Devil's Bridge (26 page)

“I didn’t even go in past the wooden boards, Detective. I swear it. I just waited for Cormac in the hallway.”

“What? To come out with the sheet and the handcuffs?”

“
Handcuffs?
I didn’t see any handcuffs,” Fitzgerald said, rattling the arm with the metal bracelet. “They make noise like this. There were no cuffs. What felony are you talking about?”

“Kidnap, if you’re feeling lucky. Murder, if you’re acting as stupid as I think you are.”

I was close to the kid’s breaking point.

“And his friend?”

“Gone. He said there was no one in there.”

“Was he surprised?” Mercer asked.

“Not surprised so much as relieved.”

I took the handcuff key from Jimmy North and held it up for Fitzgerald to see. “You want me to believe you never asked your pal who he was trying to help?”

“It’s true.”

“Or today, that you never pressed him for what he had put himself—and you—at risk for?” I asked, walking toward him.

“I told you. I thought he was doing a good thing, for himself and for everyone afraid of his uncle Emmet,” Fitzgerald said. “It was over today. I didn’t think there was no risk in walking back with him to the fort. Now are you letting me go?”

He watched as I put the key in the handcuff lock. “Actually, I thought I’d power it up another notch. See if there’s anything Cormac said that you might have forgotten to tell me.”

I’d never been into brutality as a means for getting information from a perp. But I thought I might be capable of anything to get Coop back.

Pete Fitzgerald yelped as I turned the metal on his wrist.

“Better?” I asked.

“Make him stop!” the kid screamed.

I knew Mercer was about to shut me down.

“Anything?”

“Cormac was relieved, is all,” Fitzgerald said, as fast as I asked the question. He took one more glance back, in the fading light, to the boat where Cormac was restrained. “He came out holding that sheet and told me his friend was gone. And . . .”

He paused.

“And what?”

“He said something that made no sense, so I ignored it.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“He said, ‘Thank God he’s gone.’ And I asked him where to? ’Cause so far as I was aware, Emmet Renner was still in Woodside. Might not be smart for this friend to be going back,” Fitzgerald said. “And Cormac’s answer to me was ‘Manhattan.’”

I grabbed his shirt and shook him. “Did he say where in Manhattan? What about it made no sense to you?”

“The lighthouse. The lighthouse in Manhattan,” Fitzgerald said. “I would have told you earlier, but it made no sense to me.”

I let go of him faster than he could breathe. I handed the key back to Jimmy North and told him to unlock the cuffs.

Fitzgerald doubled over and started to cry. “It made no sense because there’s no damn lighthouse in Manhattan.”

I started to trot down to the dock.

“What do I do with him now?” Jimmy shouted as Mercer ran after me.

“Take him to the squad with you,” I said. “Feed and water him, Jimmy. Give him a gold medal and get everything else he wants to say out on the table.”

“Hold up, Mike!” Mercer called out.

I stopped in front of the wooden crates, opened one, and removed half a dozen Roman candles from inside it.

“What did the kid say that turned you around?” Mercer asked.

“The lighthouse in Manhattan. That’s where we’re going.”

“Why? Where is it?”

“If you’d been any closer to it this morning, you would have bumped into it,” I said, making my way to the Intrepid.

“Where?”

“Jeffrey’s Hook, Mercer. The last lighthouse standing in Manhattan is at Jeffrey’s Hook.”

I jumped onto the deck of the boat and stowed the fireworks on the rear seat. I put the key in the ignition and started to untie the rope at the bow.

“Tell me why,” Mercer said, his hand on the stern cleat.

“’Cause it’s Renner territory, if I’m thinking right. ’Cause I played there as a kid, like I was telling Jimmy this morning, and now the whole picture’s coming into focus.”

“Where’s Jeffrey’s Hook?”

I straightened up and looked at Mercer. “I’m going to tell you what this is and why I think it might be the place Renner would lure me to. And then I’m going to ask you and Peterson to set the trap, okay?”

