Abracadaver (Esther Diamond Novel) (19 page)

“Where is he now?” I asked. “Do you know?”

“At the police garage, I suppose, unless he’s still sitting on FDR Drive.”

“Why would he be sitting on . . . ?” I realized what must have happened. “Another car broke down on him?”

“He really lost his composure,” Nolan said critically. “You’d think a cop could handle stress a little better.”

I said, “So you hailed a cab and left?”

“Did I need to listen to this guy rant and rave about the failings of the twenty-first century while punching the hood of the car and kicking the tires?”

“I guess he really did lose his composure.” And now Nolan was sitting down to dinner somewhere while Lopez was probably still waiting for a tow truck, in the snow, during rush hour, on that bitterly windy highway that ran along the East River. “Where exactly on the FDR did you leave him?”

“Under the Williamsburg Bridge. Of all the places to break down . . .” He sounded as if he thought Lopez had deliberately chosen the spot.

I opened the partition and said to my driver, “FDR Drive under the Williamsburg Bridge. And step on it!”

“Is this a scavenger hunt?” the driver asked.

I closed the partition again. “One more thing, Mike.”

“Esther, they just put my dinner in front of me, so—”

“Have you got Quinn’s phone number?”

To my relief, he did. Quinn had given it to him yesterday (perhaps with great reluctance) in case they got separated while Nolan was shadowing him.

I left Nolan to his dinner, and I dialed Quinn’s number. To my relief, he had replaced his dead cell phone, and he answered the call promptly.

“Where are you?” I asked him right after identifying myself.

“Trying to find my partner,” Quinn said irritably. “He’s fallen off the radar.”

I explained about the dead car. “I have a feeling his phone might be dead again, too. Otherwise he’d have answered my call or phoned me back by now.”

“I left him a message about thirty minutes ago,” said Quinn. “I haven’t heard from him, either.”

“Danny Teng is looking for him with a gun,” I said. “He plans to kill him.”

“Shit. I’ve been looking for Danny all day!” Then he asked, “Where did you get this information?”

“All you need to know is that my source is reliable,” I said. “And Lopez has no idea. We need to find him and warn him.”

I gave him the information I’d gotten from Nolan about Lopez’s last known location.

“All right, I’m in a police car that actually works, for a change,” said Quinn. “I’m on my way to find him right now.”

“I’m on my way, too. I’ll meet you there.”

“Why are
you
going there?” he asked.

“Because his life is in danger.”

“No, you go home and stay out of trouble. One of us will phone you—”

“Right, because a guy who’s being oppressed by an Aramaic demon that loves fresh corpses and violent pranks is
exactly
who I want Lopez to be alone with in the dark on a deserted highway while Danny Teng is look—”

“The FDR isn’t deserted,” Quinn said. “It’s probably a parking lot right now. Do you have any idea what accident statistics are like on a night like this?”

“I’m meeting you there,” I said firmly.

“You’re a pain in the butt, Esther Diamond,” Quinn said. “You two deserve each other.”

I called Lucky to give him an update. There was still no news on his end about Danny’s whereabouts.

I sat back in my seat and tried to manage my agitated nerves. My sense of urgency was probably unnecessary. After all, as far as I could tell, only three people in the whole world knew where Lopez was right now: me, his partner, and a tow truck driver who probably had a lot of calls this evening. The snow was really coming down heavy now.

Quinn was right about the FDR being a parking lot. Once we got on the highway, I was frustrated by how slowly we were moving forward. By the time we reached East River Park, which the bridge runs above, I was so impatient that I rolled down my window and stuck my head out, squinting against the blowing snow as I searched for a stranded car. We were practically under the bridge ourselves when I finally spotted a four-door sedan pulled way off to the side of the highway. It crouched in the shadows of one of the massive concrete structures that supported the bridge, which loomed high overhead.

And there was Lopez, pacing back and forth beside the car, stomping his feet, his shoulders hunched against the cold, his arms folded across his chest.

Behind him was the dark expanse of East River Park, then the river itself, and beyond that were the lights of Brooklyn.

“Oh, thank God.” I was so relieved to have found him. I said to the driver, “Over there! Do you see? Drop me off right by that car.”

