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the mound at his feet and raised the binoculars again.
    He scanned the perimeter of the church’s wide block, lingering at each security post with his high-resolution Steiner 15×80 field glasses.
    There was a line of Manhattan Task Force beat cops scattered about the front of the church with the press, and an NYPD Emergency Service Unit truck blocking the side streets at each corner.
    The baseball-hat-wearing ESU police commandos had intimidating Colt Commando submachine guns strapped across their chests, but there were coffee cups in their hands, and cigarettes. Instead of being vigilant, they were standing around goofing on one another, telling lies about what they would do with all the overtime they were raking in.
    Question: Were they that stupid? the Neat Man thought. Answer: Yes, they were.
    His cell phone went off when the bagpiper’s screech started winding down. The Neat Man lowered the binoculars and raised the phone to his ear.
    The excitement of what was about to go down hissed along his nerve endings.
    “All clear, Jack,” the Neat Man said. “It’s a go. Now make us proud.”

Chapter 13
    IN THE NAVE of the cathedral, “Jack” bit the antenna of his just-closed cell phone nervously as he gazed out at the dozens of Secret Service agents and private security and cops stationed around the church.
    Would this scheme actually work? he thought for the thousandth, no, make that the hundred thousandth time. Well, no time like the present to find out. He holstered the phone and headed for the 51st Street exit.
    Seconds later, he hustled down the marble stairs and unhooked the latch that was holding open the two-foot-thick wooden door. A female uniformed NYPD cop smoking a cigarette in the threshold glanced at him. She looked irritated.
    “In or out?” Jack said with a smile. Though he was on the short side, he was capable of turning on the charm when he wanted. “Service is starting. We got to close ’em up.”
    In the predawn security meeting, law enforcement personnel had been told to give the church security force deference in all matters concerning the ceremony.
    “Out, I guess,” the cop said.
    Good choice, flatfoot,
Jack thought, pulling the heavy doors shut and snapping the key off in the lock.
Choose life.
    He hurried up the stairs and around the ambulatory along the back of the altar.
    It was packed-standing room only-with white-frocked priests.
    The organ started and the casket appeared from under the choir loft just as he arrived at the south transept.
    Jack jogged down the stairs to the 50th Street side entrance and closed and locked the thick door there, too. He refrained from breaking the key in the lock because they’d need this exit in about a minute.
    Next order of business
. Jack took a deep breath.
    Half of Hollywood, Wall Street, and Washington was now boxed inside the cathedral.
    Quickly, he went back along the ambulatory. Beyond one of the massive columns, there was a leather bank rope. It blocked off a small, narrow marble stairwell at the rear of the altar. He stepped over the rope and descended.
    At the bottom of the marble stairs was an ornate green copper door. The sign above it read: crypt of the archbishops of new york.
    Jack stepped in quickly and yanked the door closed. He moved inside the crypt, then tightly shut the door behind him. In the dimness, he could make out the stone sarcophaguses of the interred archbishops arrayed in a semicircle around the rough-hewn stone walls of the chamber.
    “It’s me, idiots,” he said in a low voice after another second. “Hit the light.”
    There was a
click
, and the wall sconces came on.
    Behind the stone caskets were a dozen men. Most were wearing T-shirts and sweatpants. They were big, muscular, and not very friendly-looking.
    There were rips of Velcro as the men strapped on bulletproof Kevlar vests. Smith amp; Wesson nine-millimeter handguns in underarm holsters went on next. The black, fingerless gloves they put on were known