19 Purchase Street (62 page)

Trying to correct course at one point, she steered round the stern frame of what had once been a coal barge, committed the Riva to a long narrow channel between that barge and another similar one. No sooner had she completed the turn when she saw an Awesome come into that same channel two hundred feet ahead.

Leslie shoved the Riva in reverse, hoping to back out from the channel and get away.

The driver of the Awesome put his boat into full forward speed. He was too intent on the Riva to notice the piling that had rotted off its base and floated free. Two feet in diameter, it was half submerged, caught in place in such a way that it extended across the channel.

The Awesome was up to fifty when it hit the piling. For a moment it was out of the water by eight feet, propellers whining as though they resented the air. The sharp bow of the Awesome stabbed into the rot of the barge on the left. The stern snapped forward, and the whole boat flipped. It struck the barge on the other side and flipped again, plowed through feeble timbers and ended upside down with air bubbles boiling around it.

Leslie tried another narrow channel. It turned out to be a dead end, blocked by an old white painted barge half-sunk and jammed in place. It was Gainer's guess that the white barge was all that lay between them and the open river. Again, the channel was not wide enough to turn the Riva around. Leslie was about to start backing out when Gainer had her hold it right there. He climbed over the windshield to the bow. The hull plankings of the barge ran vertically, were about fourteen inches wide. Gainer tested some of those with the flat of his foot. Even that slight pressure caused them to give a bit. As one plank fell off completely Gainer saw how it was wet-rotted away just below the water line. He motioned for Leslie to go ahead slowly.

The Riva pressed at the old hull planks with its bow. That the planks might resist was an illusion. They swung up and inward as though hinged from above. The rusted nails that held them creaked as they were twisted out.

Gainer and Leslie ducked down in the cockpit to avoid the planks that dropped. The windshield passed beneath a huge horizontal beam, cleared it by mere inches.

Now the Riva was in the open belly of the barge. Its propeller clanked against hard underwater debris, perhaps there would not be depth enough. The Riva pitched once to the right as it collided with some mass below the surface but at such low speed it recovered quickly, apparently undamaged.

To the opposite hull of the barge was thirty-five feet. Gainer and Leslie hoped the planks there would be just as cooperative, but when the bow of the Riva was butted into them, they didn't budge. Leslie tried planks to the left of that spot and found those to be equally solid. Perhaps only the hull on the shoreward, muddier side was rotted away. If so, they would have to retreat if they could.

The sun had gone. Only leftover light now. They would be lost for sure among the barges.

Leslie tried some of the planks to the right. They also held fast. Then, persistently, others in that direction. She rammed harder with the bow of the Riva and finally a plank gave, was knocked completely away.

Through the opening of it, they saw the lighted city skyline across the river.

Encouraged by the one plank that had come loose, Leslie butted the Riva against the plank adjacent.

It did not give.

Leslie was through being cautious. She backed the Riva as far off as she could, gave it half throttle, sent it bulling into the planks. The sleek speedboat was not made for or accustomed to such abuse. The planks were tough old workers. It seemed a standoff, but then, the old planks buckled with impact, they split in two. Their sharp, splintery ends scraped resentful scars along the varnished forward deck of the Riva, bit hard enough against the windshield to cause that to crack. Gainer and Leslie just did get down out of the way.

The Riva emerged from the old barge, enjoyed deeper water with a kind of victorious surge. Leslie headed it upriver in the direction of the Seventy-ninth Street Basin. She switched on the running lights, feeling that confident that they had gotten away. Actually, night had not brought much of a change. The moon was close to full and visibility almost as good as it had been an hour earlier, especially out here on the water.

Two hundred feet ahead on the left.

Suddenly appeared an elongated black shape that had to be an Awesome. It came roaring out from the dead barges, having finally found a way.

Leslie swung the Riva sharply around. Cut the running lights and ran full speed.

