Cold Hit (28 page)

I was frozen in the same spot, accustomed now to the obscure lighting and the lack of contrast between the gray steel mammoths and the interior walls and ceiling. My yellow linen suit stood out against the dark colors like the bull’s-eye on a target, and my head whipped back and forth, not knowing from which direction my friend would appear.

At the same moment as I saw Mercer’s hand grab the end of the ellipse, I heard him yell, “Alex, DOWN! Now!” The discharge of his gun resounded like a cannon in the open space between the sculptures as he fired at someone I could not see.

I squatted on my haunches as though I were on the starting blocks of a relay, fingertips poised to lift me up and out the moment Mercer gave the next order. His single shot was met by a return salvo of two or three bullets, which pinged off the side of the steel almost even with the level of my head as I crouched and cowered.

Mercer’s left hand reached around for me, and I moved to meet it. Without more than a glance, he grabbed me by the wrist and we started to jog in the direction of one of the other structures, Mercer’s large frame running interference for me as we searched in vain for something that would provide a shield.

“It’s your stocking-mask guy from the garage,” he whispered, trying to catch his breath and check the gun that he usually kept holstered on his ankle.

“The girl?” I knew the answer before I asked the question.

“Dead.” He stopped to listen for noise and heard none. “At some point I’m gonna signal you to run, and you’re gonna move like a gazelle to get to that front door and call in a ten thirteen.”

Word on a police radio that an officer needed assistance was the universal beacon to summon cops to any emergency situation in which another cop’s life was at risk.

“Not without—”

“That’s movie bullshit, Coop. When I send you, you fly.” There was no point arguing. It was a decision I would have to make if an opportunity even presented itself to us.

Mercer stepped in front of me, practically flattening me against the side of one of the exteriors. He must have heard a sound that I had not picked up. He cocked his ear in the direction of its source and moved in a 180 -degree arc as he turned to fire off another round. He swung back in front of me and waited for the return fire, as my sweaty palms pressed an imprint on top of the dark steel.

Now the padded footsteps had drawn closer, and I could actually hear them running across the floor on the far side of this ellipse, toward our position.

“We’re moving,” Mercer mouthed to me as he briefly turned his head to face mine. Again he took me by the wrist, and we dashed around into the sculpture we had stood behind, and through its far end, bullets chasing us and bouncing off the cylindrical walls as we zigged and zagged together.

I trusted that Mercer was trying to find his way to the front door. Despite the variety in shape and curve, every one of the steel walls looked identical to me. Their height and their solidity had become oppressive, and I tried to steady myself as I ran behind him, praying that he had maintained some idea of the relationship between these gigantic barriers to our freedom.

Pure silence again. Mercer bent his head to peer around the edge, then looked back at me and winked. His lips formed the word “now,” and he tugged on my jacket sleeve to try to propel me out in front of him. With blind faith in his instincts, I broke into a trot and sped through the length of one more sculpture. At its far end, I thought I made out the doorway that led to the street and an escape. I looked over my shoulder to make sure that Mercer was coming along with me, and as I did I could see the expression of horror cross his face.

“Down!” he screamed at me again as he saw the gunman run into place behind my back, aiming at me from a site between me and the gallery exit.

Shots were fired from both guns, and someone shrieked in pain. I couldn’t tell whose voice had cried out, but in the split second after hearing the noise, I bolted in Mercer’s direction.

“Stay right here, Alex. I got him.” Mercer’s gun was in his hand as he overtook me and raced toward the masked figure, who was bent over from the waist and trying to run to the door. He seemed to be dragging his left leg.

I ignored Mercer’s order and chased after him as he let himself out the door. When I was within ten feet of the front wall, I could see the body of the receptionist slumped over in a leather armchair, blood oozing from her forehead a fraction of an inch away from her pierced eyebrow. I stopped in my tracks, turning to kneel and check her for a pulse.

As I dropped to my knees, Mercer was edging himself to the long metal bar that pushed out onto the street. Suddenly daylight flooded into the huge space of the gallery as the door was pulled by someone on the outside. A burst of light exploded close to where I saw Mercer standing, at about the same time as I heard the noise of the discharge. The gunman had swung the heavy entrance open from the sidewalk and let off three more shots into the gallery.

