Killer Heat (11 page)

“Why did you leave the Columbus Café?”

“Because of Elise. She wanted to meet somebody downtown.”

“It's a big place, downtown. Where?”

“The Bowery. A bar called the Pioneer.” The strip of land that
ran from Canal Street up to Cooper Square had been skid row for
more than half a century. Gentrification and the spread of yuppie
hangouts across SoHo had encroached on the once-dangerous avenue,
replacing some of the flophouses and homeless shelters with pubs
and clubs. “Who was she going to meet?”

“Kevin. She said his name was Kevin. Or Kiernan. Maybe it was
Kiernan. I don't know him, all right? I don't know anything else
about him.”

“You, Cliff, and Elise-you all took a cab together?”

“Yes,” she said, whining more heavily now. “What happened when
you got to the Pioneer?”

“It's a bar, Ms. Cooper. Get it? We ordered drinks,” Barbara
said. “Cliff was doing tequila shots. I think I had wine. I don't
know about Elise.”

“Why not?”

“She was upset, that's why. We stayed at the bar and she sat
down at a table against the wall. She was talking on her
cell.”

“To whom?”

“Kevin, I guess.”

“For how long?”

“Five minutes, maybe ten.”

“Then what happened.”

“Elise and I had an argument,” Barbara said, as tears streaked
down her cheeks.

“About what?” I kept digging at her rather than letting her
pause to collect herself. The floodgates had opened and she was
telling us the real story for the first time.

“I was mad at her for dragging us all the way downtown, like
practically half an hour in the cab. I was really pissed off.” She
wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“Why? ”Because I wanted to go home with Cliff, that's why. I
think Elise was jealous of me,“ she said, growing more sullen as
she tried to justify her annoyance at her dear friend. ”I mean, I
don't know if she made up this Kevin or Kiernan or whoever he is.
We went out of our way to go with her to the Pioneer, and the damn
guy never showed up. Was I supposed to wait all night?"

“Did she know you were mad?”

“Yeah. Like I said, we had an argument.”

“Inside the Pioneer, in front of other people?”

Barbara lowered her head. “In the bathroom. I don't think anyone
else would have heard us.”

“How did it start?”

"I told Elise that Cliff and I were leaving. It was after three
o'clock.

I was tired and starting to feel-you know, sleepy,“ she said. ”I
asked her what was up with this Kevin guy, and she like blew me
off. Told me to go ahead without her. That'd she'd be fine getting
home. I tried to get her to come with me, I really did."

“How hard did you try?” Mike asked.

“I didn't like drag her by the arm and all, okay? Was I supposed
to carry her out?”

“Did she know anyone at the Pioneer? The bartender?”

“We'd never been there before. Neither one of us. We only went
'cause this guy Kevin told her he'd meet her there.”

“How did she know him?”

“Some party the week before. She said a girl she knew from work
introduced her.”

“Was she drunk when you left her?”

“Buzzed. I'd say Elise had a good buzz on.”

“Was she still drinking?”

“Cliff bought her a glass of wine. Left it on her table. I don't
know what she did with it. He was only trying to be nice.”

“Where did you tell her you were going?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes once more. “Cliff wanted to come to our
place, okay? I told her we were going home. I didn't care whether
she came with us or not.”

“How big is your apartment?”

Barbara blushed. “It's a studio.”

It would be hard for two kids their age, one still in school, to
afford more than that on Manhattan's Upper West Side. But the
situation didn't offer much privacy when one of them hooked up
with a guy. “Maybe she felt like a third wheel,” Mike said.

“I can't help that. This isn't my fault. I didn't kill Elise and
I don't know who did.”

“The last time you saw her, where was she and what was she
doing?” I asked.

“She was at the same table against the wall. Sitting there by
herself,” Barbara said, giving us an additional fact each time she
opened her mouth. “I even called her from the cab, just to see if
that jerk ever showed up.”

“Did you talk?”

“Yeah. She told me she was going to take a walk, go to one of
the other bars down there to find him.”

“Which one?”

“I don't know, really. I told her not to do that. I told her it
wasn't safe to walk around alone down there at that hour,” Barbara
said, rubbing her eyes. “I told her that I'd stay over at Cliff's
place instead. That she just ought to get in a cab and come
home.”

The detectives would have to play catch-up. Nights wasted in the
chic eateries on Columbus Avenue would now be spent in the uneven
mix of spots-upscale and lowdown-that bookended the Bowery.
Bartenders, bouncers, patrons, and passersby would be canvassed
anew.

