NYPD Red

Chapter 26

One second I was staring at the guy who torched Brad Schuck, and the next he was gone.

“We lost him,” I said. “He knows where our camera is, and he’s climbing down the back side of the scaffold.”

I’d never worked with Jerry Brainard before, but the man was a total pro. Unflappable. Grace under fire.

“Of course he knows where that camera is. It’s twenty-seven feet high and pointing right at him,” Brainard said. “But I wonder if he knows about this one.”

His fingers worked the console, the picture changed, and suddenly there was our bomber, climbing down the opposite side of the camera tower.

“Traffic cam,” Brainard said. “I preset every one in a six-block radius before we started. Just in case.”

Jerry was good, but the guy we were after wasn’t stupid. He had to know we’d pick him up with another camera soon enough. As soon as his feet touched the ground, I understood why he needed to be off camera, even if for just a few seconds.

In one swift, almost invisible move his distinctive blue E! channel shirt was transformed into a red, orange, and gold tie-dyed T.

“Velcro,” Brainard said. “Pretty slick.”

I grabbed the mic. “Command to all units. Suspect is on the ground and on the run. He’s removed the E! channel uniform and is now wearing jeans and a red, orange, and gold tie-dyed sixties-type T-shirt. He’s in front of the Time-Life Building and headed for West Five One Street.”

You might think that with more than a hundred cops blanketing the area we’d have no problem grabbing one man. But it wasn’t that easy. Most of our guys had been stationed in front of the barricades, and they had to work their way back through the crowd.

Under normal circumstances, a bunch of New Yorkers might begrudgingly get out of the way if a cop yelled “Coming through, coming through!” But tonight, the circumstances were far from normal. As soon as the Molotov cocktail hit, people stampeded for safety. To make matters worse, they didn’t all agree on which direction was safe. It was every man for himself, and they pushed, shoved, and elbowed frantically, not caring if the person they bowled over was a pregnant woman or a cop chasing a lunatic.

Several of our uniforms broke through the crowd and made their way toward 51st Street.

“He doesn’t have a prayer,” Brainard said.

Then our screen went purple.

“Shit-he tossed a smoke bomb,” Brainard said.

The smoke screen wouldn’t win any special effects awards, but it worked.

Brainard pulled back to a wide shot.

“There he is,” I said.

Tie-Dye was heading for the maze of food carts that had taken over the south side of 51st Street.

“Sir, we’ve got a bird’s-eye view, but our guys at street level can’t see two feet in front of them.”

“But they can look up,” I said, keying the mic.

“Suspect is in the row of food carts on Five One,” I said. “He’s between a yellow-and-blue Sabrett hot dog umbrella and a red-and-white that says ‘Falafel.’”

The smoke was settling quickly, and I could see several of our uniforms aggressively pushing their way through the mob toward the target umbrellas.

The cop in the lead was ten feet away when it happened.

A motorcycle came roaring out from between the two carts and headed east on 51st Street.

“Damn,” Brainard said. “This guy is good.”

“Not as good as we are. We got him now. Command to all units,” I said into the mic. “I need a total lockdown on all vehicular traffic, Forty-second to Fifty-seventh Streets. Ninth Avenue to Third. Suspect is on a bright green Kawasaki Ninja rice rocket.”

The man on the motorcycle made a rubber-burning right turn and headed the wrong way on Sixth Avenue. The Ninja was at full throttle and was making a beeline for the flaming limo.

“Look at that crazy bastard,” Brainard said. “Where the hell is he going?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The entire grid is locked up tight. It’s impossible for him to get away.”

And then, right before my very eyes, the son of a bitch did the impossible.