Ten minutes later, Cheeta Ching was piling out of a microwave van and tearing through the crowd like a bulldozer in high heels.
"Who's in charge here?" she asked a cop.
The officer pointed to a fire marshal. "The marshal is. At least, until the National Guard gets here."
Cheeta thrust her flat face into the fire marshal's grizzled, weatherbeaten features. "Sheriff . . ."
"Marshal."
"Let's have your story."
"No time. We're still stabilizing the situation. Now get back."
"I will not get back," Cheeta hissed. "I demand my rights as a dual minority-female and Korean."
"I am woman, hear me roar," the fire marshal muttered.
Cheeta lifted her mike to his face. "What was that? I didn't catch that."
"I said, 'Get back, please.' "
Cheeta Ching turned on her cameraman, snapping, "Follow me."
The cameraman meekly followed. Cheeta skirted the crowd until she found an opening.
She reached back, found the cameraman's tie, and using it as a leash, yanked him through the opening.
"Miss Ching! What are you doing?"
"Just keep your eye to the viewfinder and the tape rolling. I'll get you through the rest. Trust me."
The cameraman swallowed hard. He had no choice. Cheeta Ching could have a man hired and fired on the spot. It was rumored she had eaten her last cameraman alive when he'd screwed up. Not chewed him out, but actually cannibalized him. At least, that was the way he'd heard it. If the story had been about anyone but the Korean Shark, he would have laughed it off.
Cheeta worked her way to Fifth Avenue and boldly strode up to the sidewalk before the brass-framed Rumpp Tower entrance. Under the huge letters RUMPP TOWER, anxious faces stared out.
"Pan along the building," she directed. "I want every gut-churning, scared-white face on the six o'clock news."
"Yes, Miss Ching."
The cameraman began to pan. Evidently some of the trapped recognized the unmistakable features of Cheeta Ching.
They waved and seemingly called her name. But their voices didn't penetrate the thick glass.
"What're they saying?" Cheeta asked, frowning.
"I dunno. Can't hear them."
"Peculiar."
"What is?"
"They're supposed to be trapped, but it looks to me like a person could just walk right out the front door."
"Then why don't they?"
The moment the words were out of his mouth, the cameraman knew he had made a mistake. There were two kinds of mistakes a cameraman working for Cheeta Ching could make: recoverable ones and irrecoverable ones.
The cameraman understood, as if by divine revelation, that he had made a mistake of the irrecoverable variety.
His fears were confirmed by Cheeta's next orders.
"Go up to the door and ask them."
He gulped. "Is it safe?"
"I'll let you know," Cheeta said flatly.
"Miss Ching, we're already in violation of the fire marshal's orders."
Cheeta whirled, teeth flashing. "What's your problem? Are you leaking testosterone out a pinhole in your scrotum? This could be your chance to become a hero."
The cameraman wasn't concerned about his heroism. He was just hoping to live through the assignment. All he had been told was that there was a big story at the Rumpp Tower. From the looks of it, it was a terrorist thing. Someone had wired the tower and was holding its occupants hostage, or something.
"Miss Ching," he croaked. "I'd rather not. Please."
Cheeta Ching got around in front of him. She was in stiletto heels, which made her almost as tall as the cameraman, who stood five-foot seven. Cheeta Ching slowly rose up on her heels, like a creeping yellow vine. As she came up to his exact eye level, her poisonous red mouth broadened to expose her too-perfect teeth.
"Has anyone ever told you how . . . tasty you look?" she asked in a glittering tone.
Suddenly the cameraman had no fear of terrorists or high explosives or any ordinary threat to his bodily integrity. He was staring right into a flat, predatory face with dark, glittering eyes and excessively sharp incisors. If human evolution could be traced back to sharks and not apes, he thought, the face of Cheeta Ching would represent the highest state of mankind's long evolutionary climb.
"For God's sake," the cameraman pleaded, "I have a family!"
Cheeta grinned wickedly. "I'll bet the baby would taste just great microwaved."
The cameraman's eyes rounded perfectly. "But-but you're going to have a baby yourself!" he stammered.
"More oxygen for my baby, if yours stops breathing."
The cameraman reacted as if a brick had knocked him between the eyes. He took a faltering step backward. Then he turned woodenly, like a man ascending the scaffold to the hangman's noose. Except that he was heading straight for the Rumpp Tower.
A police officer stationed within shouting range spotted him and yelled for the cameraman to stop.
He walked on, oblivious, his footsteps as leaden as a sponge diver's.
Cheeta Ching had taken possession of his camera and now had it up on her padded shoulder, tape running.