Takeover (10 page)

“I wish I knew. I called back, but he made Missy answer. She said Lucas does not wish to speak to me at this time, and neither does Bobby.”

She nibbled a fingernail, a habit she thought she’d broken in high school. “It would help if we could communicate with Paul. Can’t we text-message the Nextel?”

“It would beep. I already asked his partner that. We can’t risk drawing their attention to him.”

“No,” she agreed fervently. “We can’t. Where
is
Frank—Officer Patrick?”

“Trying to find someone in this city who knows Bobby Moyers. Supposedly he’s got a brother who works for Continental Airlines, and Patrick went to run him down.”

Jason returned, finishing a sandwich. “They have food in the conference area, you know.”

“Good,” Cavanaugh said. “Can you grab me something on rye?”

Jason tossed a cellophane-wrapped square at him. “I anticipate your every need, boss.”

“Glad to hear it. Now tell me who Lucas is.”

“I just got off the phone with Corrections. There are no known associates under that name in Moyers’s file for the original armed-robbery charge. No cellmates by that name at Mansfield. He only
served eight months for that, due to a combination of prison overcrowding, good behavior, and a shaky ID on the ‘armed’ part of the armed robbery.” The young man paused to swig Cherry Coke. “Theresa? You want a sandwich?”

Even the idea of food made her want to retch. “No thanks. I’m fine.”

“Then he got picked up for violating probation.”

“What’d he do?” Cavanaugh asked, breathing a puff of rye-scented breath in Theresa’s direction.

“Bought some cocaine from a gangbanger in the Flats. He used up all his luck on the first charge and had none left for the violation. He not only got six months, he wound up in a test group for prison reform. The theory goes thus: Prison isn’t rehabilitating anyone because they wind up in prison with the same old people operating in the same old gangs and then get out and commit crimes with the same old people in the same old gangs. Send the cons far away where they don’t know anyone and they’re forced to function on their own, so when they get out, they’re better able to resist falling back into their old habits.”

“That almost makes sense.”

“As with all great social experiments, only time will tell.”

“And that’s where he met Lucas.”

Jason shrugged. “Either that or Lucas isn’t his name at all.”

“Where is this far-off reformatory?”

Theresa rubbed the back of her neck again, trying to keep the stiffness there from spreading to her brain. “I bet I know.”

“Hey.” Kessler, the bank executive, stared at the TV screen. “I think something is happening.”

11:20
A.M
.

Paul watched the tall robber pace in front of them, moving slowly down the line. At least he kept the M4 carbine pointed at the floor. He stopped again, near Paul.

“You.”

The robber spoke to the black man next to him, in the green uniform. Paul felt a wave of relief and hated himself for it.

“What do you do here?”

The older man gave his name as Thompkins and said he worked in Support Services. “I vacuum and empty wastebaskets. I’m a janitor, I guess.”

“Mmm.” Lucas nodded. He still wore his hat; its emblem featured a red eagle. “I suppose I should identify with you, one lower-class workingman/oppressed minority to another. But that’s not what I’m thinking, Mr. Thompkins. I’m thinking that you may be the most valuable man in this building, because janitors go everywhere. They have to, to empty all those garbage cans. They have
access to places they lock vice presidents out of, you know what I mean?”

“I’m thinking there’s nothing so ‘working’ about what you’re doing.” The old man’s gaze stayed as straight as his back. “Nothing at all.”

Everyone else tensed, Paul included. His legs trembled from the hours of inactivity. If he had to take them down, could he get to his feet fast enough? Should he even try? What about Theresa?

The line of Lucas’s jaw wavered as he clenched his teeth, then relaxed. “That’s a good point. I’ve given up on honest work, I admit that. But it’s going to be worth it. With great risks come great rewards. How long you been here?”

“Twenty-five years.”

“My, my. That’s impressive. You know this building pretty well, then? Don’t hesitate, Mr. Thompkins, if it means you’re thinking about lying to me. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

A single bead of sweat slid down the janitor’s left temple. “I know it pretty well.”

“Good. Did you hear what that negotiator told me on the phone? About the robots?”

“Yes.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“No one can just walk into the storage rooms downstairs and pick up the money?”

“No.” His answer came promptly, with assurance. Paul believed him. Perhaps Lucas did, too, since he switched his attention to the next hostage and asked for his name.

The kid’s pale skin stood out in sharp contrast to his black hair. “Brad.”

“What do you do here, Brad?”

“I’m in the public-relations department.”

“The Federal Reserve needs PR?”

“Sure.” The young man gave a sickly grin. “Everybody hates the government.”

Lucas rewarded the joke with a sardonic twist of his lips, so that his target’s shoulders seemed to relax an inch or two, only to tense again at the next question. “What exactly do you do for the PR department, Brad?’

The young man mumbled.

“What?”

“I’m a tour guide.”

Now Lucas’s grin looked genuine, and Paul watched the points on Brad’s collar quiver as he trembled.

