Nightbird (31 page)

They were halfway to Park Avenue when the excited voice of Totowa Rose ordered all personnel to resume the tail forthwith.
Winters was on his way to First Avenue.

“Good gamble, right, pally?” Gregory said.

“You’re a gambling fool.”

“Stands to reason. This time of night he’s going to move across town. They told him to drive naturally, that’s what he’s doing.”

“It’s not natural, he’s flying.”

“We’ll fly faster.”

They caught Winters’s car going north on First Avenue. Then Winters made a hard right. Ryan had to twist around to pick up
the street sign: E. 102nd Street. Winters stopped at the end of the block, just before the entrance to the Harlem River Drive.

Gregory pulled to the hydrant and cut the Buick lights, half a block back. He sneezed for the ninth time. Winters got out
of the car quickly.

“The Ward’s Island footbridge is closed, isn’t it?” Gregory said.

“The center section is.”

Winters walked toward the turquoise metal ramp that zigzagged upward to a pedestrian walkway across the highway and farther
up to the closed Ward’s Island footbridge.

“He could still walk over the highway,” Gregory said. “Maybe he’s got somebody waiting in the Harlem River.”

“Call Totowa Rose,” Ryan said. “Tell her to notify Aviation. Ask her if it’s clear enough for that helicopter. We’re going
to need somebody up there.”

“We should have brought a wheelchair,” Gregory said. “Pushing a bandaged guy in a wheelchair is the perfect cover.”

“Let’s go,” Ryan said. “I’ll let you hold my arm.”

V
ictor Nuñez watched Trey Winters get out of his car, and his heart began to pound. The police weren’t following him; at least
he couldn’t see them. Maybe this would be easier than he thought. He dialed the phone one last time. Winters answered, looking
all around.

“On the bridge,” Victor said. “Walk up the bridge.”

Winters kept looking back up the street, as if expecting someone to be following. Victor couldn’t see very far down the block
because of the red brick housing project. He could see only a few car lengths beyond the corner.

“Faster!” Victor yelled.

But he didn’t have to yell; Winters was walking fast. If Winters had contacted the police, they would be closer, Victor thought.
Perhaps the Central Park ruse had worked. It was meant to stall them, throw them off their rhythm. He knew from his act the
importance of timing and rhythm. The slightest hitch could be devastating.

“Quickly!” Victor yelled in the phone again.

Winters started jogging up the first ramp. He was carrying the bag in one hand. It didn’t appear to be heavy. Victor had no
idea how heavy that much money would be. He threw his cell phone in the duffel bag and took out the waterproof backpack. Winters
was close enough to hear him without it. He moved into position behind the barricade, at the hole he’d drilled in the plywood.

Winters came around the corner and stopped. The actor stood on the platform, confused. The platform ran straight across the
Harlem River Drive, then down to a narrow park that ran along the Manhattan side of the river. The only other way was halfway
up the next ramp. To the barricade.

“Up here!” Victor yelled. “Come to this wall.”

The barricade, built by the city, was clean on Victor’s side, but he knew that on Winters’s side the sheet metal was marked
with graffiti. Street names and gang logos, painted by the local thugs the barrier was meant to stop. Victor could hear Winters
breathing hard. He was inches away now, only plywood separating them.

“Throw the money over,” Victor said forcefully.

Winters took a few tentative steps, then threw the bag with one hand. It caught in the loops of barbed wire atop the wall
and fell back at his feet. Victor could hear him repeating the simple instructions over and over. He was rushing and talking
to himself.

“Throw it harder!” Victor yelled.

The second time the bag cleared the barrier, and Victor caught it one-handed. He dropped to his knees and opened it. Then
Winters started saying something that Victor couldn’t make out at first. He was begging for him to throw the letters over.

“Hurry, please,” Winters said, sounding dry throated from the other side of the barrier.

Victor took an envelope from his duffel bag. He threw it long and far, way over the head of Winters, so he had to run to retrieve
it.

Victor’s hands shook as he shoved stacks into plastic bags.
Madre de Dios
, he’d never seen so much money. The plastic bags went into his own backpack, into the sealed rubberized compartment. He slipped
his arms through the straps of the backpack and tightened it.