The photograph of the smiling girl in the white shirt, wings on
the collar-and the description of her outfit, including the
crested gold ring on her finger-would be posted in the Pioneer and
in the other bars on the blocks around it. They'd have to find
Kevin-or Kiernan- or whoever it was Elise expected to meet.

“Did you talk to Elise again? Did you try to call her after
that?”

“No.”

“Weren't you worried when she didn't come home Saturday
morning?” I asked.

“I had no idea she wasn't at our apartment,” Barbara said. “I
didn't get there myself until Sunday night.”

“You spent the weekend with Cliff Trane?”

She rested her elbows on the table and placed her forehead in
her hands. “Yeah.”

“I don't get it, Barbara. Who are you protecting in this?”

“Cliff's going to be so mad at me,” she said, sliding down in
the chair and twirling her hair again. “He was suspended from
school sophomore year. Some girl claimed that she was date-raped by
his roommate and that he was an accomplice.”

I didn't know where to take this next and looked over to Mike
for help.

“The charges were dropped, Ms. Cooper,” Barbara said. “But if
he's connected to another scandal he'll be thrown out this
time.”

“It'll be up to Dickie Draper, from the Brooklyn homicide
squad, to figure out how connected your man is,” Mike said. “In
the meantime, you'll be working 24/7 to help the detectives find
out who the guy is Elise was supposed to meet.”

“I don't want Mr. Huff to hear this,” Barbara said, lowering her
voice. "I don't know if Kevin or Kiernan even exists, Mr.
Chapman.

Like the way she told guys she was a flight attendant? Elise was
making things up all the time.

The hundreds of gunshots that erupted continuously in the still,
muggy air of that August morning sounded more like a war zone than
an old park grounds in the Bronx. I waited with Mike at the
entrance to the pistol range at Rodman's Neck, the training base
run by the NYPD Firearms and Tactics Section, just over the
drawbridge that led to the little village of City Island.

Large signs that said RESTRICTED were posted along the roadway
that separated this isolated area from Pelham Bay Park, of which it
was once a part

There's a first time for everything, Coop,“ Mike said, leading
me up to a table in front of a low wooden building that looked like
an old stable. We both put on padded ear protectors, although they
did little to muffle the constant sound of gunfire. ”Settle down.
He knew me as well as I knew myself. I didn't like it here. That
was evident from the expression on my face and the stiffness of my
body.

I was scoping the vast property as we walked through the stall
to the place where we would stand for my first lesson firing guns,
which I had promised Mike and Mercer I would take after a
confrontation with an armed killer.

We were both in jeans and polo shirts already coated with a fine
layer of dust from our walk from the parking lot to the area where
dozens of cops were lined up side by side, shooting hundreds of
rounds of real ammunition as cartridges discharged around us.

“I'd rather be talking to Herb Ackerman. Or checking out Bowery
bars.”

“Later for that. You do well in school and I'll take you
bar-hopping. Okay, we're starting with a revolver.”

One of the instructors came up behind me and Mike introduced us.
He was dressed in the standard uniform of the firearms squad-all
khaki, instead of the dark blue that street cops wore, with crossed
pistol insignias on the collar. His name was Pete Acosta, and he
had a revolver for each of us.

“But you don't even use one of these anymore.”

“I started with this because my old man swore by his. Once upon
a time, everybody on the force used a .38. Cops love them 'cause
they always fire,” Mike said. “And for beginners like you, they're
usually easier to handle. Now there's too much fancy hardware on
the street and these just can't keep up.”

The day after rookie police officers were sworn in, there was a
weapons selection event at the academy. It had become increasingly
rare for young cops to choose to work with these guns, once thought
to be more reliable, though much slower, than semiautomatics.

“Don't look so frightened,” Mike said, prodding me in the back.
“Step out there. No one's going to shoot you.”

He loaded his revolver with six rounds while Pete loaded
mine.

To both sides of me, only eight feet apart, were officers firing
their guns, maybe a dozen men and women in all. In front of each
position was a target, set in the ground about thirty feet
away.

The human form, a drawing of a life-sized figure in sharp black
outline, was pointing his gun at us. Every cop was blasting away at
his chest or head. Most of the rounds were smacking into their
paper targets, killing the gun-wielding menace again and again.
Some missed high or wide, and you could see the dust kick up on the
dry mounds of dirt that formed a perimeter to the rear of the
range.

“Go ahead, Alex,” Pete said, smiling at my hesitation. “Eight
million rounds are fired here every year and nobody's ever been
hit.”

