“He wasn’t hurt?”
“They said he slid like a pro. Landed on his shoulder, kept his head up. He was wearing a leather jacket and had a backpack on.”
“And the shooter?”
“He broke off pursuit, most likely because of the witnesses.”
“Where were they?”
Fiermonte pointed toward the entrance to the bar, about halfway between where they were standing and where the bike lay. “They were coming out. Four of them. Morris figures the bike must have been parked nearby, maybe on the next block or around the corner. The rider probably had just enough time to get on and get it started and head for the bridge before the shooter caught up to him and opened up. I don’t really see anyone on foot keeping up with a Ducati for very long, do you?”
“No.” Scanning the buildings lining the northern side of Delancey Street, Cat said, “Did the witnesses see anything else?”
“The rider wasn’t wearing a helmet, which is of course against the law in this state. That corroborates our theory that whoever was riding was likely in a hurry when he got on.”
“What direction did he run off in?”
“East. But all eyes were on the shooter at that point, so no one knows if he ran onto the bridge or ducked down any one of the side streets off Delancey.”
“If their eyes were on the shooter, they must have been able to describe him.”
“Big guy, white, dressed all in black, baseball hat with the bill low.”
“That’s helpful,” she mocked. “Anything else?”
“His gun was fitted with a suppressor. And they found three ejected bullet casings just a few feet from the northern corner of Clinton. The casings appear to be grouped together.”
Cat knew enough to recognize that a “triple tap” — three quick shots — meant that the shooter was probably a professional. So, too, was the fact that the shooter’s weapon was fitted with a suppressor. Not a lot of street criminals used equipment like that, and most shooters were cowboys just dying to shoot someone and fired off as many shots as possible whenever they had the chance.
Of course Fiermonte would know this as well.
“Did anyone see what direction the shooter went in?”
“He turned north onto Clinton.”
“So he backtracked, exited the way he entered.”
“Looks that way.”
“Maybe he had a vehicle there.”
“Maybe.”
Cat thought about all this.
Fiermonte looked at her in that doubting way of his. Once a prosecutor, always a prosecutor. She couldn’t help but wonder then what hell it would be for the woman who dated him.
“It is possible Jeremy is using again?” he asked. “This could easily be drug related. A buy gone bad, or maybe a dealer he owed money to tracked him down.”
She shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“If you know anything, Cat, don’t hold back.”
“Like I said, I haven’t talked to him in a while.”
“But he was living in your father’s old apartment. You know that for certain.”
“The building’s rent-controlled. To keep the lease we needed it to be the primary address for one of us. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he was living there. He could have turned around and sublet it to someone for quick cash.”
She paused to consider something, looked around again.
Fiermonte gave her a moment, then said. “What’s on your mind, Cat?”
“I was wondering what parks are around here.”
“Why?”
“Certain areas in the city are designated for motorcycle parking. It’s semi-official, but cops generally won’t ticket motorcycles that are parked in these places, even if they’re sandwiched between two cars. A lot of those places are parks. Madison Square is one; its north and east sides are lined with motorcycles day and night. But that’s too far away. So I was wondering what parks are around here.”
Fiermonte had to think. “There’s Seward, down on Canal. And there’s one up on Houston, I think. Hamilton, or something like that. But they’re both a few blocks away. Anyone on a motorcycle would have plenty of time between here and there to lose someone pursuing on foot.”
Cat shrugged. “The shooter could have been waiting for the rider on the corner of Clinton.”
“An ambush?”
She shrugged again. “Maybe. It might be worth it to take a look, though, don’t you think?”
“But what exactly would you be looking for?”
“Another group of bar people, someone who might have seen something. Jeremy ran with a bad crowd at one point. If he is using again, then he’s probably back with them. Or someone from the old days could have gotten in touch with him.”
“I’m not following your thinking, Cat…”
“I guess I’m hoping that he loaned his bike to someone. Someone who used it to score some drugs or something like that, someone he owed a favor to. Someone who knew the best place to leave a bike so it wouldn’t get towed was a park. For that matter, his bike could have been stolen off the street by a stranger. Either case, it’s possible it wasn’t even him getting shot at tonight. But if it was him, I’d like to know, and sooner rather than later. Since the rider wasn’t wearing a helmet, maybe there’s someone somewhere who got a good look at his face.”
Fiermonte said, “It seems like a long shot to me, Cat. And anyway, it’s almost five, the bars are all closed. Anyone who might have seen something would be long gone by now.”
“Customers, yeah. But bartenders have to stick around to clean up. And parks attract transients. Plus, early morning deliverymen should be out making their rounds now. Anyway, we’re down here, Donnie. We might as well have a look.”
Fiermonte hesitated, thought about that for a moment, then nodded and said, “Okay. I’ll head south, toward Canal.”
“I’ll take a walk up to Houston.”
“If you find something, give me a call. Otherwise, let’s meet back here in fifteen.”
“You got it.”
