Shoot (22 page)

“You another detective?” she asked. “Are you a canine cop?”

“I’m Shepherd. I’m investigating the people down the block.” I stuck out my hand to shake, but a large, bearded man stepped in between us, sweeping his daughter back with one arm—horrified that I was about to touch her. Oops. Obviously the Hassidim did not approve of inter-gender touching. Sort of like the Amish, but Jewish and in Brooklyn.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

I started to tell him but he cut me off.

“We know nothing, thank you. Good night.”

Slam.

Skippy and I continued down the block toward the river but that was the best I got. I came to an apartment building but there was a uniformed doorman who started scowling at me from one hundred paces out. After that the street got darker and there were more dark, silent factories than homes. I rounded the corner, just curious. Skippy sniffed the air.

“Foof!”

The street here was down to the original cobblestones, paving that had been placed down more than a century earlier. Most of the streetlights were out or missing. From here, the bridge loomed above, arching out over dark industrial buildings and across the river. The dark bridgework began shaking and thumping, as arcing electrical sparks flashed inside its lattice. The vibrations shook the ground under me like an earthquake but it was just an elevated train rattling into Brooklyn.

After the noise faded, Skippy snapped his head right, toward something I could not hear or see. As my eyes got used to the darkness, I realized Skippy was looking at three men with long beards, long black coats and wide-brimmed hats, clustered in the shadows, their faces dark. Kosher vampires? I approached them but they turned and walked away. Shy vampires. It occurred to me that the Orthodox uniform was an excellent criminal disguise because it made them all look alike—beards and glasses and hats and long black clothing that hid faces and shapes and age.

I stopped and called Izzy.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, Izzy, I’m in Brooklyn, where they raided the APN cell.”

“Why?”

“Just nosing around,” I told him.

“Not much to see. My landsmen welcoming you?”

“What’s a landsman?” I asked.

“It’s Yiddish for countryman, a fellow Jew.”

“Oh. Not so much.”

“A goy in the hood,” Izzy chuckled. “I thought you weren’t getting paid anymore?”

“I’m not. What’s new?”

“Guess what one of the congressmen had tattooed below the belt.”

“A little devil?”

“Jane told you.”

“Yup. Anything else major?”

“Not really. No new leads. Time to call it a night.”

“Okay, talk to you in the morning.”

I looked around the corner from where I had come. Lights from cars and streetlights beckoned from a few blocks away, through a dead zone of warehouses and empty lots and fences and abandoned vehicles. Fireworks exploded and cascaded above the river. As I walked over the uneven cobblestones toward the light, I activated the Uber app again.

Skippy suddenly jerked me around, a low growl in his chest. Three figures were following us at a distance, a block away; long black coats, long dark beards, dark brimmed hats. The same guys? I considered waiting for them and trying to chat but my gut rejected that. I kept walking toward civilization.
Better in the light
, I thought, quickening my step.

They stepped up their pace, too, now half a block behind me. I noticed they were spreading out. One went straight down the middle of the deserted street and the other two took to the gutters on either side. There were no sidewalks. Why would three friends do that? I’d only do that if I was going to do something and was worried about the dog. Wouldn’t it be funny if I was mugged while hunting for killers? I headed for the closest working streetlight, stopped under it and turned around, an excellent target. Skippy was tensed, his fur rippling. The three men also stopped, staying out of the light. Weird. I had a strange vibe that they were armed but I didn’t think many Hassidic types packed heat. Of course, I was new in town. I began putting on my gun gloves.

“Good evening, landsmen,” I said loudly.

They did not reply. Headlights came down the block behind them, temporarily wiping out my night vision. A dark SUV pulled right up to me.

“Hi, Shepherd,” Raymond said, through his open window. “I was nearby and got the return call.”

We got in but Skippy kept his eyes on the dark street behind us, where the trio had been skulking. The three men seemed to have vanished. Raymond asked if it was okay if we picked up another passenger on Delancey Street in Manhattan. Somebody going to Radio City Music Hall.

“Of course, that means your fare is reduced,” Raymond explained.

“Fine with us,” I agreed.

