What s Important?

What’s Important?

Actually, that was the FBI’s rule. I don’t want to say that it’s a bad rule; it can be a very good rule. At times. Just not this time. Because the hostage taker didn’t actually want the cigarettes; he wasn’t shaking from some superserious nicotine fit, and he wasn’t making a political statement. The cigarettes were important because they would let him say he won something from the police. He made them meet his demands first.

Was it crazy?

Who cares? We’re talking about three stinking cigarettes! For a life.

Let me rephrase that calmly and in the proper context: THREE @#$#$%@#$ CIGARETTES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s all we needed to close the deal. Rather than going over and pulling out a rulebook, what needed to be done there was ask one simple question: Why?

All right, if you want other questions, try these on: What’s important? Are the cigarettes important? Is our looking tough important? Is his being able to smile at himself in the mirror important?

Or is the woman’s life important?

Why? Because he wants to say he won. If he says that, we get past the alligators, we hit Concept 51, we get a deal.

I explained that to the commander in my most calm, reasonable, businesslike voice. Well, maybe not calmly. And, uh, maybe with a few more words than I have written here. They were very short words. I don’t believe any of them had more than one syllable or four letters.

But the boss was the boss. I got back on the phone and told the bad guy the deal was off.

He used a lot of the words I used earlier. After I calmed him down—he was threatening to use the gun, and it took a bit to get him unwound—I eventually promised to go back and take another shot at it with the commander. I have to say that at this point probably the fact that I had been talking with the guy for so long helped a great deal, because the length of time let us build up something of a rapport. The other thing I had going for me was the fact that the guy did want to make a deal, as long as he could tell himself he had made it on his terms.

So I went back to the commander, who had been listening to the explosion and realized that he’d almost blown it big-time. Actually, he had blown it big-time, but now he had a chance to redeem himself. The commander took a breath, squinted a bit, then said something like, “You know, it’s only three cigarettes. Let’s give it a shot.”

Three cigarettes, one freed hostage, one burglar in custody without shots fired.

And the stinking guy didn’t even smoke.