Until that time, I would have to crawl back into the culvert, sit tight.
Because of the cloud cover, it didn’t take long for full dark to settle in.
I emerged from out of the culvert once more, made my way up the narrow stretch of river bank towards the dike wall. The port crane had stopped, its mechanical drone giving way to the high-pitched straining and stressing of the freighter’s steel hull bobbing up and down in the river’s wake. Out beyond the docked freighter, I could make out the bright pier-mounted beacons of light shooting out across the wide river.
That’s when I saw the barge coming from out of the north. A flat, brightly illuminated diving barge with maybe half a dozen men and women standing on top of it. From where I stood, I could make out two black rubber-suited divers who were, just then, dropping into the black river, no doubt in search of a possibly drowned fugitive. I knew that when they eventually came up without my body, I would be considered alive and dangerous.
Standing wet and cold on the riverbank, I felt very alone.
But soon I heard a voice and the clap of footsteps coming towards me from the direction of the dike wall. When the narrow cone-shaped light began to strafe the beach, I knew that it had to be the police.
This is what I did: I went down onto my stomach, crawled my way across the beach to the concrete wall. Stuffing my body between the wall and the beach, I tried to make myself invisible. Rather, tried to will myself invisible. Facing the river, I saw the bright white flashlight shine upon the very spot I had been standing just a couple of seconds before.
The S.P.D., my one-time brothers and sisters in arms.
Had they not announced themselves with their chest-mounted radios and flashlights, I’d already be back in custody. Instead, I held my breath, laid there perfectly still, until the flashlight moved farther south along the dike wall. When the light had all but disappeared, I got back on my feet and started jogging in the opposite direction towards the port and the longshoreman locker rooms.
The time had come for a change in wardrobe.
- - -
I walked alongside a brick monster of building that stretched the entire length of the main pier—a four-story warehouse with maybe thirty separate docking bays closed off by identical metal overhead doors. As an S.P.D. detective, I knew that the port office was located somewhere in the general vicinity. As anticipated, I found it located at the far north end of the structure.
The solid metal door was padlocked.
There was a window. A reinforced window that had been left slightly ajar.
I pushed in the window, pulled myself up and stuffed my body in through the opening.
I hit the wood plank floor hard. But not hard enough to do any damage. Picking myself up, I made my way through the front office to the back changing and shower rooms. The locker room itself was windowless, with only a large louver for ventilation. There was a bathroom and a gang shower. Out beyond that was a closed-off area designated for the machine shop.
Every available space was filled with lockers.
Eight or nine rows of beat-up metal, coffin-shaped boxes covered in graffiti and Scotch-taped Penthouse and Hustler nudes. The place reeked of mold.
I stood there sopping wet with only the outside dockside spots to light my way. Quickly, I rummaged through the few lockers that had no locks on them. By the end of my search, I found a pair of workman’s khakis, a white t-shirt and a pair of steel-toed Timberlands that fit well enough.
So far so good.
I was alive; I had new clothes and a destination in mind.
Hotel Wellington … Room 6-5-7 …
They were coming through the machine shop doors when I spotted them.
Two cops.
One man speaking to the other in a slow whisper voice, the narrow beams of light coming from their hand-held sticks bouncing off the block walls and tin lockers like twin Tinker Bells.
I pressed my back up against the lockers, held my breath. I waited until the cops made it past the showers and stepped into the locker room. There were no windows to crawl through. The only way out would be back through the office. Meaning, I would somehow have to get those two uniformed Stormville cops behind me.
I waited until they passed me by. Then I moved on towards the office, taking slow silent steps while the cops went ahead and searched the locker room.
I must have been halfway across the floor when I noticed it. The office door that led out onto the pier was no longer padlocked shut.
The door was wide open.
Somebody had to have opened it. Maybe the same man who, right then, stepped out of the shadows, pointed an old black-plated service revolver in my face. Just this crazy night watchman who, with a shaking left hand, raised a silver whistle to his grimy lips and started to blow.