“Nothing’s okay till I hear you out.”

“Listen up, ’cause I’m moving fast,” I said, turning on the running lights at the front of the boat. “Jeffrey’s Hook is one of the most treacherous points in the Hudson River, right next to Fort Washington.”

“Under the George Washington Bridge?” Mercer said.

“Exactly. The little red lighthouse,” I said. “But long before there was a bridge, there was this rocky piece of land—the hook—jutting out into the river at a site where there were more shipwrecks than anyplace in the city except for Hell Gate.”

I took the flashlight out of my rear pants pocket and placed it on the cockpit.

“In the early nineteenth century, the only thought given to preventing wrecks was to hang a red pole with two lights on it out into the river. It wasn’t till the 1920s that the city bought this old lighthouse from Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Ten years later, when the George Washington Bridge opened right on top of the spot, there was no longer a need for the little beacon.”

“But it’s obviously still standing,” Mercer said.

“Obsolete but still standing,” I said. “What’s the date? Today’s date?”

“It’s Friday. October twentieth.”

“There’s your answer. The lighthouse is open to the public for one week a year every fall. One single week. The rest of the time it’s closed. I bet the kidnappers hit the last night of open season on Wednesday—the annual festival. Needed a place to stash their victim for a couple of days.”

“So they had Lonigan create a makeshift B and B inside the old fort for a couple of nights,” Mercer said. “There was enough activity on Liberty Island, with the concert tomorrow night, to make their comings and goings fit in unobtrusively, no matter what time of day or night they arrived—deliverymen, sound engineers, caterers, crews to erect tents.”

“Fort Washington and that rocky point at Jeffrey’s Hook is a comfort zone for Emmet Renner,” I said. “It’s isolated and remote. An easy place to break into, and no one around to disturb him. One of his playgrounds on the Hudson River. It’s a dark comfort zone for a dark killer.”

“What else do we need?” Mercer said, about to step on the gunwale and get on the boat.

But I pushed hard with both hands and the bow separated from the dock.

“You’re not coming with me, man. You’ve got better things to—”

“Don’t do this, Mike.”

“Throw me that rope,” I said.

“You’ve got the Lonigan kid.”

“Damn right I do. I swear I’ll take good care of him if you work the rest of this with the lieutenant like I need you to do,” I said. “Now, throw the goddamn rope.”

I had already drifted too far away for Mercer to jump onto the boat. He tossed the line to me.

The engine was idling ten feet off the end of the dock.

“As soon as I take off, you call Lieutenant Peterson. Tell him why I’m sure it’s Renner and that I think the red lighthouse is where he’s got Coop.”

“I’m dialing now,” Mercer said. “That much I knew.”

“Tell him no lights and sirens, okay? No John Wayne macho-commando operation at the fort,” I said. “I think I can surprise him from the water.”

“Dumbest of a lot of dumb things I’ve heard out of your mouth, Mike.”

“Peterson needs to get Emergency Services on the bridge. There are three or four paths that lead from the surrounding park area to the lighthouse itself. And an abandoned trail across a bridge built in the 1840s for the first railroads. Those would be the logical approaches cops might make because they’re pretty well covered by tree foliage—even at this time in the season.”

“Got it.”

“And the Harbor Unit, Mercer. They need to stay back till I give you some kind of sign.”

“With any luck they’ll be there before you will.”

It was just after six o’clock and the sun had set.

I switched on the starboard and port lights—green for starboard and red for port—so that I could run the boat safely in the channel without getting hit. I eased the boat away from Liberty Island and circled it once to say one more thing to Mercer.

“No shooting. There’s to be no shooting until we see that Coop is alive and well.”

From this point on, once Mercer made the call, I would have no control over any of the decisions being made. But I needed to think that I did.

