by Cleo Coyle
“You didn’t know, did you?”
“No. Your mother tried to warn me, but with my morning team late, I haven’t had time to run to a newsstand or read the papers.”
“Well, you might want to read this one.” He slipped on his still-wet jacket and shivered. “I’m off for that shower—the one at the health club, not the one that nearly drowned me. See you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I echoed, staring at the headline. “What’s tomorrow?”
“We’re going to see Gus, remember?”
“Oh. Right!”
“And don’t forget those cannoli cupcakes. I wouldn’t mind eating one or two or four myself.”
As soon as Matt pushed through the front door, I opened the paper and began to read—until I was interrupted by the arrival of my (late) morning shift.
“Hey, boss. On break already to read the paper? Wow, the perks of management never end.”
Esther Best (shortened by a forefather from Bestovasky) unwound her black spiderweb lace shawl. The commando overcoat came off next, to reveal zaftig hips and a short-sleeved Poetry Slam tee that displayed her literary tribute tattoos. With a rare smile on my goth barista’s fetching face, I let her barb pass without comment.
Nancy Kelly, my youngest barista, staggered in behind Esther. Her Midwest farm girl cheerfulness was absent today, her wheat-colored braids coming loose, her eyes puffy and red.
“Coffee,” she croaked. “Nancy needs coffee bad.”
“Tired?” I asked.
“We didn’t get much sleep, which is why we’re late, by the way.” She paused to glare at Esther. “My roommate was up all hours, listening to a creepy guy with a creepier voice recite really creepy poetry.”
“That was Allen Ginsberg,” Esther said, examining her nails. “I always listen to Ginsberg’s poetry when I’m feeling down.”
“Why? To push you over the edge? And you call that yacketayakking poetry? Ugh. After work, I’m buying earplugs. That demented maniac gave me nightmares.”
“That’s the idea. I get my best poems from nightmares.”
“Okay, enough!” I declared. “I need one of you to fill the pastry case and the other to unroll the rain mat at the front door.”
“But the storm is over, boss. Look outside. The sun is shining.”
“Fine, forget the mat. Just make sure all the rain that our Matt tracked in is mopped up. Flip a coin on the chores and get going. We open in eight minutes.”
Still bickering—but quietly now—my Odd Couple got to work. I opened the paper, only to be interrupted again, by another staff member, my longtime assistant manager, Tucker Burton.
“What are you doing here, Tuck? You’re ten hours early.”
“Only for this job . . .” He frowned down at Matt’s puddles before dodging Esther on a mission with her mop. “I have another gig starting in two hours, and I need some strong java mojo to pump me up.”
“What’s the other job? Theatrical, I assume?”
He headed for the espresso machine. “I’m holding auditions all day.”
“Another public service announcement?” Esther asked. “What is it this time? The dangers of salt? Sugar? Breathing?”
“I’ve been hired to direct a charity show at Irving Plaza. A superhero extravaganza for kids with cancer.”
“So what’s it going to be, a chorus line for men in tights?”
Tuck waved his hand. “A musical revue will hardly do. These kids have seen all the movies. They expect epic fight scenes, and that’s what I’m going to give them.”
“Rubber sets and breakaway furniture?”
“Precisely.”
“How exciting,” Nancy gushed from behind the pastry case. “Will the dark and brooding Batman be there? And the hunky Superman?”
“Both capes will be fluttering,” Tuck assured her. “And we’ll have that hot new dynamic duo Panther Man and Cub. I’ve also got to find an Iron Man, a Thor, and a square-jawed Captain America.”
Nancy sidled up to him. “You know, I wouldn’t mind helping you find a really hot Superman. Someone a Lois Lane like me could swoon over.”
Tuck tossed his floppy mop. “This is Greenwich Village, sugar. Finding a Superman is easy. What I need is an actor.”
“One who also happens to fill out the tights?” Esther cracked.
Tuck shot back his espresso. “That wouldn’t hurt, either.”