Then he heard the voice of Anthony Ryan. He turned the corner to the next ramp and sprinted for the rope.

R
yan and Gregory reached the platform just as Trey Winters was coming down. He looked pale and shaken. He tried to walk past
them. Gregory grabbed him by the arm.

“Where did he go?” Ryan said.

“I gave him the money,” Winters said.

“No kidding. But where did he go?”

“He was behind the wall. I threw the money over.”

“You’re not finished here,” Gregory said. “Show us.”

Winters trembled as Gregory walked him up the ramp to the barricade. He told them how he threw the bag over the barricade.
He never saw Nuñez or where he disappeared to. Then Winters begged to leave, saying he wasn’t feeling well.

“He give you the pictures?” Gregory said.

“He didn’t give me anything.”

Ryan looked up toward the crest of the bridge as he struggled to put his gun away with his left hand.

“This is no time to be shy,” Gregory said, patting Winters’s chest. “What’s this bulge in your jacket?”

“It’s just some personal papers,” Winters said.

“You brought office work with you? Do a little paperwork while you’re racing around the city, right?”

Winters pulled away as Gregory reached inside his suit jacket.

“You can’t do this,” Winters said. “That’s illegal search and seizure.”

“I’ll let the Supreme Court worry about that later,” Gregory said. “But right now you can either give me what you have, or
I can rip that jacket off you.”

Car doors slammed on E. 102nd Street. The hollow beat of footsteps shook the ramp as boy cops made the climb in leaps and
bounds. They didn’t have to ask where the action was. Totowa Rose had followed the path. Winters handed the brown manila envelope
to Gregory. Inside was a stack of paper that looked like handwritten notes.

“Where are the pictures?” Gregory said. He held Winters at arm’s length while he shoved the envelope into his own jacket pocket.

“There are no pictures,” Winters said, snatching vainly at the envelope. “Just give those back to me. I can make it worth
your while.”

Gregory spun Winters around, shoved him against the side of the bridge, and patted him down. Ryan looked across the river,
wishing he’d brought the binoculars from the car.

“You’ll get it all back as soon as we voucher it,” Gregory said.

Winters stormed away, looking for the Major Case commander. Ryan studied the structure of the bridge, trying to figure out
how Victor Nuñez had disappeared. He thought the Mexican trapeze artist should have asked for more money, all the trouble
he went through. But the NYPD would have stiffed him with an even weightier hoax.

“He’s in the freakin’ river, isn’t he,” Joe Gregory said, looking out on the water of the Harlem.

“No, he’s not in the river,” Ryan said. “If he planned to escape by water, he wouldn’t have set this meet on a bridge, then
jumped from… what does that say, fifty-five feet. That’s crazy.”

“He didn’t just vanish,” Gregory said. “He’s in the
agua
, guaranteed.”

“What did you take from Winters?” Ryan said.

“Looked like letters. Maybe he wasn’t lying.”

“He’s lying. Whatever they are, he didn’t bring them with him.”

Major Case arrived in full force. Up above, the helicopter, no longer held back by weather, circled over Winters’s car like
a bird dog standing its prey.

“We got Aviation working now, pally,” Joe Gregory said, taking the portable out of his pocket. “I’m gonna tell Totowa Rose
to send that helicopter to check the water for speedboats.”

“Speedboats?” Ryan said. “What is this,
Miami Vice
?”

“I’m calling Harbor anyway.”

“Call Jacques Cousteau if you want. But he’s not in the water. I think Nuñez either climbed up to that raised bar in the center
and crawled across, or he swung over somehow. He’s on Ward’s Island, and I bet he has a car parked over there.”

“This guy might be Superman, pally. But he can’t outrun the radio. I’ll call Rose, tell her to block the Triborough Bridge.
That’s the only exit from Randall’s, isn’t it? We’ll drive over like the gentlemen and detectives we are. Then we’ll hunt
him down like a dog.”

Gregory talked tactics and trash with Totowa Rose as they walked quickly down the ramp. Both of them ignored the Major Case
boss calling them back. They made a U-turn against traffic on E. 102nd Street. As they drove up First Avenue to the Triborough
Bridge, Gregory sneezed for the tenth and eleventh times.

