F Wilson - Fatal Error

"Sorry. Not for sale."

As he began to move off, the guy grabbed him in a bear hug and tried to pull him off the bike.

"I've got to meet someone!"

Jack drove an elbow into his solar plexus-hard. The guy stumbled back and landed against the passenger door of a nearby car. A faint "Hey!" filtered from within. People on the sidewalk had stopped to watch. Slow night on Central Park West.

"So do I," Jack said.

"Mister Ausler?"

Jack looked around and saw a big guy in a black suit get out of the driver seat of the limo and start moving his way.

"Kevin!" the man who'd been called Ausler shouted, his voice thick with fury. "I need that bike! Get me that bike!"

Now he was moving his jaw.

Kevin? Bruno or Jeeves would have been more in keeping with the scene.

Jack gave Kevin a hard look and shook his head. "You don't want to start something you can't finish." Kevin stopped uncertainly by the front bumper.

Jack then looked at Ausler. "Didn't your mommy ever say no?"

"I offered to buy it!"

Jack twisted the throttle and roared off, passing more limos and junkers and even a pickup truck or two-hedge fund managers, secretaries, laborers, all frozen in position. A traffic jam was an equal-opportunity pain in the ass.

Riding along the park's western flank, the only cross traffic he'd had to deal with was at the rare traverses. They hadn't been too bad, but the gridlock at the 110th Street circle stopped him dead. So he turned east and ran along the top of the park. He made good time there until he reached the northeast corner at Fifth. Crossing that took some doing. He turned uptown again on Madison but had to stop and thread his way past every cross street until he reached 125th.

Harlem's main drag was a whole different kind of chaos. Almost a party vibe here. It looked like people had abandoned their cars either to walk to their destination or hit whatever bars or food joints they could find. If you couldn't drive, might as well get comfortable and hoist a few till the jam eased. A bonanza for the street vendors too-people were lined up for shish kebab and falafel and anything else edible. He spotted a couple of places advertising "soul food." Up ahead he noticed that the rear door of a Budweiser truck had been rolled up and folks were helping themselves to cases of beer and passing out the cans to anyone who wanted one. The driver was nowhere in sight.

The result was an impassable vehicular thicket. He could walk his bike along the crowded sidewalks but time was running out.

Jack needed 125th Street. It led directly to the Triboro Bridge. Only a few more blocks and he'd hit its ramp. The Triboro, true to its name, was actually a series of three bridges linking the Bronx, Manhattan, and, most important, Queens, where it led to the Grand Central Parkway, which in turn led to LaGuardia Airport. The bridges were linked by a long, high viaduct with no lights to slow the flow. Traffic should-should-open up there.

Well, he could try a parallel approach. He turned around and headed back down Madison against the traffic, then turned east on 124th.

Much better. Not good, but at least he was able to find a path through the cars. At Second Avenue he saw a sign to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. What the-?

Oh, yeah. They'd renamed the bridge back in '08, but nobody called it the Kennedy or the RFK. It was the Triboro and would always be the Triboro. Even the traffic guys on the radio still called it the Triboro.

Jack angled left onto the ramp and ran into real trouble.

"Lady?" Weezy said, edging into the darkened bedroom.

She'd never had to address her before by name and "Lady" sounded kind of awkward. But awkwardness be damned, she wasn't answering.

"Lady?"

Still no response.

Weezy stopped at the bedside and turned on the lamp. The Lady lay stretched out in her housedress, her arms at her side, her expression peaceful. She said she didn't sleep but her eyes were closed and She wasn't breathing.

Weezy dropped to her knees beside the bed and shook her. Her whole body moved. She seemed to be hollow, made of papier-mache.

"Lady!"

A breath, then a barely audible, "Yes."

"I thought you were dead!"

Her eyes remained closed as she spoke. "So weak."

Too weak to open her eyes?

"You weren't breathing."

"I don't need air to exist, only to speak."

"Anything I can do?"

A thin smile. "Just go on being you. Now… I must conserve my strength."

"Sure. Of course." Weezy rose and backed away. "Conserve it. Every ounce. I'll be outside if you need me."

Need me? For what? What could she do?

She reached for the lamp. "Do you want the light out?"

"It doesn't matter."

Weezy left it on and returned to the front room.

"She's fading away," she whispered to no one. A sob broke free. "We're losing her."

The Triboro ramp was at a complete standstill. The tollbooths were bad enough. Each of the narrow lanes between them was blocked by a car that couldn't move forward or backward. Jack inched his bike past a Mini Cooper only to face the worst jam yet. Cars feeding toward the first bridge were packed so close they couldn't open their doors. Certainly no room for his bike.

He spotted open space far to the left-the exit to Randall's Island. Nobody seemed interested in that. Well, why not give that a try? Maybe he could find a way back up to the viaduct that would put him past this logjam.

A real rush to be able to feed the bike some gas down the empty ramp. After what he'd been through, thirty miles an hour felt like ninety.

He'd been here once or twice since moving to New York. Mostly a sports park with tennis courts, soccer and football fields, a couple of baseball diamonds, but also home to an FDNY fire academy and some sort of mental hospital.

Down on solid ground again, he followed a road paralleling the phalanx of huge columns that supported the viaduct looming a good hundred feet overhead. The light was poor down here and he had to depend on his headlight. He was rolling along, looking for a way back upstairs when the light picked up a hint of movement up ahead on the right near one of the columns. Could be nothing, could be bad news, like someone ducking out of sight. His headlight would have been visible for a while now, allowing time to set a trap.

As he sped through his options, he pulled the sap from his jacket and looped the thong around his wrist. He could have gone for the Glock nestled in the nylon holster in the small of his back, but he was going to need two hands to handle the bike. Still…

Thick brush lined the left side of the road, creating a gauntlet of sorts. He could stop and go back and look for another route, but there might not be one. He needed a way through here that would avoid trouble without slowing his progress.

As he closed in on the column, he made up his mind. Leaning low over the handlebars, he maxed the throttle and veered left, away from the column. The bike leaped ahead -and someone jumped from behind the column, swinging what looked like a two-by-four. It passed through the space where Jack's head would have been had he remained upright, but now it missed both high and wide.

As Jack glanced right to see if his would-be attacker was alone, something hit him from the left. He felt an arm go around his waist in a partially missed tackle. He slipped free but the impact was enough to unbalance him. He squeezed the brakes for all they were worth as the bike tipped. It went over, but he had his arms and legs tucked as metal scraped pavement. He was into a roll as he hit the ground, minimizing the impact. Still it knocked some of the wind out of him, and pain knifed through his right hip as it caught on the rim of a pothole.