The high-pitched whistle was piercing.
He was an old man. Maybe somewhere in his mid-seventies. A tall, uniformed, crooked branch of a man with scraggly gray hair, a gaunt stubble-covered face and wide wet eyes.
“Stop,” he spat.
The whistle hung off his neck by an old black shoelace. The pistol trembled in his right hand. Too heavy for his skin and bones. Looking into his bloodshot and blistered eyes, I knew he had to be frightened out of his wits. I looked for the index finger on his right hand. Was it pressed against the pistol trigger? It was impossible to tell in the half-light, even from a distance of only five or six feet.
“Hands,” he insisted. “Raise your goddamned hands.”
Slowly I raised them, shoulder height.
It must have been the cue the two Stormville cops were waiting for. They came up on me from behind. I didn’t require eyes in the back of my head to know where they stood.
One of them shouted, “Down on your knees.”
I knew he could not have been more than three feet away from me. So close I could almost feel his hot breath against the back of my neck.
I hesitated for only a second or two before I started bending my knees, collapsing my body, careful to go slow, not give the old man a reason to shoot me in the face, not give the cops a reason to shoot me in the back.
They had nabbed me fair and square.
As far as they were concerned, I was already on my way back to county lockup, ready to stand trial for the murder of their Captain’s wife and eventually the Captain.
Me, Richard Divine, part-time cop turned cop killer.
But then I was no cop killer. And all semblance of fair-and-squareness had skipped town the deep dark morning that Montana pulled me out of bed, ordered me to head up an independent investigation.
Me, lowering my body.
“Do it,” came a voice from behind.
There was the old man’s pistol barrel following the tip of my nose every inch of the way down. To my right, the flashes of red, white and blue cop cruiser light reflected against the wall. There was the heavy dark river just beyond the macadam-covered pier. There was the giant freighter, bleeding bilge water from rusted holes in its lower hull. There were the intermittent beams of spotlight that shot out across the water.
I knew that it was just a matter of seconds until the empty cop cruiser attracted the attention of any cop who might be in the immediate area. Just a matter of time until these two men and one over-the-hill night watchman turned into an entire squad.
I started lowering my hands.
I didn’t stop lowering them until they were almost level with my knees and the floor. Then I leaned all my body weight onto my left arm and, just like that, extended my right leg, swinging it against the old man’s legs like a battle-axe.
His feet were cut right out from under him.
He dropped like a sack of rags and bones. So hard you could almost hear his hip pop.
The revolver fell out of his hand, bounced off the floor. I rolled over onto my right side, brought the pistol up, pressed the barrel against the old man’s head, cocked the hammer.
I had no choice but to hold a gun to the old-timer’s h
ead.
I’d been screwed from the start.
Ever since those cops had decided to check out the locker room. Christ, ever since I’d washed up on the riverbank; ever since the night watchman decided to play hero.
I got up, told the old man to lay flat on his stomach, not to make a hint of a sound or I’d have to shoot him in the head.
“Don’t test me,” I warned.
The cops just stood there, sidearms in hand.
I told them to toss me the guns, then remove their utility belts, toss me those too.
“Fucking do it.”
Sirens, getting louder.
First they exchanged part confused, part frightened glances. Then together, the two bent down, slid their pieces over to me. Standing once more, they undid their belts, tossed them over at my feet.
I confiscated both of the officer’s 9 mms, stuffed one of the barrels into my pants, while keeping the other on the cops and the old man.
I pulled the extra clips off their utility belts, stuffed them into my pockets.
There was a fifty gallon drum filled with old motor oil only a few feet away from me, on my left-hand side. I side stepped over to it, tossed in the old man’s revolver.
Just for the sheer intuition of it, I made the larger cop take off his Kevlar vest, hand it over.
“You planning on being shot?” he asked, as if it were the time for jokes.