On the way, my phone rang but no one was on the line. I looked at the screen, which said
NUMBER BLOCKED
. I texted Jane, in case it was her, and said we would be home soon. On the other side of the bridge, back in Manhattan, a chunky older guy got in the front with Raymond. He did a double-take at Skippy but settled in for the ride. Apparently he didn’t speak much English. When we got to the music hall, on Avenue of the Americas at 50th Street, near Rockefeller Center, I told Raymond I wasn’t far from home and Skippy needed a walk. I thanked him and said goodnight.

“You got a real cool dog,” Raymond said, as we got out. “You trained him well.”

“Thanks,” I agreed, reaching for the door handle. “But I didn’t train him.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

Skippy took care of his business quickly and we started to jog north toward Jane’s, Skippy barking at fireworks. The third eye feeling I had earlier returned, the itchy shoulder blades, like a switch had been toggled on. Fuck. If I couldn’t trust my third eye, I had no edge. I was just another fat, dumb and happy Jethro waiting for impact. Skippy’s ears were working overtime, like fuzzy radar dishes, swiveling left and right as the explosions went off around us.

“It’s just fireworks, Skippy. Maintain an even strain.”

He stopped in his tracks, tensed and looked up at the dark starless city sky between the tall buildings flanking Avenue of the Americas near the Hilton Hotel. His head bobbled randomly, like he was watching a fly near his nose. Then his head stopped and tilted, then tracked around again. I looked up again and saw nothing.

“What is it, Lassie?” I asked Skippy. “The Dogstar?”

He made a whining noise that sounded like he was trying to talk, his snout sniffing the air at a high-rise building a hundred feet away, on the other side of a little plaza with a fountain and a few benches. He led me to the building, under a third-story overhang, an empty lobby visible behind large plate-glass windows. The building was obviously closed for the night and there was no door on our side. I heard something and looked up at the underside of the building overhang.

In the dim light, feathery gray, white and black shapes were clustered on ledges. I looked at my feet under the crowded eaves, white splatters on the cement.

Pigeons. Hundreds of them, sleeping. I always wondered where they went at night. I took a few sidesteps to avoid being dumped on by dreaming pigeons.

“Since when do you like pigeons?” I asked Skippy.

Usually Skippy went after bigger game: other dogs, cats, carriage horses. But I noticed he wasn’t looking up at the drowsy birds. He was looking out over the avenue, again intent on the empty sky, like he spotted a squirrel on a lamppost. I didn’t see any pigeons out there. Obviously they weren’t nocturnal.

Skippy tensed his muscles, as if he was going to lunge. I held the leash tightly. He could pull me over if he did that. I looked up again. I saw some of the Big Brother video camera bubbles mounted on poles and buildings, part of the expanding surveillance culture that terrorism had forced on us. Nothing else.

“Skippy, buddy, there’s nothing up there. Let these guys sleep. They have a busy day tomorrow. I’m hungry, let’s get…”

I saw it. A dark shape flashed across a light steel building checkered with reflective glass, like a spider sliding over a web. Then it vanished upwards. Fast.

What. The. Fuck.

“Easy, buddy. Sit. Good boy.”

He sat. I never taught Skippy anything but he came to me already highly trained, from a murdered reality show host. Someday, I would have to find out who had instructed my dog.

My rear eye was winking wild. I took out my phone and pretended to take a call. Then I switched on the camera, so it was pointing over my shoulder. I took a shot. Then I slowly traversed and did it again and again. I looked at the pictures. Nothing. I flipped through them faster, like a movie, and spotted something. I enlarged the spot. Fuck me if it didn’t look like a little spider in the sky. Goddamn. Every nerve in my body told me to move. Skippy growled low and kept looking over his shoulder, showing his teeth. My shoulder blades felt like someone was tickling them with a feather duster.

“Good dog!” I yelled. “Let’s run!”

Skippy and I took off and I changed course, tugging his leash back toward the building, under the eaves. I yelled loudly upwards; no words, just a throat-ripping Wolfman roar. Skippy began barking loudly.

“Good dog!” I yelled.

The flock of pigeons exploded down and then up into the open air, with a blast of wings all around us. We ran with them. The mass of panicked birds overhead was still climbing, shifting shape upwards, as it funneled around itself. Thumping, snapping noises and the brood changed direction, and disappeared. I heard buzzing, a crash and breaking glass, as something bounced off a parked car a hundred feet away. The car’s alarm sounded, whooping loudly.