Nancy’s second offer to join the Great Superman Search was interrupted by the bell over our front door.
“Are you serving?” asked a desperate-looking young woman with a bulging NYU backpack. “My first law school class starts in thirty minutes, and I need coffee badly.”
“You’ve come to the right mountaintop, oh, Decaffeinated One!” Esther intoned. “And props for using the grammatically correct badly.”
“That means, come right in,” I told the law student. As I flipped our CLOSED sign to OPEN, she headed inside. That’s when I spied a familiar face.
“Hey, Clare, how’s it going?”
The jovial tenor belonged to Detective Finbar “Sully” Sullivan, twenty-two-year veteran of the NYPD and right-hand man to the decorated narcotics detective who’d won my heart.
As Sully entered, I gave him a hug and saw the man himself approach our door, Detective Lieutenant Michael Ryan Francis Quinn, the respected head of the department’s famous OD Squad.
Quinn’s commanding presence filled the coffeehouse the way his broad-shouldered silhouette filled the sunlit door, the way his courage and caring filled my life.
“Hi, Clare.”
“Hi, Mike.”
His NYPD jacket was rumpled from the all-nighter, and the dark sand of his five-o’clock shadow stubbled the hard line of his jaw. But despite his lack of sleep, there was no sign of fatigue in the blue of his switchblade eyes, or the sweet-sly smile he offered me.
“I’d give you a kiss,” I told him, “but I’d rather your mouth start moving for another reason.”
Quinn’s smile all but vanished when I unfolded the newspaper still clutched in my hand.
“‘Open Season on the NYPD,’” I read aloud. “‘Four Cops Shot in Three Days.’ And not one word from you. So come in, please. Because I want answers, and I want them now.”
FIVE
“EASY, Cosi. Don’t overreact—”
“Overreact? To what? The fact that you’re a member of a subset being actively hunted and gunned down? Or that you kept it from me?”
Quinn raised his hands in mock surrender. “The press is blowing a couple of random events out of proportion to sell papers, that’s all.”
“That’s not all—”
“True, but Sully and I just spent twelve long hours arresting and flipping a street dealer who just gave us the means to nail the most notorious suppliers of synthetic drugs in the five boroughs. Can’t we have a little coffee and kindness before we start explaining why you shouldn’t worry?”
I was no less desperate for answers on the shootings, but Quinn got me on that one.
I directed them to the espresso bar, tied on my apron, and soon the two were drinking up steaming cups of my new City Sunrise blend and chowing down on a mountain of fresh-baked muffins.
“Okay . . .” I rested my elbows on the counter. “Start explaining why I shouldn’t worry about these shootings.”
Sully couldn’t do much explaining with half a Snickerdoodle Muffin in his mouth. Swiping crumbs off his NYPD jacket, he pointed to Quinn, who told me—
“The first incident happened during a vertical patrol in Brooklyn. That’s a routine sweep of a building’s stairwell. A rookie housing cop stumbled into the middle of an armed robbery. Cop wounded, suspect caught. Happens a few times a year.”
“I see. Next?”
Now Quinn’s mouth was stuffed with a Maple-Glazed Oat
meal Muffin, so Sully took over—
“Shooting number two was a traffic cop, Clare. She was writing parking tickets in Queens when—”
“She took a bullet in the shoulder. But she’s fine.” Quinn forcefully jumped in, mouth still full. “Treated and released.”
It was quick, but I saw Sully and Quinn exchange a grim glance.
“What was that look?” I challenged.
“What look?” Quinn asked.
“Don’t play with me. Who shot that poor woman?”
“It’s right there in your paper.” Quinn tapped the tabloid. “No one was apprehended, but the blame was put on an ongoing gang feud in the neighborhood.”
“Then what about shootings three and four?” I asked. “I scanned the article, but there’s very little beyond the fact that two cops were shot last night.”
Both detectives went suspiciously silent. Quinn looked cool as a cuke. But Sully was starting to sweat. Before I could press them, Sully’s smartphone buzzed—
“It’s Fran, phoning from her mother’s place in Rochester.” Looking relieved, he glanced at Quinn. “I’ll just take this outside . . .”
