I keyed the mic. “Central, this is Red One. Be advised we are in pursuit of a homicide suspect driving an FDNY ambulance. He’s headed north on the Deegan from Yankee Stadium.”
Some calls bear repeating. Central didn’t disappoint.
“Unit,” she said, “you are advising me that you are chasing an FDNY ambulance, and that it is being driven by a homicide suspect.”
“Affirmative. Notify aviation. The bus number is three-one-four.”
I still had Joe Donahue at DOI on my cell. “Joe, I need an update.”
“He just passed Van Cortlandt. He’s heading into Westchester.”
There’s a confounding rule about pursuing a vehicle outside of our jurisdiction. Technically we couldn’t chase him unless we had him in sight. We weren’t close enough to see him, but I wasn’t exactly about to broadcast that.
“Central, notify state, county, and local that we are crossing into Westchester.”
“Ten-four, Red One. Will notify them immediately.”
Immediately in dispatcher-speak doesn’t mean “instantaneously.” It takes a while for one dispatcher to contact the other, and then it takes another while for the second dispatcher to get the word out to her troops.
While that was going on, Kylie was eating up the distance between us and Banta. He had a head start, but city ambulances aren’t as fast as people might think. They get where they’re going in a hurry because they can break traffic laws and clear a path for themselves. But on a drag strip, a cop car would leave Banta’s bus in the dust.
A new voice came over the radio. Male, deep, with a Jamaican lilt. “Bronx Auto Crime, Central. Get me a current location on Red One.”
Kylie’s eyes were glued to the road, but I could see the grin spread across her face. Some bored-out-of-his-gourd detective who had been cruising the streets of the Bronx on a stolen-car detail just hit the high-speed-chase lottery.
“Red One, Central. We are north through Van Cortlandt Park.”
“Auto Crime, Central. Show us responding toward that location.”
When something big breaks on citywide, any cop who picks it up is going to radio his buddies and tell them to roll over to that channel. Within minutes half the cops in the city would be tuned in to the drama on the Deegan and hoping it would come their way.
The radio lit up, and by the time we crossed the city line into Yonkers, Bronx Narcotics and Highway One had signed on for the ride. And by the time we passed the Empire Casino, three more cars and an ESU truck were en route to join the posse.
“No shortage of volunteers,” I said.
“NYPD chasing FDNY. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that?” Kylie said. “At best, these cops figure they have a shot at being on the six o’clock news. At worst, they’ve got a war story to spin at the bar tonight. I bet for most of them, it’s better than sex.”
I checked in with DOI. “Joe, what do you got?”
“He jumped off the Deegan. He’s on the off-ramp to the Sprain.”
“We are about a mile shy of the Sprain,” I said. “We’re gaining on him.”
“Hold on, he didn’t get on the Sprain. He took a right on Tuckahoe Road.”
“He had a clear shot to the thruway,” I said. “Siren or no siren, how does he expect to outrun us if he’s taking local streets?”
“He’s not getting on the highway. He just turned onto East Grassy Sprain Road.”
“I never heard of it. Where the hell does it go?”
“It runs parallel to the parkway. It goes through Yonkers, past a bunch of businesses, private homes, a golf course, a school—makes no sense.”
“We’re on East Grassy Sprain now,” I said. “I have eyes on him.”
I called our location in to Central, which was still getting units responding left, right, and center. Wherever Banta was going, there was a shitload of cops going with him.
We were less than two city blocks behind him when I saw the big green and white sign: SPRAIN LAKE GOLF COURSE.
There was a red-brick guardhouse with a flimsy wooden barrier at the front gate. Banta could have easily crashed through it, but his siren worked its magic. The guard lifted the gate just as he sailed through. Kylie gave him a whoop-whoop, and he wisely kept it open.
If I’d thought Gary Banta were stupid, I might’ve assumed he’d just driven himself into a dead end. But Gary was a planner. He knew where he was going, and clearly, he had played this course before.
