Devil's Bridge

by Linda Fairstein

  “I don’t know much about fishing, Chapman, but looks to me like I picked exactly the bait I needed,” he said. “And I can pretty much write my own ticket where I’m going next.”

  “Give her to me and I can make the deal.”

  “I give her to you and you won’t live long enough to do that. That’s the easy part,” Renner said. “Step out from behind that fortress and I’ll show you I haven’t lost my touch.”

  “So far your only crime is breaking and entering. Liberty Island,” I said. If he released Coop alive and well, then I didn’t give a damn about the kidnapping charge. “And the lighthouse.”

  “Don’t slight me on the kidnapping, Chapman. We Renners pride ourselves on the big snatch.”

  “How about Duffy?” I said. “I’ll give you Duffy back.”

  “Duffy’s nothing to me.”

  “A friend of the family.”

  “He’s not blood, Chapman,” Renner said. “And this is all about blood.”

  I didn’t expect any less from Emmet Renner. But his accomplice, the guy plastered against the side of the lighthouse, took his cue from what he assumed was Paddy Duffy’s fate and Renner’s icy remark. He bolted.

  The man vaulted over the railing and started to run, headed for the bushes of Bennett Park for cover, and then most certainly beyond.

  Emmet Renner was stuck in place, unable to shoot the man in the back for fear, I’m sure, that he would expose himself to police fire. I didn’t think he’d believe I’d gotten to Jeffrey’s Hook by myself.

  The runaway wasn’t my concern. He would undoubtedly plow straight into a squad of gathering police officers as he tried to make a timely escape from an ungrateful employer, and that left at least one less gun in Coop’s little world.

  I needed to keep Emmet Renner out of the lighthouse. I needed to keep him from harming Coop—from killing her—now that I was here to witness exactly that.

  “Renner! Two men down.”

  “Come out where I can see you, Chapman,” he said, turning back—it appeared to me—to enter the lighthouse door.

  The silhouette reemerged, and this time he was dragging a bundle across the threshold.

  I did a double take. The bundle was a human being, bound and gagged, and being dragged by her long blond hair onto the walkway around the lighthouse.

  Now was the time for a sniper to take a shot. All my inhibitions about another shooting vanished in a flash. But the only angle at which Renner would have been vulnerable was from the river, and there was no one in place to shoot.

  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.

  And Emmet Renner still had Alex Cooper.

  I didn’t know what to do next. I was overwhelmed by the activity I had put in motion, and now I couldn’t figure which one of us was at greatest risk.

  I decided to move forward toward the lighthouse again, hoping to get close before anyone else arrived there or lights went on around us. Emergency Services would have no choice but to move in to protect the oncoming good Samaritans. To protect everyone except Coop.

  That was when I heard the sound of the Intrepid’s engine. I had left the keys in the cockpit and someone had just turned on the engine. Had Paddy Duffy freed himself from the hold? Had Emmet Renner’s accomplice circled the lighthouse and found the boat?

  I was as close to panicking as I had ever been when I turned away from Renner to find out who was on board.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  I heard a man’s voice say my name. “Chapman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Scuba. It’s okay.”

  I wasn’t shaking as badly as Lonigan, but it was close.

  The police diver was in a black dry suit with a full face mask. He’d come to the rocks on a small dark-gray Zodiac that he’d tied up to the Intrepid, then swam ashore.

  “Cue me,” I said. “What do they want me to do?”

  “Just what you’re doing. Let Renner think you’ll give him the boat before backup arrives. That’s why I turned on the engine,” the cop said. “So he’d hear it.”

  “But Coop?”

  “We’ll have you covered.”

  “How?”

  “Better you don’t know, Chapman. You’d unintentionally tip it off.”

  “Chapman?” Renner called out to me.

  I turned my attention back to him.

  “The boat is ready for you. I’m not releasing Cormac until you walk down here and meet me halfway,” I said.

  I crossed over the largest boulder, and this time, instead of heading for the shadows of the bridge tower, I stayed close to the shoreline. I was going to the lighthouse.

  “I hear the boat, Chapman. Where is it?”

  “Just past the rock. Past Cormac.”

  The kid was whimpering now, probably out of strength to do anything louder.

  “You’d better move fast, Renner. People are coming.”

  I almost wanted him to see me. I wanted Coop to hear my voice.

