“I hope they know how to handle a trigger-happy lunatic.”
They both ducked as more shots came. Brick dust flew off the chimney.
“What happened?” Reardon asked.
“I was cruising, saw this guy come out of the building, thought he was running to catch a bus or something.”
More shots.
“Crazy fuck won’t let up for a minute,” Hoffman said. “Anyway, he’s running, and a gun falls out of his pocket, drops on the sidewalk. He stoops to pick it up, I’m already out of the car by then, the crazy bastard throws a coupla shots at me.”
More shots. The men hugged the chimney wall.
“I’ve been counting,” Hoffman said. “He reloads every seven shots. Got to be an automatic.”
“Why’d he start shooting in the first place?” Reardon asked.
“Who the hell knows? Crazy.”
A single shot this time.
“That’s seven. Here’s where he changes the clip. Want to count with me, friend?”
Silence.
Then two shots.
More silence.
Another two.
“That makes four,” Hoffman said.
They waited.
Silence.
A single shot.
“Five,” Reardon said.
“He’s behind the pigeon coop,” Hoffman said. “You take the right, I’ll take the left.”
On the street below, an ambulance siren.
Another shot.
“Six,” Reardon said.
“Get set.”
They braced themselves. It seemed an eternity before the last shot came. “Go!” Hoffman yelled.
They broke from crouches into running strides, splitting into two targets as they came across the roof, Reardon on the right. Hoffman on the left. A small metallic click from behind the pigeon coop, a new clip being rammed home. Vaporized breath pluming from their mouths as they pounded across the tar. Reardon reached the corner of the pigeon coop. The man had his back to him.
“Freeze!” Reardon shouted, and the man whirled.
A Colt .45 automatic was in his right hand.
Reardon fired at once, taking the man in the shoulder. The man fell back against the pigeon coop. There was the frantic flutter of wings. The man slumped to the floor of the roof, lay in darkness against the wall of the coop. Breathing hard, Reardon reached down for him, rolled him over, cuffed his hands behind his back. A flashlight snapped on. Hoffman coming around the left-hand corner of the coop. He threw the beam into the man’s face.
“You make him?” he said.
Reardon looked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Harold Jurgens. The prick who got acquitted this morning.”
He reached down for him.
“Up!” he said.
The door to the roof snapped open, metal banging against brick. A 911-cop peered into the darkness, a shotgun in his hands. “You guys okay?” he said.
“Move it!” Reardon told Jurgens, and shoved out at him angrily, almost knocking him off his feet again. “We’re fine,” he told the 911-cop.
“You’re lucky,” the cop said. “We’ve got a dead kid in the hallway downstairs.”
7
The television commercials all said, “Make it Jamaica again.” Somebody up there must have been listening. Today was Jamaica in New York City. The tropics right here in the Big Apple. Fifty-four degrees outside, clear blue skies, not a hint of wind. In the squadroom, the detectives were sitting around in shirtsleeves. When Hoffman came in, he was wearing a sports jacket over a cotton turtleneck, no coat. He threw that morning’s Daily News on Reardon’s desk.
“Our boy made the front page,” he said.
“Yeah, great,” Reardon said, and looked at the headline:
“Wanna bet he walks again?” Reardon said sourly.
“Not this time,” Hoffman said.
“Wanna bet?”
The phone on his desk rang. He picked up the receiver.
“Fifth Squad, Reardon,” he said.
“Mr. Reardon?”
A woman’s voice. Young, hesitant.
“Yes?”
“This is Miss Sanderson.”
“Who?”
“Martha Sanderson.” A pause. “I was juror number five.” Another pause. “The Jurgens trial.”
“Yes, Miss Sanderson?”
“I’m calling to apologize,” she said.
“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” Reardon said.
“I saw the story in this morning’s paper,” she said, and paused again. “We were wrong... and I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, softening, “that’s all right. Thanks for calling, I appreciate it.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“Mr. Reardon,” she said, “I really am sorry.”
“I understand,” he said.
“I’m not sure you do.”
“Don’t worry about it, okay?”
“I feel terrible about this, really, I do. I wonder... is it possible we could... I’d like to explain further. I don’t want you to think we reached our verdict without careful thought. And deliberation. It was a wrong decision, but I do feel I owe you an explanation.”
“You’ve already explained, Miss Sanderson.”
“I meant... in person.”
“Well...”
“Do you think we could meet for a drink sometime later today? Or a cup of coffee? Something? Really, I feel I owe you something.”
There was another long silence on the line.
“Mr. Reardon?”
“A drink sounds fine,” he said.
“What’s a good time for you?”
“I’m through here at four,” he said, and looked at the clock.
“Could we make it a little past five?”
“Sure. Where are you?”
“I work for Forbes magazine,” she said, “at Fifth and Eleventh. There’s a place called Ringo’s, on Twelfth. Could you meet me there at, say, five-fifteen? It’s just off Sixth.”
“Ringo’s at five-fifteen. I’ll see you there.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” she said, and hung up.
Reardon put the receiver back on the cradle.
“Must be a native New Yorker,” he said. “She called it Sixth.”
“Huh?” Hoffman said. He was reading the story on Jurgens’s arrest
“Instead of Avenue of the Americas.”
“Still claims he had nothing to do with the little dead girl,” Hoffman said. “Came running out of the hallway like a locomotive, but claims he never saw her in his life.” He shrugged. “Maybe he will walk again.”
“We shoulda nailed him on the roof,” Reardon said. “Two in the heart.”
His phone rang again. He picked up.
“Fifth Squad. Reardon.”
“Reardon, this is Weissman at the Two-Four.” a man’s voice said. “I got your flyer on that brown Benz, and I...”
“Yeah?” Reardon said at once.
“Relax, this ain’t a positive make,” Weissman said. “But I been working a murder up here, guy on Central Park West got killed Monday night — about an hour before your guy caught it on Mulberry Street. A brown Benz figures in it. You want to come up here sometime today? We may have something in common.”
Dave Weissman was a Detective Grade/First in his mid-forties, Reardon guessed, a bulky man wearing a sleeveless sweater over a sports shirt. The cops in this city frequently ran into one another, but this was the first time Reardon had ever met Weissman. Slightly balding at the back of his head, wearing eyeglasses, puffing on a cigar, he stood behind the slide projector and said, “This is what the apartment looked like.”
They were sitting in the Interrogation Room of the Twenty-fourth Precinct, uptown on West One Hundredth Street. The projector was set up on a long, scarred, wooden table. Weissman had hung a screen over the oneway mirror on the other side of the room.