Page 66 of Two Kinds of Stranger (Eddie Flynn #9)

Eddie

‘You’re calling on the river?’ I asked.

Amy looked at me with that same disappointed expression. She was a teenager, and that meant she knew infinitely more about the world, and everything in it, than I did.

‘I’m calling. He’s bluffing,’ she said, glancing across the table at Joe Novak.

‘I ain’t saying a word,’ said Joe.

‘You should listen to your father,’ said Christine. ‘This is his wheelhouse.’

Christine and Kevin were on the couch in the corner of my apartment.

I was sitting at the small dining table, playing poker with Amy and Joe, who was staying with me while Bloch and Lake did everything possible to give the impression that Joe was stashed away in Lake’s apartment on East Fifth Street and First Avenue.

Elly had come over too. At the moment, Flynn and Brooks was at war, and I just wanted everyone around me.

We’d had pizza and sodas, and now I was teaching Amy poker.

Thanks to Harry, I had something new to show the court tomorrow in Elly’s case. Something that would change things dramatically.

Elly came out of the bathroom and sat on a chair facing the couch. She was quiet. I’d invited Kate over too, but she had declined. Said she was working.

Kate was struggling.

‘Dad, I know what I’m doing,’ said Amy.

‘Okay, I’m just offering some friendly advice,’ I said, then reached for my phone in my pants pocket. It was buzzing.

Bloch was calling.

‘What’s happening?’

‘Bruno is down. The stranger appeared. I tagged him in the arm but he’s on the run. We’re in pursuit. Get down here right now.’

‘I’ve got to go. Bloch and Lake are chasing the stranger,’ I said. I grabbed my coat and keys and ran out. I heard Elly calling after me, but I ignored her. I had to move.

Within thirty seconds, I was behind the wheel of my Mustang, racking up speeding fines as I blitzed downtown, blowing two red lights.

Bloch was now on speaker in my car. I could hear her breathing heavily, her voice punctuated by the pounding of her boots on the sidewalk. She was running fast.

‘He just got into a black Toyota Camry. I’m headed back to my car.’

‘Where’s Lake?’ I said.

‘He’s ahead of me, waiting at my Jeep. Where are you?’

‘I’m five minutes away. Second Avenue, headed south. Just passing Twenty-fifth Street. Where’s Lake’s car?’

‘Beside mine. He’s a terrible driver and his car is a piece of shit. He’ll ride shotgun with me.’

I could hear her breathing slowing, her pace decreasing. The sound of her Jeep unlocking and then, seconds later, the roar of the engine.

‘He’s turned east on Sixth. Black Camry, New York plate but I can’t get close enough to read it yet.’

I slammed on the brakes for a red light, let five cars pass in front of me. Waited until it was clear then blew through the red before it could change.

‘I’m passing Seventeenth Street,’ I said.

Bloch had put me on speaker. I could hear Lake swearing in the background.

‘Watch it!’ he cried.

‘You okay?’ I asked.

‘Fine, he’s turning onto Avenue A.’

‘How far ahead is he?’

‘Two blocks, but not for much longer,’ she said, the engine revving high, the gear changing, then more revs.

If he was headed south with a car on his tail, there was little to no way to shake it unless he was a highly skilled driver. My guess was he was nowhere near as good as Bloch. In that case, he had one chance – get off the island to give himself more options, including the interstate.

‘Don’t get killed,’ I said. ‘Just stay on him. He’s going for the Williamsburg Bridge. I’m going to stay on Second and cut onto Delancey Street, see if I can head him off.’

For once, even at this hour, I had a clear road ahead. Green lights all the way.

I crushed the accelerator into the floor, hit seven thousand revs, then heeled and toed the gear change into fourth and watched the needle on the speedo climb past eighty miles an hour.

At this speed, it didn’t matter what happened to the lights. If they turned red, there was nothing I could do. I pulled round a yellow cab, heard the horn blasting after me and prayed I didn’t run into the NYPD or a truck driver coming out of a side street.

I gripped the wheel, eased off the gas as I shot through the intersection onto Chrystie Street, blew past Sara D. Roosevelt Park and held my breath.

Foot off the gas. Clutch. I dropped into second, slammed the wheel left and pulled the handbrake.

The tires smoked and screamed in the turn as I laid rubber across three lanes and arced onto Delancey Street where I let the brakes go and hit the gas, fighting with the wheel to correct the slide and wrestle the Mustang into a straight line.

‘I’m on Delancey. Where is he?’

‘He’s on Essex, turning into Delancey now. Lake called it in. Police are on the way. They’re going to close the bridge on the Brooklyn side.’

Up ahead, maybe a block and a half away, I saw a black Toyota Camry fire straight across the intersection, its tail flicking out, catching another vehicle. The horns blared, but the bump helped the Camry bounce back on course.