I scanned the fairway. The grass was lush—soft, green, and wet. Emphasis on wet. The golfers were either carrying their bags or pulling them along with two-wheelers. The course was too soggy for motorized golf carts.
That didn’t stop Gary from turning his five-ton beast off the road and powering it onto the perfectly manicured green carpet.
Kylie followed.
Clods of mud as big as basketballs flew up and pelted our windshield. She goosed her washers and turned on the wipers, but that only made it worse. We were driving blind.
By the time Kylie saw the sprinkler head, it was too late. It chewed up our left front tire, and we came to a sudden hard stop.
I jumped out of the car. The EMS bus was at least two football fields away. And then I heard it.
Helicopter.
But it wasn’t one of ours. It was Gary Banta’s ride out.
CHAPTER 71
We can do it,” Kylie said. She got out of the car and broke into a run.
And then we heard the howl. Siren.
We both turned. A chocolate-brown Chevy Impala, strobe lights white-hot and flashing in the windshield, was tearing up the fairway, regurgitating mud-caked green divots, thick as yesterday’s porridge, onto the already ravaged hallowed grounds.
“Cavalry,” Kylie said.
The back door flew open, the car slowed, and Kylie and I piled in.
There were three of them in the car, one white, one black, one brown—young, lean, and undercover. They had the requisite tats on their arms and seven-day stubble on their faces; their shirts and jeans were just ratty enough to be urban cool. They looked more like a boy band than the cavalry.
“Are you the Red team who needs help catching a bus?” the guy in the front passenger seat said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” His buddies laughed.
“You Bronx Auto?” Kylie said, picking up on the Jamaican accent. “I thought they were sending real detectives.”
Bigger laugh. Cops busting cops’ balls, even at a time like this.
“Son of a bitch,” the driver said as we skidded into a ninety-degree turn. “This wreck fits right in at the Webster Projects, but it ain’t worth shit on the golf course.”
He jammed the gearshift into low, got traction, and righted the car. “What’d they do?” he said. “Kill somebody and steal a bus?”
“Home invasions. One old lady died. And they’re legit EMTs,” Kylie said.
Brothers under the same blanket. A sobering detail. Head shakes all around.
“Armed?” the Jamaican asked.
“Presumed,” I said, my eyes glued to the chopper that had just settled onto a putting green. The bus tried to barrel through a sand trap. Big mistake. Wheels spinning, kicking up a sandstorm, it ground to a halt.
Doors were flung open. The driver, white, and his partner, black, scrambled out and headed for the helicopter, which was a solid fifty yards away. The black guy was fast, agile, but the driver, Banta—I was sure of it—was slow navigating his way out of the wet sand.
We weren’t doing that well ourselves as the car went slip-sliding across the slick turf. And then another spinout as the Impala did a complete one-eighty.
“Faster on foot,” Kylie said. She bailed out of the back door and ran toward the chopper. I jumped out after her.
The chopper was small, a single-engine, no markings except for a tail number. NYPD Aviation would be able to outrun it—if they were here. But they were still minutes away, and that’s all the time Banta needed to lift off and fly in any direction on the compass, la
nd in a secluded spot, and drive off to parts unknown. That was Gary—always planning ahead.
The pilot must have been one of his EMS cohorts, because less than thirty minutes after Banta got the call that we were on to him, this guy showed up with the getaway plane, no questions asked.
I was a hundred feet away when the black EMS tech climbed into the chopper. Kylie was closer, but not by much.
Gary was going to outrun her. He knew it. I knew it. And Kylie knew it. Which was probably why she reached down to her right hip.
“Don’t shoot,” I screamed, my voice drowned out by the whump-whump of the rotors.
Kylie breaks a lot of rules and bends even more. She’s got a reputation as a maverick, and she’s proud of it. But there’s one rule that will cost her her job if she violated it. A cop cannot—repeat, cannot—shoot at a moving vehicle unless he or she is returning gunfire.
That means if a car is coming at me at seventy miles an hour, I have two choices: get hit or get the hell out of the way. Firing my gun is not an option.