I pulled back on the throttle and made my way across the river to go north. The water taxis appeared to be full of commuters. I crept along at eight or ten knots because of the traffic, despite my desire to race to Jeffrey’s Hook.

I hadn’t gotten farther than Battery Park City when my phone rang.

It was Vickee, calling from the press office at One Police Plaza.

“Game’s up, Mike,” she said. “The commissioner wants you to come in to headquarters stat.”

“Have you talked to Mercer?”

“He said he doesn’t know where you are.” Her voice was covered in a crisp layer of frost. “And I don’t believe him.”

Good man,
I thought.
Great friend.

“What’s changed?” I said. “Mercer’s not lying. Peterson sent me home.”

“There’s a ransom note, Mike.”

I gripped the steering wheel of the Intrepid. I thought I was going to be sick.

“What does it say? What’s the demand?”

“No demand yet. A note tucked under the windshield wiper of the district attorney’s car when his security detail went downstairs at six o’clock,” Vickee said. “‘Alexandra Cooper is alive’ is what it says. There’ll be video proof at ten
P.M.
”

I pulled on the throttle to ramp up my speed. “So why does Scully want me? Why does anyone think this is real?”

“He wants you here to protect you from yourself, Mike. From doing something stupid when we’ve just been offered a glimmer of hope,” she said. I’d never heard an edge in Vickee’s voice until just now. “There’s an inked fingerprint on the note next to Alex’s name. We’re checking it now against the prints in her DA’s employment file. Then we’ll know if this is for real.”

I heard the word
fingerprint
and I could only think of Westies bosses like Coonan and Renner who had kept fingers that they had cut off their victims. Another wave of nausea swept over me.

“I’ll see you at nine forty-five.”

I was cruising past a party boat with revelers celebrating on deck. I didn’t think the wake I was kicking up would disturb the large vessel. Speed seemed more important to me at this moment than safety.

“You’d better make it sooner than that, Mike,” Vickee said. “The commissioner is taking the story public in an hour. He’s holding a presser with Paul Battaglia. He knows he can’t sit on the story of Alex’s disappearance once the video goes viral, so he’s breaking the news himself.”

I moved the needle up so that I was doing twenty knots, and then twenty-five. I was flying over the water at thirty-five knots, past the piers that held giant cruise ships. I had a distance of about one hundred city blocks to go.

I didn’t know this stretch of the river. It seemed to be a straight shot toward the bridge. I could mark my progress by landmarks: the tall lighted spire of Riverside Church near 125th Street and the circular dome of Grant’s Tomb. The huge sewage-treatment plant loomed ahead of me, so I checked behind me for other boats, then veered off to the center of the fast-running waterway.

Trains speeding past me on the railroad tracks that ran alongside the river from Penn Station to the north made it impossible to hear almost anything else except the roar of their engines. I checked the depth finder and had plenty of water beneath me for the draw of my boat.

As soon as the detail on the giant gray towers of the George Washington Bridge came clearly into sight, I cut back on the throttle and slowed the boat’s speed, gradually, to below ten knots. I cut off the running lights and let my eyes adjust to the blackness all around me, from the starless city sky to the swirling current beneath me.

If it was going to be possible to surprise Emmet Renner, then it would have to be by a stealth-like approach from the Hudson.

I knew there were giant rocks that surrounded Jeffrey’s Hook. They were the reason for the existence of the lighthouse, although much of the shoreline had been dynamited to clear the passage for vessels when the GW was built. I needed to be on high alert so that I didn’t drive the boat aground before finalizing a plan.

The red paint of the lighthouse reflected the brilliant lights, strung like a necklace, that covered the beams on the great bridge from east tower to west. The sturdy little building was only forty feet high, dwarfed by the six-hundred-foot rise of the steel beams above her.

I caught a break. The lower half of the Hudson River—as far upstate as Troy—was a tidal estuary. The tide was shifting and carrying me northward, taking me closer and closer to the bridge, with only the slightest amount of engine thrust.