Mercer Wallace collapsed to the floor without uttering a sound.

I picked up Mercer’s hand and spoke his name with an urgency I had never known before. His eyes opened, and he tried to talk but could not.

“Thank God,” I said. “Stay with me, Mercer. I’m getting help.”

The doorway gave against my push and I was on the street. Three teenage boys were Rollerblading, heading westward to the piers. I had no idea where in the gallery I had dropped my tote and the cell phone I kept inside it. “Call nine-one-one,” I shouted at them. “Please call nine-one-one — tell them a cop is shot. Please!”

One of the kids held his index finger and thumb together in an “okay”sign and skated off, I assumed, to a telephone on the corner. The other two came to the sidewalk and were only seconds behind me as I scrambled back to Mercer’s side.

I sat on the floor next to his motionless body and tried to find where he was hit. His eyes flickered open and he attempted to follow the movements of my hands.

“Oh, shit,” I said, both to myself and to the boys, who stood dumbfounded at my back, not knowing what to make of the dead girl and the dying cop. “Are you sure your friend’s going to call nine-one-one? One of you should stand in front of this place so you can point it out when the police car comes.” I was barking commands like a general. “Get out to Tenth Avenue. Flag down anyone you can find to get in here to help.”

One kid took off but the other watched with fascination as I folded back the lapels of Mercer’s jacket and saw the bullet hole that had torn through his clothes and perforated the left side of his chest, terribly close to his heart.

“Bad,” Mercer mumbled as I held my ear over his mouth to better hear him. He opened his lips to say more. No sound came out as he turned his head away from me and his eyelids shut.

“Don’t close your eyes, Mercer. Don’t close your eyes, please.” I could hear sirens in the distance and I kept on praying that he wouldn’t lose consciousness, that I wouldn’t see his eyes roll back into his head. I held one of his strong hands in my own, stroking his face and head, trying to keep him with me by talking at him ceaselessly.

“Listen to me, Mercer,” I begged him. “I can hear a siren. They’re on the way. We’ll get you to Vinny’s in three minutes. Stay with me, Mercer. You got that son of a bitch, now stay with me, please.” Saint Vincent’s Hospital was less than ten blocks away, with an emergency room well equipped to handle trauma like gunshot wounds.

I watched his chest move up and down, his labored breathing giving off a low, rumbling noise from his throat. “Keep looking at me, Mercer. I’m gonna be with you through everything, just give me a chance. Breathe for me.” I was wiping sweat off his forehead with my fingers as it dripped down both sides of his neck and into his eyes.

The smallest blader skated back in the door. “We got a fire truck, okay?”

“That’s great, that’s excellent. Hear that, Mercer? We got a truck coming in.” I turned back to the kid. “Tell them we need an ambulance.” He was gone again.

Mercer’s mouth curled up on one side, as though he was trying to smile. I pressed the palm of his hand to my lips. Again I started babbling anything I could think of to keep him alert. I talked about Mike and about food and about the department and about how he could go to my house on the Vineyard for his recovery, and as I was rambling on to the next topic, four firemen in all their gear tore into the room and surrounded us.

I got up and stepped back, telling them that Mercer was a detective and that he had been shot at close range in the chest. Before I could finish the explanation, an ambulance had pulled up next to the hook and ladder parked in front of the gallery. I got lost in the commotion as the EMS team started an IV drip in Mercer’s arm and loaded him onto a stretcher. As I stood on the sidewalk, five radio cars pulled into the block from both directions, responding to the call for assistance that each cop dreads most of all, for himself and for everyone else in blue.

Now I was just a hanger-on at the fringe of the growing crowd. None of the officers who arrived knew me, and my identification and badge were somewhere in my bag on the floor of the gallery. I pushed the kids who had helped me out of the way, trying to explain to the cops who Mercer was and what had happened.

The EMS workers lifted the stretcher onto the rear of the ambulance, and as it tilted, I could see that Mercer’s eyes were closed shut. “I’m going with you,” I shouted over the heads of the firemen who were clustered around the wagon.

