NYPD Red (24 page)

THEY WERE MAKING a mockery of his movie.

Another time, another place, and The Chameleon might have found it funny. But this was the climax of his film, and instead of acting like worthy opponents, MacDonald and Jordan had showed up and were floundering around in the water like a couple of Keystone Kops.

Liberty Island was not as close as he would have liked, but it was close enough. He had to act now. He waited for Jordan to haul MacDonald up into the Zodiac. This was the last scene, and he didn’t want them to miss it.

“And action!” he yelled.

He raised his cell phone in the air, angling the glass face so it reflected the light of the setting sun. They’d see it, and they’d know what it meant.

He held up his other hand, slowly gave them the finger, then pointed it down and rested it on the number 1 button of his speed dial.

The cops knew exactly what was coming next. They ducked for cover, but The Chameleon no longer cared about them. He gazed out at the horizon. It was just as he and Lexi had imagined—the doomed yacht, the all-knowing statue, the orange glow of the sun as it slipped into the water.

He pressed down hard on the button. He heard the beep of the auto-dial, then a single ring, and then…

“Kaboom.”

The word was followed by a deep throaty laugh.

“I said ‘kaboom,’” the voice on the other end of the phone mocked. “Sorry it isn’t any louder, but I cut the phone wires to your detonators—all three of them. What’s the matter, Mr. Chameleon? You suddenly at a loss for words?”

“Charles?” Gabriel finally said.

“You sound surprised. Didn’t you see the last-minute script changes? The cavalry showed up, cut me loose, and upgraded me to hero status.”

“Those sons of bitches,” Gabriel said.

“That’s show business,” Connor said. “Your movie doesn’t always turn out the way you—”

“My movie will turn out amazing!” Benoit screamed. He hung up. Charles Connor was an extra. Not worth talking to. The talking was over. This was an action movie, and the action was about to kick into high gear.

He gunned the engine and drew his Glock.

“Alternate scene!” he yelled as he barreled down on the other Zodiac.

KYLIE AND I were pressed flat to the bottom of the Zodiac, waiting for the inevitable.

She kept count. “One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand…”

By fifteen-one-thousand the inevitable still hadn’t happened.

“Something went wrong,” she said. “Take a look.”

I lifted my head and peered over the gunwale.

“Game changer,” I said, ducking back out of sight. “I don’t think he can get it to blow. He’s talking to someone on the cell phone.”

“Maybe he’s calling tech support,” she said. “Don’t give him a chance to figure it out. Let’s take him.”

I sat up and reached for the starter cord.

The first bullet tore through the Yamaha engine, and I hit the deck. Three more shots flew over our heads.

I heard Benoit’s Zodiac race past us. I rolled over, grabbed my gun, and fired back, all noise and no accuracy. He did a one-eighty and came back at us. I yanked at the starter cord, but his first shot had taken out the engine.

He opened fire, and I flattened out yet again.

“Zach, I don’t have a gun,” Kylie said.

“I have a backup. Ankle holster.” I could hear the Zodiac bearing down on us again. “I’ll get it as soon as he passes.”

He didn’t pass.

He rammed us.

He clipped the front corner of our Zodiac, catching it at the perfect angle to lift it high and pitch me overboard. I flew out of the boat backward and hit the water headfirst.

It felt like somebody came up behind me and whacked me with a two-by-four. All I could see were blue spots on a field of black, and then I went under.

I’m not a natural-born swimmer, and I thrashed my way back to the surface, coughing up river water and jerking my throbbing head in all directions looking for Kylie. Our Zodiac had righted itself, and she was still in it, but there were at least thirty feet of open water separating the two of us.

Benoit made another U-turn, saw the gap between us, and roared straight down the middle, firing at me as he came. Somehow I had managed to hang on to my piece, and, keeping it above water, I fired back wildly without a prayer of hitting him.

His bullets were much more on target, cutting through the water to my left, my right, and one striking less than a foot in front of me. He barreled right past me and swung the Zodiac into a wide arc so he could make another pass. I knew it was only a matter of time. I was a fish in a barrel, and Benoit was hell-bent on shooting fish.

And then, over the roar of the engine, I heard Kylie yell, “Zach, fake a hit! Go under.”

Benoit was bearing down on me again, but much more slowly so he could line up his shot.

He fired once. I grabbed my right shoulder, stopped treading water, and dropped straight down. The last thing I saw before I let the river swallow me up was Kylie kneeling in a shooter’s position on the hull of the Zodiac, both arms outstretched, aiming straight at Benoit.

Aiming? Aiming what?

As of two minutes ago, her gun was at the bottom of the Hudson River.

GABRIEL HAD SEEN it a hundred times in the movies. In a high-speed chase scene, the cop car turns into the back wheels of an escaping vehicle, causing it to spin out of control.

He used the exact same concept to flip the cops’ Zodiac around and send Jordan flying into the water. The cop landed flat on his back.