He also took our seasonal Pecan Pie Muffin (a beautifully caramelized cross between a mini pecan pie and a breakfast muffin). “See you soon, Clare!”
“Give your wife my best,” I called to him. “And let her know I finally typed up that Baileys Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. I’ll e-mail it tonight.”
“Thanks for her—and me.” Sully winked, waving the muffin. “I could have eaten that whole plate myself last Sunday!”
As he headed out the door, Quinn threw me a half smile. “I think he did eat the whole plate, didn’t he?”
“Half the plate. You ate the other half.”
“Speaking of second helpings. I’d love a refill,” Quinn said, holding out his cup. “And maybe one of those cute little Pumpkin Pie Muffins?”
I delivered both. “Now where were we?”
“On the Baileys Irish Cream Cookies?”
“On the third and fourth shootings.”
Quinn made a show of shrugging. “Those two incidents happened last night. I haven’t been officially briefed on the details.”
“Officially briefed? But you’ve heard all about it unofficially, haven’t you?” His expression appeared unreadable—to the general public. Not to me. “What are you hiding, Michael Quinn? What don’t you want me to know?”
“Take easy, Cosi, or I’ll charge you with harassment.”
“Don’t joke about this!”
“Look, sweetheart, there are thirty-five thousand cops in this city. Even if one of them got shot every single day, the odds of anyone you know getting hurt are miniscule. You’d probably have a better chance at winning the New York Lottery—”
A sharp crack interrupted him, loud and unmistakable. A gunshot.
We both froze as the blast echoed off the buildings along Hudson, followed by frightened cries and stampeding feet.
Finally, a shocked silence descended, broken only by a woman’s hysterical plea—
“Oh, God! Someone call 911. A policeman’s been shot!”
SIX
“STAY inside, Clare!” Quinn shouted as he flew out the front door.
I ignored the command. If someone was hurt, I wanted to help, so I pushed through right behind him—and stopped dead.
After a chilly morning in a shuttered coffeehouse, I was blinded by the dazzling poststorm sunshine. Before my eyes could adjust, a powerful tug yanked me to the sidewalk.
“You should have stayed inside.” Quinn’s tone was not gentle.
I blinked away stars, to focus on the very large gun in his hands.
Quinn was down on one knee, crouched inside the Village Blend’s recessed doorway. I was tucked behind him, squashed against the door.
“What do you see?”
Quinn didn’t answer. He was too busy calling out a string of police codes into his smartphone. So I peeked above the broad shoulder of my human shield, at the scene on the street.
At first I saw only pedestrians, cowering behind parked cars, a trash can, even a mailbox.
Vehicular traffic flowed rush-hour normal along all four lanes of Hudson. But on the side street next to the Village Blend, a delivery van blocked traffic. The driver’s side door hung open, and the driver himself was taking cover in a doorway, just like me.
In front of that van, a figure in an NYPD jacket was sprawled on the pavement. I could see red pooling around him.
“It’s Sully,” Quinn hissed, his white-knuckle grip tightening on his weapon.
Oh, God . . . I tried to rise higher for a better view, but Quinn dragged me down.
“The sniper is still out there.” His hard gaze remained on the high windows and rooftops around us.
“Sully’s hurt. He’s bleeding,” I rasped. “We have to do something!”
“I’ve called for backup, Clare, paramedics and SWAT. And if the shooter gives his position away, I’ll take him out.”
I could hear a siren. Police? An ambulance? Whatever it was, it seemed very far away.
Then someone cried out, and we instantly saw the reason: a young woman in a rose pink jogging suit was exiting a building. Eyes fixed on her smartphone, earphones muting the shouted warnings, she blithely walked into the line of fire. Even worse, when the jogger finally noticed the bleeding cop lying in the street, she froze like a mouse at last spotting the cobra.
