Devil's Bridge (27 page)

I sat down on the boulder and moved crab-like back to the boat. I stepped over the side of it and grabbed the metal frame that edged the canvas T-top to lower myself down.

I lifted the cover of the bench and looked down into the head.

Cormac Lonigan—my hostage—was exactly where I had left him.

I pulled him to his feet and told him to walk up the three small steps to the deck. The sock in his mouth would keep him quiet. There wasn’t much I had to worry about, but I made him get to his knees.

He was shivering with just his jockey shorts and long-sleeved shirt on.

I bent down in the storage space beyond the toilet. There were a few sets of waders and other boating clothes.

I climbed up next to Lonigan. “These will be too big for you, but they’ll be warmer,” I said.

I helped him pull on the one-piece black rubber overalls. He didn’t fight me. I didn’t dare remove his handcuffs, so I fastened the clasps over his shirt but decided against letting his hands free for long enough to put on an all-weather jacket.

I had no intention to kill the kid. I just wanted him to be my bait.

I walked to the stern to get the extra length of rope that was stowed there. I rolled up the legs of my chinos, almost to my knees. When I turned back to Lonigan, I could see him taking in the landscape. He must have recognized the bridge overhead but might have made no sense of the location.

I got back onto the boulder where we were anchored and told Lonigan to follow me.

He hesitated. He had no ability to speak, but his eyes were asking me
Why?

“Gotta test the water,” I said. “In case we have to go for a swim.”

His head shook violently from side to side.

“Just sayin’, Cormac. Now, take a walk with me.”

He was off-balance from hours of being hunched up on the toilet with his hands behind his back. In addition, he had the bulky waders on, and their footed rubber overalls made walking difficult.

I held on to him to steady him on the slick surface, carrying the length of rope over my shoulder like a lariat.

We were thirty yards or so north of the red lighthouse and walking toward it. We were on much lower ground and hidden by the boulders, so it wouldn’t be possible for anyone to spot us. I couldn’t see signs of life from within, and I wasn’t sure that there were cops in place yet on the girders of the great gray bridge.

To our right, sticking up from the river like a series of large tombstones, was another outcropping of rocks.

I held on to Lonigan’s handcuffs, his back to me, and extended my right leg so that my foot dipped into the water.

“Ooooh,” I said. “Pretty nippy.” I tugged on the cuffs and pulled him so that his booted feet were standing on the base of one of the rocks, covered up to his ankles by the Hudson.

I talked to him as I laced one end of the thick nautical rope around the links of his handcuffs and then through the shoulder straps of his waders.

“What do you know about hypothermia?” I asked.

Lonigan couldn’t speak if he wanted to.

“I didn’t think so. It’s a dangerous thing, Cormac. Cold water accelerates its onset because body heat is usually lost twenty-five times faster in cold water. It gets to the core of your body,” I said, going about my business strapping the rope around the back side of the naturally made tombstone. “Gets the brain, the heart, the lungs—all the vital organs. And skinny people like you? Well, it tends to get to them faster.”

I kept my balance as I wrapped the rope around Lonigan’s body and then again around the vertical rock.

“Nobody wants you to live more than I do, kid. I’m needing you badly to make a trade, okay? For that woman you don’t know anything about, remember? The one your uncle snatched? So in water this cold—and remember, I put these waders on you for a reason—you’re good out here for two and a half hours.”

Cormac Lonigan closed his eyes.

“Now, it will get colder, because the tide’s coming in and the water will keep rising. Good thing you’re nice and tall. And holding still increases your survival time,” I said. “I took a course once at the Police Academy. A chance to train to be an Emergency Services cop. I got through all the crap about heights and elevator shafts and jaws of life. The one thing I couldn’t deal with? It was hypothermia. It was jumping into the frigid East River—like, doing it voluntarily—to save the ass of some drunken fool who had fallen in, who was kicking and screaming and flailing his arms, and more likely to drown by doing that. I gave up on the idea early on. More suited to dead bodies.”

I was knotting the rope at the rear of the rock. My toes were already ice-cold.

“But that’s when I learned how important it is, in the case of hypothermia, to keep a positive attitude.”

Lonigan’s head was hanging.

“Don’t blow me off when I’m talking to you, kid. I’m not joking with you. You need a will to live, and you need to keep as still as possible.”

Cormac Lonigan twisted in place. I thought it was as likely to remove himself from the sound of my voice as it might have been to try to break free.

