The Killer in My Eyes (32 page)

He got off the bike and approached the door, with his helmet hanging from his hand.

It was here, not so long ago, and pretty much at this hour, that he had used it as a weapon to defend himself from the attack of Lord and his friends. After which, he had gone up to the apartment with a black eye and blood dripping from his shirt. And found Lysa, half naked in the bathroom, and her ironic reaction to his surprise at finding her there.

Do you always have a nose bleed when you’re embarrassed?

He remembered her words, her face, her eyes, and what was beneath the robe when she had opened it, and he would have preferred none of this to have happened.

But it had.

Jordan was a man who had seen death, who had killed. And yet now, he felt defenceless in the face of all the things he had not understood about Lysa, and especially all the things he had not understood or accepted about himself.

He made up his mind and pressed the button. Maybe she had seen him from the window, because the answer came almost instantaneously.

‘I’m on my way down.’

In spite of himself, Jordan felt relieved. He heard the click of the lock and soon afterwards Lysa appeared, the way he had always seen her.

Beautiful and sensual.

‘Hi,’ she said simply.

‘Hi,’ he replied.

Jordan saw that Lysa was avoiding meeting his eyes. She looked tired, as if she had been thinking too much and sleeping too little.

‘Have you already eaten?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I was having dinner when you called.’

Having dinner with her?
Lysa would have liked to ask, but she held back.

‘Sorry I disturbed you,’ was all she said.

‘It’s OK. We’d already finished.’

Lysa nodded towards the lighted windows of the diner across the street. ‘How about a coffee?’

Jordan was pleased with the suggestion. In the apartment they would have felt alone – among people they could have the illusion that they were together. ‘A coffee would be great.’

They crossed side by side, in the semi-darkness, Jordan with the weight of the helmet in his hand and Lysa with the weight of what she was carrying inside, whatever it was.

Then everything happened quickly.

There was the roar of a motorbike and a blue and white Honda raced around the corner of the building, carrying two people wearing full-face helmets.

The driver braked sharply, and the passenger lifted an arm in their direction.

As the first shot rang out, Jordan grabbed Lysa and pushed her to the ground, then lay down on top of her to cover her with his body.

There were two more shots in rapid succession.

Jordan felt something whistling over his head, and brick dust falling on them from where the bullets had hit a wall.

The Honda accelerated violently, its tyres screeching on the asphalt as the bike slithered round in a U-turn that caused a couple of cars coming in the other direction to slam on their brakes.

Jordan lifted his head. There was an eerie silence after the noise of the gunshots. His shirt felt damp and sticky on the right side of his chest. He rolled onto his side to let Lysa breathe.

‘Are you all right?’

Lysa raised her head off the ground as best she could, trying to see a particular point on her body. Jordan followed the direction of her gaze and saw a red stain spreading on the left side of her chest.

‘Jordan, I . . .’

In a moment he was kneeling beside her, trying to reassure her as best he could. ‘Be quiet, don’t speak. Everything’s all right.’

Jordan opened her blouse and saw that the bullet had struck the lower part of her shoulder, just above the heart. He moved his face closer to hers.

‘Lysa, can you hear me? It’s not serious, you can make it. Hold on. An ambulance will be here soon.’

Lysa couldn’t speak but blinked to show that she had understood.

Just then, Annette came running out of the diner with a table napkin in her hand. He grabbed the napkin from her, rolled it into a ball and pressed it to Lysa’s wound. Lysa grimaced with pain.

‘Annette, come here, just keep doing what I’m doing. We have to stop the bleeding.’

Jordan stood up, took the cellphone from his pocket and put it in the pocket of her green apron. ‘Call 911 and tell them what happened. I’ll call you as soon as I can.’

Jordan picked up his helmet, put it on without fastening it, and ran to the Ducati. He kick-started the engine, put it in gear, and set off at top speed, the rear wheel skidding. He shot across the intersection like a missile, narrowly avoiding a green minibus with the logo of a catering company, whose driver was forced to swerve sharply towards the sidewalk.

Jordan then joined the flow of traffic, trying to think as he continued to accelerate.

It was fairly unlikely that the two men on the Honda had taken any of the crosstown streets heading east, which would have meant endless intersections and traffic-lights. Going through a red light or riding down those streets at high speed would bring a police car on your trail before long.

It was more likely that they had continued southwards along Eleventh Avenue, where the traffic flow was easier and the speed-limit a lot more lenient. The two men had a significant head start on him, but Jordan could not let that deter him.

He hit the avenue from 14th Street, where only the previous evening he had put an end to a series of deaths with the arrest of Julius Wong.

The Ducati was running at 95 mph, weaving between the cars with the agility of a bullfighter’s cape. Jordan was filled with anxiety and anger. The sight of the red stain spreading over Lysa’s blouse had shaken him. He didn’t know who the attackers were, but it was quite clear that they’d been gunning for him and had hit Lysa by mistake.

There were works in progress near Pier 40, signalled by warning signs and a row of yellow plastic road humps, causing a bottleneck to form. As Jordan approached, he saw the tail-light of a motorbike moving in and out of the lines of cars.

In all probability, the driver of the bike, after keeping in the left lane, had been forced by cars to join the right-hand lane. If Jordan had taken the same route, he would have been slowed down in the same way.

In an instant he took a decision.

He braked with no warning, earning curses from the motorists behind him, then swerved resolutely to the right and suddenly accelerated until he got the bike up onto the sidewalk, moving his body in such a way as to avoid too much skidding.