I looked from side to side at the men practicing around me and
raised my arm, lining up the notch on the tip of the revolver
through the sight.

“Get the thug,” Pete said.

“What?”

“We call him the thug.”

I pulled back on the trigger and the gun discharged.

“Sweet Jesus,” Mike said. “Check with the Montauk police, Pete.
Somebody might be sitting on his deck, gunshot wound in the middle
of his forehead. She sailed that one right out of the ballpark. You
check your vision lately, Coop?”

The sound of the constant gunfire unnerved me. I had never heard
anything like it. I picked up the revolver and aimed again, or so I
thought. The bullet lodged somewhere in the dirt beyond the thug's
shoulder. He wouldn't even have needed to duck.

Mike stepped in closer behind me and put his arms over each of
mine. “You see that guy on the target? He's aiming to blow your
brains out. Think of it that way.”

He was trying to keep my arms in place after I sighted the chest
of the paper figure. “Pull back.”

I fired once more, into the mound off in the distance, and now
the cops on either side of me stopped to watch. Then I tried the
last three rounds, but none of them came close.

“You do it.”

Mike stood beside me and pointed the revolver. He let off six
rounds, before refilling the gun with a speed loader that Pete
handed to him with another six. Every one of them made its mark
somewhere on the threatening thug.

“Maybe you'll like the semiautomatic better,” Pete said. “What
do you use, Mike?”

“A Glock 19,” he said, unholstering his gun from his ankle.

Pete walked inside the stable with the revolvers and returned
with a different gun for me. “Try this. It's a Sig-Sauer. A nine
millimeter semiautomatic.”

“Too many moving parts for her. This is a broad who can't
operate a DVD player, Pete. She may never get it, but Mercer and I
are determined to try.”

More men were turning to watch me now-mocking me-as Pete
explained the differences between the guns.

“There's one bullet in the chamber,” Pete said, “and fifteen in
the magazine. It requires good isometric tension to use one of
these, Alex. There's a lot of jump in the recoil.”

I could guess from firing the revolver what recoil was, but I
didn't have a clue about isometric tension.

“Put your right index finger on the trigger,” Pete said.

Mike moved in again to position me. He had put his own gun back
in his ankle holster. “Stand with your legs apart, arms straight
out.”

“Why don't you just let Pete do this with me, okay?”

“Put your right index finger on the trigger,” Mike said,
ignoring me as he was not unused to doing. “Both thumbs on the left
side of the grip. No, no, no. You can't cross them like that.”

The guy to my right stepped back, with good reason. I pressed
hard on the trigger, and when the gun discharged, my arms flew up
with the kick and pulled to the side. It seemed like I had grazed
the thug's kneecap, although I had been aiming for his chest.

“Look, I can't do this with everyone staring at me.”

“You? I'm thinking your dream gig is to try a four-perp murder
case that's televised on Court TV. What's with the shy shooter
thing? You giving up?”

“Not yet. Is there any other way to do this without an
audience?” I asked Pete.

“FATS. That's an indoor facility. Let's go over there. It's the
Firearms and Tactics Simulators,” he said, pointing to another area
of the vast operation.

I returned the Sig and ear protectors and started to walk with
Mike.

“You two head over,” Pete said, stepping into an office as we
passed through the stable to the far side of C-range, the
designated pistol target area at which we'd been firing. “I'll put
these away and be right there.”

“It's amazing no one's been killed here.”

“Shot, no. Killed, yes,” Mike said. “Thirty years ago, one of my
father's friends was blown up.”

“What do you mean?”

He walked backwards and squinted to look off to the south,
beyond the pistol range. “There's a huge crater they call the Pit.
It's on the southernmost tip of the peninsula here, that juts into
Eastchester Bay. The bomb squad detonates all the devices that are
recovered in the city. They've done it since the days of the
Weathermen. One of the earliest bombs they brought here detonated
prematurely, and Brian's friend didn't make it away in time.”

“How horrible,” I said. “Is that why the range is restricted?
The bomb danger?”

“This whole enclave is the NYPD's practice territory for urban
warfare,” Mike said, to the background noise of gunshots. “You've
got all the special weapons that the antiterrorist squads use-MP5
submachine guns and Colt rifles and Ithaca shotguns. There's a
helipad for the department's choppers. You got Aviation and police
boat docks, the Bomb Squad, Special Ops, Highway Patrol, all hidden
in this out-ofthe-way place that nobody seems to know about. It was
even an emergency base after 9/11.”