“She’s going to get killed—”
Quinn instinctively moved out of the doorway, and a bullet immediately shattered our front window frame beside his head. As he threw himself backward again, splinters peppered us both.
The shot snapped the jogger out of her paralysis. The young woman turned and ran back to her building at a speed that would do any Olympian proud.
An easy target, I thought, so why didn’t the sniper pull the trigger?
I flashed on the newspaper headline, and knew the answer.
Because this shooter’s one and only goal is to target cops!
I glanced at Sully. The man hadn’t budged, but there was more blood pooling on the concrete.
That’s when I made the decision. Praying I’d jumped to the right conclusion, I told Mike—
“Don’t move. You’re the target. Not me.”
Then I ran into the street.
SEVEN
A bone-chilling wind gusted in off the Hudson River, just a few blocks away. I wore no coat, only my slacks, a thin sweater, and an apron for warmth.
But that wasn’t why I was shivering.
With every step I anticipated the thunderclap of the rifle, and the punch and burn of a bullet ripping through me. My spine tingled. I felt a bull’s-eye on the back of my neck. Time slowed to a crawl, but I kept going.
I heard Quinn calling after me—okay, he was yelling at me like crazy—but it wasn’t the most opportune time to debate my actions.
Meanwhile, the sirens seemed no closer, their advance slowed by rush-hour traffic, now at a complete stop along Hudson.
Finally, I dropped to the glacial concrete beside Sully’s still form. His back was turned, so I shook his shoulder and called his name.
No response.
Quinn tried again to move out of cover—and another shot dinged the Village Blend’s redbrick facade.
“Stay down!” I shouted. “I told you, the sniper’s only shooting at police!”
“And you know that . . . for sure?”
There was a shockingly calm irony in Quinn’s reply that shouldn’t have surprised me, given the countless firefights he’d been in. But then he was the one who’d told me—
“Cool, clear thinking is what gets you through. Emotion is what gets you killed . . .”
I clung to that advice. Using Quinn as my example, I beat
down the rising panic as another shot rang out. This one sounded different and also much closer and easier to pinpoint!
It had come from the rooftop directly across from the Village Blend. The shot failed to hit anyone (thank goodness), and Quinn quickly returned fire, giving me cover.
With no better target in plain sight, I realized the shooter might be trying to finish off Sully, so before I administered first aid, I decided to drag him behind the delivery van. But when I turned him over, I changed my mind.
Sully’s gaze was unfocused, his eyelids fluttering, his pale flesh cold as the morning air.
My hands came away sticky with blood, and I soon found a ghastly hole above Sully’s left elbow. I compressed the wound, but blood continued to gush around my fingers. If the flow was not stopped, Sully could bleed to death before the ambulance came.
As I untied my Village Blend apron and tugged it off, a creeping chill transferred from the pavement right up my spine. I quickly tore up the blue fabric, circled the strips around Sully’s wound, and wound the apron strings around his arm, several inches above the injury.
When I pulled my instant tourniquet tight, Sully groaned.
“Hang in there, Sully! Help is coming . . .”
And, thank God, some was already here. Within a few seconds, I’d managed to slow the scarlet tide to a trickle.
Holding the tourniquet in place, I searched the rooftop directly across the street from the Village Blend but saw no one. Another bang came from there, and Quinn fired several times, appearing to scare the shooter back.
Now I scanned the entire area, looking for any others in need of help. That’s when I noticed something moving on a nearby roof. It was that vacant building, the one I’d complained about at the community board meeting.
Kids had been using the Dumpsters to boost themselves onto the fire escape and up to the roof. But I doubted any partying was going on at this hour of the morning.
Something black and flowing fluttered into view and then disappeared again.
I shouted at Quinn, asking if he could see the building. The Village Blend sat on a corner, and the abandoned building was partway down the cross street we shared—it would be hard for Quinn to see from his vantage. But he wasn’t paying attention to my pointing. He was on his smartphone again, his eyes on the rooftop directly across from the coffeehouse, where the loud bangs had gone off. Then his attention moved to the sky.