"Okay.
Keep in touch. Let's move."

McGrath replaced the handset, crammed the last mouthful
of his
sandwich down his throat,
swallowed, stood up. "Everybody out. Those
files
ready?"

Captain
Luther nodded.

"Okay, don't forget the cells, now. Mustn't let any
of the bastards on
remand
drown. Let's move it now, boys, or we are going to get our feet
wet,
and then some. I'm going up to the Chief."