His head shook violently from side to side.
“Just sayin’, Cormac. Now, take a walk with me.”
He was off-balance from hours of being hunched up on the toilet with his hands behind his back. In addition, he had the bulky waders on, and their footed rubber overalls made walking difficult.
I held on to him to steady him on the slick surface, carrying the length of rope over my shoulder like a lariat.
We were thirty yards or so north of the red lighthouse and walking toward it. We were on much lower ground and hidden by the boulders, so it wouldn’t be possible for anyone to spot us. I couldn’t see signs of life from within, and I wasn’t sure that there were cops in place yet on the girders of the great gray bridge.
To our right, sticking up from the river like a series of large tombstones, was another outcropping of rocks.
I held on to Lonigan’s handcuffs, his back to me, and extended my right leg so that my foot dipped into the water.
“Ooooh,” I said. “Pretty nippy.” I tugged on the cuffs and pulled him so that his booted feet were standing on the base of one of the rocks, covered up to his ankles by the Hudson.
I talked to him as I laced one end of the thick nautical rope around the links of his handcuffs and then through the shoulder straps of his waders.
“What do you know about hypothermia?” I asked.
Lonigan couldn’t speak if he wanted to.
“I didn’t think so. It’s a dangerous thing, Cormac. Cold water accelerates its onset because body heat is usually lost twenty-five times faster in cold water. It gets to the core of your body,” I said, going about my business strapping the rope around the back side of the naturally made tombstone. “Gets the brain, the heart, the lungs-all the vital organs. And skinny people like you? Well, it tends to get to them faster.”
I kept my balance as I wrapped the rope around Lonigan’s body and then again around the vertical rock.
“Nobody wants you to live more than I do, kid. I’m needing you badly to make a trade, okay? For that woman you don’t know anything about, remember? The one your uncle snatched? So in water this cold-and remember, I put these waders on you for a reason-you’re good out here for two and a half hours.”
Cormac Lonigan closed his eyes.
“Now, it will get colder, because the tide’s coming in and the water will keep rising. Good thing you’re nice and tall. And holding still increases your survival time,” I said. “I took a course once at the Police Academy. A chance to train to be an Emergency Services cop. I got through all the crap about heights and elevator shafts and jaws of life. The one thing I couldn’t deal with? It was hypothermia. It was jumping into the frigid East River-like, doing it voluntarily-to save the ass of some drunken fool who had fallen in, who was kicking and screaming and flailing his arms, and more likely to drown by doing that. I gave up on the idea early on. More suited to dead bodies.”
I was knotting the rope at the rear of the rock. My toes were already ice-cold.
“But that’s when I learned how important it is, in the case of hypothermia, to keep a positive attitude.”
Lonigan’s head was hanging.
“Don’t blow me off when I’m talking to you, kid. I’m not joking with you. You need a will to live, and you need to keep as still as possible.”
Cormac Lonigan twisted in place. I thought it was as likely to remove himself from the sound of my voice as it might have been to try to break free.
“Squirming around like that won’t help you. If you get loose enough to slide into the river? Well, that’s my worst nightmare,” I said. “The thing about those chest-high waders is that they will fill right up to the top with water and just float you away with the current. Fast and furious as she goes. Most likely you’ll crack your head on a boulder before you freeze to death. So take my advice and hold as still as you can.”
There was little chance that Cormac Lonigan could break free.
It was time to talk to his uncle about Coop.
FORTY-EIGHT
I stayed along the very edge of the shoreline, leaning forward on the boulders so that I was angled at almost forty-five degrees.
I couldn’t see downriver, so it was unlikely that Mercer and the harbor patrol cops knew I was out of the boat. I couldn’t even see the lighthouse, which was blocked from my view by the base of the two bridge towers, so I doubted that if anyone was there he or she could see me.
Slowly and carefully I worked my way around the perimeter of Jeffrey’s Hook. The smaller stones hurt the soles of my feet, and the dampness of the large rocks added to my chill.
When I reached the corner of the cement foundation that grounded one of the bridge towers, I stood up beside it. It more than concealed my body from any occupants of the lighthouse, which was not very far away.
I looked up at the massive girders that held the cables and beams that supported the bridge. If there were cops in place-and they should have been by now-they were undoubtedly dressed like ninjas and impossible for me to see amid the hundreds of thousands of pieces of steel and wire.
I opened my phone and clicked on Mercer’s number.
“Hey,” he said. “You still good?”
“Except for lying to you,” I said, whispering into the device, “I’m fine.”
“Like there was a chance you wouldn’t lie to me?” Mercer said. “You know about the fingerprint, right?”
“Vickee called me. Told me they were checking.” Every cop, every prosecutor who took a law enforcement job with the city, had to be printed.
“It’s Alex. Whoever dropped the note has Alex. That’s a confirm.”
“Still no demand?”
“Scully’s waiting on that.”
“But going public?”
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
“Can you see the lighthouse?” I asked. “Can you make it out from where you are?”
“Yes, Mike. We’re staying south, but I can see it pretty well with binoculars.”
“There’s a glassed-in cupola on top. The lantern room,” I said. “And then a circular balcony around it and steps that wind down. Can you spot anyone at all?”
“Not even a fly.”
“Are the ESU guys in place?”
“The first team is on location. More men are on the way.”
“Are they communicating with you?” I asked.
“We’ve got a line open to the sergeant who’s with them.”
“Just let them know that I’m the guy at the base of the bridge,” I said. “I’m barefoot and exhausted and half out of my mind with worry about Coop, but I’m one of them.”
“Will do.”
“I’ve got an idea to see if Emmet Renner is in there,” I said.
“Please tell me it doesn’t involve your gun. There’s nobody on site who wants to use a weapon till we know where Alex is.”
“That was my rule to you, remember?”
“Yeah. So what’s your plan?”
“I’m going to set off one of Kanye’s Roman candles.”
“You’re what?” Mercer said. “You could kill yourself, Mike. Don’t do it.”
“It’s going to go off from the top of a boulder. Perfectly safe,” I said. “You just tell Emergency Services and the bridge police that it’s not a bomb or anything. I don’t want them freaking out when they see the blasts. It’s just a couple of pieces of fireworks-just a sound and light display. We’ll watch whether anyone comes out to explore. The ESU team needs to stay in place and not even think about shooting.”
“Nobody’s shooting,” Mercer said. “They’re just looking for a butterfly net to drop over your head.”
“Keep your eyes on the lighthouse, Mercer,” I said.
I ended the call.
I took the Roman candles out of my pocket. The label said they were eight-shot Thunder Shocks, with maximum loud report. I’d been to enough Fourth of July parties at Breezy Point, the Irish Riviera, to know how to set these off without incident.
I planted the bottom of them in a crevice in a rock near the water, aiming their tops away from the bridge, in the direction of the lighthouse.