The Graving Dock (17 page)

Balfa stepped forward. “Sir, could you set the bag—”

A shot rang out. At first Jack thought it might have come from behind him, on the waterfront somewhere, but it was so
loud
. He turned to see Tommy Balfa put his hand up to a red hole in his cheek, and then the detective fell to the deck. Jack turned back to the other man, who had dropped the paper bag he had just shot through and was raising a pistol.

Jack raised his own gun, but the boat swayed and he almost lost his footing. He grabbed at the boom; once he had a hold of it, he swung it as hard as he could to the right. It caught the man in the side; he grunted in surprise as the gun flew out of his hands and disappeared over the side of the boat.

“Don’t move!” Jack shouted, doing his best to steady his aim on the man’s chest. He snuck a glance down at his partner, who was writhing feebly on the deck—things didn’t look good. Balfa needed medical treatment,
fast
. Jack took a step forward, which was a mistake, because he had nothing to hold on to, and he felt his feet start to go out from under him.

The man shouted something, lowered his head, and charged. He ducked under the boom and slammed into Jack’s chest. Both men had lost their footing now, and they slid across the deck, wrestling furiously. Jack grabbed the man’s arm and his hand closed on pure muscle. The man chopped his hand down on Jack’s wrist and he was appalled to watch his gun leave his hand and skate across the deck. He threw up an elbow and felt a satisfying
whump
as it caught the man’s cheek. He was struggling to his feet when the man grabbed his pants leg and yanked. Jack slid toward the side of the boat and felt the wire lifeline catch him at mid-thigh, and then he was toppling over the cable toward the waves.

T
HE COLD WATER BURNED
like fire.

Jack had no time to consider the strangeness of that shock, because it was immediately followed by another: He was sinking fast. His wool overcoat, which seconds ago had protected him from the cold air, had turned into a soggy shroud, and the Kevlar vest into a heavy straitjacket. Even as he tumbled down, a shard of irony pierced his consciousness: He was drowning because of a bulletproof vest. Bubbles burbled around his head like angry bees. The water was so murky that he couldn’t even see which way was up. Panicked, he managed to work his frozen fingers enough to unbutton the coat. He shrugged his way out of it, and then—lungs bursting—wormed out of the vest. He saw a dim light ahead and struck out toward it, praying that it would bring him back into the life-giving air.

What seemed like minutes later, he broke the surface, gasping. The currents spun him around, and he glimpsed the sailboat, ten yards away. He saw the man gripping the wire cable, staring dispassionately down at him, and then the currents bore him away.

Even without the weight of the coat and vest, he could barely manage to keep his head above the water. He kicked his shoes off, then lashed out furiously toward the shore, but he was caught in the massive hand of the current as it pulled him out into the open water, claiming him:
MINE.
It swirled him under again, and then released him just enough so that he was able to grab another mouthful of air. He was shivering desperately, and moving faster now. His right shoulder suddenly slammed into something; he never found out what it was because the current rushed him on. He caught a view of the low mass of Staten Island far in the distance, and the leaden clouds, pierced by a slanting ray of sunlight, like some heavenly annunciation. The view of the harbor was shockingly different from the water; there was none of the lordly perspective and distance afforded by the deck of a boat.

The grip of the current suddenly released him into a pocket of less angry water, and he was able to keep his head above it, and to note how bleak his situation was. Lifting his chin, he was able to look out for the Charlie Unit boat: nowhere in sight. He could make out the orange bulk of the Staten Island ferry far in the distance, way too far for anyone to hear his shivery cries. Aside from a long dark tanker even farther off, there was not another vessel in sight. The shore was a hundred yards away now. Even if he could buck the currents, time was running out. Hypothermia was setting in—he could feel it: His hands and feet were going numb, his muscles cramping, his brain getting foggy. He was moving out toward sea now and he remembered what Mike Pacelli had told him about how floating objects in the harbor tended to wash up on the south shore of Long Island. In this cold, he wouldn’t live to make it anywhere near that far. He thought of what the old sailor had told him decades before: There comes a point when you can only take in a deep lungful of water and let the ocean win.

