Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

WE CONVINCED HAMSTER TO walk back out into the daylight and take a ride with us to show us where he had seen the men.

“So, tell me, um, Hamster,” Doyle said as we rolled east toward Broadway in the Crown Vic. “You seem like a pretty informed person. Why the, uh, um, living underground thing?”

“You read the, uh, um, paper?” Hamster replied as he stared out the window.

“Not today’s,” Doyle said.

“How about in general?” Hamster said.

“Yes, I read the paper. Online mostly these days. Why?” Doyle said, looking back at him.

“You ever think with all that’s going on today in this sick-and-getting-sicker society that the better question might be why do you live aboveground?” he said.

Without further ado, Hamster directed us forty blocks downtown, to Seventy-Second, at the other end of the Freedom Tunnel. We rolled over a curb onto a Riverside Park path and down under the steel arches of the raised West Side Highway to a green space along the Hudson.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing as I waited for Avila and Radar to park beside us. Down here under the highway, they’d managed to tuck in a brand-new, elaborate park with basketball courts and baseball fields and a bike path. I’d lived and worked in New York my whole life—actually lived only about twenty blocks away—and had never even heard of this place, or the Freedom Tunnel, for that matter. This city never failed to surprise.

Hamster got out of the car, his big eyes blinking through the tangled gray mop of his hair as he looked around. We listened to the cooing of pigeons nesting in the crevices of the raised roadbed above as we waited.

“This way,” he finally said.

We followed him across the baseball field and the bike path and stood right beside the lapping shore of the Hudson. Above some anchored white sailboats bobbing on the dark, choppy water, rose-gold sunlight glinted off a glass high-rise on the New Jersey shore. It was quite pleasant and peaceful along the shore with the wind blowing.

“There!” Hamster yelled, pointing north a couple of hundred feet to a fenced gap in the pale curve of the stone riprap that edged the shore.

We walked over along the path and then made a left over the jagged rocks toward the rusted fence. Behind it, between the rocks, was the concrete base of an old pump house. With one edge of it open to the water, it looked like a little dock.

A perfect place to party, hidden from the path, with a water view, I thought. And a well-used one, judging by the broken beer bottles and used condoms and trash and burn marks that covered the area.

“This is where they were,” Hamster said. “It was the middle of the night, and they had a grill with them, and they sat there on folding chairs like it was a picnic.”

“A grill?” Doyle said.

“A charcoal grill, swear to God,” Hamster said.

“Could you identify these people if you saw them again?” I said.

“No, it was too dark, and I was too far away to see faces. Just what they did. I thought they were going to rape her at first, but this was way worse.”

And you didn’t call the cops why? I thought but didn’t say.

“Detective, I think they found a body around here,” Avila said, looking around. “About two months ago. Badly burned, in a suitcase, of all things.”

“Did you guys find it?” I said to Avila.

“No, you did, I think. NYPD. They mentioned it at dispatch.”

Doyle and I looked at each other.

“Midtown South, probably?” Doyle said.

“Probably,” I said.

“I need to get out of here,” Hamster finally said, cracking his knuckles again as he started climbing back up the rocks toward the bike path. “You can arrest me if you want, but I need to get the hell away from here now.”

CHAPTER 44

THE NEXT DAY WAS Naomi’s wake.