“Squirming around like that won’t help you. If you get loose enough to slide into the river? Well, that’s my worst nightmare,” I said. “The thing about those chest-high waders is that they will fill right up to the top with water and just float you away with the current. Fast and furious as she goes. Most likely you’ll crack your head on a boulder before you freeze to death. So take my advice and hold as still as you can.”

There was little chance that Cormac Lonigan could break free.

It was time to talk to his uncle about Coop.

I stayed along the very edge of the shoreline, leaning forward on the boulders so that I was angled at almost forty-five degrees.

I couldn’t see downriver, so it was unlikely that Mercer and the harbor patrol cops knew I was out of the boat. I couldn’t even see the lighthouse, which was blocked from my view by the base of the two bridge towers, so I doubted that if anyone was there he or she could see me.

Slowly and carefully I worked my way around the perimeter of Jeffrey’s Hook. The smaller stones hurt the soles of my feet, and the dampness of the large rocks added to my chill.

When I reached the corner of the cement foundation that grounded one of the bridge towers, I stood up beside it. It more than concealed my body from any occupants of the lighthouse, which was not very far away.

I looked up at the massive girders that held the cables and beams that supported the bridge. If there were cops in place—and they should have been by now—they were undoubtedly dressed like ninjas and impossible for me to see amid the hundreds of thousands of pieces of steel and wire.

I opened my phone and clicked on Mercer’s number.

“Hey,” he said. “You still good?”

“Except for lying to you,” I said, whispering into the device, “I’m fine.”

“Like there was a chance you wouldn’t lie to me?” Mercer said. “You know about the fingerprint, right?”

“Vickee called me. Told me they were checking.” Every cop, every prosecutor who took a law enforcement job with the city, had to be printed.

“It’s Alex. Whoever dropped the note has Alex. That’s a confirm.”

“Still no demand?”

“Scully’s waiting on that.”

“But going public?”

“Yes. Yes, he is.”

“Can you see the lighthouse?” I asked. “Can you make it out from where you are?”

“Yes, Mike. We’re staying south, but I can see it pretty well with binoculars.”

“There’s a glassed-in cupola on top. The lantern room,” I said. “And then a circular balcony around it and steps that wind down. Can you spot anyone at all?”

“Not even a fly.”

“Are the ESU guys in place?”

“The first team is on location. More men are on the way.”

“Are they communicating with you?” I asked.

“We’ve got a line open to the sergeant who’s with them.”

“Just let them know that I’m the guy at the base of the bridge,” I said. “I’m barefoot and exhausted and half out of my mind with worry about Coop, but I’m one of them.”

“Will do.”

“I’ve got an idea to see if Emmet Renner is in there,” I said.

“Please tell me it doesn’t involve your gun. There’s nobody on site who wants to use a weapon till we know where Alex is.”

“That was my rule to you, remember?”

“Yeah. So what’s your plan?”

“I’m going to set off one of Kanye’s Roman candles.”

“You’re what?” Mercer said. “You could kill yourself, Mike. Don’t do it.”

“It’s going to go off from the top of a boulder. Perfectly safe,” I said. “You just tell Emergency Services and the bridge police that it’s not a bomb or anything. I don’t want them freaking out when they see the blasts. It’s just a couple of pieces of fireworks—just a sound and light display. We’ll watch whether anyone comes out to explore. The ESU team needs to stay in place and not even think about shooting.”

“Nobody’s shooting,” Mercer said. “They’re just looking for a butterfly net to drop over your head.”

“Keep your eyes on the lighthouse, Mercer,” I said.

I ended the call.

I took the Roman candles out of my pocket. The label said they were eight-shot Thunder Shocks, with maximum loud report. I’d been to enough Fourth of July parties at Breezy Point, the Irish Riviera, to know how to set these off without incident.

I planted the bottom of them in a crevice in a rock near the water, aiming their tops away from the bridge, in the direction of the lighthouse.

I took matches from my pocket and lit the ignition charges. I moved back behind the cover of the base of the bridge.

I waited patiently as the flame worked down to the top pyrotechnic star and the fire spread within each of the candles, which were bound to have a greater impact going off together than each alone.

Boats motored by on the river, but these weren’t pointed their way.

Finally, the lift charges were ignited and the candles exploded into the black space of the sky directly south of the lighthouse.

The bright yellow and purple stars burst out of the seam in the rock and kept coming: five, six, seven, eight of them—sixteen in all. The noise of the blast made the train whistle of a northbound express seem like a distant rumble.

I stepped back behind the cement foundation to wait and to watch.