I picked up my phone and speed-dialed Mercer.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“On a Harbor Unit boat. About to catch up to you.”

I turned around, keeping both hands on the wheel, and spotted the blue-and-white NYPD vessel about a hundred yards off my stern.

“You’ve got to stay back, Mercer. That’s all I’m asking. Stay back till I signal,” I said. “How about the lieutenant?”

“He was already on his way to Queens when I called, but he’s rushing a team into place.

“There’ll be two men in the girders of the bridge and a crew surrounding the park,” Mercer said. “And you ought to know that Peterson told Scully everything, including the fact you have your own hostage.”

“Damn it.”

“Since the commissioner knows, there’ll be a real plan in play within the hour. Can you hold off one more hour, Mike?”

I didn’t know how to answer. It wasn’t in me to wait.

“Mike?”

“Can you stay back and douse the lights?” I asked.

I looked around again and the NYPD launch had gone black.

“Thanks for that. Now, as soon as I go past the lighthouse,” I said, “I’ll be out of sight. Your crew can show you on the charts that it’s best for me to stay east after passing the main point of Jeffrey’s Hook.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a stretch of huge rocks there that stand out of the water. Some of them get covered up when the tide comes all the way in, but that’s why you won’t see me. I’ll pull in against those boulders,” I said. “If you guys are willing to stay back, then I’ll wait.”

“You got it, Mike,” Mercer said.

I not only had the current and tides with me. I also had an idea.

I moved the boat as quickly and quietly as she would go, navigating a path around the giant rocks.

Jeffrey’s Hook was the narrowest point between the New York and New Jersey shorelines in this stretch of the Hudson River. That’s why it had been chosen as the spot on which to anchor the enormous bridge.

It was for the very same reason that General George Washington selected Jeffrey’s Hook as the place to sink his chevaux-de-frise during the Revolutionary War, to try to create a blockade to prevent the British and Hessian soldiers from advancing upriver.

The boulders mined from above Fort Washington were sunk on the wooden chevaux, from riverbank to riverbank, by American soldiers, and the ships that had carried them across the water had later been moored in place above them. It was the only way to secure the position of those vessels and the heavy cargo they had lowered into the Hudson River to stop the enemy.

The massive iron hooks that once held the line of sunken boats in place looked like weapons of war themselves.

I had seen them often, as a kid. They had been buried deep in the boulders by soldiers who would soon after be captured.

They had always fascinated me—hooks the size of the cleats on this boat, forged and fired and bent into shape, looking like the long, arthritic fingers of a witch.

The Intrepid banged up against a couple of the rocks. It didn’t sound any worse than a wave crashing against them, buffered by the sound of another passing train.

I didn’t want to use the flashlight. Fortunately, the GW Bridge lights offered enough of an outline of the shore.

I knew exactly what I was looking for. There were three boulders, each separated from the next by about ten feet, which were on a spit of land called Ceder Point.

It was on that spit—a huge slab of rock—where the hooks were embedded deep into the schist.

I scanned the area as I tried to idle the boat in place. At the top of a crest there used to be a statue, I remembered. It was a distinctive shape, sort of resembling a snowman, with a round head and a stout belly and bottom. The Daughters of the American Revolution had commissioned it a century ago, with words marking the site:
AMERICAN REDOUBT 1776.

I finally saw the stone snowman at the top of the rocky hill.

I held on to the bow rope and crawled off the boat, angled onto one of the boulders. I kicked off my shoes so that I didn’t slide back into the water.

It was only a matter of minutes until I found a pair of the Revolutionary-era rusted hooks.

My feet scraped against the rock as I climbed toward them. I was happy to feel patches of moss that made sticking to the surface easier.

When I got one hand on the first hook, I wound the rope around it. Then I reached it to the second hook and made the knot tighter and tighter. I tugged on the line and my little Intrepid seemed to be securely in place.

It was the first step in building my devil’s bridge.