The range was a beehive of police activity. We passed a mess
hall and a gun shop and the entrance to an underground bunker that
Mike said held at least one of every kind of firearm ever
manufactured, including rare World War II weapons.

There was a series of prefab shacks lined up in a row, and the
fourth one of those had the FATS logo hanging over its railing.

I scooped up a handful of empty cartridges from the ground as
Pete jogged toward us. “Don't get too attached to those,” he said.
“I've got my lead poisoning test next week.”

I opened my fingers and watched them drop.

“Takes a lot more than that. But we were losing police dogs at a
terrifying rate. Turns out they were absorbing the lead through
their paws.”

I winced as he opened the door to the small cabin. The overhead
lights were on when we entered. Pete turned them off so that the
three of us stood in complete darkness.

“Private enough for the princess?” Mike asked.

“It might not make any difference in my shooting skills that I
can't see, but I think some light would be helpful.”

Pete stepped over to a computer monitor and played with the
controls. The entire far wall became an enormous screen, and the
first frame of a movie was frozen against it.

“Move over behind here, Alex.” He guided me to a large, empty
oil barrel standing on its end in front of the screen. “This is all
you've got in case you need to take cover. Mike, take the one next
to her.”

On top of each was a semiautomatic. “They're real guns,” he
said, “but they've got soap cartridges inside. They're connected to
the computer. You seen these yet, Mike?”

“Nope.”

“I'm going to run these films. Each one is three or four minutes
long. You and Mike have answered a call to come to this apartment.
Shots fired. Reports of a drug deal gone bad. Try aiming your gun,
Alex. It should be a lot lighter than the one you just used.”

I lifted the gun and pointed it at the screen, lining it up with
the sight. Not only was it dark, but I thought the quiet should
make it easier to concentrate.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

The clip began with the closing of the door of the patrol car
behind me. I was viewing everything from the vantage point of the
first officer on the scene. Voices in the tenement building I
virtually entered were shouting that the cops had arrived. A man in
a bright-colored shirt was racing up steps-several flights-as I
tried to overtake him, and from behind me, Pete was barking out
commands.

“Police! Drop your weapons! Stop! Police!” he shouted as though
he were actually at the scene. “C'mon, Alex, you're chasing the guy
up the stairs. He's taking them two at a time. He's got you beat.”
The camera lens bounced up and down as I was turning corners after
the fleeing suspect. An apartment door slammed shut somewhere above
me and the camera lurched upward, toward the high-pitched sound of
a child screaming for help.

“It's that one, Alex,” Pete yelled. “You're going to kick on
that door. You'd better tell them you're a cop.”

My virtual foot shoved the door and it opened onto a frenetic
scene. A man whose Hawaiian print shirt resembled the clothing of
the guy who had run up the stairs leaped over the back of a sofa.
He was holding something but he moved so quickly I couldn't tell if
the object in his hand was a gun or not.

“Is that your man in there? Are you sure? You better tell them
to freeze, Alex. Let me hear you shout at him, okay?
Where's your partner? Has he got you covered?”

It was all happening too fast. The slender woman seated on the
edge of her chair had drug paraphernalia in front of her. I could
make out the white powder and pipe, and as I looked to my right to
see whether Mike had his gun poised to back me up, I caught a
handlettered sign over the picture of a uniformed cop that said
“Kill the pigs.”

The man behind the sofa stuck his head up above the top of the
cushion and called something out to his companion. I couldn't
understand what he said. A baby started crying on the left side of
the screen. As my eyes darted in that direction, the woman lifted
the lid on the shoebox next to the cocaine and pulled a gun from
it.

Before I could aim, she had fired at me. Mike squeezed off a
round that nailed her in the throat, although in real time I
couldn't have seen him do it. I would have been dead.

“Saved your skinny ass again, Coop.”

“I give up. I don't know how you guys do it, day in and day
out.”

“Ready for another one, Alex?” Pete asked.

“I'm telling you this should be mandatory training for every
prosecutor your office hires. Most of them have no idea what we're
up against till they're chauffeured to a crime scene in an RMP at
three o'clock in the morning,” Mike said, referring to the
department's blue and white radio motor patrol cars, “and they get
an up close and personal sense of what the job is like.”

“I don't think I can do it, Pete. I need a nice still target
like the thug-nobody shooting back at me-in a quiet room like this.
Nothing interactive.”

The second tape started to play. It appeared to be a routine
traffic accident. A dark green Toyota truck smashed into a silver
Honda and spun the car around. The driver of the Honda was slumped
against the steering wheel and the wailing siren announced the
approach of a police car.