He pictured Michelle, though; pictured his son. He wasn’t ready to leave them behind. He managed to raise his head again, and spotted something light-colored, drifting, maybe twenty yards away. He splashed toward it, each stroke an agony of effort. Finally, he closed in: a wooden pallet. His hands wouldn’t cooperate to grip the rough slats, but he threw an arm over the edge and managed to pull himself partway onto it. The little raft depressed under his weight, but it kept his head above the slap of the frozen waves.

He spit out a mouthful of salty water, gasped for air, and lay there, shivering uncontrollably. He was drifting toward the middle of the harbor. A wave slapped against the pallet and the spray stung his eyes; he rubbed an unfeeling hand across them. It was no good. Maybe he wouldn’t drown now, but he might freeze to death before the next boat came along.

After a couple of minutes he heard a clanking.

He wondered if he was hallucinating, but there it was again.

His neck muscles strained as he raised his head above the wood.

There!
Maybe thirty yards away, approaching on his right. A bright green tower, bobbing on the waves, one of the harbor markers. His only chance.

With his last bit of strength, he pushed himself away from the relative safety of the pallet, back down into the icy waves, and slapped furiously at the water.

He could barely keep his head high enough to see now, but his ears led him on.
Clank, clank.
The sound grew louder. He strained his head up one last time, corrected his trajectory, and redoubled his efforts. If he swept past the buoy, he might as well pack it in.

He needn’t have worried: The current slammed him right into the metal side. The challenge was to hold on—the base was a tall cylinder encrusted with barnacles, slimed with sea moss. Desperate, he flailed up and grabbed a bar of the latticed tower. He reached up and managed to place his other hand. He stopped, groaning. Just a little more…He felt drowsy now—all he really wanted to do was sleep—but he clung to the buoy, and then pulled back with all of his remaining strength. The little tower swayed sharply and the bell clanged; the sound was so close that it felt as if it was cleaving his head in two. Grimly, he repeated the motion. The bell clanged and clanged.

H
E STOOD ON THE
little marina’s pier the next morning, shivering, though he was bundled in layers and layers of clothes: long Johns, down vest, hat, gloves…Every few minutes someone approached, offering another cup of hot coffee. They all figured he was nuts to come back so soon; that he’d never want to get near cold water again. He stood there and shivered, and didn’t tell anybody the real reasons why. The sudden bark of the gunshot. The bloody hole in Tommy Balfa’s face, the sight of the old man raising the gun to fire again…And there was only one reason Balfa had been on that boat in the first place.

He took another sip of coffee and watched as techs in jumpsuits swarmed up the staircase from the boat’s small cabin. It seemed that they were done with their forensics work. He glanced back toward the base of the pier, where a big knot of NYPD brass conferred gravely. A cop had been killed, and this was no longer just a precinct affair. The mighty behemoth of the Department had stirred in anger and deep affront. Back on shore, a line of uniforms did their best to keep a jostling horde of press behind the Crime Scene tape. TV news vans filled the street, their tall satellite antennas broadcasting the pompous voices of on-the-spot reporters who were clearly thrilled by the previous day’s events.
Vampires.

Jack stood apart, on the end of the pier. The wind was calm today, and the water smooth. It was cold, though, damned cold.

He could have remained in his warm hospital bed. The doctors had advised it, but being back in a hospital again gave him the heebie-jeebies. After a night rendered sleepless—first by urgent official interviews about the shooting, then by an anxious visit from Michelle, finally by vicious dreams—he was glad to escape, even if it meant being caught up in this roiling drama. It was a crime scene; he was a homicide cop. This was where the action was; it was where he belonged. Most of all, he burned to catch the man who had killed a young boy, and a security guard, and messed-up Tommy Balfa, who had died—after all—in the line of duty.

He knew what the Crime Scene techs had found when they arrived the previous afternoon. One ransacked cabin, valuables still present. One NYPD detective, deceased, with the letters
G.I.
Magic Markered on his forehead.

He also knew what they hadn’t found. An NYPD Glock-19 service pistol, registered to one Jack Leightner. He pictured it skidding across the deck…It hadn’t gone overboard, though, not that he could recall. The loss of your service piece was one of the most profound embarrassments for a cop—especially when it ended up in the hands of a killer.

