Nothing had happened. There was no sign of Newton. Just after sundown, a street performer had taken up a post on the corner with a pair of guitar cases, popped one open, and started playing. He was actually pretty good, and looked to be taking in a decent amount of pocket change from the pedestrians. He was still there, the bar was open and doing a brisk business, and Erin was bored out of her mind.
Around ten o’ clock, Piekarski suddenly stopped in the middle of one of her anecdotes. She sat up straight.
“There,” she said.
Erin cracked her neck and groaned. “What?”
“That looks like our boy.”
Piekarski was right. Newton was coming down the sidewalk. He was big and broad-shouldered, but there was a definite edginess to him. His eyes darted from side to side and he drummed his fingers against the legs of his jeans as he walked. The man looked seriously scared.
The two policewomen watched their target as he passed the guitar player. He gave the man a wide berth and a suspicious stare. A couple was on their way out of the bar, holding hands. When they stepped onto the sidewalk, Newton jumped and shoved a hand into his coat pocket. Then he recovered and kept walking.
“He’s carrying,” Erin murmured.
“We can stop-and-frisk, bust him on the weapon charge,” Piekarski suggested. A felon with a gun was a major parole violation.
“No. We wait.” They needed more. A parole violation wouldn’t be enough to get him to turn on his buddies.
Newton got to the door that led to the apartment stairs. He pulled out his keys and shuffled them around to find the right one.
The guitar player had put his guitar back in its case. He was kneeling on the concrete, opening the other case. Erin caught the motion as she was watching Newton. She saw the sudden, decisive movement.
“Gun!”
The word was out of her mouth before she’d consciously thought about it. Then she forgot about the surveillance mission. Even as she shouted and reached for the door handle with one hand and her Glock with the other, a dozen things happened at once.
The guitar player came up with a sawed-off shotgun in his hands, aimed at Newton. Erin flung open her door and lunged onto the street, drawing her pistol. Piekarski, with her good street instincts, whipped out her own sidearm and hurled herself out the passenger door of the van. Newton, twitchy as ever, saw the man aiming at him and turned sharply sideways. His keys tumbled out of his hand toward the ground and his right hand went into his coat again. The young woman of the couple gave a muffled cry of scared surprise. Her date saw what was happening and his eyes got wide.
“NYPD!” Erin shouted, but her yell was drowned out by the roar of the shotgun. Newton twisted and convulsed. A puff of white feathers blew out from his jacket and danced in the streetlight beam. As he went down, a blast of flame blew another hole in his coat just over the pocket. He’d fired through his own clothes. Erin didn’t see where that bullet went.
Maybe three seconds had passed. Time seemed to move both very slowly and very fast. The young man on the sidewalk grabbed his girl and tackled her to the sidewalk, flattening her under himself. Somebody screamed. Erin had no idea who. The guitar player pumped the shotgun and fired again into Newton’s body as the Irishman slumped against the brickwork and slid to the concrete. Newton’s own gun fired two more times, probably in reflex. Erin shouted again and fired two quick shots at the guitar player. Piekarski was shooting too. Rolf, sealed in the back of the van, started barking.
The guitar player’s head snapped around and he was looking right at Erin. She didn’t think she’d hit him. The range was something over thirty yards, and between the dim light and the rush of adrenaline, she’d missed. She fired again just as he let go with another blast from his shotgun. She felt something sting the back of her knuckles, a hot, raw pain like a bad rope burn, and her hand jerked involuntarily. She’d missed again. There was an earsplitting crash from the van at her back. Then the guitar player spun and ducked back around the corner and out of sight.
“You hit?” Piekarski shouted.
“I’m good!” Erin yelled back. “Cover me!”
She sprinted across the street toward the scene of the shooting, grabbing some shelter behind a parked car. She could see Newton crumpled at the base of the wall, and the two bystanders lying flat. Rolf was still barking, but she couldn’t take the time to let him out of the van.
Erin kept her eyes on the corner where the gunman had gone. She took a breath and ran toward the front of the bar. Then she crouched low at the corner and thrust herself around it, leading with the barrel of her Glock.
She saw taillights as a car roared away from the curb, but the small bulbs at the license plate were dark, probably deliberately deactivated. A horn blared and it sideswiped another car with a squeal of metal. Then it was around another corner and gone.
“Clear!” Erin shouted to Piekarski. “Call it in! Got a black sedan, Honda, southbound. Didn’t catch the plates, but it’s crunched in on the right door panels. And we need a bus, forthwith!”
“Copy!” Piekarski replied, jumping back into the van and grabbing the radio. Even as she did, a patrol car pulled up with lights and sirens going. A shooting in Manhattan pretty much guaranteed a very quick police response.
Erin held up her shield with one hand while she approached Newton, keeping her gun in the other hand. She saw a lot of blood on his coat. Little bits of the jacket’s lining drifted down like snowflakes, sticking to the blood.
Newton’s hand spasmed and he jerked it out of his pocket.