I chanced a glance down Essex Street, saw Bloch’s Jeep easing out of the intersection. She fell in behind me.

Now there were two of us bearing down on the Camry.

And gaining.

The Camry’s brake lights flashed red, then it pulled out and overtook a camper van.

Sparks flew from the exhaust as it hit the slipway for the bridge and began to climb.

‘At this speed, he’ll be across the bridge in under a minute,’ I said. ‘Those cops better close it.’

‘They’re almost there,’ said Lake.

We climbed, and I followed the Camry, weaving through the light traffic as we rose above the city. Soon we would be over the East River.

This guy was incredibly smart. That’s what made him predictable. One way or another, this would all be over once we made the other side of the bri—

Jesus!

He was stopping.

I stood on the brakes.

The Mustang fishtailed, angled toward the concrete barrier separating me from a hundred-foot drop into the river. I fought the slide with the wheel, then pulled the handbrake.

The Camry, instead of speeding to get over the bridge before it could be closed, had pulled up in a cloud of tire smoke and angled his car to block both lanes of the bridge.

The Mustang came to a stop just a few feet from the Camry.

Then the driver’s door opened and a man, dressed in black, dived out onto the ground.

I unhooked my seatbelt, threw myself on the passenger seat just as the man’s head came up again over the hood of the Camry, a pistol in his hand. I heard three shots, two through the windshield and the third blew it out, showering me in broken glass.

More firing. This time I heard the rounds hitting metal, but not my car.

I took a quick peek in my side mirror, saw Lake and Bloch getting out of the Jeep, guns in their hands, using the heavy doors for cover as they fired back.

This was my chance.

I kicked open the passenger door, crawled out as fast as I could onto the asphalt and, keeping low, I made it to the trunk of my car.

Over the sound of gunfire, I heard sirens.

I never thought I’d be glad to see the cops, but tonight was an exception.

‘Drop the gun and step out!’ I cried. ‘The cops are blocking the other side of the bridge. You’re not going to make it to the interstate. You got nowhere to go.’

The firing stopped.

I heard a voice.

‘I was never going for the freeway. I know when it’s over.’

A volley of shots from the stranger saw Lake and Bloch duck behind the Jeep doors, holes appearing in the hood and side panels of the car.

As the firing stopped, I peeked out.

The man stood in the middle of the highway, staring at an empty gun. He spun and vaulted over the concrete barrier onto the balcony beneath one of the support towers.

Bloch and Lake started running toward me. I turned and ran for the stranger.

I jumped the barrier, and my feet slid on the iron-grille walkway as I landed.

It was an area not much bigger than a barbershop floor, but bags of cement, stacks of traffic cones and a Porta-Potty took up most of the space.

This was an area for the highway and construction workers who were always carrying out repairs to the bridge.

A railing wrapped round the semicircular balcony.

At the apex of that half circle was an iron streetlight, with three globe bulbs, each of them about three times the size of a soccer ball – t he old-fashioned, ornamental type of lights that gave the bridge so much of its charm.

I heard Bloch and Lake coming over the barrier, their feet stomping on the iron walkway.

At first, I couldn’t see the man we’d been chasing.

Then, from behind a stack of orange water barrels, he grabbed hold of the iron streetlight pole and levered himself up to stand on the railing.

‘Stop!’ I cried.

Bloch said, ‘Don’t move.’

He looked back over his shoulder at the three of us. Then looked down.

Through the grille, I could see the East River, maybe a hundred and twenty feet below, dark and swirling. The wind was strong and as sharp as ice up here.

I took out my phone, held it low, angled the camera lens toward the lights and hit video record. It was then that I noticed he held his left arm stiffly. Blood was dripping from a wound there.

‘Cops are almost here. Don’t do it. Step down. Tell them what you’ve done. You can still do some good. You can tell them how you poisoned James and Harriet.’

He said nothing, just stared down into the river below.

The sirens grew louder. Getting closer now.

‘Come down. Don’t do it.’

I held up the phone, capturing the man in full frame.

Even when I looked back at the footage from that night, I couldn’t tell what happened first.

Did he jump first, or did I move first?

Impossible to tell.

The man raised his right leg, held it over the edge for a second, and then hopped into the air and disappeared.

I ran to the edge, grabbing the balcony railing.

Lake and Bloch joined me on either side and stared into the darkness below.

We saw the man falling, hitting the water with a terrible schtoooom sound, like a missile breaking a wave.

The splash was ten feet high, white water flowing through the air and crashing back down.

Rolling red and blue lights painted the green iron bridge as the sirens roared to a stop.

For five minutes, none of us moved. We stared at the water, looking for signs of life.

There were none.