Thankfully, that detail had eluded the reporters,
HERO COP SLAIN IN HUNT FOR SERIAL KILLER,
read the cover of the
Post
Ridiculous, of course—killing three separate people under different circumstances didn’t necessarily make a perp a true serial killer. But they didn’t care; they had papers to sell. As for the
hero cop
part…Jack rubbed a glove across his face. Through all of the turmoil of the last twenty-four hours—Balfa’s killing, his own rescue, the ensuing mobilization of forces, the media frenzy—he had not mentioned the detective’s little secret. It had been one thing too much.

A seagull landed a few feet away. It lifted one leg and scratched it against the other, eying Jack warily. A thin breeze ruffled its feathers. “If you were smart,” Jack told it, “you would’ve flown to Florida a month ago.”

A figure broke through the scrum at the base of the pier and walked out. Mike Pacelli, from the Harbor Unit.

“How ya doin?” he asked.

Jack just shrugged.

Pacelli shook his head. “Next time you feel like taking a dip, can I suggest a membership at the Y?”

Jack smiled, weary.

Pacelli stood next to him and together they stared down at the water. “You need anything?” his old colleague asked.

Jack nodded. “The scuba unit.”

Pacelli sighed. “I was afraid you were gonna say that.”

THREE HOURS LATER, THE
Harbor Unit man opened the door of Jack’s car and slid into the passenger seat. He took his gloves off and held his hands up to a heater vent.

Jack glanced out at the Scuba Unit launch anchored next to the pier. Burly men in thick black drysuits stomped around on the deck. “They find anything yet?”

Pacelli shook his head. “Not yet. This could take a while.”

“I’m sorry to send those poor bastards down on a day like this.”

Cold aside, it was a tedious job, crawling around in the muck at the bottom of the river. The divers worked a pattern line, a one-hundred-foot rope stretched out and secured at both ends. Visibility was zero, so they had to reach around in the dark. When they had checked along the entire length of the line, they moved it over a few feet and started again. Finding a gun could take hours—or days.

Pacelli glanced at a cup of coffee on the dashboard. “Mind if I have a sip?”

“Take the whole thing. If I have any more, it’s gonna start coming out my ears.”

“Don’t worry about the scubas. This is a breeze for them.” Pacelli took a good slug of the warm coffee. “You know what they have to do to get into the unit in the first place?”

Jack shook his head.

“First, they take a written test, all the technical crap they need to know to keep them alive. If they fail any part of it, they’re out. Next, they go to the gym for pull-ups, push-ups, and sit-ups. Then they have to run a mile in less than six thirty-eight. Then they have to go in the pool and do twenty laps in eleven minutes. If the other applicants do it in less, they’re out. They have to go one length underwater without coming up. Then they have to put on a weight belt and do it again. They do a half-hour survival float, and then tread water for fifteen to twenty minutes, with their hands out of the water for the last few minutes.”

“Jesus.”

Pacelli shook his head. “That’s the easy part. If they make it through all that, then they put some scuba gear on, and they have to swim into the deep end of the pool and get past five or six members of the team. If they come up, they’re out.”

“What do you mean, ‘get past’?”

“They’ll spin you around, and someone will rip your mask off, then pass you off to someone else, who’ll yank your regulator out of your mouth. The job isn’t just physical—you can’t panic. You might be deep in a river, and you can’t see your hand in front of your face, and the currents are ripping along…you never know what you might run into. Shopping carts. Cars. Bodies.” He stopped when he noticed Jack’s gray face. “Sorry—I guess you know something about the water, now.”

Someone tapped on the window and Jack looked up, startled. A young uniform. “Excuse me, sir,” the kid said. “The scubas found something and they’d like you to take a look.”

Jack and his colleague bundled up again, left the warm bubble of the car, pushed through the press throng as calmly as they could, and finally reached the end of the pier, where they met with the head of the scuba unit, a crewcut sergeant in his mid-forties who looked like he was made of pure gristle. The man presented them with a recovered gun.