It took less than one minute. The door to the lighthouse opened slowly. A man appeared in the doorway, and backlit as he was, I could see it wasn’t Emmet Renner.

He stood there for a few seconds, as though waiting for something else to happen. Then he started to walk down the slope toward the river, toward the source of the fireworks launch.

I could tell that he was younger than Renner. Probably in his twenties, like Cormac Lonigan. I could also see that when he put his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, in his right one he was clutching something heavy, like a gun.

The young man who was approaching the far side of the base of the tower didn’t seem terribly concerned. The purple and yellow shooting stars and their loud soundtrack had been meant to grab the attention of anyone around, but the fireworks would not have been confused with incoming artillery.

He was dressed for the cool of an early-fall evening, and his sneakers gripped the boulder more readily than my bare feet.

He came down to the water’s edge, crouched to pick up some pebbles, and looked around to see if he had any company.

I watched as he tried to skip the stones on the river, still crouching. But the surface was way too busy for skipping them.

Both his hands were engaged in culling stones and tossing them. For at least this moment I had the upper hand.

I stepped from behind the tower’s base and onto the top of the slanted boulder. Before the young man heard me, I raced down on my bare feet and pushed him forward so that his face and chest pounded against the rock. His head was almost in the water.

I straddled his back, covering his mouth with my left hand as I grabbed his gun—an old-fashioned revolver—from his pocket.

I held the barrel of the gun against his ear.

“I’m Chingachgook,” I said, “last of the Mohicans.”

James Fenimore Cooper had stoked my childhood fantasies of Hudson River Valley Indians when I played on these rocks decades ago.

“Say one word and if your gun is loaded, you’ll be a dead man. If it’s not loaded, I’ve got my own.”

There was neither sound nor movement from the watchman.

“I’m going to stand up, and you’re coming with me.”

He followed orders and got to his feet.

I retraced my route toward the Intrepid, one step behind my new prisoner and the gun tight against his head.

We passed Cormac Lonigan, but I didn’t stop to eyeball him, and my companion didn’t think of doing anything except looking straight ahead.

When we reached the side of the boat, I had to nudge the guy in his backside to get him to step on board. Once again, I had an occupant for the lone seat on the boat’s toilet.

He climbed down the three narrow steps and followed my orders to sit down.

“Take off your shoes and socks and pass them to me,” I said.

I was fresh out of handcuffs, but the good thing about boats was that there was always some kind of line around that would come in handy. I kicked the pile of life preservers aside and there was a blue-and-white nylon rope beneath it.

Once I had tied the man’s hands together and shoved one of his own socks deep into his mouth so that he couldn’t dislodge it, I speed-dialed Mercer again.

“I got one man out of the lighthouse,” I said.

“What does he say?” Mercer asked. “Who’s in there?”

“Cut me a break, dude. Tell me I did good for a change, will you? I had to get him back to the boat before I could talk to him. But he did have a gun and I took it away,” I said. “I’m going to put the phone down, on speaker, so you can hear what he has to say.”

“You have an extra set of cuffs, Mike?”

“Nope.”

“A second guy on the boat with you?” Mercer asked. “Where’s Lonigan?”

“Chillin’. Situation under control.”

I rested the phone on the edge of the seat behind me.

“I’m patting him down first,” I said, running my hand over the man’s clothes and into his pockets. “Nothing here. Not even ID.”

I picked up his handgun and checked. Six bullets, locked and loaded.

I held it against his cheek with my right hand as I removed the sock with my left.

“Very softly now, you tell me your name.”

“Paddy,” he said.

“I should have guessed. Paddy what?”

“Paddy Duffy.”

“The luck of the Irish is with me,” I said. “It’s a slight bit of brogue I hear, am I right?”

I thought of what the cop, Officer Stern, had told us that morning, about the redheaded man in the backseat of the SUV with a sleeping woman. That the man had a brogue.

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“Where’s Emmet Renner?” I asked.

Paddy flinched. Which was all the answer I needed.

“He’s in the lighthouse, I’d say. And counting on you to be looking out for him.”

Paddy Duffy nodded.

“There’s a woman there, too, isn’t there?”

It seemed like an hour between the time I asked the question and his answer.

“Yes. He’s got a girl in there.”

“She’s alive?”

My breathing was more rapid than his. He knew what to be afraid of, but at this point I wasn’t quite sure what I was facing.

“Yeah. She’s alive.”

I holstered the gun in my waistband and covered my face with my hands. I didn’t speak again until I could compose myself.