‘I’m OK,’ she said, gazing back into the house. ‘There’s a man in here,’ she started, but then turned to Jonah and screamed. He followed her eyes and was surprised to discover the microphone in his hand. He had forgotten about it and torn it loose from the cassette recorder.
‘Don’t kill him,’ she said. ‘Please don’t kill my son.’
‘Jonah!’ Gordo shouted from the top of the stairs. ‘He’s coming out! He’s coming out the window.’
Jonah turned and darted back outside. The blood roared in his ears. He leaped down the stairs and went around to his right, running down the narrow grassy space between houses. The grass was spare and brownish green. He looked up at the windows on the second floor, but saw no sign of Foerster. He stopped and glanced back out at the street – just in time to see Foerster chug past, arms and legs pumping up and down like the pistons of a steam engine.
‘Shit.’
Jonah ran back up the alley to the street.
Foerster’s slight figure dashed ahead toward Richmond Terrace. Jonah wouldn’t underestimate him this time. Foerster had a head start and he knew the neighborhood. All the same, there was nothing to do but chase him.
Gordo came out onto the front steps, but Jonah paid him no mind. He tore off after Foerster instead.
At the corner, Foerster turned right.
Please, Jonah thought, please don’t let him be gone when I reach the corner.
He turned and Foerster was up ahead, bursting across the street through the traffic. Jonah followed, mike still in hand. He cut across the street, eyes pinned on his prey, too much so. A woman in front of Jonah stopped short. She wore a kerchief on her head and a long coat, and she had an old supermarket cart piled high with rags and aluminum cans and chunks of scrap metal. Jonah crashed into it, knocking it over, but stayed on his feet. A car screeched and a scooter zig-zagged around them. People yelled.
Jonah kept running.
Foerster weaved through the milling pedestrians. He turned left and headed along the walkway toward the Staten Island ferry terminal. Jonah saw his head bobbing and weaving through the crowds. Jonah made the turn five seconds behind him.
The ferry was there. Its horn gave a blast, signaling it was ready to leave. The last stragglers were getting on board.
Shit! Could he have the ferries timed too?
Foerster ran past a fat couple and disappeared into the crowd. Jonah kept moving, waiting for Foerster to resurface. A moment later, he passed the fat couple himself and entered the terminal building through a double doorway. He stopped running and walked through the dismal waiting room. Foerster must have come through here, but now he was nowhere in sight. Damn! He had lost him.
He couldn’t have turned right or left, Jonah was sure of that. He must have gotten on the ferry. There was a bottleneck of people up by the ferry entrance. Jonah joined the line. A man did a double-take when he saw Jonah’s microphone. Jonah flowed along behind him and climbed on board.
The ferry was the Samuel I. Newhouse, commissioned in 1982. Jonah shuffled past a plaque commemorating its namesake. Random thoughts flashed. The boat was old, and still plying its trade. Was that good or bad?
He didn’t know whether to go right or left. If he went the wrong way, and Foerster doubled back, they were sunk. No, he had to assume Gordo had followed them to the ferry terminal. If Foerster climbed off the boat, Gordo would get him. Unless Foerster had made himself invisible, which now also seemed possible. The horn blasted again. The boat was leaving. Jonah went right, flowing along with the crowd. He moved slowly through a corridor with padded chairs arrayed along the big windows.
He felt the boat lurch, then begin to move.
He walked slowly to the end of the corridor. The ferry had left the terminal and now he was going to Manhattan. He glanced out the door at the end of the corridor. Another sitting room, filled with people. He turned around.
And spotted Foerster.
Thirty yards back, Foerster slid between people up a flight of stairs. Jonah had gone right by without noticing the stairs or Foerster. Now there was a thick knot of people, a crazy New York stew-pot of races, colors and creeds between Jonah and those stairs, between he and Foerster. The people were all trying to follow Jonah into the next compartment, but Jonah wasn’t going that way anymore. He was swimming against the tide.
He pushed a small Asian man out of his way.
The man pushed Jonah back with both hands, getting his body into it. He shouted something into Jonah’s face. Jonah shoved him hard, knocking him towards the window. The man fell into a woman’s lap. But the two men behind him were also Asians. They were together. All three started yelling now. One of them punched Jonah in the chest.
Jonah had no time for this.
‘Gang way!’ he shouted. ‘Police!’
He blasted through the two remaining Asians, and the rest of the crowd parted in front of him. He burst up the stairs, went through some doors, and came to an outdoor deck. Foerster waited out there. His head swiveled, surveying the whole deck, but there was nowhere left for him to run. He stood and gaped at Jonah.
‘Let’s do this the easy way,’ Jonah said.
But Foerster didn’t do anything the easy way. He moved toward the edge of the deck. Suddenly he vaulted up onto the safety railing. A woman nearby gasped. Foerster squatted on top of the railing like an insect, watching Jonah carefully.
The railing was to Jonah’s left. He looked over it, down to the water. The boat was really moving now. It had to be a three-story jump to the harbor. The water was foaming down there as they motored along. The whole scene gave Jonah vertigo, but it didn’t seem to bother Foerster. When he was young, Foerster should have run away and become a circus freak. It would have saved everybody a lot of trouble.
A breeze had kicked up. Jonah took a couple steps toward his quarry.
Foerster grinned. His face was sweaty and pale.
‘Don’t come any closer. Take one more step and I’m out of here.’
Foerster would jump. Jonah knew he would. And there was no way Jonah was going after him. Not from this height. Not into that water. He glanced down at the microphone in his hand, and an idea struck. Foerster was less than ten feet from him. Jonah brandished the microphone like a gun. He moved into a two-fisted crouch. He hoped Foerster didn’t watch much football.
‘Freeze, Foerster!’
‘Get away from me!’ Foerster shouted.
A crowd had gathered around them.
‘You climb down off there or I’ll let you have it with this.’
‘I’m gonna jump. I swear it, I’m gonna jump if you don’t get the fuck away.’
‘This is a stun gun, motherfucker. I give you a pop, you’ll be useless. You ever get a blast from one of these? This is a new one. It’ll put you in shock. You don’t want to go in the water like that. I promise you’ll drown. You want to drown over this? Is that what you want?’
Foerster gazed down at the water below him, then back at Jonah’s stun gun.
‘Climb down RIGHT NOW. Let’s go. Climb down. On the deck.’
Foerster eyed the stun gun.
He eyed the water.
The light went out of his face. His jaw sagged.
‘That’s not a gun,’ somebody said. It was a man’s voice, coming from just a few feet behind Jonah.
‘What?’ Foerster said. His eyes focused on a point just over Jonah’s left shoulder.
‘It’s not a gun. It’s a microphone. You never seen one of those before?’
Jonah glanced in the direction of the voice. Mr Know-It-All was chubby, maybe thirty years old, with a heavy beard and wearing a Yankees windbreaker jacket. Jonah heard his own voice, coming as if from someplace else. ‘Foerster, you’re gonna die, understand? This guy has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. In another second, I’m going to shoot you and you’re going to die in that water.’
‘Then I’ll see you in hell.’
