And if you look up, ladies and gents, I thought, emergency lights blazing through the lower level’s E-Z Pass lane, you’ll see an authentic, stressed-out New York City cop about to break the sound barrier.
I clicked the siren to full auto as we blasted through the Manhattan-side tolls at a stomach-churning seventy.
We’d just been told Chelsea was in Harlem. I couldn’t lose another kid. If there was any possible way to get to her before it was too late, I was going to do it.
“Where are you now?” the kidnapper said into the ear of my hands-free headset. Again, he’d insisted on guiding me street by street. My own personal insane OnStar operator.
“On the Manhattan side of the Henry Hudson Bridge,” I said.
“Did you know that it was built by Robert Moses back in the thirties using New Deal labor?” he said. “In twenty years, Moses managed to build most of New York City’s major bridges, parkways, and public beaches. The Twin Towers were knocked down almost ten years ago, and it’s still just a pit. Our civilization is winding down, Mike. It’s obvious. So’s our planet. Take a fork out of the drawer and turn off the oven timer. This place is done.”
“Hello? Hello? I think the signal’s breaking up,” I said as I whipped off the headset to clear the sweat and bull crap out of my ears. Beside me, Emily was working two radios and her cell phone as we gunned it south. I cupped my cell’s microphone.
“How are we looking?” I whispered.
Besides Aviation and the Emergency Service Unit backing us up, the phone company was on board now, actively working on a trace.
“Verizon’s still trying to triangulate,” Emily said. “Nothing so far.”
As I drove, I racked my brain to come up with a way to try to throw the kidnapper off balance, turn the tables on him. He was in charge, and what was worse from the smug tone of his voice, it sounded like he knew it.
“Are you there?” he was saying angrily when I patched back in.
“Hello? Hello?” I said. “The signal seems to be back now.”
“The signal, huh? I believe you, Mike. Almost. Now take the George Washington Bridge exit.”
Shit, I thought. That exit was already blowing past on my left. I spun the wheel, mercilessly mowing down a family of construction traffic cones on the exit’s shoulder. We missed a head-on with a construction light cart by a few millimeters as I just made it back into the lane.
“Can you hear me now?” the kidnapper said. “Head over to Broadway, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Chapter 27
I FOLLOWED THE kidnapper’s instructions through Washington Heights and on deeper into Harlem. As we turned off Broadway at St. Nicholas Avenue, we passed a series of enormous housing projects that were as stark and depressing as warehouses in an industrial plant.
Bulletproof windows began to appear on the corner delis and Chinese takeouts. It looked a lot like the section of the Bronx where we’d found Jacob Dunning.
I was on another magical misery tour of the inner city, complete with constant narration.
“Take a good look around, Mike,” the kidnapper said. “Remember the War on Poverty? Poverty won. African Americans and Latino immigrants were lured into the cities because of jobs, and then the jobs moved away with all the white people. The racial and economic inequality that still exists in this country makes me physically sick sometimes.
“It’s not just here, either. Look at places like Newark, Pittsburgh, St. Louis. It’s the twenty-first century, and still there’s a lack of decent employment and no shortage of discrimination toward people of color.”
“Where to now?” I said.
“You’re getting warm. Make a left onto One Hundred and Forty-first, a left onto Bradhurst, and a right onto One Hundred and Forty-second,” the kidnapper said.
At 142nd, a single, leaning brownstone stood on the corner of a mostly rubble-filled lot. I slowed, scanning its surrounding weeds. I spotted a diaper, a mattress, and a rusty shopping cart but, thankfully, no Chelsea.
“Go to two-eight-six. That’s where she is, Mike. Time for me to go. Tell Mom I said hi,” he said and hung up.
I rapidly scanned the buildings and screeched to a stop in front of the address. I jumped out of the car and stared up at the onion-shaped dome above the three-story building in front of me.
“It’s a mosque,” I radioed our backup. “I repeat. We’re at two-eight-six One Hundred and Forty-second Street. It’s on the north side of the street. We can’t wait. We’re going in the front.”
We opened a pair of elaborate doors and rushed into a large, shabby, definitely unchic lobby. It looked like the mosque had been converted from an old movie theater.
“Hello?” I called as we entered an open area where the seats had once been. There were windows in its walls now, and the floor was covered in Oriental rugs. It must be the prayer room, I figured. The light-filled space was divided in half by a large lace screen, and one of the walls was covered in elaborate tile.