Chapter 87

AFTER MOONEY HUNG up on me, I ran as fast as I could back to the main entrance at St. Edward’s. On the way, I called for a roadblock on Lexington and for Aviation to keep an eye south on Lex for erratically driving taxis. That was pretty much asking for them to keep an eye out for water in the ocean, so I wasn’t too hopeful. In fact, after the most recent events and Mooney’s messianic nutball monologue, I was deep in full-despair territory.

A lot of blond, ladies-who-lunch, Upper East Side moms were now embracing their kids by the Park Avenue median. Other worried-looking parents were breathlessly waiting by the police sawhorses, yelling and gazing into the crowd of released schoolkids. Were Mason’s and Parrish’s mothers waiting there? I wondered.

“Bomb Squad and the Hostage Rescue guys are still inside, securing the building,” Emily told me as she cupped her cell. “They’re searching for booby traps, making sure Mooney hasn’t left any of the explosive behind.”

“I’m more afraid that he hasn’t,” I said, dialing my boss. “In fact, I’m much more afraid that he’s taken every ounce of it with him and those two poor kids.”

EMTs were bringing out the body of Coach Webb as my phone rang. No one else had been hurt, thank God.

At least not yet.

The young black Nineteenth Precinct captain rushed over to me, holding his cell phone toward me.

“Detective, it’s Commissioner Daly.”

“Bennett,” I said into it.

“Mike, it’s John Daly. Listen, bad news. Mooney just arrived out in front of the Stock Exchange. He’s wired himself to three people with the plastic explosive and is insisting on going inside.”

I closed my eyes, resisting the urge to start screaming. The New York Stock Exchange? And what did he just say?

“Three people?!” I said. “He only abducted two St. Edward’s kids as far as we can tell.”

“I heard it was three, Mike. Just get down there with Agent Parker and the Hostage Rescue Team ASAP and see what you can do. You guys know him best.”

Yeah, I thought, handing the captain back his phone. That was the problem. I knew all too well what Mooney was all about.

I frantically waved over the Hostage Rescue and Bomb Squad guys.

“Where to now?” Emily said with a pained look on her face as we hopped back into her car. “I’m running out of gas.”

“Financial district. Where else?” I said. “Mooney just showed up at the Stock Exchange.”

Chapter 88

SHACKLED TO THE three young men with high explosives, Francis X. Mooney stutter-stepped through the grand lobby of 11 Wall Street. Though the dozen NYPD and private Stock Exchange officers stationed there had guns trained at his head, they parted before him as he led his captives toward the metal detectors.

The officers kept pace half a step behind them like paparazzi with guns instead of cameras.

Francis’s heart beat in a way he’d never experienced before, like a bass drum at the end of a German opera. Fear and ecstasy commingled in his blood into something terrible and wonderful, something entirely new. He knew Quinn’s kid had been the deciding factor. He’d done the impossible. He was actually inside the New York Stock Exchange!

The Parrish boy tripped on some of the det cord and fell. Francis turned with a smile and gently helped him up off the polished stone.

“It’s not much further now, son. I promise,” he said.

Around the corner in the middle of the right-hand wall, he halted by the door he wanted. It led up some stairs to a door to the balcony above the trading floor where they rang the opening bell.

He’d been here once before. A client of his was going public with his biotech company, and Mooney had been invited to attend the ceremony. He’d stood behind the executive, smiling and clapping obediently, as the old-fashioned plate bell clanged the new trading day.

How many men had he helped to amass staggering amounts of unfair wealth? he thought. Too many to count. That’s why he was here. He was making up for that. For all of it.

He turned and faced the officers at his heels.

“We’re going through that door now. Alone. After I’m inside, I’m going to seal it with explosives. Follow and everyone dies. Thank you.”

Mooney opened the door, pulled the three young men through, then sealed it with PE-4. The explosive was pretty much useless because it wasn’t attached to a detonator, but how would they know that? It would deter them enough.

The yelling from the cavernous trading floor was palpable as they opened the door at the top of the stairs. He led the boys out onto the end of the balcony.

On the pompous granite walls hung huge American flags and neon blue NYSE banners. Every three feet, it seemed, was some kind of computer screen. On them scrolled the relentless march of numbers showing the ever-changing stock bids.

Below was pandemonium, a confusing mosh pit of men and women in business suits and colored smocks. They were yelling and typing into small computers hanging around their necks as they crowded by the carousel-like stock-trading desks. He stared down at the pathetic scurrying, the little ants scrambling for their crumbs. They’d thank him for this.

Mooney stepped up on the podium that stood by the balcony’s railing for the celebrities who rang the opening bell. He flicked the microphone on and thumped it with his taped-up hands.

“Stop!” Mooney yelled out over the trading floor.

A scary hush went through the chamber as traders and brokers stopped what they were doing and craned upward.

Mooney was weeping again. He was surprised to see that some of the traders on the floor had ashes on their foreheads. Were they really ready to share in the world’s suffering? To sacrifice themselves?

He took a deep breath.

Time to find out, he thought.

Chapter 89

THE MIDTOWN TRAFFIC had never seemed more impassable while Emily and I tried to carve a path downtown. Minute after precious minute slipped away as we screeched and slanted our way down Lexington through Turtle Bay and Murray Hill, the Flat Iron district, Gramercy Park, Union Square.

“So many neighborhoods, so little damn time,” I yelled with my ear cocked to the radio for the worst.

We were coming into SoHo when my phone rang. Was it over?

“Mooney just forced his way inside the Stock Exchange,” Chief Fleming told me.

“Wh-, wh-, what?” I screamed. “How the hell did he manage that!”

I couldn’t believe it. The security around the Stock Exchange had to be the highest in the city, maybe in the world. It seemed like all of southern Manhattan was one huge blockade after 9/11.

“Right after he snatched the St. Edward’s kids, the son of a bitch took the Exchange’s security chief’s kid from his doorman job at gunpoint. Then Mooney tangled himself, the students, and the doorman all together with the missing det cord and explosives. Dennis Quinn, the security chief, was manning the employee entrance when Mooney showed up, threatening to blow up his kid right on the street if Quinn didn’t let him inside. Quinn let him in. What the hell else was he supposed to do? It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

It sounded like Emily removed the muffler when she scraped the Crown Vic up onto the curb in front of Trinity Church six minutes later. Hopping out, I almost knocked down Chief Fleming, who was standing next to the NYPD Critical Incident bus, parked across the length of Broadway.

“Mooney’s blocked himself off in the balcony above the trading floor where they ring the opening bell,” my boss said over the wail of sirens that seemed to be coming from every direction. “He also just called nine-one-one. He’s made an offer. He says he’ll exchange the St. Edward’s students for their fathers. We have thirty minutes to get them here. We’re contacting them now.”