Cemetery Dance

Chapter 72

The police speedboat, with Pendergast at the helm, tore down the Harlem River at fifty knots, curving around the northern tip of Manhattan Island and heading south. It flashed under a sequence of bridges: the West 207th Street Bridge; the George Washington Bridge; the Alexander Hamilton Bridge; the High Bridge; the Ma — combs Dam Bridge; the 145th Street Bridge; and finally the Willis Avenue Bridge. Here the Harlem River widened into a bay as it neared the junction with the East River. But instead of heading into the East River, Pendergast put the boat into a screaming turn and pointed it into the Bronx Kill, a narrow, foul creek separating the Bronx from Randall's Island.

Reducing speed to thirty knots, he headed down the Bronx Kill — more an open sewer and garbage dump than a navigable waterway — the boat throwing up a brown wake, the smell of marsh gas and sewage rising like a miasma. A dark railroad trestle rose up ahead and he passed underneath it, the diesel jet engine echoing weirdly as it went through the brief tunnel. Night had enveloped the bleak landscape and Pendergast grasped the handle of the boat's spotlight, directing the beam at various obstacles ahead as the boat slalomed among half — sunken hulks of old barges, rotting pilings of long — vanished bridges, and the submerged skeletons of ancient subway cars.

Quite suddenly the Bronx Kill widened again to a broad bay, opening into upper Hell Gate and the northern end of the East River. The vast prison complex of Rikers Island loomed directly ahead, the infamous X — shaped cement towers, bathed in pitiless sodium lights, rising up against a black sky.

Pendergast increased speed and the boat quickly left Manhattan behind; the Midtown skyline receded as he pounded up the East River toward the opening to Long Island Sound. Now, passing between Stepping Stones Light and City Island, Pendergast arced into the Sound and opened the boat up full throttle. The wind roared past, spray flying behind, the little vessel smacking the chop, swaying from side to side as it rocketed up the Sound, the full moon flashing off the water. It was a quiet evening, with only a few boats out and about. The channel buoys glowed softly in the moonlight.

Every minute counted. He might already be too late.

When Sands Point Light hove into view, he angled the boat near shore, crossed the broad mouth of Glen Cove, and headed straight for the mainland on the far side, keeping his eyes on the shorefront estates as they passed by, one after the other. A long pier came into view along a wooded shore and he aimed for it. Beyond the pier lay a dark expanse of lawn, rising to the turrets and shingled gables of a large Gold Coast mansion.

Pendergast brought the boat up to the pier at terrifying speed, reversing the engines at the last moment and spinning the boat so that it pointed back out into the Sound. Before the vessel had even stopped he jammed a boat fender between the edge of the wheel and the throttle, leapt from the bow onto the pier, and ran toward the dark, silent house. The uncaptained boat, throttle jammed in forward idle, chugged out from the pier and soon disappeared into the expanse of Long Island Sound, its red and green running lights gradually merging into darkness.