Deadline Y2K (16 page)

“Only after the Superbowl, but that's just drunks.”

“They could sell tickets,” Spillman said. “People would pay to see what I saw today.”

“Save the tapes from your security monitors,” Copeland said. “Maybe you can sell them.”

“That's my Donnie boy, always trying to turn a buck. For your information, Ed wants the tapes. I don't care.”

“Look,” Copeland said. “I'm very interested in finding out what happened to your systems, Jonathon. Mind if I talk to your people in Pleasanton? Maybe I can get Safeway as a client. Nice account. We have all these Y2K people working on the banks who won't have that much to do next week.”

“I swear to God, Donnie, your mind is one of the wonders of the universe, but be my guest. Hey, if you want lunch, we got lunch. It's all over the floor, a quarter acre of it. I'll be here.”

Copeland clicked off his phone, surveyed the three girls, picked the chubby one, and gave Madam Wo eighty dollars.

“You wan' special, like always?”

Copeland grunted and followed his prize down the red satin corridor.

*   *   *

When Captain Garcia arrived at 99th and Amsterdam Avenue, a busy intersection in a primarily Spanish-speaking neighborhood, one hundred fifty people were on their knees, praying in Spanish in the middle of the street.

Garcia's 24th Precinct stretched from 86th to Cathedral Parkway on the West Side and included some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in America, as well as some of the city's poorest barrios where less than half the population spoke English. From his friends, Garcia had learned quite a bit about the millennium bug and what to expect, and he knew damned well that many of the poverty-stricken Caribbean Islanders and Central Americans in the Two-Four didn't have a clue. What they did know was that the millennium was coming full-blast and bearing the fruit of two thousands years of mystical numerology and scrambled Christian theology.

People were spilling out of the evangelical church on the corner and into the street, falling to their knees, blocking traffic and attracting a large crowd of gawkers on the sidewalks. Garcia wasn't sure whose side they'd take if things got out of hand.

Garcia could feel another riot in the making. The mayor was in Washington for a millennium photo opportunity with the President. His Honor intended to return for another photo op in Times Square at midnight, leaving the safety of the city during the day in the unprepared hands of five borough presidents, four deputy mayors, and one police commissioner. Garcia had no doubt these politicians would barrage him with useless orders and directives. No matter what happened, Garcia would receive no help from the hierarchy because what was happening in the 24th Precinct was certain to be repeated all over the city before long. Like every other NYPD precinct captain, Garcia was on his own

The fire department was on the scene, and the fire commander was ready to turn the hoses on the crowd. Garcia knew Fire Commander Graviano as a stone-cold racist who considered the fire department a weapon in his private war against the people of New York. Graviano was willing to let a tenement burn, a process he called urban renewal.

“I'm ready to squirt 'em,” Graviano said. “Just say the word.”

“Let me talk to them first,” the captain said.

“Talk to them?” Graviano sneered. “Fuckin' A, captain. These people don't even speak English.”

Garcia moved into the kneeling crowd and found the minister, a young man in a flowing red-and-white robe who was in the throes of an ecstatic communion with the Lord.

“Excuse me,” Garcia said in Spanish, using the most formal and courteous of verb tenses, “but why are you and your congregation here in the street and not inside your church? It is most certainly a church to be admired.”

“We want to show ourselves to God. We want to prove ourselves as martyrs. We are waiting for you, my captain, to help us reveal ourselves to Jesus.”

All the other evangelicals had stopped praying and were watching them.

“We must suffer to prove ourselves worthy,” the preacher said. “Will you accommodate us, captain?”

My God, thought Garcia, I thought I'd seen everything.

“You want me to take all of you to jail?”

“Yes.”

“All right, but you'll have to walk.”

“Oh, no, captain, you must arrest us, put us in chains, and throw us in your dungeon.”

“I'm afraid that's impossible,
padre.
I don't have the manpower,” Garcia said, gesturing toward the firemen. “If you don't move, the
bomberos
will turn their hoses on you, and people will be hurt.”

