Sitting in the Blarney Stone off Columbus Circle, Schmidt fingered the pretzel bowl, considering a statistic his cousin Charley had mentioned, that food on bar tops had so many parts per million of shit in it. It was probably true, Schmidt thought but didn't care. He crunched his pretzel, trying to pay attention but didn't taste anything out of the ordinary. When he went for the next one, his fingers touched something smooth and round, not a pretzel. He pulled the transponder out of the bowl and held it up to the light of the mechanical bowling machine then turned it around a couple of times, dunked it in his Schlitz, and rubbed it on his sleeve.
That's when he heard the "ping." And that's when all hell broke loose.
Schmidt staggered out onto Broadway and began taking hostages, but only ones that were his type. He thought he saw threatening figures in the park peering at him over the wall and began shooting at them.