Hell Gate

FORTY-SEVEN

It took less than three minutes for Mike to race up Amsterdam Avenue to West 174th Street once he floored the Jaguar.

The bridge was at one of the widest points in the park. It was difficult to navigate the rocky terrain and scramble down to the area where EMTs and cops were trying to put the woman’s body on a stretcher.

Mercer had followed us. He and Mike were the first detectives to arrive on the scene.

There was little doubt in my mind that the woman, who appeared to have fractured her skull and both legs, was Anita Paz. She fit the vague physical description Leighton had given us, and she was wrapped in a cheap synthetic fur jacket.

“She don’t have time for you, Detective,” the head EMT said as Mike put his hand in her jacket pocket to look for identification. “We don’t get her to Columbia Pres in minutes, she’s goin’ out of the picture.”

There were four men on the team. Two lifted the stretcher with Anita Paz strapped into it while the other two tried to clear the brush for the steep climb back up to the roadway. The great hospital was mercifully close to our location.

Two men, each holding a leashed retriever, were talking to the pair of cops.

Mike and I approached them, while Mercer scoured the ground for things that might be related to the woman’s fall.

“You see any of this?” Mike asked, after displaying his badge to the men.

“No, sir. We meet every day, same time, to walk our dogs down here by the river. I never saw nothing like this. I thought for sure the girl was dead.”

“Who called it in?”

“Me,” the same guy answered. His walking buddy looked like he was going to be sick.

“A suicide?”

“I said it could be that. Could be just an accident. You know that bridge is very dangerous, Detective.”

“I know. It’s the oldest bridge in the city. It’s been closed for fifty years.”

“Bad way to go,” the cop said.

“Find a note?” Mike asked. “Anything to suggest a suicide?”

“You kidding? Not here. Paper would have been blown away by this arctic air.”

I guessed the temperature was in the teens, but the wind chill made it feel like single digits.

“There’s a guy who was up in the squad for a couple of hours, might be able to ID her. He ran out of there a little while ago. You know the congressman who got collared for DWI last week?”

“Seen that scumbag’s pictures in the papers,” the cop said. “Think he was messing with this broad too?”

Mike didn’t answer.

“You know who the jumper is? That would solve half my problems, if she don’t wake up too soon.”

“Run the name Anita Paz. Leighton knows her. She’s been missing for a couple of hours.”

“Did you see anyone else in the park before you got to this point?” I asked. “Or jogging away?”

The dog walkers looked at each other. The same one spoke for both. “Just the regulars. Maybe a few less runners and people out for exercise. A little chilly, no? We’re only out because the dogs have to be.”

“But you didn’t hear people fighting with each other? Shouting? Nobody running through the park?”

“Nothing. We didn’t see nothing unusual.”

“Crime Scene on the way?” Mike asked the cops.

“After the triple homicide in Brooklyn and a gang rape in the Bronx. They want us to cordon off the area and they’ll deal with it by afternoon.”

“Keep an eye open for that Leighton weasel, pal.”

“You think he’s dangerous?”

“I know he’s self-destructive and angry. Don’t know what he’s liable to do.”

“I’ll put it out on the radio.”

“Good man,” Mike said. “C’mon up top, Coop. Let’s see what it looks like.”

My driving moccasins and Mike’s loafers were not the best shoes for managing the rocky incline, which in places was coated with ice. It took us almost ten minutes to climb from the edge of the Harlem River up to the Manhattan end of the High Bridge, which connected the island to the Bronx.

Mike tried to distract me as we made our way up. He knew me well enough that my first thoughts were about the baby, who was probably this woman’s child. Mercer brought up the rear.

“What if she’s Ana’s mother?”

“Steady as she goes, Coop. Don’t go there yet. You hear that guy? This is the oldest bridge in town.”

“Older than the Brooklyn Bridge?” I asked.

“Way. It was built in the eighteen forties as part of the system bringing water to New York from upstate. From the Croton Reservoir. It’s the very first structure that linked Manhattan to the main-land. To the rest of America. Don’t you remember what that lady told us when we were in Poe Park?”

“That when Edgar Allan Poe lived in his little cottage in the Bronx, while his wife was dying, he’d console himself with long nocturnal walks across the river. On this? The High Bridge?”

“You got it.”

We were directly beneath the series of vaulted arches that held up the span on this side of the river.

“You know, I would think that if Anita was going to jump-going to really try to kill herself-she would have gotten farther out on the bridge, to the middle, so she’d land in the river. That’s the sure way to a suicide.”

“Yeah. But the condition of the walkway is such a mess up there, it may not be easy to get out that far,” Mike said. “Whether she jumped or got pushed, the boulders she landed on are pretty unforgiving.”

“Mind if I catch my breath?” I asked, stopping as we neared the top.

“I can pull you the rest of the way,” Mercer said jokingly, grabbing my hand. “You got the wind at your back.”

“I feel like I’ve got the wind everywhere. It’s brutal.” The bitter cold made the landscape even more stark and miserable. “Was the bridge ever used for carriages or cars?”

“No. Just pedestrians. It was always a walkway.”

“Why was it closed?” I asked.

“Some morons threw rocks off the bridge. Almost killed several tourists on the Circle Line boat.”

“And it never reopened?” We had almost crested the grade.

“No. The aqueduct was replaced by the underwater tunnel system you got to know so well,” Mike said, reminding me of a case we had worked a year earlier. “This bridge hasn’t been used to carry water to us for a hundred years. So nobody’s ever invested the money to open the walkway again.”

The three of us stood together at the walled-off entrance to the crumbling span and looked across at the stone masonry piers and arches. “It really does look like a Roman aqueduct,” I said.

“That’s the ancient principle they used to bring water here from the mountains, Coop.”

I had learned the hard way, through a murder case, that Manhattan had no natural water supply of its own.

“Wait a minute, Mike,” Mercer said. “High Bridge, right?”

“Yeah. A low one would have been cheaper to build, but they needed the height so that boats going through to the Hudson could get under it.”

“But it was built as an aqueduct, you said.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s one of Kendall Reid’s fake funds,” Mercer said, warming his ears with his gloved hands. “That’s one of the phantom charities Tim Spindlis named at the press conference. Save the Aqueduct Bridge.”

“Dead on, Mr. Wallace,” Mike said, processing Mercer’s logic. “Reid should have patched some holes in this bridge instead of stuffing his cash in shoe boxes and cargo ships full of immigrants.”

“Time for a wake-up call to your pal Spindlis, Alex.”

“All Battaglia’s horses and all his men may not be able to put Anita’s cracked head back together, Coop. Get on the phone and tell him to give us everything he’s got.”