“So much the better, captain.”

“You have women and children with you.”

“We're all martyrs in the eyes of the Lord.”

“I don't think so,” Garcia said, shifting from the formal to the informal, trying to throw the preacher off balance. “You're going to wake up tomorrow morning and feel like an idiot. You're deceiving these people. You're under arrest. Just you, no one else.”

“I can't leave my congregation.”

“You can and you will.”

Garcia waved over two uniforms who lifted the minister from his knees and pushed him toward a patrol car. Struggling, flailing wildly, he shouted, “It's starting, brothers and sisters, our journey to meet our Lord on Judgment Day is starting. Pray, brothers and sisters. Jesus is our witness. Jesus will see what they do to us today!”

The congregation began to writhe on the asphalt as the cops wrestled the screaming minister into the back of a patrol car.

“Take him to the precinct, captain?” asked one of the arresting officers.

“No, take him to his church. Maybe the rest will follow.”

“I can't wait around here all fuckin' day,” the fire commander said. “If I get another call, I'm gone.”

“If we can get him out of here,” Garcia said patiently, “and they don't have anyone to tell them what to do, maybe we can disperse the crowd peacefully.”

“It's not gonna happen, Garcia,” said the fireman, pointing to the crowds assembled on all four corners of the intersection. “What about them?”

The crowd was mesmerized by 150 people writhing and moaning in religious ecstasy in the middle of the street. Missing was the usual rumble of catcalls and jeers, and Garcia heard only a few shouts directed at the police and firefighters.

Garcia was an expert at crowd control and also had a deep empathy for the people of New York. He believed he was a public servant and a guarantor of public safety, and he hated officials like Graviano who used their authority to further their own misconceived agendas. If the firefighters turned on their hoses, the crowd would respond with rocks and bottles and rip the neighborhood to shreds.

There was another way. He gathered all the cops and firefighters around him and announced his decision.

“Okay,” he said. “Set up permanent barricades at 100th Street, 98th Street, Amsterdam Avenue and Central Park West. I declare this area the Millennium Religious Sanctuary of the 24th Precinct. That's it. Do it.”

“What?” screamed Graviano. “You don't have the authority to do that.”

“I just did it, you stupid jerk, and I'm going to announce it to the press. Richards, get those reporters over here. I've already had one riot today, and I'm not going to have another. Commander, when I was in the Marines I learned it's much easier to ask forgiveness later than permission first. This is my precinct, and if these people are looking for God, the best they're going to get is me, Captain Ed Garcia. Let's have a little religious tolerance. These people only want to pray. They
believe.
I can't mess with that. Don't you get it? Every religious nut in New York will show up here, and we'll have them all in one place. That way, they won't be doing this all over town. Only once every thousand years do people want to pray in the streets of New York, so I say, let 'em. Get the minister out of the car, Richards. What the hell, I'll do it myself. Go back to your fire station,” he said to the commander. “We don't need you anymore. Thank you.”

“You'll lose your job for this, Garcia.”

“Maybe, but my successor will have a precinct in one piece, at least,” Garcia said as he stepped away. “Here's the media.”

Garcia waved at the reporters, most of whom had followed him from 96th Street, and gestured for them to come closer.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in his best booming public relations voice. “I have an announcement to make. As you know, the city intends to block off several designated areas for New Year's Eve and millennium celebrations. Well, I've just added to the list. As I'm sure you're aware, the millennium has great religious significance for many people in this city, and while we may not agree with their beliefs and aspirations, we must respect them. Therefore, in the name of religious tolerance, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and the people of the City of New York, I'm closing Amsterdam Avenue to traffic as of right now from 98th to 100th. Welcome to the official Millennium Religious Sanctuary of the 24th Precinct.”

The press was aghast. This was unprecedented, unheard of, almost unthinkable, but as word of Captain Garcia's decree spread among the people in the street, an explosion of joy erupted from the throats of the believers.

Garcia beamed. “Let God smile on New York City today,” he said. “We're gonna need all the help we can get.”

