The Rockefeller Center station, one of the largest in the entire subway system, was a virtual catacomb of passageways and exits. It had four tracks, two island platforms, and more than fourteen exits to the street. As a special bonus, there were also entryways into the Rockefeller Center concourse, an underground maze lined with shops that stretched for blocks in every direction.
As he ran, the Teacher yanked his T-shirt out of his jeans to cover his pistols, then ripped off his Tucci jacket and tossed it by one of the exits. There was no worry about leaving a trail – someone would grab it and be gone within seconds. He hit another flight of stairs and lunged down them four at a time, racing toward the metallic screech of an approaching V train.
He got to the second car just as the doors bonged open. Yes! he thought, jumping on.
But a sudden thunder of footfalls down the stairwell he’d just exited made his head swivel.
“Stop that train!” he heard a cop yelling. More voices joined in. “Yo! Yo! Driver, stop! Stop!”
Bing bong. The subway’s driver, sitting in his compartment at the front of the train, closed the doors as if absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary. You had to love this goddam city. Everybody was insane. The train pulled forward, humming.
The Teacher wiped sweat from his eyes and looked at the passengers in the half-full car. They all had their heads buried in a newspaper or a paperback. Never get involved. Damn right. He turned to stare at the tunnel lights that flashed outside the windows as the subway whizzed past, constellations of blue shooting stars.
Unbelievable – he was free again. Unstoppable! The hand of Destiny itself really was guiding him. There was simply no other explanation.
Just as he’d decided that, the door at the rear end of the car rattled opened. Two transit cops stood there, breathing heavily. One was a heavyset, older white man, the other a black female so young she had to be a rookie. Both had their hands on the butts of their Glocks, but the weapons were still undrawn.
“Freeze!” the old flatfoot yelled, but he still didn’t draw. What the hell was he waiting for? An engraved invite?
It took the Teacher less than a second to draw both of his own guns simultaneously from the small of his back, the.22 in his right hand and the.45 in his left.
Now the passengers paid attention to him. Wide-eyed, some shrieking, they flattened themselves down onto the seats or dove to the floor.
“Listen to me,” the Teacher yelled across the car. “I like cops, I swear. I’ve got no beef with you, and I don’t want to hurt you. Let me go. That’s all I want.”
The train was coming into the 51st and Lex station. Maybe the driver finally realized that something was up, because it made a sudden lurch. Thrown off balance, the two uniforms reacted by finally going for their Glocks.
“I said no, damn it!” the Teacher roared. Left-handed, with the.45, he shot the male officer in the knee, then the groin, and then the head. At the same time, with his right hand, he emptied the last four rounds of the.22 into the space just above the female cop’s Sam Browne belt. Had to get around those pesky Kevlar vests.
His eardrums felt like they were bleeding from the thunder of the unsilenced.45, like a pack of cherry bombs had gone off inside his head. But a blizzard of endorphins whirled through his skull as well. What a rush! Like nothing in the world.
The train came to a shuddering halt, its doors opening automatically. A businessman waiting on the platform started to step into the car, but stopped dead at what he saw, then scurried away.
The Teacher was about to do the same, when a gunshot exploded behind him, and a stinging sound whipped past his left ear. He spun back around and stared in disbelief.
It was the lady cop. She was down on the floor of the train with Swiss cheese for a tummy, yet still trying to line him up in her shaking gun sights. What courage under fire!
“That’s magnificent,” he said to her sincerely. “You should get a medal. I’m really sorry I have to do this.”
He raised the.45 and aimed it at her terrified face.
“I really am,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 33
I couldn’t believe it! What the hell was going on in this world? As we were wrapping up the task force meeting, we got word that there’d been not one, but two more shootings in midtown. Preliminary reports said that a civilian and two transit cops had been shot, around Rockefeller Center, by the same assailant.
Our assailant. There wasn’t much doubt about it by now.
Even with my siren cranked, it took me most of forty minutes to get through the gridlock from headquarters to the frantic crime scene at 51st and Lexington.
Right off the top, it was impossible not to notice the NYPD chopper hovering above the Citicorp building. The throb of its rotors seemed to keep time with my heart as I waded through the crowd that was seething around a completely blocked-off 51st Street.
A sergeant let me under the yellow tape beside the 51st Street subway stairs. His serious-as-cancer face told me something I didn’t want to know. The echoing metallic squawk of police radios and sirens seemed to be coming from everywhere at once as I descended into the hot, narrow stairwell.
A train was stopped in the tunnel. There were maybe two dozen cops standing on the platform alongside one of the front cars. Inside it, I saw spent shell casings on the bloodstained floor. I could tell at a glance that several rounds had been fired.
The crowd of cops parted as a team of paramedics wheeled a stretcher out of the train car. Hats were quickly taken off. A hulking Emergency Service cop next to me blessed himself. When the stretcher neared, I followed his example, shaking my head hard to fight the sudden numbness in my chest.
The victim was the female rookie transit cop. All I knew about her was that her name was Tonya Griffith, and that she was dead. I couldn’t even see her face because of all the blood.
I asked another transit cop about Tonya’s partner, and found out that he was en route to Bellevue.
“Likely?” the big ESU guy inquired. As in, likely to die?
The transit cop didn’t answer. That meant, affirmative.
“Son of a bitch,” the ESU cop said, clenching his fists violently. “Son of a fucking bitch.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Everything had changed from an hour ago. The shooter had killed one, probably two, of our own. The stakes had skyrocketed.
Now it was personal.
Chapter 34
I followed the stretcher up to the street as the EMTs carried Tonya Griffith to an ambulance and put her inside. The driver slammed the rear metal doors, climbed in, and hit the roof lights. Then he seemed to think better of it, and turned them off before slowly pulling out into traffic. There was no rush on the way to the morgue.
As I watched the ambulance roll toward the Chrysler Building, I found myself thinking about taking that job at ABC. I’d had enough of shootings and death. At least, that was sure how I felt at that moment.
Detective Terry Lavery came stomping up the stairs behind me.
“Just spoke to the precinct captain, Mike,” he said. “The shooter disappeared. They scoured the area under- and aboveground, stopped buses and taxis on Lex and Fifty-first, but not a trace.”
The ESU cop had said it all. Son of a bitch.
“Witnesses?” I said.
“About a dozen. Mostly they glued themselves to the car walls when the shooting started, but their descriptions match closely. Tall Caucasian male with black hair and dark sunglasses, wearing jeans and a graffiti