“Sorry, lady. You’ll have to meet us at the hospital — Seventh Avenue and Eleventh Street.” One of the men was getting into the driver’s seat and the other was closing the first side of the double rear doors.

I squeezed ahead and climbed up onto the back running board. There was no point telling them I was an assistant district attorney. That fact, without any supporting identification, didn’t buy me a ride on the ambulance. “I’m his wife!” I screamed at them. “I’m going with him.” I ducked into the van, and the medical technician came in behind me and slammed the door.

I held Mercer’s hand for the short ride, ambulance sirens blaring, as we were escorted to Saint Vincent’s by three police cars leading the charge downtown.

I couldn’t tell if the moisture on the crease near Mercer’s left eye was perspiration or a tear, but a big drop formed and hung there until the shifting of the stretcher dislodged it as his body was removed and carried toward the entrance of the emergency room. He didn’t open his eyes, not even for a moment.

“Stop beating yourself up over it, kid. He’s a cop and you’re not. Aren’t we supposed to take bullets for the rest of you ungrateful assholes who delight in calling us pigs?
You
didn’t shoot him. Some friggin’ mutt who I should have alone in my office for maybe fifteen minutes…”

I had beeped Chapman even before I called the lieutenant and the district attorney. “It’s my fault we kept the meet without telling you about it.”

“Great, blondie. You wanted
me
pumped full of lead too, huh?” Mike had raced to the hospital, arriving within an hour of my call, and was waiting with me for word from Mercer’s surgeon. He was white with fear about his friend’s medical condition, and his fingers combed through his hair constantly — a sure sign of his agitation.

“What did you tell Spencer?” Mercer’s father was a widower, retired from his job as a mechanic at Delta Air Lines. Mike had stopped by his home in Queens on his way to the hospital, to tell Spencer Wallace about the shooting.

“Man, that sucked. Better me than seeing some chaplain on your doorstep, like it was normal for him to drop in every week to pray for Mercer’s well-being. I just didn’t want his pop to hear it on the news later without some personal contact first. Might be the toughest thing I’ve ever done.” Mike stopped pacing long enough to sit down on one of the institutional beige vinyl chairs in the waiting lounge and rest his head back against the neck cushion.

“Did he want to come here with you?” I knew Spencer had already suffered a mild stroke earlier in the year and had not yet fully recovered. But Mercer was the light of his life, and it tore me apart to think of how the impact of this event would pain him.

“Yeah, but I told him absolutely not. He just looks so weak to begin with, Alex, and I knocked whatever remained right out of his guts. His sister lives down the block, so I called her to come in to sit with him for the afternoon.” Mercer had two ex-wives and no current steady. “Spencer was worried about you, too. He just looked at me and said that you and I are Mercer’s family now. We’re the ones to be with him today.”

Mike was on his feet again, first circling the room, then walking out the doorway.

“Where are you going?”

“I got some calls to make. Sit tight.”

“There’s a phone right here. We can use my credit card number to get an outside line.”

Mike ignored me and walked off. I understood the dynamic and knew that, as close as the three of us were, I was an outsider in these circumstances. The fraternity of police officers who put their lives on the line every day for the rest of us circles the wagons pretty tightly when one of their own is harmed. I had been there today with Mercer, but I had escaped injury. Most cops swear they would rather have given their own life than to have failed to protect a partner. I didn’t carry a gun and would not have been expected to play the role that a police officer would play in this situation. But my heart was heavy with guilt knowing that I had drawn Mercer into a situation that had, perhaps, cost him his life.

“Are you Miss Cooper?”

The halls were swarming with cops — some of whom had responded to the news of a downed colleague, others of whom Mercer had worked with and had heard of the shooting through the department grapevine. The commissioner was coming back by helicopter from a weekend upstate, and the mayor was expected to arrive at the hospital within the next hour to visit Mercer’s bedside.

“Yes, I am.”

“Lieutenant Gibbons asked me to bring these to you. Thought you might need ’em.” The young patrolman handed me a brown paper bag. Inside were my identification badge, wallet, keys, and cell phone. “Said to tell you that he had to keep the pocketbook and the rest of the contents to send over to Latent to be processed for prints.”