*   *   *

Copeland was back in the massage parlor lobby in time to see the tail end of Ed Garcia's second sound bite of the day. The official Millennium Religious Sanctuary of the 24th Precinct. Wonderful. Why the hell not. As he was thanking Madam Wo, the TV cut away from Spanish Harlem to the ABC anchor desk in Washington.

“We have more breaking news, this time from Julie Carpenter in Hong Kong. Come in Julie.”

“Bob, it's forty-five minutes past midnight here in Hong Kong, the former British colony on China's south coast, and I'm sure you can see fireworks still exploding over the harbor behind me. We've had a magnificent parade of boats and much excitement, but Bob, I have to tell you, the millennium bug is ravaging China. Astronauts on the space station are reporting a rolling power blackout across this vast nation. Only Shanghai and Hong Kong remain illuminated. The Chinese government has ordered a news blackout, but we're getting reports via the Internet and from ham radio operators.”

Madam Wo and her girls burst into a flurry of excited Cantonese, pointing at the TV and looking distraught. “You go, you go,” Madam Wo insisted, pushing Copeland toward the door. “We close now.”

Copeland stepped into Mott Street where he was greeted by a tremendous racket rising from every building. As the news from the old country reached the heart of New York's Chinese community, a million firecrackers seemed to go off at once. He felt his chest constrict. A noisy crowd had gathered in front of an electronics store to watch TVs in the windows.

The millennium bug was shutting down the global economy, a virtual entity entirely dependent on computers and rapid communication. The Federal Reserve had to close the electronic fund transfer system without delay. He should have seen it coming and stayed in his office, and he chastised himself for thinking with his dick instead of his brain. He might be too late.

He started running, forcing his way through hordes of humanity pouring from buildings, raising a clamorous din in all the languages of earth. From Chinatown to the Battery, Lower Manhattan had become a microcosm of a planet in distress, convulsing in the shock of the first planetwide financial collapse caused by the failure of technology.

*   *   *

If the global economy had a spiritual center, it was Wall Street. At 11:45
A.M.
, with Asia crumbling in the wake of the millennium bug, the short, crooked street lined with magnificent buildings was a psychic wasteland, teeming with ghosts, chalk-faced men and women sunken into mere wisps of themselves. The illusion was deepened by half of them being intoxicated, whether with whiskey or shock didn't matter. Chaos theory had come home to roost.

Copeland had no intention of being a ghost. He tried to pump himself up and restore his confidence by telling himself that amidst the ruins, he would flourish. He would pull off the greatest bank robbery in history and get away with it. After all the mayhem was accounted for, he was going to come out a winner.

The only thing standing between him and his ultimate triumph was the Big Red Button. Hurrying along, a vision of the button began to taunt him, drawing him into its deep magenta orbit. He started to hallucinate, seeing Doc inside the red circle, then the bank's logo, then his wife and son. It was as though his entire life was surging across the screen and mocking him.

He had no idea what would happen if he launched the programs hidden behind the button. Doc could have wired the button into anything. The circuit was supposed to run through five cutouts, but where were they? He should have asked. He wasn't himself, wasn't sharp, wasn't in control. He was losing it. He was the one man in New York who should have been immune to the millennium bug, but right now as he struggled through the crowded streets, it was boring right through his heart. On the other hand, if he didn't touch the button, and the Federal Reserve shut down the banking system, the heist program would lie idle until the system was brought back on line. After waiting so long, couldn't he wait until next Tuesday or even Wednesday? But waiting might give the bank's programmers at the Tech Center a few more days to recheck the code, thereby increasing the chance, no matter how infinitesimally small, of their stumbling across the program. As Doc often said, “There is no such thing as absolute security. A foolproof system doesn't exist. There are only probabilities.” Perhaps the surprise waiting in Doc's computer was that nothing would happen because Doc had guessed the Fed would close down the system. Maybe the Big Red Button was no more than a prank to torment the boss. The real trigger, if it existed, was probably locked inside Doc's laptop.