I pulled out my phone with my left hand, my right hand still holding my gun. I hit redial and when Mercer answered I told him to do whatever he had to-whatever the men could-to save Coop’s life. I couldn’t even see Emmet Renner as he moved away with Coop.
“Renner!” I yelled again. “The devil’s bridge.”
He stopped moving. The half silhouette reappeared in my sight line. I could see him bend his neck back and look up at the span of the George Washington. I was grateful to have his attention.
“Not that one,” I said. “Not the one up above us. I’ve got a better deal for you.”
“Fairy tales now, Chapman?” he said, with a laugh that sounded diabolical. “I haven’t heard about the devil’s bridge since my mother died.”
“I’ve built one just for you, Renner. Just for you.”
“I’m to send Alex Cooper across it and get what in return? What are you offering me?” he said. “What could you possibly have that I want?”
“I’ve got your blood, Renner.”
“My what? You’ve got my what?”
I could see boats passing in the water behind the lighthouse, but I didn’t spot the NYPD cruiser.
“Not exactly the first living soul to cross over, but your blood nonetheless.”
“What have you done now, Chapman?”
I had upped the ante and Renner had raised his voice.
“I’ve got your sister’s kid, Renner.”
“No, you don’t. You’re bluffing me now.”
“I’ve got Cormac Lonigan.”
It might be bad blood, but they were all Renners.
He was coming around the building, almost into a position opposite me.
“Cormac’s home now. I’m sure he’s home.”
He was losing it a bit; I could hear that in his voice. He wasn’t wrapped that tight thirty years back, and he had undoubtedly unraveled even more.
“You dragged him into this, Renner,” I said. I left out the part about how he had been responsible for his brother’s death all those years ago. “Shauna’s kid.”
His roar into the night air was a partial release of his rage.
“Don’t do to Shauna what you did to your old man,” I said. “I’ll give you the kid.”
“Where is he?” Renner asked. “Where’s Shauna’s boy?”
“You let Alex Cooper go and I’ll give you Shauna’s son.”
“You’d really kill another Renner kid, Chapman?” he asked, rocking against the wrought iron railing. “What have you done with Cormac? What have you done with her boy? If you kill him-”
“It’s only you who can kill him,” I said. “You’ve got someone I love, and I’ve got Renner blood to trade for her.”
“Where’s Cormac?” he shouted at me, rattling the old railing as he pulled on it. “Where in God’s name is he?”
“Not far at all,” I said. “He’s on the rocks, Renner. The kid’s on Execution Rock.”
FIFTY-TWO
“Is he alive?” Emmet Renner asked.
He had taken a few steps back and seemed to be bending over Coop’s body. I couldn’t see her at all. I couldn’t tell whether she was able to move.
“For now, yeah. Maybe in an hour or so he starts hallucinating,” I said. “You know how that goes. But he’s alive now.”
I needed to get Renner out in the open. I needed to move closer and draw him toward me so that whoever was backing me up had a chance to act while I distracted him with his nephew’s plight.
“It was your game, the rock,” I said. “I figure you know what kind of torture it is.”
“You got cops helping you with this?” Renner asked.
“Flying solo. I came here by boat, alone with Cormac.”
“Where the fuck is he?” Renner asked, taking a step in my direction.
“Probably on the very same rock you used, when you used to play in this park.”
I thought I could hear his feet shuffling on the walkway, but I didn’t know whether he was moving closer to me or farther away, back to Coop.
“I watched you from the heights above Ceder Point, back before-” I caught myself just as I was about to insert Charlie Renner’s name in the conversation. “Back when I was seven or eight.”
It was one of the most memorable ways that Emmet Renner and his pals bullied the younger kids, his brother, Charlie, and Charlie’s friends, on Execution Rock.
We played in Bennett Park then-all of us little warriors who tracked the bluestone and granite foundation of Fort Washington’s ruins. We watched the grown men who staged reenactments of battles on important dates throughout the year. We built our own fortifications on the heights above the Hudson, using tree trunks and branches that had been damaged in lightning storms.
Now I kept backing off, deeper into the shadows and closer to the boat.
There was an old story about the British colonials who controlled New York and Long Island before the American Revolution. I didn’t learn it in school. I heard it first from Renner’s gang.
When rebels had become unruly and were sentenced to die, the authorities would often chain them to rocks in the river. It was a slow death and a torturous one, as they drowned with the rising water of the incoming tide.
I reached Cormac Lonigan. The water was at his waist. His lips were deep blue and he was shivering uncontrollably.
I’d seen his uncle Emmet play this game with unwitting kids-always the weaker ones, the younger ones. I’d never seen him kill anyone this way, but I was certain he had done just that.
The water had risen on the boulder, too, as well as on Cormac Lonigan’s body. I waded into it and felt the sting of the cold on my skin.
I reached my arm out toward his face. His head smacked against the rock as he recoiled instinctively.
I took a step closer and reached out again. This time I grabbed on to my handkerchief and sock and pulled them out of his mouth.
The noise that came out of Cormac Lonigan sounded like the cry of a wounded animal. The words he tried to say were help me, but it was a great primal scream that shattered the silence of the landscape around me.
FIFTY-THREE
“You want him, Renner?” I said. “Come and get him before he starts gurgling Hudson River water.”
Emmet Renner hardly knew the kid. But it wouldn’t be easy for him, I didn’t think, to face his own sister after returning home and recruiting her son to his murderous ways. That, coming right on top of the death throes of their father.
Cormac was screaming for his uncle now, begging him to save his life. If there was anyone else in earshot, we’d have company soon. It was one of the most sorrowful sounds I’d ever heard.
“People are going to come piling in from the park, Renner,” I said. “Dog walkers out for a stroll, joggers running by. Only a man with no soul could listen to this howling and not come to help.”
I couldn’t see him from where I was standing. I doubted he would leave Coop alone, but the kid made a god-awful noise and if Renner had grown up at all during his years in the desert, he’d have to respond.
“I’ve got a boat,” I said. “That’s how I brought your nephew here. I’ll put you both on it and promise safe passage through the harbor.”
Cormac Lonigan moaned and tried to summon the strength to scream again. But there was no word from Renner.
Then I heard voices shouting, coming from the wooded area in Bennett Park. Then a dog barking. Then two or three dogs.
“Where are you?” one man called out from a point on the heights above me.
“You can’t kill them all, Renner,” I yelled to him.
“I’ll take the boat, Chapman,” he called back to me. “Give me the boat and the kid.”
There suddenly seemed to be noises coming from every direction.
I had opened the floodgates by removing the gag from Lonigan’s mouth. Now the police units surrounding the lighthouse, the park, and the bridge tower would have to reveal themselves to block the well-meaning citizens from rushing to the rocks.