“So you must know this building pretty well, huh? Maybe even better than the janitor.”

“No.” Brad’s air of nonchalance wouldn’t have fooled a three-year-old. “I take them to our museum and then the vault—the old vault. It’s empty now. A historical conversation piece.”

“No money or robots?”

“No. The old vault was part of the original 1923 construction—anyway, I’m never in the work areas. We can’t have hordes of middle-schoolers disrupting the staff.”

“Still, you know the layout. What else is in this building? And, just as with Mr. Thompkins here, lying to me would not be a good idea.” Lucas stroked the M4 to make his point.

The young man swallowed hard. “There’s offices, for the analysts and the examiners. There’s the security team. There’s the bank officers’ rooms on the ninth floor. We have a little vending area—”

“Bank officers. Do they have vaults up there?”

Brad snorted, envy overcoming fear, if only for a moment. “Hardly. More like Oriental rugs and Ming vases.”

“Really?”

His head bobbed in his desperation to please. “The vice president for general counsel even has an original Picasso.”

“Uh-huh. Where does this hallway go, this one behind y’all here?”

“The employee lobby—it opens onto Superior. There’s also the elevator to the parking garage and the one to the loading dock, where that shipment is coming in at two.”

Lucas came closer to the boy. “You’re all pushing me toward this two o’clock shipment, aren’t you? Why is that?”

“I’m not pushing anything.”

“You just want to go home, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.” Fear etched crow’s-feet into his face as Brad screwed his eyes shut, trying to blot out the image of the M4’s barrel, a yard from his nose. “Yes.”

Paul kept gazing at Lucas, trying to remember every detail, just in case the guy got away. In case Paul
lived
to see him get away.

“If it makes you feel better, Brad, I may change my mind about that shipment. Hell, at this point what’s another few hours?” Without warning he walked away from Brad, disappearing behind the reception desk to return with a box of Kleenex.

“Here.” He handed it to the receptionist, seated next to Paul,
who hadn’t stopped crying since the first shot rang out. “Clean yourself up. Missy, isn’t it?”

“Thank you,” she breathed.

“That’s okay. You hang in there, because I need someone to answer the phones.”

She wiped her eyes, which did not stop filling up. “Please let me go. You have to let me go.”

Lucas had begun to walk away, but her speaking up seemed to surprise him. “Why is that?”

“My little girl. She’s three years old, and she needs her mommy. She’s so precious—”

The sobs that accompanied this appeal would have softened the heart of Genghis Khan, but Lucas showed no signs of sympathy or even interest. Instead he moved over to the woman who had brought her baby along, one of the two women who’d been hiding behind the teller cages. Mark Ludlow’s wife, now his widow, though Paul figured she did not know of her recent change in status. “What’s his name?”

The woman’s eyes were huge and sea blue under untidy lengths of dishwater-blond hair. She clutched the child to her, his head resting against her shoulder. He seemed to be dozing, the skin around his nose slightly reddened, but he kept his grip on a tiny stuffed dog wearing a Browns football helmet. Mother and son appeared well fed and neatly attired. “His name is Ethan.”

“That’s nice. You name him after his daddy?”

“N-n-no. I just liked it.”

“Uh-huh. So why ain’t Ethan in school—What’s your name?”

The woman next to her spoke up, tossing auburn curls from her eyes. “She’s Jessica. Can’t you let them go? He’s just a little boy.”

Lucas considered her. “It’s not polite to jump the line. And I’m sure Jessie here can speak for herself.”

“He’s only two,” Jessica Ludlow said with a delicate southern accent, so softly Paul could barely hear her. “I found a nice day-care lady, but he wasn’t feeling well this morning, and she wouldn’t take him.”

“So you brought him to work?”

“I didn’t know what else to do. I was just going to tell my boss that I’d have to take the day off.” Her lips crinkled, and she gulped in a breath. “Then I was going to leave.”

“Take it easy. Follow your son’s example and just chill out,” Lucas told her before moving on. “You, Talking Tina. What do you do here?”

“My name’s Cherise.” About thirty years of age, the slender woman eyed Lucas with more anger than fear. Paul felt that this could not be wise.

“Thanks for sharing, but I don’t recall asking your name. I asked what it is you do here.”

Bobby had been pacing along the teller cages like a hyena before feeding time, but now he stopped, perhaps sensing something in his partner’s voice.
They’re too far apart,
Paul thought—
I can’t hit them both, not before one gets me.

“I’m a savings-bond teller.”

“What are those?”

“Savings bonds? They’re a promissory note guaranteed by the government. They’re also tax-exempt, so they’re a secure way to save. The bonds are bought and cashed in at those windows.” She ducked her head to indicate the teller cages behind him, on the East
Sixth side of the lobby. “The ones you tied these guys to are empty, just there for show.”

“So there’s cash money in those cages? How much?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

The M4 carbine came up slowly, as if this were only a random movement and not connected to the sudden tension in his frame. “I’m beginning to not like you, Cherise. I’m beginning to doubt your concern for your coworkers. Jessie, you might want to block your baby’s ears.”

