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Not just with any lawyers, either. Two seven-hundred-dollar-an-hour mouthpieces from a white-shoe Wall Street firm had actually shown up at the precinct house raising hell until the precinct captain relented. The fact was we didn’t have enough on them to charge them with anything. Not yet, anyway. Like it or not, they’d been released, and our best leads just walked out the door.
To add insult to injury, we’d put surveillance on them, but they seemed to have shaken it. We’d also just received a forensics report from the FBI on the Russians’ credit cards and cell phones and Internet searches. There was nothing. They had no electronic trail of any kind. The two computer experts were Luddites, apparently.
I groaned as I looked out the window at the Hudson and Jersey on the other side. Then I looked south at the Statue of Liberty in the harbor and imagined a wave coming over her.
In the silence, Arturo got up and made himself another coffee.
“Look on the bright side, guys. They’ve got free K-
Cups up here. Yummy. I love K-Cups,” he said sarcastically.
“Yeah. Nothing like a smooth, soothing K-Cup to while away the afternoon before the destruction of your city,” said Doyle, flicking a coffee stirrer at him.
I stared out the window down to the courtyard, where soldiers were setting up cots.
Were the cots for the soldiers? Were they expecting refugees? What the hell were cots going to do when the water came? Become flotation devices?
I only knew that we had to keep our heads about us in this whirling dervish of a mess. I sat up.
“Okay, let’s do this again. Theories,” I said to Emily.
“I almost can’t believe it’s a ransom,” she said as she swirled her coffee. “I was really leaning toward a Unabomber-style suspect. One man on a mad mission, like you said. This now? Three billion? This is a real curveball.”
“It’s the Russkies. Has to be,” said Doyle as he rolled out of his chair onto the floor and started doing push-ups. “Think about it. The fed forensic report shows they have no credit cards or computer records, yet they’re computer experts? They have stuff. They just know how to hide it. They’re in on this.”
Then the real chaos began.
Chief Fabretti came into the cafeteria talking on his phone.
“You’re kidding. Jeez. Wow, just like that. Okay, thanks.”
“What’s up, Chief?” said Doyle as he hopped to his feet.
“Turn on the TV,” Fabretti said, pointing to the set in the cafeteria’s corner. “This is unbelievable.”
Doyle ran over and clicked on the set. I stood up as I saw something there I hadn’t seen since I was a kid.
There was a blue screen with two words in yellow.
STAND BY.
Doyle changed the channel. It was on every one. A long and bright beep sounded out, followed by a squawk of radio feedback. Then it did it again.
“This is not a test,” said a calm, feminine voice. “I repeat, this is not a test of the Emergency Alert System. Please stand by. Please stand by.”
“What is this?”
“The mayor just came out of another meeting with the scientists. She’s doing it. She’s pulling the trigger.”
I listened to the beep repeat.
“This is not a test,” said the voice. “I repeat, this is not a test of the Emergency Alert System.”
“Pulling what trigger?” said Lopez. “You mean she’s going to give them the money?”
“No. She’s going to evacuate, right?” I said as I stared at the STAND BY on the screen.
Fabretti nodded.