There are no loopholes, no excuses. And in this case, there was no justification for shooting. Kylie’s life wasn’t in danger, just her pride. She was determined not to lose Banta.
He clambered into the helicopter and pulled the door shut. The engine whined, the blades spun faster, but Kylie didn’t stop. Just as the pilot pulled on the lever to create more lift, she jumped onto the landing-gear skid, brought her right hand up from her hip, shook it hard, and jammed it through the narrow vent window.
It wasn’t a gun. You don’t shake your gun. You shake your department-issued can of mace. It’s not much bigger than a tube of lipstick, but it packs more than enough wallop to incapacitate a cockpit full of bad guys.
The chopper smacked down hard as Kylie yanked her arm out of the window and pirouetted off the skid like one of the Flying Wallendas coming down from the high wire, ready to take a bow.
The chopper doors burst open, and the occupants spilled out, choking, wheezing, and dropping to the ground.
Kylie went directly to the fallen hero, cuffed him, and yanked him to his feet.
The boy band, guns in hand, joined the action and helped me take care of the other two in short order.
The rotors on the chopper eased to a stop, the last echo of the siren died out, and the civilians who had been watching—and recording—the action burst into applause.
Except for one man—one very, very angry man. He came running toward us yelling something about crazy bastards having to pay.
Hard to blame him. He was the groundskeeper.
CHAPTER 72
We separated Gary Banta from the others and poured him into the back of a squad car. He didn’t say a word for the entire forty-five-minute ride back to Manhattan. He didn’t have to. Guilt, shame, and remorse were etched on his face.
We got to the precinct just at the change of tour, so the place was humming with the energy of a big-city police station. Kylie and I walked through the door, our pants and shoes caked with mud, and all the cops in the room stopped what they were doing. But they weren’t looking at us.
They were staring at one of their own, still in uniform, wrists shackled, head hung low, eyes unable to meet theirs. I gave the desk sergeant a quick nod. Paperwork later. We rushed Banta upstairs and out of the line of fire before some wiseass cop said something that would send him into a tailspin.
“That was rough,” I said as soon as we got him into a chair in the interrogation room. “You okay?”
He gave me a stoic nod. But I knew the stony façade couldn’t last long. Everyone has a breaking point, and for Gary Banta, all it took for the dam to burst were seven words.
You have the right to remain silent.
Translation: Life as you know it is over.
His body heaved; he slumped in his chair and wept uncontrollably.
I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “We’ll help you get through this, brother.”
Brother. It wasn’t a sign of respect. It was a tactic. When you want someone to talk, treat him like gold.
We gave him water, tissues, and time to cry it out. He declined a lawyer. He had too much he needed to get off his chest.
“Gary,” I said in my best father-confessor voice, “you have a record anyone would be proud of. This isn’t you.”
He looked up, grateful that I had a hint of the man he used to be.
“Tell them that,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “The family. Tell them how sorry I am. It was supposed to be a victimless crime. Insurance was going to reimburse them. We never meant for anyone to die.”
“We?” I said.
“Me, Diggs, and Ramos. It was just the three of us.”
“What about the crew at Yankee Stadium?”
He cracked half a smile. “They’re clean. The only thing they’re guilty of is giving me a heads-up that a cop was lying about knowing me. Hunter made you when he said I don’t drink coffee and you bought it. I drink it by the gallon.”
I returned the smile and shrugged. “FDNY, one; NYPD, zero.” I put my hand on his shoulder a second time. “I saw a picture of the fire commissioner pinning a medal on you,” I said. “It was only two years ago. How’d you get from there to here?”
He closed his eyes for about ten seconds as he reconstructed a life gone wrong. “I’m a single dad,” he said when he opened them. “Two years ago I was on top of the world. My daughter finished college, she got a great job, and I had some money in my pocket. Same with the other two guys. So we bought a house in Peekskill, worked on it on our days off, and flipped it six months later. We cleared fifty-seven grand, and we were hooked.