The Awesome happened to be the one with Sweet aboard. Sweet spotted the Riva, directed the driver's attention to it. There would be no getting away this time. Sweet had an automatic rifle with a full magazine and a couple of spares. He would wait until he was close alongside the Riva. He had revised his thinking somewhat. More convenient for him now if he wasted only one of the two. Either the man or the woman, it didn't matter which. Save the trouble of having to search all over that fucking island for the money. Then, of course, he'd put the finishing touch on the whole matter by finishing off that one. The most difficult thing under these circumstances was how to be careful enough to waste only the first one. That problem made Sweet lean back toward his original intention—just spray a couple of magazine loads into the cockpit of the Riva, really put a lot of holes into both the fuckers.

The Riva had a head start of about two hundred yards, but it would not take long for the Awesome to close that gap. Leslie knew once they were in the open bay there would be no hope. She put the Riva on a diagonal course off the tip of Manhattan.

One short blast from a nautical horn.

There, ahead, were three horizontal rows of lights, one above the other. Long symmetrical rows moving on the water. As the Riva proceeded in that direction the lights transformed into identical windows and the yellow-orange mass they were a part of could be made out.

The Staten Island Ferry.

Three decks high above the water line, three hundred feet long.

On its way to the ferry terminal at the Battery.

Leslie kept the Riva headed straight for it. It seemed she meant to ram it but she timed the speed of the ferry precisely with her own, cut across its wake and under its stern. She executed a fairly wide turn to the left and, at full speed, ran for the ferry's bow to cut back in front of it.

The Awesome was only seventy yards behind. Its driver was not fooled by Leslie's evasive tactics. He followed her around the ferry.

By then the ferry was approaching its slip at the terminal. It grumbled and shuddered as though slowing was a strain. The outer reaches of its slip were no more than two hundred feet ahead—huge pilings driven deep into the river bottom so they could stand firm fifteen feet above the water line; hundreds of them bunched to form extensions like a pair of spread legs, a wide but narrowing opening that the ferry could easily find and be fitted into.

Another blast from the ferry's bow, so brief it seemed either bored or timid.

Twice more the Awesome chased the Riva completely around the ferry, following without difficulty but not making up much distance because of all the turning. Sweet's impatience was edging him. All this going round and round was a waste of everyone's time. It was also making his stomach queasy.

On the third time around Leslie cut even closer to the stern of the ferry, and as soon as she'd cleared it she asked the Riva for its sharpest, shortest turn to the left. Again the Riva's bow went nearly straight up, twisted like it was undecided about whether or not to flip over. Only its propeller was in the water for a moment, and then it smacked down on the water so violently Gainer and Leslie were almost thrown overboard. Leslie slowed and ran the Riva close alongside the ferry, so close the Riva's gunwale scraped along the ferry's metal hull. At midship she brought the Riva to match the slowness of the ferry, held it there in touch.

Gainer glanced up ten feet above to the lower deck within the lighted ferry, saw a man reading the
Daily News
and a woman wearing a white nurse's cap. The light they were in prevented them from seeing out into the darkness.

The Awesome came chasing around the stern of the ferry. It swung as wide as before, spotted the Riva but too late, due to its own speed and the degree of the turn. It went by. No matter, it would simply go around again. Sweet believed the Riva had given up, was pressing up to the larger vessel out of desperation, anything for protection.

The ferry reached the outermost pilings of its slip, played its powerful spotlights on them. More often than not it did not come in straight and neat but rather approximately, using the pilings and the way they narrowed the slip right and left to finally have the lip of its landing ramp align with the ramp of the terminal.

This time the ferry came in at an angle to the right. Its bow collided with pilings on that side.

The pilings creaked and gave way some under the tremendous pressure.

Still Leslie kept the Riva midship of the ferry, close as possible to its hull.

It seemed to Gainer that they were headed into a lethal wedge, that there was no way they could avoid being crushed between the ferry and the pilings. And now the Awesome was coming up on them, nearly rammed their stern with its pointed bow.

The forward part of the ferry caromed off the pilings on the right and went for those on the left, all the while moving slowly but steadily deeper into the slip.

Leslie gave a sudden throttle to the Riva. It surged forward through the opening now between the ferry and the pilings on the right.

