Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

“Give me your address!” I grabbed a pen and scribbled down the address. “Give me your phone numbers. Home and cell.” I scribbled those down as well. “I’m on my way. Listen to me. Call my number every five minutes. You got that?”

“But what-”

“Call! If you get voice mail, just say hi and hang up. Whatever you do, stay away from the window. Just hang tight.”

“I’m scared. Hurry. Please. I don’t-”

I nearly took out the tax accountant who works two doors down from me. He was shuffling toward the men’s room, holding a key attached to a clipboard. I missed him by an inch.

I HIT THE STREET in five minutes. Four of them were spent on the elevator going down from my office to the street. It was lunchtime. The elevator eased to a stop over and over again.

Twelfth floor…

Eleventh floor…

Ninth floor…

Eighth floor…

Fourth floor…

Third floor…

Outside, I hailed a cab. I tossed a handful of bills on the front seat and told the driver to go reckless. Eight minutes later, I had him pull over a block from Michelle Poole’s building.

Michelle lived on Twenty-seventh Street, near Third Avenue. Close enough to where Zachary Riddick had lived, I realized, to account easily for Michelle’s several sightings of the lawyer. As I got out of the car, I registered this factoid and tucked it away in a deep file. Riddick hadn’t necessarily been stalking Robin’s friend. The woman was just jumpy. In that case, maybe-

I spotted him.

He was standing outside of a stone church in the middle of the block. The church had large red doors, and he was leaning up against one of them, smoking a cigarette. My heart slammed against my rib cage.

It was Ratface. The guy I had noticed at the Quaker meeting. He was wearing a baseball cap, but otherwise he was dressed the same as before. As I watched, he pulled a fresh cigarette from a pack in his coat pocket, lit it off the first one and flicked the old one to the sidewalk, just missing a man walking by. The man must have said something to him. Ratface gave the man the finger, took a drag on his new cigarette and refixed his gaze on the building across the street. As I rounded the corner, he looked up and saw me. The red door behind him opened, and as an elderly woman exited the church, Ratface flicked his cigarette to the sidewalk and ran inside the church. I picked up my pace. Full speed.

The church was dark except for the altar area. In the rows of shadowy pews, I could make out a dozen or so people sitting quietly in the dark. There was a center aisle as well as aisles running down either side of the church. They appeared to be empty. There was no way Ratface could have already raced down the length of any aisle and disappeared into another part of the church. He was here. In the dark. I started to pull out my gun then hesitated. Not here. Not yet, anyway.

I started slowly down the center aisle, checking the faces of the people in the pews. I couldn’t imagine that he would have had the wherewithal to slip into a pew and try to blend in. My mind gave me an image. A man shrinking with tremendous quickness, his clothes dropping to the floor as if he has vanished altogether, and a black hairy rat scurrying out from under the clothes and darting into the shadows.

I was nearly right.

“Hey!” Partway down the pew I was approaching, a man leaped to his feet. “What in the world…?”

Ratface bobbed to his feet at the far end of the pew. As soon as he’d entered the church, he must have hit the floor and scurried beneath the pews, making his way forward on knees and elbows. He took off running. He was through the door at the end of the aisle before I was halfway down the narrow pew. I leaped onto the pew, where I could run faster.

“Move!”

The man sitting in the pew lurched forward. I cleared him, pounding my way to the end of the pew. I hit the aisle and raced to the door. Behind it, a set of winding stairs led to the basement level. I heard a sound from below-a clanging-and took off down the stairs. They wound down to a basement hallway that ran under the altar. A small kitchenette. Two restrooms. A large open room with a piano and folding chairs. And a door directly to my left. I paused. I tried the door. Locked. Or perhaps the doorknob was being held. I squeezed the knob and tried to twist it. It seemed like it was giving a little.

Wrong.

I heard a sound behind me and turned in time to see the women’s room door swinging open. The door caught me directly on the jaw. Sparks pierced my vision. At the same time, I felt something happening in my left side. Ratface shoved me to the floor, leaped over me and started running down the hallway. I looked down to see a long black piece of plastic sticking from my side. I tugged on it. It was a kitchen knife. The blade felt cold as I pulled it out. As soon as the blade cleared my jacket, blood began pumping onto my fingers.

Immediately, my mouth went dry. In the darkened hallway, the blood looked like oil. I staggered to my feet. I guessed that the other end of the hallway could only lead to a similar set of stairs and back up into the church. I made the calculation and, clutching my side, plunged through the sparks and back up the winding stairs. I swung myself around the railing at the top and emerged at the altar area, right next to the choir stalls. Off in the pews, shadowy figures were moving about swiftly. Someone cried out, “There he is!” But they might have meant me.

I moved across the front of the altar just as Ratface appeared, running up the far side aisle in the direction of the front door. I veered and aimed for the center aisle but lost my footing as I hit the marble steps leading down from the altar. I went down. Ratface was yanking the door open as I got back to my feet. I looked down and saw a swirl of blood on the marble. Somewhere in the darkness of the church, a woman screamed.

I lurched forward.

Outside.

He was a good block ahead of me, heading east. I took off after him. He dodged the cars on Third Avenue more deftly than I was able to, though at one point he surfed precariously on a patch of ice and allowed me to gain on him. I was grunting like a gimp racehorse, the vapor of my breath coming out in husky bursts. The wound in my side felt like it was packed with nails.

He was opening distance between us. As I dodged a woman pushing a baby stroller, I felt my cell phone vibrating. No time for that. I bore down. There were only two more blocks before we’d hit the FDR Drive, and beyond that, the East River. If he attempted to cross the FDR, my job was done. There was no way he could negotiate all those lanes of speeding traffic. As he neared Second Avenue, he barreled past an Asian woman, and she fell to the sidewalk. An instant later, I grunted, “Sorry,” and hurdled cleanly over her, my lungs warning me they were ready to explode.

At First Avenue, he veered to his right. Son of a bitch. There’s a residential complex called Waterside Plaza at Twenty-fifth Street and the FDR. An angled walkway crossing over the highway leads to the complex. Ratface hit the walkway at full speed. I was losing him. Fear is a mighty fuel, and he was burning it well. I pounded up the cement walkway, which spilled onto a large plaza. I saw my quarry leaping down a short set of steps to a narrow walkway that fronted the river. It also led to one of the complex’s apartment towers.

I pulled my gun and stormed forward, nearly tumbling down the short flight of stairs to the lower plaza. My vision was starting to play games with me. There was a large glass entranceway to the apartment tower. It seemed the only place he could have gone, and I headed for it.

I never made it.

The son of a bitch had ducked behind a stone support pillar opposite the entrance. I saw his reflection in the glass just as he lunged from his hiding spot and hit me full force, his lowered shoulder connecting with my ribs. He drove me sideways all the way to the low cement wall overlooking the river. I hit the wall hard, my gun rattling to the pavement. What little oxygen I had in my lungs left me. Ratface was still with me, still down low. The sparks returned to my vision, and my arms came down on the man’s head and neck as uselessly as if they belonged to a rag doll. When I felt a grip tighten around my ankles, I knew exactly what he had in mind.