Chapter Five
North on Attorney, east on Rivington for two blocks, then north again on Pitt, and Cat was facing Hamilton Fish Park.
Fiermonte was right — if Jeremy’s motorcycle had been parked there, its rider would have easily lost any pursuer on foot between here and the crash site. And for the rider to have passed the Delancey Bar and Grille, he would have had to enter Delancey either by Clinton Street or one of the streets farther east, and the distance between here and Clinton was even greater than the distance between here and Delancey.
Cat stood on the park’s perimeter for a few moments, looking around but seeing nothing. Just as she had been in her dream, she was alone now. The few bars she had passed on the way here were all closed up, but finding another set of witnesses wasn’t really ever a hope.
Finally, she began to backtrack, but instead of turning onto Attorney, she continued west on Rivington, then a block later turned on Clinton. She was just north of Delancey, and halfway down the block, when she saw something in the gutter on the east side of the empty street.
She crossed and approached it, but it wasn’t till she was a few feet away that she recognized what the item was.
The clear plastic visor from a motorcycle helmet.
And it wasn’t till she was standing over it that she saw what appeared to be a small smudge of dried blood on one of its edges. The edge was chipped, the visor itself cracked.
She looked around the immediate area but saw no sign of the helmet. Could this have been why the shooter backtracked? Had he run up Clinton — as opposed to fleeing in any of the other directions available to him — to retrieve the helmet to which this visor belonged?
If so, why would he have done that?
Standing by the visor as if guarding it, Cat scanned the surrounding buildings, looking not at the doors of each one but rather just above them. She didn’t have to look for too long before she spotted exactly what she had been hopi
ng to see all along.
A security camera. One of the many — thousands probably, these days — scattered throughout the city.
This particular camera was mounted above the door of a preschool and aimed toward the sidewalk in a way that gave Cat hope that where she was standing would be included in its field of vision.
Cat was waiting in her Mustang as Fiermonte and Morris, standing once again by the crashed motorcycle, spoke. A wrecker arrived to tow the motorcycle to the impound lot, so they moved their conversation to the sidewalk as the driver worked. Cat glanced at her watch. It was almost half-past five, the sky along the eastern horizon rimmed with a steely gray.
It took another ten minutes before Fiermonte finally broke away from Morris and headed toward Cat’s Mustang. He climbed into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed. The windows were closed, had been as she waited, but with him in the seat beside her now she suddenly felt just a little crowded. A little shut in. A trace amount of panic rushed through her, and she craved a drink.
“He’s going to contact the owner of the preschool and get a look at their surveillance tape,” Fiermonte said. “I’ll let you know what it shows, if it shows anything.”
“And the visor?”
“It’ll take a few days to get the DNA from the blood.”
“You’ll need something of Jeremy’s to match it to.”
“Morris will get a warrant to search the apartment. I’m assuming there’ll be a brush with some of Jeremy’s hair on it, or a used razor or something along those lines.”
“I could take care of that,” she offered. “It’d be good for me to do something to help.”
“It’s better if we let Morris do this by the book.”
“But what if he finds something incriminating?”
“Yeah, that’s a problem, isn’t it? We should have a few hours before Morris gets his warrant. Maybe you could take a quick look around the place first, just in case. For all we know, Jeremy’s got an Ecstasy lab there. Or worse. You up for that, Cat?”
She nodded, then said, “Yeah.”
It was her turn to look at him closely. Something was clearly bothering him.
“What’s on your mind, Donnie?”
“I should have told you this sooner, but Jeremy called me a while back. About a month ago, I guess. He said he’d gotten himself clean and was thinking clearly for the first time in a long time. To be honest, he sounded a bit manic, talking fast and saying stuff that was way out there.”
“Like what?”
“That he remembered things from the night your father was killed, things that he’d suppressed, apparently.”
“What things?”
“He wouldn’t tell me over the phone. I asked him if he was working, and he told me he was tending bar at a restaurant in Midtown. I went there the next day to confirm it. He was there all right, but he seemed…keyed up.”
“That’s Jeremy.”
“I know, but this seemed different. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. I asked him about the memories and he said he didn’t want to talk about it. I told him he could trust me, but he just shut me down. I didn’t want to push it, or him, so I backed off and said I’d like to hear from him once a week — the same day, the same time, every week. He agreed and checked in with me just like I’d asked him to, right on time — until this week, that is.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“I was handling it. Or at least I thought I was. Anyway, you have enough to worry about.”
“He’s my brother, Donnie. He’s my problem.”
“It’s hard to know what the right thing to do is here. With him, I mean. With you three. But you’re wrong about him being your problem, Cat. He’s my problem, too.”
“When was he supposed to check in?”
“Yesterday.”
“Did you go looking for him when he didn’t call?”
“I was in court all day. I phoned the restaurant when I got out. It turns out he had quit weeks ago. Every time he called and told me he was still working there and doing fine, he was lying.”
Born to suffer, Cat thought. And to cause suffering.
Nothing new there.
“Did you go by the apartment?”