By the time he got his bearings, he was totally separated from his partner, and now Gabriel could take them out one at a time.

Jordan first. Benoit closed in on him, firing as he went. At one point he was less than ten feet from his target, but the water was choppy, and none of his shots hit the mark.

Slow down,
a voice said.

It was Gabriel the director.

Gabriel the action hero eased up on the throttle and circled the boat for another run.

Steady, steady, steady,
the director said.
Now.

He fired.

Jordan grabbed his shoulder, flew back, and went under.

“One down,” Gabriel said. He turned to Kylie. Her boat was disabled or she’d have come at him. She had no place to go.

He slowed his Zodiac to a crawl and stopped twenty feet from her.

It was dark, but her body was clearly backlit by the setting sun. She was kneeling in a shooter’s stance.

“NYPD!” she yelled. “Drop your gun and hold your hands up high.”

“You don’t have a gun, bitch!” he screamed. “Otherwise you’d have opened fire on me before I nailed your partner.”

“Final warning!” she called out. “Drop your gun and get your hands in the air.”

Shoot her,
the voice said. This time it wasn’t the director.

It was Lexi. She was here for the final scene. Uninvited, but of course she showed up anyway. He laughed. That Lexi—he never could control her.

Shoot her for me, Gabe. Shoot her.

He pulled the trigger.

Click.

He was out of bullets.

Ram her. Run her down. Cut her in half. Kill her.

Gabriel put his hand on the throttle. MacDonald’s Zodiac was directly in his path. She was still aiming at him. And then he saw it in her hand, silhouetted against the sky.

It was boxy with a square front and yellow stripes on the side.

She squeezed the trigger.

I SURFACED JUST in time to see the standoff. Kylie and Benoit, about twenty feet apart, neither of them moving.

And then the river exploded. A heart-stopping, earsplitting volcanic bang shattered the serenity of the Upper Bay and reverberated from Brooklyn to Bayonne. For an instant, the world turned a blinding bright orange. Then a geyser of boiling hot white water shot up, followed by large plumes of thick black smoke that blossomed out across the sky, showering down pieces of flaming Zodiac and human body parts.

Benoit, who had been at the center of the explosion, was vaporized. Kylie was only twenty feet away, and the seismic waves lifted her boat out of the water. One second she had been on her knees drawing a bead on Benoit, and the next her body was arcing through the air.

She hit the water fifty feet away from me and went under.

I called her name and started swimming through the oil slick and burning remnants of the fiberglass hull hissing in the water. I waited for her to pop her head up, but she didn’t, which meant she was either unconscious or worse.

My clothes and my shoes were dragging me down, and I felt like I was swimming in a dream—no matter how hard I pushed myself, I never seemed to get any closer.

When I finally got to the spot where I saw her hit the water, I dove down. It was dark and murky, and the best I could do was search frantically by sweeping my arms in front of me. After a minute, I shot up, gulped down some air, called her name again, and looked in every direction.

Nothing.

And then something broke the surface. A shoe. I dove back underwater and swam toward it. Ten feet. Twenty feet. I had lost all sense of direction. I no longer knew where I was or where Kylie had gone down.

Then I saw it. Swirling in the black water were strands of gold. Blond hair.

I kicked so hard I collided with her, then I grabbed her and pushed my way to the top. I sucked in some air, pressed my mouth to her mouth, and forced whatever oxygen I had in my lungs into hers.

She threw her head back and let out a loud gasp. I held on to her as she coughed up most of the water she had gulped down.

“Breathe,” I said.

She breathed.

“Just keep breathing. Don’t try to talk.”

She talked. “What happened?” she said.

“I saved your life. Second time today.”

“No, with Benoit.

“You blew him out of the water into bite-size chunks.”

“I was only trying to stun him.”

“He must’ve had a pocket full of C4. You couldn’t light it up with a bazooka, but if he had it primed with a blasting cap, all it took was one good Tase.”

I could hear the sirens. Then I saw them coming at us from all angles—Harbor Patrol, fireboats, Coast Guard, and at the front of the pack, Jim Rothlein in the
Kristina.

The last traces of sun were disappearing into the water, and there in the distance, wrapped in a purple and pink New York City twilight, I could make out the Statue of Liberty.

“I guess this is how Benoit’s movie ends,” I said.

The water was cold, and Kylie, shivering, pressed her body as close to mine as she could get. “As they say in the biz,” she said, “‘fade to black.’”

I wrapped my arms around her, held her tight, and whispered in her ear, “Roll credits.”

NEW YORKERS LOVE a hero, and when they woke up Thursday morning, they had two new ones. Splashed across the front page of the
Daily News
was the headline “Dynamic Duo Foils Hollywood Killer.”

Below it was a picture of Spence Harrington in his hospital bed with Kylie sitting at his side.

The headline on page 3 said “Bomber Nails Producer. Producer’s Wife Nails Bomber.” The story was accompanied by a shot of Kylie in an evening gown and Spence in black tie which had been taken just a few days before at Radio City.

