Papers, photos, files, and reports surrounded Cluff as if scattered by an explosion, laying where they fell when he pushed everything from his desk but the files from the two juvenile facilities. He leaned close, giving them the third look in a minute, his anxious eyes moving from the Newark report on his left to the report from the Bridges juvenile facility on his right. He re-checked admission and release dates. Making sure the names were the same.
It don’t necessarily mean anything. People change …but why do I feel like there’s a siren screaming in my head?
He pulled his phone and started dialing.
I bolted toward the stairs, not caring who I pushed aside. I turned into the stairwell and felt a hard blow to my sternum. The rock-hard hand of a massive uniformed cop. Two other walls of beef stood beside him, giving me laser eyes.
“Show me ID,” the guy with his hand in my belly said. “You need special ID for the second floor.”
The cop beside him said, “I don’t see any kind of ID.”
Waltz ran up, breathing hard. “He’s with me, Barney. He’s OK. Let him go.”
“My orders are no one without clearance or an NYPD identification can go past –”
“I’ll take responsibility. Let him go!”
I continued up the steps, Waltz laboring behind. I saw my brother following and waved him back, hoping he saw my warning. I hit the second floor, the doors to the cavernous meeting room in front of me. I slipped into the room, saw a couple hundred women at round tables with carafes and glassware in front of them. Pelham was seated to the side of the podium, another woman droning at the mic, the introduction part of the proceedings.
“ …tireless advocate of the disenfran-chised …”
I looked toward the side of the room and saw Bullard, his phone raised, his eyes dark and angry. Bullard? Could it be?
I sidled along the wall and snatched the phone from his face. It was a bargain brand with no video function. Bullard wasn’t the one.
“What the fuck’s with you, asshole?” he whispered, snatching it back. “I’m trying to talk to Cluff. His signal keeps breaking up in here.” He put the phone back to his face. “You gotta talk louder, Cluff, I can’t goddamn hear.”
Day’s phone sounded. I studied the screen. A tight tunnel, empty, probably one of the service corridors. Where could it be?
“ …great pleasure to introduce the next President of the United States, Congresswoman Cynthia Pelham …”
I started to move away when Bullard grabbed my arm. I turned. He held up a finger, just a second, while frowning into the phone. I looked at Day’s device. The sender was still moving through the corridor, the video murky, undefined. The screen turned black.
Bullard closed his phone. He looked confused. “Cluff did more checking of Newark and Bridges. There were a half-dozen crossover juvie admissions to both facilities when Bernal and Anderson were working. One of them was named Jonathan Cargyle.”
“Cargyle?”
“Like that newbie in Tech Services. He was here earlier, working. Making sure everything was safe.”
I looked to the dais, saw a wide-smiled Pelham at ease in her element.
“ …gives me a feeling of satisfaction to look out over the faces of so many accomplished women. When I am President I vow that …”
“Cargyle?” I saw a mind picture of the innocuous kid who was never without tools or telephones. “What was he doing?”
“He was up on the stage. Checking the microphones or something.”
“ …making sure all women can achieve full equality in all fields of endeavor …”
I turned and saw Cynthia Pelham, a black microphone directly in front of her face. To the side, I saw Cargyle peeking through the curtain. He had a phone in his hand, held high, ready to send Jim Day the record of his triumph.
I started running to the dais. When I yelled, “Everyone down,” panic ensued. I was suddenly swimming against a tide of screaming bodies, women falling, folding chairs tumbling over, glasses breaking on the floor. Pelham held her ground. There was nowhere for her to run but into the tumult.
I saw Pelham’s Secret Service protectors fall beneath the crush of bodies. I was ten feet from the podium.
I pushed a woman aside, dove across another. Five feet.
I grabbed the microphone, cast-iron stand and all. Wires popped free as I sprinted to the window and launched it into the glass with every bit of strength in me, stand, microphone and wires tumbling. I saw it hit the storm-proof glass, bounce back like rubber, fall to the floor inside the room. I dove away, rolling desperately. A white flash enveloped everything. The floor shuddered beneath my body.
Only then did I hear the explosion.