crazy as you say, he might just turn that gun on me.”
“Two kids. Eight and ten. Boy and a girl. And their parents.”
Gideon turned, expelled a long breath. “Jesus. I’m giving you one day—just one day. And I’m going to be pissed at you for a long, long time.”
Glinn bestowed a cold smile on him.
2
THEY ARRIVED AT a scene of controlled chaos. The setting was a nondescript working-class street in the ironically named neighborhood of Sunnyside, Queens. The house was part of a long row of attached brick houses, facing an identical row across a street of cracked pavement. There were no trees on the block; the lawns were overgrown with weeds and brown from lack of rain. The air hummed with the roar of traffic on nearby Queens Boulevard, and a smell of car exhaust drifted in the air.
A cop showed them where to park, and they got out. The police had set up roadblocks and barricades at both ends of the street, and the place was packed with squad cars, their lightbars flashing. Garza showed ID and was waved through a barricade, which held back a seething crowd of rubberneckers, many drinking beer, a few even wearing funny hats and carrying on as if it were a block party.
New York City, thought Gideon with a shake of his head.
The police had cleared a large area in front of the house in which Chalker had taken hostages. Two SWAT teams had been deployed, one in a forward post behind an armored rescue vehicle, the other back behind a set of concrete barricades. Gideon could see snipers peeking above several rooftops. In the middle distance, he could hear the occasional blaring of a voice over a megaphone, apparently a hostage negotiator trying to talk Chalker down.
As Garza pushed toward the front, Gideon experienced a sudden flash of déjà vu, a spasm of nausea. This was the way his father had been killed, exactly like this: with the megaphones, the SWAT teams, the snipers and barricades—shot in cold blood, surrendering, with his hands up…Gideon fought to push the memory aside.
They passed through another set of barricades to an FBI command post. An agent detached himself from the group and came over.
“Special Agent Stone Fordyce,” said Garza, introducing him. “Assistant commander of the FBI team on site. You’ll be working with him.”
Gideon eyed the man with instinctual hostility. The guy was straight out of a TV series, dressed in a blue suit, starched white shirt, and repp tie, ID hanging around his neck, tall, handsome, arrogant, self-assured, and ridiculously fit. His narrow blue eyes looked down at Gideon as if examining a lower form of life.
“So you’re the friend?” asked Fordyce, his eyes lingering on Gideon, particularly on his clothes—black jeans, black Keds without laces, secondhand tuxedo shirt, thin scarf.
“I’m not the maiden aunt, if that’s what you mean,” Gideon replied.
“Here’s the deal,” the man went on, after a pause. “This friend of yours, Chalker, he’s paranoid, delusional. Classic psychotic break. He’s spouting a bunch of conspiracy ideas: that the government kidnapped him, used him for radiation experiments, and beamed rays into his head—the usual. He thinks his landlord and landlady are in on the conspiracy and he’s taken them hostage, along with their two kids.”
“What does he want?” Gideon asked.
“Incoherent. He’s armed with what we think is a 1911-style Colt .45. He’s fired it once or twice for show. Not sure if he actually knows how to use it. You got any knowledge of his prior experience with weapons?”
“I would’ve thought none,” said Gideon.
“Tell me about him.”
“Socially inept. Didn’t have a lot of friends, got burdened with a world-class dysfunctional wife who put him through the wringer. Dissatisfied with his job, talked about wanting to become a writer. Finally ended up getting religion.”
“Was he good at his job? Smart?”
“Competent but not brilliant. As for brains, he’s way more intelligent than, say, the average FBI agent.”
There was a silence as Fordyce took this in and did not react. “The brief says this guy designed nuclear weapons at Los Alamos. Right?”
“More or less.”
“You think there’s a chance he’s got explosives rigged in there?”
“He may have worked with nuclear weapons, but a firecracker would’ve freaked him out. As for explosives—I sincerely doubt it.”
Fordyce stared at him, went on. “He thinks everyone here is a government agent.”
“He’s probably right.”
“We’re hoping he’ll trust someone out of his past. You.”
Gideon could hear in the background more megaphoned words, then a distorted, screamed reply, too far away to