I had a cold, sobering moment of shock when I paid the driver. The fare was more than I spent on groceries in a week. I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that I had three weeks of filming on a TV series coming up. Plus, I had spent this money in an unusual emergency.

Even so, it stung.

Just as my taxi drove away, another car pulled up to this spot, a police light flashing on its roof. Quinn got out of the vehicle and said something to me.

“What?” I couldn’t hear him above the dull roar of traffic from the FDR beside us and the bridge up above.

“You made good time!” he shouted.

“Oh.” It hadn’t felt like it.

Looking understandably surprised to see us, Lopez approached where we stood. He wasn’t wearing a hat, and his black, wind-tossed hair was damp and heavily flecked with snowflakes.

“What are you two doing here?” he shouted. “How did you find me?”

I started to explain, but this spot was just too noisy. Lopez gestured for us to follow him, and we walked about fifty yards, leaving the two cars behind as we moved away from the road and into the quieter park. I heard the roar of a motorcycle nearby, then the engine seemed to go dead. I looked over my shoulder at the highway, and traffic was moving very slowly, with people honking and engines idling.

The wind whipped up underneath my heavy coat, and I gasped at how cold it was. That was when I realized I was still wearing my hooker costume for
D30.
I had left the C&P building in such desperate haste earlier, I hadn’t changed back into my own clothes—hadn’t even realized until this moment that I was still wearing Jilly C-Note’s costume. And that tiny skirt was a big mistake in weather like this.

Quinn and I both started talking, interrupting each other and stepping on each other’s sentences. We explained about Danny Teng.

“Seriously?” Lopez tugged his collar up higher around his neck. “I’m going to
sue
that goddamn lawyer. This is all his fault! Killing me is the first idea Danny Teng’s ever had in his life, and it was put there by that sleazy shyster.”

“God, that is
so
like you,” I said in exasperation. “I think you’re kind of missing the point here! Which is that your life is in danger!”

“Mostly, I’m in danger of freezing to death,” he said crankily, “because I’ve been stuck out here for almost two hours in
another
broken-down car.”

“Oh, and I don’t think your phone is working,” I said.

“I
know
it’s not working! Of
course,
it’s not working! I’m out here alone in the dark with a dead car, so why in the world would I have a
functioning phone
with me? That would just be
crazy!
”

“All right,” said Quinn, “let’s make an effort to compose ourselves and figure out—”

“
Don’t
tell me to compose myself,” Lopez snapped. “That’s what her jackass friend kept saying!”

“Nolan’s not my friend, he’s a colleague,” I said automatically.

“My
God,
do you ever owe us an apology for that guy,” Lopez said, rubbing his red nose. “In fact, two hours ago, breaking down here seemed like a blessing, because he finally
left.
If I had known that would do that trick, I would have sabotaged the car yesterday morning.”

“Yeah, well, he’s how we found you, buddy,” said Quinn. “Esther called him to find out where you were, since he was the only person in the Greater New York area who knew. Otherwise you’d probably be stuck here until the spring thaw.”

“Let’s go,” said Lopez. “I’m abandoning the car. I don’t care anymore. I’ve lost count by now of how many cars . . . how many phones . . . how much
crap
is going wrong. I don’t get it. What the hell is going on?”

I looked at Quinn, who by now knew as well as I did what was going on. He gave me a cold glare and shook his head slightly, indicating we would
not
talk about it. Lopez, who was busy glaring at the broken-down car in the distance, didn’t see.

“We should go back to the squad and talk to the lieutenant,” said Quinn. “I’m worried about this Danny Teng thing. He seems crazy enough to whack a cop.”

“Where does this information come from?” Lopez asked.

I never had a chance to prevaricate. Suddenly there were three
really loud
bursts of gunfire right by us. Once you’ve heard the sound, it’s not easy to mistake for anything else. Plus, a bullet ricocheted off a lamppost and flew right past my head, so that was another clue.

“Get down!”
Lopez shouted, shoving me to the ground as he and Quinn crouched low and pulled out their guns.

I didn’t have to be told twice. I was already in a huddle on the cold, slushy pavement, my head down.