“Damn! Skippy, stay,” I ordered him.

I left him in the plaza with a loose leash and raced over. It was big, maybe three feet across, like Sparky’s drone but bigger, and had bounced off the hood and windshield of the car. Half a dozen shredded pigeons were scattered all over. I felt bad. The poor birds had trashed at least four of the propellers. Several of the props on the eight-motored drone were still spinning, trying to fly, a huge, wounded spider with an angry wasp voice. In the center, a black camera with a long lens was still swiveling and zooming. Then I saw the familiar orange plastic-covered flat brick and wires underneath. It looked like a pound of cheddar cheese but smelled sweet, like marzipan. I didn’t think. I pulled out every wire as fast as I could, starting with the ones going to the soft brick, as if my life depended on it. One wire lead was attached to a silvery tube that looked familiar. One end of the detonator tube was stuck into the orange material, which had the consistency of firm clay. I tugged it from the brick and then ripped the other end out of a junction box. I carried it over to a sewer storm drain and tossed in the tube and attached wires. As I turned back to the crash site, there was a loud bang. I yanked the brick package and it popped out of its slot. When I was sure there were no more wires connected, I shoved it back in. It took me a few more tugs to disconnect the rotors. The wasp humming stopped. Everything stopped. Several curious people approached on the sidewalk. I called Skippy and he came running, cautiously sniffing the drone.

“Foof!” Skippy said. Then he froze, pointing his snout directly at the orange slab in the drone, his eyes glued to it.

“Holy shit!” I said.

“What happened?” a skinny guy asked me.

“Some kind of fireworks thing landed on somebody’s car,” I lied, picking up the whole apparatus with my gloved hands and walking away. “Skippy! Heel!”

I began moving as quickly as I could without breaking into a run across Seventh Avenue, with Skippy trotting at my side, before any asshole could whip out his cellphone camera.

I heard voices behind me, indecisive, confused. Someone called out but I ignored it and hurried around the corner at 58th Street, a one-way street. I thought I heard screeching tires behind me. Of course. They’d be in a vehicle with the remote control video rig. I broke into a full run. When I heard a distant siren a few minutes later, I ran faster for a few blocks north and went into the park. I was out of shape. After only ten minutes of running, I dropped my trophy on the ground and took a break on an empty bench. Skippy alerted on the drone again, in case I was completely stupid, and then lay on the bench next to me, nervous.

“Skippy, you are a pro,” I told him. “It’s okay, boy.”

I made a call.

“Sparky? It’s Shepherd. Yeah I know. A fuckin’ musket, right? Listen, pal, something just fell into my lap and I think it’s right up your alley… this could get hairy but you’re the only twidget I know who knows this stuff. I need your help… and your van. This thing is heavy. Yeah… right now… Central Park… uh… wait, hold on… North of the Plaza Hotel on 59th Street, there’s an entrance to the park at Fifth Avenue with a sculpture… not sure… yeah it might have been Alice in Wonderland. Yeah. That’s about the size of it. We’re down the fucking rabbithole now. Okay. How long? I’ll wait.”

As my rush receded, I had to smile. My third eye was working just fine after all. It was closed for now but the eye in the sky was closed. Who did it belong to? When they remotely blew the detonator, was that to kill me or were they just trying to destroy the drone so it wouldn’t lead to them? It seemed like they were more interested in watching me than wasting me. I tried not to take it personally.

When Sparky’s van screeched to a halt in the street nearby, he got out and made a face at me because I was laughing out loud. I had run with a broken spy drone through the middle of Manhattan and nobody looked twice. Then I sat on a public Central Park bench—with a trashed black drone covered with bloody pigeon feathers and a block of Semtex plastic explosive tucked inside—for more than twenty minutes. Not one person challenged me, bothered me or even suggested that was odd.

I love this crazy town.

I explained to Sparky what happened and told him not to touch the drone without gloves.

“Holy fat fuck-a-doodle-doo,” Sparky observed, raising a camera and taking shots of the defeated drone. “You think the goddamn
Mail
did this?”