I said, “If you don’t fucking mind.”
He pulled it over his head, heaved it my way.
I told them all to go flat onto their bellies.
They didn’t argue.
Pulling the cuffs from the belts, I handed them to the old man.
“Lock them up,” I said. “You lock yourself to the big one.”
The old man moved painfully slow. Or maybe it was my imagination. But in the end, he got the job done.
When they were secured, I pulled off my t-shirt, strapped on the vest. Did it while holding the piece on all three of them. Then I pulled the t-shirt back over the Kevlar. You never knew when a bulletproof vest might come in handy. Especially when the entire State of New York had a gun pointed at your head.
The sirens were so loud now they made my brain hurt.
It seemed everything made my brain hurt.
Making my way to the open door, I stuck my head out, surveyed south, then north.
All clear.
I stepped out into the night.
59
CAIN GOT UP FROM his chair, moved across the floor of what, up until a few days prior, had been the office of his department superior. He closed the door and the Venetian blinds that covered the glass. Then, against department regulations, locked it.
Back at his desk, he pulled a bottle of Seagrams 7 from the bottom right-hand drawer, set it out on his desk. Pouring a shot into a clear drinking glass he pulled back a quick shot, stifling the throat burning urge to choke. Lighting a cigarette, he poured another shot, but this time allowed it to sit out on the desk and breathe.
That’s when his intercom buzzed.
Picking up the extension, he pressed it to his ear.
“Sorry to bother you, Lieutenant Cain,” the switchboard operator said. “But there’s a guy on line one with a funny voice. Says his name is Joseph. That you guys are old friends.”
Cain let out a smoke-filled sigh.
“You want me to get rid of him for you, Lieutenant?”
“No, Emily, I’ll take it.”
Reaching out with his right hand, cigarette set between tar-stained fingers, Cain ambivalently punched the number “1” on the panel.
“Cain,” he groused.
“If this man you call Divine should get away and start shooting off his focking mouth, you will have much trouble, yes?”
The lieutenant, soon to be acting Captain of the S.P.D., found himself swallowing something that felt like a brick.
“I understand,” he said, pouring yet another shot. “I have good men on the job of re-apprehending Divine right now. He won’t get far, Joseph. I assure you.”
“Or perhaps I should now take the matters into my own hands. Do a little housecleaning, as they say in America. Start at the bottom, work my way to the top, yes.”
“That’s not necessary, Joseph.”
“Oh, but I think that a message must be sent. I’d like to personally send a message, to you, yes?”
“That won’t be necessary. I have men and a helicopter searching—“
But the line disconnected. Cain lifted the glass, downed the shot, slapped the glass back down onto the desk. Pressing the intercom, he leaned forward, mouth poised before the hands-free mic.
“Emily,” he called out.
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“Get me Joy, please. Send him directly up to my new office A.S.A.P.”
A dead air pause.
“What is it, Emily? What is it you’re hiding?”
“It’s just that Nicky has been A.W.O.L. since Divine’s prelim hearing and the escape that followed it …”
“And why is it that I—the new commander of this precinct—have not been informed of this development?”
“We were sure he’d be back in no time. Nicky seems like a good kid, Lieutenant.”
Fucking uniforms always covering for one another. But then, you would have done the same thing once upon a time, Mitch.
“Just do your best to locate him, Emily.”
“Already on it, Lieutenant.”
Where the fuck are you, Joy? Why, of all times, do you decide to disappear now?
Sitting back in Jake’s swivel chair, Cain swung around, stared contemplatively out the window onto the pigeons perched there and the gray river in the distance. Just like his department superior used to do when he was in deep shit.
60
THE CHOPPER PILOT MUST have spotted me exiting the warehouse office.
The Huey must have been following the route of the river when it caught me rounding the corner of the warehouse and out onto the parking lot.
Mounted to the belly of the chopper was a spotlight.