The young mother gasped.

“So how much, Cherise?”

“Three to five hundred thousand.”

“Hmm.” Lucas lowered the submachine gun, reached into his oversize duffel, and pulled out a red nylon backpack. He tossed it to her. “Fill this up.”

Cherise didn’t move. “What?”

“You work in those teller cages, right? You must know where the money is.”

“Well, yeah—but I only have keys to my drawers, the ones assigned to me. I’ll have about—”

Before she could complete her mental calculations, Lucas reached into the duffel bag again and pulled out an eight-inch-long Craftsman screwdriver. “That’s all right. I have this. It might screw up the locks a little, but then again, I don’t really care.”

She still did not move.

“Do you want to sit in this lobby until two this afternoon?”

She stood up slowly, never taking her eyes off the barrel of his gun.

“Good job, Cherise. We’re going to walk a wide path around these friends of yours from security and their puppy. Don’t forget I have twenty-nine rounds of .223 shells pointed at your back, and all it would take is one twitch of my finger to let them all fly into you. Keep an eye on the rest of them, Bobby.” He had to shout over the K-9 unit’s dog, barking at their passage.

“I’ve got ’em,” his partner said, raising his own carbine to his shoulder. He sighted down the barrel in Paul’s direction, and Paul felt the ooze of sweat along his spine grow to a trickle. Lucas’s words made him think the robber had military training. A civilian would probably call the rounds “.22s.”

Lucas and his captive dipped past Bobby and disappeared, only to reappear behind the antique grillwork of the first teller window.

The conversation, if it could be so called, between Lucas and the querulous Cherise bounced off the eighty-six-year-old marble walls and curved along the elaborate ceiling frescoes. Paul could make out most of it, once the dog piped down, as they moved in and out of sight behind the wall.

“How much is that?”

“Thirty-eight thousand, four hundred.”

“Okay. Next drawer. Fit the screwdriver into the lock.”

“It won’t move.”

“Pry it. Get the tip into the crack there and twist.”

“Tell you what.” Paul heard Cherise’s words as clearly as if she stood next to him, though he could not see either of them. “Why don’t you try it? I’ll hold your gun.”

“She’s always like that,” Thompkins muttered, and shook his head.

“Quiet,” Bobby told him, including the rest of the row in his glance. “And stop fidgeting.”

From the stress in his voice, it seemed that some of Lucas’s cool had evaporated. “Do it!”

Cherise said a few words Paul couldn’t make out. Then
“No!”

The gunshots echoed through the lobby. The sound seemed to gather strength with every rebound off the polished tile until the waves deafened him. Missy screamed, Jessica Ludlow held her son’s head to her chest, and Thompkins came partially to his feet. Paul’s hand moved toward his gun. But he froze when Bobby and his M4 carbine materialized three feet in front of them.

He’s in the center!
Paul screamed silently to the unseen police snipers who
had
to be stationed in the windows of the library across the street. One of them must be able to get a bead—
Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!

But now Lucas could not be seen, not by the snipers and not by Paul.

“Did he shoot her?” the janitor asked. Missy sobbed. The security guys were all shouting, mostly obscenities, but Paul heard one say, “I can’t see.”

Brad moaned, “We have to get out of here. He’ll kill us all, one by one.”

“Are there offices behind the teller cages?” Paul asked Thompkins. “Other rooms back in there?”

“Three. Mine and—”

“I said
shut up
!” Bobby shouted at them as he backed up to the teller windows. “Lucas, you okay?”

“I’m fine. Be there in a sec.”

“If he killed that girl, then you’re both in very serious trouble,” Paul said to Bobby.

“Gee, like we weren’t before? You wanna act as my lawyer? Get me a deal?”

“You haven’t hurt anyone—yet. You should get out now, quit while you’re ahead.” Paul fought to keep his voice steady, reasonable, watching every minute for an opening. If Bobby would turn away, even for a second, Paul could fire, close the fifteen-foot gap between them before Lucas emerged, grab Bobby’s gun, and—

Bobby not only pointed the rifle at him, he raised it to his eye as if taking special aim. “You should shut up and quit while
you’re
ahead. I’ll hang with Lucas and kill all of you—”

Missy gasped.

“—but I ain’t never going to trust no cops. My whole family is dead because of them.”

Lucas reappeared behind him, with the backpack but without any sign of Cherise. “What’s going on?”

“This guy thinks I should give myself up.”

“Well”—Lucas dropped the now-stuffed backpack onto the floor—“a man’s entitled to his opinion. We have four hundred and eighty thousand and some-odd dollars, Bobby. I don’t think that’s enough.”

“Me neither.”

“Did you kill that girl?” the janitor asked again.

Lucas said, “Let’s just say we won’t be seeing Miss Cherise again soon. But right now we need to put our heads together. Where else in this building can we find some money?”