“I was going to today. I learned a long time ago that if you push Jeremy, he runs. I didn’t want that to happen.”
“And he hadn’t said anything more about the memories.”
“Not a thing. It was almost as if he had forgotten all about it. At that point, I just assumed it was something he’d blurted out during an episode. Or maybe he’d had a moment of paranoid delusion or something.”
Cat had seen her brother in fits of mania. She’d also seen him high to the point of near-religious euphoria. And though she had never witnessed delusional outbursts, she knew anything was possible.
What, after years and years of abuse, could be left of the poor boy’s mind?
Fiermonte took in a breath, let it out. “I hate to say this, but I was hoping this whole thing tonight was somehow drug related. A buy gone bad, or maybe he owed the wrong person money. And maybe you’re right; maybe it wasn’t even him on his bike tonight. But right now my gut is telling me otherwise.”
Fiermonte looked at Cat, paused, then said, “Maybe Jeremy does know something — saw it the night your father was taken but had forgot all about it till now. Or maybe he’s out of his mind and in need of meds. Whatever the case, we need to find him. Before he gets himself hurt. Or worse. We need to find him and get him help. Even if that means going for involuntary commitment again. I made a promise to your father a long time ago, and I’ll do what I have to do to keep it. Do you understand me?”
Cat nodded. “I’d better get going, then.”
“Call me after, even if you don’t find anything.”
“Will do.”
“And be careful.”
Cat wasn’t sure if he meant don’t get caught or keep a sharp eye out.
It didn’t matter; she planned on doing both.
Chapter Six
Immediately upon entering the apartment on West Tenth Street, Cat smelled something. Perfume, maybe. Or body wash. It was faint, and strangely familiar, but there was no mistaking that whatever it was, it was feminine.
She began to look around, knew she needed to remain focused on her task, but it was difficult for her to be here and not be overwhelmed by memories. More so, in fact, than she had anticipated.
She’d done so much to leave all this behind.
This had been their father’s apartment, the place where he had lived after his discharge from the army back in ’74. Shortly after that he had joined the FBI. He had married late — in ’80 at the age of thirty-five — and bought the house in Ossining where Cat and her two brothers were raised.
Growing up, she had idolized her father — he had worked long hours in the city, was often gone for days at a time, was a man, her mother reminded her frequently but gently, who was doing what he had to do in order to support his family. It wasn’t till Cat was a teenager that she learned what her father actually did to make his living, the risks he had taken in a war on organized crime, both before meeting their mother and then after that. At that moment Cat knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life.
It was during her childhood that she first experienced the pain-pleasure cycle — missing her father terribly, craving his company and attention, then having it, intensely if all too briefly, only to have him leave again, after which the pain would return. This pattern, burned into her during her youth, was one that she sought out as an adult — a common story, this she knew. But as aware as she was of this pattern, of how it had begun and what it meant, she could never really find a way to break it. Affairs with unavailable men were the best way for her to recreate this cycle. And for whatever reason, it seemed that unavailable men were as drawn to her as she was to them.
But she did her best now to fight this rush of memories, needed to focus on why she was here, but this apartm
ent, in its strange way, was a keystone in her life. For the longest time it had been a place of mystery to her, where he father had lived his second and secret life. Living here, as though he were still a bachelor and not a husband and father of three, had helped maintain his various covers — and protected his family, all but hidden up in Westchester. Cat had not even seen this apartment until she was twenty, and only then because her father no longer played any part in undercover operations. An agent could pull off only a few of those, at the most. John Coyle Sr., a legend in the Bureau, was a veteran of ten.
Off-limits for so long, the place where her father had lived without her, had slept, if he really slept at all, while his life was in danger daily — how could being here not trigger countless memories for her? Even now, technically, she shouldn’t be here; even now there was danger in her simply having entered and taken a look around.
She checked her watch, saw that she’d been here for fifteen minutes already. Had she really lost track of that much time? She decided that she’d better get to it and do a serious search. She needed to find something that would tell her without a doubt that Jeremy had been living here. The perfume could have meant he had a live-in girlfriend, or it could have meant that he had simply spent last night with some stranger. If that were the case, Cat thought, maybe she had more in common with her troubled kid brother than she realized.
But the presence of lingering perfume could also have meant that Jeremy had simply sublet the place to a woman, or maybe a couple, for the quick cash.
Then Cat saw the framed photograph of their mother in the bedroom and knew by this that Jeremy was living here. He carried that photo with him everywhere he went, wasn’t likely to have left it behind had he leased the place out. She remembered visiting him in the hospital after his first breakdown, when he was at last diagnosed as bipolar. This was just months after their father had been killed. Jeremy had asked her to get the photo of their mother from his place — he was staying with some friends in a dive on the Lower East Side — and bring it to him. He had landed in the hospital after crashing a car he and one of his roommates had stolen while high. Fiermonte, Cat later learned, had pulled some strings to get the charges dropped, then arranged for Jeremy to enter a treatment center — his first of many.
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