“We bought another house. Bigger, much more money, but we were like addicts. We were going to get rich flipping houses. And then Murphy’s Law kicked us in the balls. First it turned out the electric wasn’t up to code, then we had to spend ten grand on a truss to support the second floor, and finally, the crusher—mold.
“The place was a money pit. We were in over our heads, and we couldn’t scrape together enough to get out. And then one day Diggsy and I catch a call, a guy hit by a car on Bainbridge Avenue. We pick him up in the bus, and we’re cutting his shirt off, and we see them. Bags of coke taped to his chest. Turned out to be five kilos—street value was like eighty, ninety grand.
“The guy says to us, ‘Don’t rat me out to the cops. Just hang on to the blow for me for a few days, and there’s fifteen grand in it for you.’ Diggs and me, we’re straight shooters, but we’re hemorrhaging money on this house, and we can’t say no to fifteen large. Two days later, the guy—we named him Mr. Bainbridge—calls and tells us to drop the coke off at a Sunoco station on East Tremont. We do, and the guy gives us a bag with fifteen Gs in it.”
He looked up at us. “You know where this is going, don’t you?”
“Bainbridge called again,” I said. “Any drug dealer would be happy to have two upstanding citizens with EMS badges on his payroll.”
“The next run was to Jersey. A week later, it’s Norfolk, Virginia. That’s a long haul. So we call Ramos. He was in the toilet with us on the house-flipping, plus he’s a pilot. Why drive across five state lines when you can fly?
“We did seven runs in all, some by car, some by plane. Then Bainbridge says he needs us to bring twenty keys to Baltimore. It’s a half-a-million-dollar payload, and he’ll pay us fifty grand for a two-hundred-mile drive. The three of us are giddy like little kids, because this is all we need to finally get out of the hole. We decide to make a weekend out of it. Drop the coke, collect the cash for Bainbridge, then celebrate with hard-shell crabs and enough beer to float a battleship.”
I looked at Kylie. We both knew what was coming next.
“The handoff is in the parking lot of a renovated warehouse in a decent part of town. Three dudes pull up in an Escalade. One gets out and shows us the money, five hundred grand. We give him the coke, and the other two get out of the car, both with AK-47s. One says, ‘Live or die.
Either way, we get the money.’ We vote live.”
“Do you think Bainbridge set you up?”
“Doesn’t matter. We can’t go to the cops, and we owe him half a million. We spend the weekend in Baltimore anyway, and that’s where we hatch the plan for the home invasions.”
“Your targets weren’t random,” Kylie said. “How did you know who to hit?”
“Diggs has a kid brother, Tyreese. He works nights cleaning offices at a company that does the billing for a bunch of nursing agencies in the city. Ty is mentally challenged, but he’s a whiz with computers. We tell him what we need, and he shows up the next morning with a printout. He has no idea what he’s doing. He just wants to make his big brother happy.”
“And what about Bainbridge?” she said.
He stiffened. “What about him?”
“What’s his real name? You help us land a drug dealer, and I’m sure the DA will be willing to knock some time off your sentence.”
“Detective, you don’t need me to give up his name. You can go to my log and come up with the accident victim I picked up on Bainbridge Avenue. But that won’t do you any good. You need me to testify, and if I do, it doesn’t matter if the DA sends me to prison for only a day and a half, I’ll never get out alive.”
He was right. All we could do was tell Narcotics the story and let them figure out what to do about Bainbridge. Kylie and I had bigger problems to deal with. And at the top of that list was Chief of Detectives Harlan Doyle.
CHAPTER 73
Maybe it was the gardenias that helped us crack the code of Bobby Dodd’s diaries. Or maybe it was the moon earrings. Or the birthday gift. It didn’t matter. Cheryl found them all.
It was Wednesday morning and Cheryl, Kylie, and I were back in our war room still trying to deconstruct Dodd’s ramblings of his imagined life with Erin.
“Zach, Kylie, listen to this,” Cheryl said. “It’s dated June third of this year. ’Erin and I met in our secret place. Her hair was pulled up under the hat, and the shades covered her eyes, but she still looked beautiful, and she smelled all summery, like gardenias.
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