There was also an inset photo of me, my official department head shot, captioned “Kylie MacDonald-Harrington’s other partner, Detective Zachary Jordan.”

It was hard to believe. On Monday, I had woken up wondering if teaming up with Kylie MacDonald would be career suicide. By Thursday, she was a hero, and I had become the Other Guy.

I got to the office at 7:30, and Kylie was already there waiting for me.

“Zach, I’m mortified,” she said, holding the paper in her hand.

“Don’t be,” I said. “You took down Lexi, you took down Benoit, you deserve the glory.”

“But you and I are partners. We were in this together. You’ve been with NYPD Red three years. I’m here all of three days. I don’t know what the press was thinking when they spun the story the way they did.”

“They were thinking that you and Spence are a celebrity couple, and that a picture of the two of you on the front page would sell more newspapers than one of me sopping wet, dragging my ass off a police boat.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can have Spence call the studio publicist and have her get the press to clarify—”

I jumped in fast. “Absolutely not. I’m a cop. I don’t have a publicist, and I don’t want one.”

“Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?” she said.

“Well, yeah, if you don’t mind,” I said.

“Anything.”

“I’d really be honored if you and Spence would autograph my copy of the
Daily News.
”

She punched me in the shoulder. “Asshole.”

“Speaking of Spence,” I said, “how is the other half of the Dynamic Duo this morning?”

“He’s on heavy doses of antibiotics, so they’re keeping him in the hospital for a couple more days, but the surgeon says he’ll be fine. He’ll need crutches for a while, but in about six months, it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

My phone rang. It was Cates.

“You and MacDonald,” she said. “My office. We have some unfinished business.”

It was time to bite the bullet.

“I just watched the mayor’s press conference,” Cates said when we got there. “He blew the usual smoke up Hollywood’s ass. Something on the order of ‘it can get ugly wherever you shoot, but if it happens in New York, you’ll get the fastest, smartest, bravest police force in the world. Nobody backs up the film industry like NYPD Red.’”

“Those are the same exact words Shelley Trager said to him yesterday when the mayor was thinking about canceling the rest of Hollywood on the Hudson week,” Kylie said.

“Nobody ever said our mayor was an original thinker. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what he said. I doubt if it convinced any of the LA crowd to bring more of their business to the city, but I’m sure the sweet tax package Irwin Diamond offered them will work wonders. Bottom line, the mayor is happy. So is the commissioner. He said I should congratulate the two of you on your ‘extraordinary heroism while engaged in personal combat with an armed adversary.’”

“Thank you,” I said.

“His words, not mine,” Cates said. “I, on the other hand, am not happy. I have a problem with cops who work off the reservation. What the hell were you thinking when you blew off my phone call?”

Before I could say a word, Kylie jumped in. “It wasn’t Zach,” she said. “I blew it off.”

“I didn’t call you,” Cates said. “I called Jordan.”

“Yes, but I practically ripped the phone out of his hand,” Kylie said, taking more than her fair share of the heat. “I wasn’t thinking. My husband’s life was on the line, and I was going to save him.”

“And did you think I would have stopped you?” Cates said. “I will back up any detective under my command who operates on guts, instinct, and initiative. You have a lot of authority in this unit, but it’s only because I give it to you. If you ever cut me out of the loop again, I don’t care how many front pages your faces are on, I will transfer your asses right the hell out of NYPD Red. Understood?”

“Understood,” Kylie and I responded in unison.

“That said, I can’t deny what you’ve done. You brought down a serial killer who was on the verge of blowing up a boatload of innocent people.”

“We had help from someone on the boat,” Kylie said. “Charles Connor.”

“Mr. Connor is brave and articulate,” Cates said. “And if I know anything about public relations, somewhere in the next news cycle, he’ll be standing on the steps of city hall, where the mayor will award him the Bronze Medallion for exceptional citizenship. But don’t kid yourselves; Connor would be dead if you two hadn’t showed up. You’re heroes. You did the unit proud, and I’m sure when Detective Shanks gets back he’ll understand why I’m making the two of you a permanent team.”

“Us?” Kylie said. “Permanent?”

“As permanent as things can get in this department,” Cates said. “I myself am always looking over my shoulder to see who’s after my job. It’s a lot easier if one of the contenders works right here, where I can keep an eye on her. Congratulations, Detectives. Dismissed.”

We walked out of the office, and Kylie gave me a high five. “Did you hear what she said, Zach? We’re a permanent team.”

“As long as you don’t piss her off again,” I said, feeling a twinge of remorse over Omar’s impending reassignment.

“Me? You’re the one who blew off her phone call. Shape up, partner.” She punched me in the shoulder again, laughing this time. “Is this cool, or what?”

Her face radiated with joy and triumph. The beautiful, confident, unpredictable young cadet I fell in love with the first day of academy was now a beautiful, confident, unpredictable NYPD Red badass supercop—my partner.

And I was still in love with her.

“Yeah, it’s cool,” I said.