Meantime, you need anything else? More pizza, soda pop, anything like that? Hey, it must be hot in there-how about some ice cream for your niece and nephew?' 'I'm not, either-that's the last thing I want to do.

'I know you're not playing, D-Ray,' I said. You think I don't know I'm already lookin' at life in prison? What I got to lose if I kill somebody else?' If it drove these last few blocks, that meant I'd failed. I was fighting with everything I had to keep it there. In fact, the Wells Fargo truck had arrived a good two hours ago and was parked out of sight nearby. If it weren't for the dozen uniformed Emergency Service Unit and Manhattan North Task Force cops listening in, you might have thought I was a priest hearing a confession. Hostage situations call for measured calm, something I'm actually pretty good at faking. And drive through traffic, just like everybody else.' They don't carry that kind of cash around, either-they've got to go through a complicated procedure to get it. 'You keep saying that, but I don't see no truck!' A hundred thousand dollars in unmarked twenties, sitting on the front seat.' 'Like I told you, I got Wells Fargo to send an armored truck up from Brooklyn. 'The money's coming, D-Ray,' I said, speaking gently into the headset. When police had come after him earlier today, he'd holed up in a Harlem brownstone, now behind police barricades, threatening to kill five members of his own family. It came from a nineteen-year-old gang hit man known as D-Ray-his real name was Kenneth Robinson-who was the main suspect in a triple drug murder. I'd gotten to know that voice really well over the past seven and a half hours. 'Where's my money, Bennett?' an angry voice shouted through my headset. I wasn't going anywhere on that Monday night. GETTING STUCK ON a bus in New York City, even under normal circumstances, is a lesson in frustration.īut when the bus belongs to the NYPD Tactical Assistance Response Unit, and it's parked at a barricade that's swarming with cops, and you're there because you're the only person in the world who might have a chance at keeping several hostages from being killed, you can cancel your dinner plans.

Campfire james patterson