  Emmet Renner was really between the rocks and a hard place. His entire plan was crumbling, but he wasn’t quite ready to let go of his prey.

  “Uncle Em,” Lonigan screamed one more time. “Come get me.”

  For the first time since I had arrived on Jeffrey’s Hook, Emmet Renner walked toward me from the small terrace of the lighthouse.

  Now to add to the barking dogs was the sound of police sirens coming from the West Side Highway and the streets in the neighborhood.

  He knew time was running out. He clearly thought the water was an actual means of escape, and that the only police presence was coming from the park behind him. I was thankful Mercer had convinced the Harbor Unit to stay out of sight.

  Emmet Renner stood at the top of the steps that led from the lighthouse to the rocks. His gun was in his hand. He turned his head to look back at Coop.

  “I’m here, Renner,” I called out.

  He swiveled around to try to find my position, but I couldn’t see him clearly enough to try to take him out.

  “Step down, Renner.” I lifted my gun and pointed it in his general direction. “I didn’t think Westies killed broads.”

  “She’s not a broad, Chapman. She’s a prosecutor.”

  “Get moving before the dogs come. And the cops,” I said. “You’ve got about a minute to go. The key’s in the ignition. Walk on by me and I’ll cut Lonigan loose.”

  Emmet Renner took his first step. “I don’t want the boy, Chapman. I want the boat.”

  Bloodless after all. Not even his own family made a difference in the end. Emmet Renner just wanted to save his own skin.

  I threw my Glock onto the rock and watched it skid down toward the water.

  Renner heard it, must have guessed what had happened, and started to run down the remaining steps and in the direction of the Intrepid.

  Before I was able to race across the rock, two more scuba rescue cops in black dry suits hoisted themselves out of the water and onto the boulder.

  The first one out tore off his flippers and ran to the lighthouse. He practically threw himself on top of Coop, shielding her from whatever unknown harm still lurked around us.

  I was there within seconds, after he ripped the gag from her mouth and as he was cutting the plastic cuffs off her wrists.

  I lifted her limp body in my arms, carried her inside the lighthouse, and sat on the floor with her in my lap, cradling her head against my chest as I whispered my apologies to her over and over again.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  “Nobody died?” Coop asked.

  “Nobody,” I said.

  “The Lonigan kid?”

  “Severe hypothermia. He’ll be fine. He’s in another wing.”

  We were in a private room at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, just ten blocks from Bennett Park. Coop had been examined in the ER and admitted for observation. It was three o’clock in the morning.

  “Emmet Renner?”

  “No shots fired,” I said. “He might need his nose fixed again, but in the meantime he’s reacq
uainting himself with the New York City jail system.”

  Coop was in a hospital gown, in bed, with extra blankets to cover her. An intravenous tube was dripping fluids into her arm to rehydrate her. I was sitting on the other bed, dressed in surgical scrubs. Our clothing, damp and dirty, had been vouchered as evidence. I stood up and she reached for my arm. “Please don’t leave me alone.”

  “Hey, now. I’m not going far. I just need to borrow something from the cops in the hallway.”

  There was a police detail outside Coop’s room and would be for as long as she was hospitalized. Probably for a good period of time after her release. I asked two of the guys for their handcuffs.

  She was sitting on the edge of her bed when I came back in. Her eyes were moist again and she was dabbing at them with tissue.

  I’d never seen her quite this way—so skittish and clinging to me. But she’d never been through an ordeal like the past forty-eight hours.

  “Handcuffs?” She seemed startled to see me holding two pairs. I should have been more sensitive to the visual of them after her own experience, but I was out of gas, too.

  “I got a problem with hospitals, Coop. There’s no king-size beds.”

  I unlocked the wheels of my bed and pulled it right beside hers. I reached under the mattress and cuffed the metal frames to each other in two places so they didn’t split apart.

  It was one of the first times that night I had seen her smile.

  She got back under the covers and I put an extra pillow behind her head.

  “How about something to eat?” I asked. “There’s room service, you know.”

  Renner had given her only a couple of oranges and a few bottles of water in the forty-eight hours she’d been held.

  “I can’t think about food yet. I’m still kind of nauseated.”

  “They’ve added something for that to your IV, Coop,” I said, stroking her hair.

  She turned away from me, onto her side.

  “You want to talk?” I asked.

  She shook her head in the negative.

  “You did a good job filling in a lot of the blanks for the commissioner,” I said.