It shone a bright beacon down upon me. Just this big round spotlight that I could not escape. Not out in the open like that. No matter how much I tried to shake it, the circle of light followed my every step as I shot across the lot towards the road that accessed the port from Stormville’s south end.
In my mind’s core, I pictured the gates of the Saint Agnes Cemetery.
With the chopper still hovering overhead, I bolted across an empty Broadway. Coming upon the stone cemetery wall I went over the top, dropped down onto the other side. I hid myself in a thick bed of overgrown weeds and brush.
The rain started coming down harder than it had all night.
Lightning flashed over the mountains to the east. The thunder followed just a few seconds later.
The police sirens went silent.
Down on my belly, curled up against a marble mausoleum, I waited for the chopper to make another pass with its bright beacon. Then I got back up on my feet, made one more run for the wooded glade that bordered the west side of the cemetery.
Once inside the protection of the thick cover I dove flat onto my belly.
I was soaking wet again, but I didn’t have the time to care. All I wanted to do was catch my breath, wait for the chopper to disappear. Only then would I think about my next life saving move.
- - -
Maybe a half hour later, I was moving on through the woods, climbing over more chain link and wood fences than I cared to count. It took about forty-minutes more than it should have, but I managed to make it back into the city’s south end in one piece, without being sighted.
I was cold, wet and hungry.
I estimated the time to be close to nine o’clock.
Keeping inside the shadows, I kept a steady pace down Green Street, past Saint Joseph’s church, past the old row houses, brownstones and town houses where the nineteenth century lumber barons and steel mill owners once lived before St
ormville became a prison town. From there I moved on through the rain along Broadway, past the old Greyhound station and on past the brightly lit, aluminum-paneled Catskill Civic Center.
Soon I was climbing the desolate back side of the State Street hill in the pouring down rain, cutting through the now abandoned parking garage and out to what had once been considered the rear garden entrance to the Hotel Wellington. A forgotten garden from a forgotten era that had evolved into a jungle of thick weeds, heavy vines, scattered bits of trash and shattered concrete.
I made my way into the alley and waited there under a concealing curtain of darkness and rain for as long as it took. Until I was certain that no black and whites were prowling the State Street side of the hotel. It was then that I slipped out of the alley and approached the now boarded up front entrance to the once majestic Wellington.
Grabbing hold of the plywood that covered the old revolving door frame, I ripped one side away, allowed myself just enough room to slip inside. I wiped the water from my face and eyes, combed back my hair with open fingers. I pulled one of the 9 mms from my pant waist and took a quick look around at what remained of the old lobby. A circle of light that leaked in from the street lamps shined down upon an old reception counter. A long, rectangular-shaped cabinet finished at one time with what I guessed must have been cherry wood panels. Or maybe mahogany.
The panels had been pulled away exposing only a rough wood skeleton.
I took a few steps forward, tickling the trigger guard with my shooting finger as I made my way through the rest of the lobby, my feet shuffling over soot-covered black and white marbled tiles.
I came to a large center stairwell.
Inside the stairwell was an old Otis elevator that made the vertical run up the entire twenty stories of the hotel all the way to the ceiling-mounted skylights. The elevator carriage had an accordion-like door that opened and closed manually. Most of the machine’s guts had been ripped out.
From the bottom of the wrap-around staircase I looked up at the electric light that leaked in through the skylights and shined down upon the naked stair treads like dull yellow tracer beams.
I climbed the stairs.
There was the cracking of the treads, the wormy smell of wet dirt and the rain that seeped through the roof. When I made it to the sixth floor landing, I faced the dark corridor. Pistol gripped in my right hand I walked over empty beer and wine bottles, over down pillows with feather stuffing oozing out gray-brown and clumpy through long gashes torn into the cases. I stepped around piles of papers, over mattresses, discarded clothing and ripped-up sections of carpeting.
Dick Moonlight - 01 - Moonlight Falls Page 20