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    "I don't have clear authority here, Frank," Hancock said.  "He does."  She pointed at a black Caprice just pulling into the hospital lot.
    "Who's that?"
    "Jack Rice.  He's a State Police captain.  Winston reports to him."
    "Come  out and meet me, one-on-one," Winston said.  "Whatever has angered you cannot be changed through violence."
    "We better get to Rice."  I jogged to his car.  Hancock followed.
    When Rice stepped out of the passenger side I was surprised to see that he was only five feet tall and pudgy, almost swollen-looking.  His hair was light brown and baby-fine.  He wore a tailored gray suit, blue pin-striped button-down and red paisley tie that made him look like an oversized display item from a Brooks Brothers window.  He greeted Hancock, who introduced me.
    "Your man Winston is going to screw things up if you let him bully Lucas," I said immediately.
    Hancock tried to be diplomatic.  "Dr. Clevenger appreciates Dr. Winston's training in these matters, but we've had experience with Lucas.  He's an extraordinary..."
    Rice glanced over my shoulder at Winston.
    "We just had a death," Hancock said.  "A woman jumped from the fifth floor.  She'd been cut up, badly."
    "I got the report on my way over.  Who was she?"
    "Grace Cummings.  Sixty-eight years old."
    "A nurse?"
    "No.  A prisoner."
    "Thank God."
    Winston's electric monotone filled the hospital grounds.  "I want you to tell me your concerns, face-to-face.  Man-to-man."
    I hung my head in despair.
    "What's your problem, doctor?" Rice asked me.
    "The language is too threatening for someone paranoid," I said.  "To Lucas, being called out like this can seem like a test of his manhood.  We don't want that.  We want him to feel safe, at least for now.  That's why telling him we'll get him in touch with Cardinal Law, or get him that helicopter..."
    Rice shook his head.  "Absolutely not.  I've already made my position on that clear to Commissioner Hancock.  We don't make deals with kidnappers."
    "I'm not talking about making a deal.  I'm talking about a strategy," I said.  "Bullying Lucas isn't going to work.  He capable of anything."
    "That doesn't put me in the mood to give in to him."
    "Winston's approach won't work."
    "No?"  He grinned and nodded over my shoulder.
    I had the feeling I might be talking to someone crazy.  "No," I said.
    He nodded again.  "Take a look."
    I turned around and saw Lucas standing inside the glass doors to the hospital lobby.  He was still wearing his scrubs and his cast.  Several other figures were beside him, but the panes of glass adjacent to the door were fogged up, and I couldn't quite make them out.  Lucas took a step forward, and the doors slid open.  He barely poked his head out to look left and right, then stepped back inside.
    "You have nothing to be afraid of," Winston blared.
    A moment later, Lucas and four others walked out the door.  He was in the middle of the first row of three, arm in arm with two nurses dressed in white who looked petrified.  Each woman's outside arm was held aloft by a man behind her, and each had a large knife at her throat.  The five of them looked like a bizarre bird with steel fangs.
    Winston let his bullhorn drop to his side and took a step back.
    "Come talk with me," Lucas called to him.
    Winston backed up another step.
    I heard Rice's police radio crackle.  "No clear shot," a voice said.
    "Damn," Rice said.
    "I don't recognize the big one in back on the left," Hancock said, "but the one on the right, the black man, is Zweig."
    "One doctor to another, like you said," Lucas baited Winston.  "Face-to-face."
    Winston turned and looked at the three of us watching him.
    "We have nothing to fear from one another," Lucas said.  "We're both men of honor."
    "Don't do it," I said, just loud enough, I hoped, for Winston alone to hear.
    Maybe it was my telling him what to do, or not to do, that made Winston take the chance.  I can't say.  Maybe I could have helped