A
ll was quiet at the top of the bridge. Victor threw the duffel bag into the Harlem River, then wedged himself behind a steel
beam. He took his time, tightening the straps of his waterproof backpack. Over water now, he heard only the sound of his own
breathing, coming hard and fast after the run. The steamy hissing of tires on the wet pavement barely a whisper. The voice
of Anthony Ryan could not be heard.

Victor had attached the rope to the north side of the bridge to lessen the chances of being seen. Then he knotted it at the
handhold and tied a scarf at the knot. It had worked perfectly on his first try, the trip from Ward’s Island.

Behind him, cops were milling around the barricade, but no one was chasing him. They had no idea where he was. He’d be visible
for only three seconds, in the night, over the black water.

He took the bag of resin from his pocket and sprinkled it on his gloved hands. He wrapped his hands above the scarf and pulled
the rope. Taut, perfect. As a boy the ropes felt like an extension of his hands, his arms, his shoulders. He could do it all
then, with his eyes closed, swinging high above the dirt floors of countless arenas.

He took a deep breath and let go.

Victor had forgotten the exhilaration. The pure freedom of flying through soothing darkness. For those brief seconds all was
silent except for the hum of his body through God’s black sky. Whether above a dirt floor in Mexico City or a polluted river
in New York, to fly was to experience a miracle. The swing, the grab. He made it easily.

Victor first saw the helicopter as he ran down the ramp on the Ward’s Island side. He’d never thought they could get one up
this quickly. But they were guessing; they didn’t know where he was. Or where he’d go. The edge was still his.

The helicopter spotlight swept over the river as he found his bike in the bushes. From the footbridge to the Hell Gate was
almost a mile. A trip that would have taken only three minutes by bike, but he’d ridden less than a hundred yards when the
helicopter spotlight swept the exposed path. He scrambled into the woods, pulling the bike with him.

Victor knelt on the wet grass behind a dripping spruce as the helicopter moved away, north along the footpath, the light glinting
off specks in the macadam. He could see only the one chopper, but he knew more would be coming. Cops would soon flood the
island. Anthony Ryan would be coming. He left the bike and began to run diagonally, through the thickest part of the foliage.

The denseness of the woods was a fortunate covering, but a branch slashed his cheek, and blood ran into his open mouth. In
the leafy darkness, he could see the intense white beam of the helicopter searchlight. He thought about his first time in
the tunnel in Madison Square Garden. He’d stood behind his father, peeking out into the arena, marveling at the vastness of
it. The pure brightness of the spotlight was the thing that most impressed him. The smell of the animals, the bustle of the
acts changing, performers speaking strange languages… he was used to all that. But the enormity of the crowd noise. Tens of
thousands, his father said. The light show, the music, the sound of the organ reverberating in his chest. Most of all the
powerful and seductive glare of the spotlight.

Victor leaped over fallen trees, crashed recklessly through heavy bushes. His slashed cheek stung from sweat, and he’d begun
to feel heavy legged, his face burning up. The heat was unbearable in the rubberized suit, but he was getting close. He could
hear the halyard slapping against the flagpole of the psychiatric center. Then he saw a car, moving slowly on the path below.
He waited for it to pass.

He was exhausted when he reached the pillars under the roadway of the Triborough Bridge. Hidden from the helicopter’s view,
he bent over and gasped for air. He was glad he’d chosen a spot under the roadway. Minutes had been added to his trip, perhaps
ten. But he was less than twenty yards from the spot where he would enter the water. Victor Nuñez’s quad muscles burned, and
his skin itched from the sweltering rubberized suit. He sucked air into his lungs as he removed his sweatshirt and pants.
A mist of steam rose from his body. He walked to the edge of the water and pulled off his sneakers. His feet were burning.
The water would feel good.

G
regory guided the Buick down the dark back paths of the island. They drove past the ball fields and the hospitals down to
the footbridge. Ryan got out and jogged up the ramp, the run causing his head to ache even more. Halfway up the footbridge
he saw the rope, the scarf blowing in the slight breeze. Gregory notified Totowa Rose that the subject was on Ward’s Island.

“Try some of these other paths,” Ryan said.