The Awesome followed.

Leslie swung the Riva sharply around the bow of the ferry. There was barely room to maneuver.

The ferry pounded against the pilings on its left. The pilings absorbed the stress and slung the huge vessel in the other direction. Creating an opening on the left.

But not much of an opening. It looked no more than six or seven feet wide.

Go for it! Gainer believed he actually shouted that because it was so loud in his mind. It was their only choice. In another moment the huge mass of the ferry would crush them.

Leslie asked the Riva for all it had.

The Riva answered as though it too knew it was going for its life. The squeeze couldn't have been tighter. The Riva scraped against the ferry on one side, against the pilings on the other. Scraped through. Ran clear and swiftly from the slip.

The Awesome was wider-beamed. Sweet yelled at the driver to follow the Riva through that opening but the driver saw he couldn't possibly make it. He reversed the Awesome, managed to get it turned around. Only to find that on the opposite side the space between the ferry and the pilings was even narrower.

The Awesome was trapped in the slit.

Sweet only had time to think about jumping overboard because, next moment, there was no longer any water to jump into. The ferry splintered the Awesome, crushed it, the driver and Sweet, like they were in a trash compactor.

R
ATHER
than go to the Seventy-ninth Street Basin and risk running into another of the Awesomes, Gainer and Leslie went up the East River to the Bristol Pier.

Before mooring the Riva there, Gainer flung the automatic rifle overboard, gave it a hateful heave for all the good it hadn't done him. The plunking splash the rifle made as it hit the water seemed appropriately to punctuate the end of their New York Harbor miseries.

They walked beneath FDR Drive to First Avenue, caught a taxi up to Forty-seventh Street.

Chapin's apartment.

Gainer buzzed, kept the buzzer pressed in. When there was no response he tried the street-level door. It was open. So was the entrance door to Chapin's living quarters.

Chapin wasn't there but he wasn't long gone. Gainer tested some of the stubs in the piled ashtrays. Most were stale and stiff, perhaps weeks old, a few were still pliable, had been mashed out that day. Two glasses on the side table, among a lot of dry smudged others, had wet rings under them from recent condensation. Three or four hours ago at the most, Gainer estimated.

He looked around, inside dresser drawers and closets for any sign that Chapin had gone for good or might possibly be returning. It appeared as though everything had just been left there, including a Smith and Wesson 0.357 magnum revolver in the cabinet of the nightstand, loaded, and a well-worn red leather personal telephone-number book among the tortured bed linens. The book had the numbers of at least a hundred working girls in it. No second names, all first. Many scratched out, many with numbers changed six or seven times. Despite appearances, Gainer didn't believe Chapin would be back. Presumably money could replace anything—with something better.

They went upstairs to Chapin's workroom.

As soon as they opened the door they heard Chapin:

“Gainer, my boy, you didn't ask me.”

It was only Chapin's voice coming from four perfectly positioned speakers. The opening of the door had activated a tape. There was such fidelity to it and it was set at such a normal conversational level that it seemed Chapin was there, in person.

“You assumed when you should have asked,” the tape went on. “I would have told you how I'd be, maybe. But probably not. Anyway, I've never yet been able to resist a fucking when it was bent over for me. That's my bedrock nature.”

Gainer was making fists in his jacket pockets.

Chapin's voice went on: “Usually I don't have compunctions about it. Usually I slip it to someone and if it hurts it hurts. But I like you about a million times more than anyone around and I've got considerations. I don't mean by that I've got a bothering conscience, just considerations.”

Gainer went over to one of the speakers, jabbed his elbow into it and tore its cone. No matter, the other three speakers continued right on.

“Gainer, believe me, all that money would have made you dead. No one can fuck with so much and be out front with those he's dealing with. The way things were for you, of course, you didn't have much choice. The way I saw it you were going to get whacked out no matter what. With me it's different. I'm the invisible man, old pal no name, who nobody knows had anything to do with it. Only you can connect me and you don't have the legs for that, the way you stand.”