When the next two bullets exploded in our direction, the two cops figured out roughly where the shooter was, which was a lot more than I could do, and took cover. Lopez dragged me with him behind a fat tree trunk. My feet moved as he pulled me across the snow and ice by my arm, but I didn’t lift my head.

Once we were behind cover, he shifted me a little, then whispered, “Get down all the way. On your stomach. And stay there.”

I did as I was told.

But when I felt him start to move away from me, I lifted my head. “Where are you going?”

“Stay here,” he ordered softly. “Don’t move, don’t speak.”

Quinn was huddled behind a garbage can nearby, peering over the top of it. He looked at Lopez and made a gesture that was not self-explanatory to me, but which apparently meant something to him. To my horror, the two of them left the marginal safety of cover and ran off in separate directions.

Danny
, I thought.

It had to be him. But how had he found Lopez? Nolan, Quinn, and I were the only people who knew . . . Then I remembered.

“Shit. I’ve been looking for Danny all day!”
Quinn had said.

And Danny had known.

A cop asking around Chinatown for him? Of
course
Danny knew.

He was an idiot, but he was an experienced criminal. To find Lopez, he realized that all he had to do was follow the cop who was searching for
him.
I recalled the motorcycle engine that had caught my attention minutes ago, and I suspected Danny had been riding it, tailing Quinn—to a dark, deserted park beside a traffic-snarled highway on a snowy night.

Well, this was just
great.

I lay there, flat on the ground, for long, dark, silent minutes, shivering with cold, hearing nothing but traffic noises. What the hell was happening? Were Quinn and Lopez closing in on Danny? Was he about to ambush them? Did he realize he’d lost the element of surprise and decide to run away?

The tension was killing me. I was listening so hard that I tried not even to breathe, straining to detect any faint sound besides traffic and wind.

Finally, when I felt like I must have been lying there for half an hour, I heard footsteps, a shot, a shout, and then a whole volley of thunderous shots from multiple guns. Followed by silence.

Then Quinn’s voice. “He’s down!”

Adrenaline surged through me, and I tried to pop up—but I was so cold and stiff, I could only crawl laboriously to my feet, moving slowly.

I could see Quinn, his red hair gleaming under the streetlamps, about forty yards away. The body of a man was on the ground in front of him. Quinn used his foot to shove something away from it—Danny’s gun, I assumed—then bent over and put his hand on the neck, checking for a pulse.

“DOA!” he called over his shoulder.

I looked around, panicking for a moment when I couldn’t find Lopez. Where was he? But then I saw the faint gleam of his black hair in a stray beam of light. He was standing in the shadows, a dark figure in a dark setting, about twenty feet away from Quinn and the body.

“Lopez!” I ran to him, slipping and tripping as I went. “Are you all right?”

When I got to him, he was breathing very hard, as if he’d been running through the park all this time, chasing his would-be assassin through the night. His gun was in his hand, his arm dangling at his side.

I threw my arms around him. He staggered a little under the enthusiasm of my embrace.

“Sorry! Sorry.” I laughed a little, helping him get his balance. “I’m just so glad you’re alive.”

“Yeah.” He nodded, breathing harder. “Me, too.”

He opened his coat and tried to holster his gun, but his movements were clumsy and uncoordinated.

“Are you all right?” I asked with concern, my hand on his shoulder.

He shook his head, not as if answering me, but as if trying to clear his vision. “I feel a little . . .” His breathing, already fast, suddenly doubled its speed. “A little . . .”

“Lopez?” I said in alarm.

He looked at me, an expression of amazement on his face, as if just now discovering I was there. “Esther?”

And then he collapsed, sinking to the ground so fast I didn’t have time to catch him. As he rolled over into a dim pool of light, his coat flapped open and I saw the crimson stain spreading across his chest.

“Lopez!”
I fell to my knees and screamed his name again.

His eyes were half-closed. He was looking up at me, his expression sad now, as if wishing I would stop screaming.

I heard footsteps and then saw running feet. On the other side of Lopez’s body, Quinn dropped to his knees while tearing off his down jacket. He wadded it up, smooshed it against Lopez’s chest, and put my hands on top of this mass.