The anger of the engine echoing Jordan’s own rage, he launched himself at top speed along the walkway beside the river, praying that the rear tyre would not be damaged from the impact as it had hit the sidewalk.

Thanks to his greater speed, he soon caught up with the bike, which had now moved clear of the bottleneck. He hadn’t been 100 per cent sure it was them, but when he saw the blue and white of the Honda in the yellowish light of the streetlamps, he could not help letting out a cry of elation.

‘Got you, you bastards!’

He accelerated even more.

An evening jogger running towards him jumped up on the parapet to avoid him, his eyes wide in fright.

Jordan wasn’t afraid. The adrenaline of the chase was working on him like a drug. All he wanted was to make those two men pay for Lysa’s bloodstained blouse.

The driver of the Honda became aware out of the corner of his eye of the scarlet flash of the Ducati racing along the sidewalk to his right, turned and saw Jordan, and put on a burst of speed.

Now the two bikes were racing each other.

Jordan saw the passenger raise his right arm in his direction and this time he clearly made out the gun. With perfect timing, he swerved to the left at the exact moment the man squeezed the trigger. He saw the flash but the sound of the shot was covered by the engine noise.

Taking advantage of a driveway, Jordan managed to get back down on the asphalt and follow the Honda, keeping to the left, making it hard for the man sitting on the passenger seat, who had the gun in his right hand, to take aim.

Despite this, Jordan was forced again to swerve violently when the man moved the gun over to his left hand and fired two shots towards him almost blindly.

Jordan had not been able to see what kind of gun was being used, so he didn’t know how many bullets the man had left. There had been three shots outside the diner, and now another three. If it was an average automatic, it would have nine or ten bullets, which meant he must have at least three left.

In the meantime, the two bikes were still going at a mad speed, almost side by side, swaying between the cars like crazy balls in a pinball machine.

The river had disappeared from view and now they were travelling past the Financial District, with the Merrill Lynch and American Express buildings on the right and the lights of Ground Zero on the left.

Jordan saw a patrol car coming in the opposite direction with its lights flashing, do a rapid U-turn at Albany Street and set off in pursuit of them. He wasn’t surprised. Two motorbikes shooting along the avenue, with the passenger on one continuing to fire wildly at the driver of the other, was more than enough to alert the police.

Jordan did not care. He kept going, his eyes fixed on the bike ahead of him. Only the Honda bike was distinct: everything else was a chaos of light and colour and noise.

The driver of that bike, too, must have noticed that they now had a police escort, because at the end of the long avenue, he headed straight for Battery Park, where the paths were narrow. He was an excellent driver, and no doubt trusted to his skill to shake off his pursuers. The police car would not be able to manoeuvre well in the park, and the driver probably thought he’d be able to give Jordan the slip, too.

They skirted Castle Clinton, the driver of the Honda performing a perfectly controlled skid.

Jordan told himself that he had to find a way to stop the other bike. He himself was a good biker, but this other guy was in a different league. If he fell, or if the other man put on enough speed to get out of the park at the other end, he would never catch up with them again.

As he was thinking this, the Honda swerved to the right and headed towards the ferry terminal for Ellis Island, narrowly avoiding the souvenir stands, which were closed at this hour.

Jordan saw the man aim the front of his bike in the direction of the water and accelerate violently. He realized immediately what the guy was planning to do. It was a reckless manoeuvre. The park was separated from the sea by a walkway that led to the Staten Island ferry terminal. The driver of the Honda was planning to jump the flight of steps leading down to the walkway.

It was an extremely difficult feat to pull off, because it had to be done diagonally, otherwise, given the narrowness of the walkway, you would hit the parapet on the other side. If the guy succeeded, Jordan would never be able to catch up with him, because he himself didn’t feel at all confident of being able to perform the same manoeuvre.

He saw the Honda rise on its rear wheel, the driver clearly trying to avoid the weight of the engine tipping the bike forward during the jump. A moment later, its engine screaming, the bike was in the air.

It was the passenger who jeopardized the manoeuvre. Maybe out of fear, maybe out of inexperience, he did not move in time with the driver, and his weight made the bike skid as it hit the ground. The passenger was flung from the saddle and fell on his back on the thick metal bar that ran along the top of the parapet. Jordan saw his body bend at an unnatural angle, before his legs went up and he fell straight down into the sea with a perfect overturn. In the meantime, the driver, trapped beneath the Honda, was crushed by its weight against the concrete base of the parapet.

Jordan had braked in time, stopping his bike a few inches from the top of the steps. He opened the kickstand, got off, and ran down the steps towards the point of impact.

By the dim light of the streetlamps he saw the man lying under the crumpled bike, and from the position of the head in relation to the body realized he would never again shoot anybody. Jordan did not even need to check the pulse on his throat to know that the man was dead.

He removed his helmet, put it down on the ground and bent over the man.

At that moment, he heard a noise of running steps behind him, and a torch was aimed at his back, immediately followed by a voice he knew.

‘Hey, you, get up with your hands behind your head – now! Then turn around slowly, lie down on the ground and stay there.’

Jordan imagined the scene. One of the two cops aiming the beam of light at him and the other near him, with his gun levelled, ready to shoot at the slightest sign of a reaction.

He stood up, holding his hands behind his neck. It was the first time he had been on the receiving end of this procedure.

‘I’m not armed.’

‘Do as I say, asshole,’ the voice he knew said. ‘We’ve got you covered. One false move and I shoot.’

Jordan turned and allowed the torch to play over his face. He addressed the voice hidden in the darkness, just behind the beam of light.