Worst Case (Michael Bennett 3)

“I’ll follow on foot,” I called to Emily as I spotted the tall youth moving south across the project yard. “Follow in the car. Stay at least two blocks behind me. The trunk of the Fed car has more antennas than a goddamn cell site. We don’t want to spook him.”

Emily booked away as I tailed the man. I hung back as far as I could. He wasn’t moving particularly fast. He didn’t look over his shoulder or seem concerned in any way about whether anyone was following him. I wondered if he was being coy or if he was just stupid. I was leaning toward the latter.

As I followed, I stayed in contact with the roving multi-layered surveillance detail we had set up. The topography of that little corner of East Harlem was hell on surveillance. Not only did we have the river, the Harlem River Drive, and a close subway to contend with, but the projects themselves were separated from the rest of Harlem by a high, stone bluff. There were lots of alleys, one-way streets, and dead ends, plenty of places to duck into to try to shake us.

It was cat-and-mouse time, and frankly, I wasn’t exactly sure who was going to come out on top.

I was surprised when the man made a hard right out of the complex and headed under the raised roadway of 155th Street past a ROAD CLOSED sign. I noticed some cars parked at the dead end of the short street. Would he hop into one of them?

Instead, he made another right at the face of the dead end’s stone bluff and turned toward a set of ascending stairs I hadn’t seen. I shook my head when I reached them and saw how incredibly steep they were.

I wasn’t sure if it was my thighs or my lungs that were burning the most as I neared the top.

“We have a visual,” I heard over my radio as the man hit the top of the stairs next to a Harlem River Drive entrance ramp. We had an undercover Highway Patrol unit stationed a hundred yards north up the highway in case he attempted to move the money out that way.

He didn’t, though. He passed the entrance and was crossing over Edgecombe Avenue along the upper part of 155th Street when I got to the top. I thought he would head down into the subway on the corner of 155th and St. Nicholas, where yet another team was waiting, but he surprised us all by heading to the window of a place called Eagle Pizza on the corner and grabbing a slice.

A slice? I thought. Was this guy for real? Nobody could be this calm. I searched the crowd of pedestrians going up and down the subway stairs. There was definitely something off about this whole thing.

Emily pulled up beside me, and I joined her in the Fed car. We watched the black guy finish his slice and continue west with the money.

He’d just rolled the suitcase off the next corner when it happened. There was a high scream of a motor, and a figure wearing a black motorcycle helmet and matching racing leathers roared up on a BMX dirt bike.

Without stopping and without an opportunity to do anything except look on with our mouths open, we watched as the rider scooped up the bag the black guy had let go of. He gunned the cycle through the red light, almost hitting the hood of our car, and raced the opposite way down 155th.

Chapter 50

WE WERE POINTED in the wrong direction as he lasered past us. Emily hopped the curb as she U-turned after him. I was on the radio, screaming the recent happenings, when the biker screeched to the left north onto Amsterdam. The biker swung off the street onto the sidewalk and into a city park. It felt like the axle broke as Emily hopped curb number two directly after him.

“I guess this means we’re not maintaining tailing distance anymore!” I yelled as we violently off-roaded on the uneven grass behind the dirt bike.

The rider skidded to a stop beside a city pool. He left the bike and began booking with the money into the trees. I didn’t have time to say, “You’ve got to be shitting me,” as I jumped out after him.

I made it through a break in the thick brush and gulped as I spotted where the guy was headed.

It was the High Bridge pedestrian bridge, which connected Manhattan to the Bronx. Built in the mid-1800s, the thirteen-story narrow stone walkway that spanned the Harlem River had originally been used as an aqueduct that carried the city’s water supply down from upstate. Now it was an abandoned structure just south of the Cross Bronx Expressway that city administrations debated whether they should renovate or tear down.

Motorcycle man swung the bag onto his back, hopped onto some ancient scaffolding, and started climbing. In a moment, he hopped over a break in the razor wire and was hightailing it toward the Bronx over the bridge’s weed-filled cobblestone pavers.

“Call the Bronx!” I radioed my backup. “The Forty-fourth Precinct. The crazy son of a bitch is headed over the High Bridge walkway toward the Bronx!”

“And so’s this one,” I mumbled to myself as I tucked the radio into my pocket and pulled myself onto the scaffolding.

I paused as I hopped down from the fence onto the bridge itself. It was maybe ten feet across, with only flimsy, waist-high cast-iron railings between me and a horrifying fall to my death. Talk about vertigo.

Motorcycle man was going flat out at the other end of the bridge when he shrugged the bag off his back and chucked it. I thought it would hit the river, but I saw it land with a puff of dust on the Bronx side between the Major Deegan Expressway and the Metro North train tracks.

“He tossed it!” I called. “Get somebody across the river and down by the train tracks. The money is next to the Bronx-side tracks!”

When I looked up, I saw the motorcycle man running in a new direction. Directly at me!

He had his jacket off and was grasping something in his hand now. It had wires coming out of it. They seemed to go over his shoulder toward his back.

Bomb!? I thought, drawing my Glock. What the—?

“DOWN! NOW!” I yelled. The guy was a bad listener.

“ON YOUR KNEES!” I yelled.