“We were looking for love in all the wrong places,” one of the guys shouted out.
“And now some kid gets the job done in your stead. The commissioner asked me to send you his best and to announce that the Raymond Tanner Task Force is officially disbanded.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Vandomir said.
“I just want to add,” I said, leaning on Vickee’s shoulder as I got to my feet, “that I am especially grateful to each one of you, personally, for making this work a priority.”
“We weren’t worried much, Alex,” Pug McBride said, displaying his empty glass over his head to the waiter. “Chapman had your back.”
“He’s had her back for years,” the sergeant said, reaching for one of the bottles of wine on the table. “Now he’s got a hand on better body parts than that.”
Most of the guys laughed, so there was no point in protesting.
“It’s all about Tanner tonight,” Mercer said, knowing the banter, the focus on my vulnerability, would make me uncomfortable.
“The kid cop sounds like a star,” Pug said. “If that stunt don’t buy him his gold shield, nothing will.”
“Goes to the head of the class for deceiving the devil,” Mike said. “I told the lieutenant he ought to ask for an interview with him. Grab him now before any bad habits set in. He’s my kind of cop, building the devil’s bridge.”
SEVEN
“I’ll bite,” Vickee said. “What is it?”
“The bridge?” Mike asked.
“There’s a Devil’s Bridge off the tip of the Vineyard,” I said. I remembered it from the days when I fished with Adam Nyman at the crack of dawn. “It’s a treacherous archipelago of boulders that strings out below the Gay Head Cliffs toward Cuttyhunk Island, under the water where the ocean meets the sound.”
The deadliest marine accident in New England’s history occurred in 1884, when a passenger steamer-the City of Columbus-ran aground on the shoals of Devil’s Bridge, killing more than one hundred people. I had heard the story from descendants of the dead still on the island, haunted by the tragedy that had occurred within sight of the Gay Head Lighthouse.
“Brush up on your folklore, ladies.”
“We’re about to get a touch of Brian Chapman, are we?” Pug McBride said, laying on his thickest brogue. “I miss your father every day, Mikey.”
Mike’s father, Brian, had a legendary career in the NYPD, much decorated for his heroism and his brilliant investigative work. It was his great pride that Mike pursued a college degree instead of following him onto the job, but when Brian dropped dead within forty-eight hours of turning in his gun and shield for retirement, Mike went directly from his Fordham commencement to sign up for entry in the Police Academy.
“There are devil’s bridges all over Europe,” Mike said. “Masonry arches from medieval times-in France and Spain and Italy, and of course throughout England and Ireland-each of which comes with its own version of a folktale.”
“What does it have to do with being a cop?” Vickee asked.
Mike was sitting directly across the table from Vickee. He placed his glass of vodka on the table and pointed at her with his forefinger, picking up the dialect of his County Cork roots. “So my great-aunt Bronwen-she was from Wales, as you can tell by the name-she came from a town near the great Mynach Gorge.”
“You giving us blarney, Chapman?” Pug asked. “I heard this one from your old man more times than I can count.”
“Roll with it, Pug. The ladies seem to be ignorant.”
“Welsh fairy tales?” I said. “Guilty as charged.”
“Mynach’s one of the most scenic places in the countryside, with dramatic waterfalls that drop nearly three hundred feet down the gorge. And the problem was, back in the day, there was no way to cross that gorge to get to the other side-to town, to the fields where the cows were grazing, to church-”
“We get your point.”
Mike took another slug of vodka. “So Bronwen’s great-great-great-granny made a pact with the devil. She got Satan himself to agree to build a bridge for her,” Mike said, snapping his finger with a loud click, “and to do it overnight. But he wanted something in return.”
“He always does,” Vickee said.
“Well, that time he wanted a promise that he could have the first living soul who crossed his bridge the next morning,” Mike said. “Stayed up all night getting the bridge made-you can still see it spanning the gorge today-and then he hid himself right at the end of the rock pile. Just like a rapist hiding amid the boulders in Riverside Park. Waiting for the first living soul.”
Vickee waved the back of her hand at Mike. “You forget, Detective, that the kids growing up in the projects don’t exactly know the folktales you were brought up on. Might not be the same risk/reward ratio.”
“Don’t distract me, Vickee. I’m on a high here. I’ve got everybody but Pug spellbound.”
“Heard it before, Chapman. The little old lady-aye, your auntie Bronwen herself-she deceives the devil. He builds her a beautiful bridge in the most unlikely of places-”
“And instead of giving him a living soul to ravish, the clever woman sends her dog on ahead of the beautiful young maiden,” Mike said, lifting his glass in the air. “The first living thing, only it happens to have four legs.”
“So this smart cop used the dog to roust Raymond Tanner from his hiding place,” I said.
“And like the devil, who was so enraged by the old lady’s trick that he leaped into the falls and was never seen in those parts again, the rookie has rid us of the evil Tanner.”
“Yeah, he built his own bridge to Rikers Island for the night,” Pug said as the waiter tried to get everyone’s attention to announce the dinner specials. “The devil played right into the kid’s hands.”
For the next two hours, we did what cops and prosecutors do when thrown together with good food and an excess of alcohol. We told war stories. Pug on the homicidal maniac who had paralyzed the subway for half the summer; Alan on the child molester who dressed in his mother’s clothes to lure kids into the apartment; Catherine on the guy who jumped bail fifteen years earlier only to be nabbed in Georgia by her cold case unit and charged with a dozen more rapes along I-95.
When Vickee finished her chicken piccata, she left the table to go outside to call the public information office to see whether there was any word on the Tanner arraignment.
I was still working on my orecchiette con broccoli rabe, enjoying a cool glass of pinot grigio, when Mike walked around the table and took Vickee’s seat next to me.
“You okay, Coop?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling back at Mike. “This time I think it’s just mind games, not physical threats. You’ve heard what Antonio Estevez pulled off?”
Mike nodded. “Yeah, Drew called me about it. Really slick. And sticking stuff into your document files by uploading it from another DA’s office computer? The dude’s got game.”
“Next time I see him, I’ll tell him you’re a fan.”
“At least you get a reprieve from the trial. Maybe we can figure something to do with the weekend.”
“A last Vineyard trip for the season? Give me something to look forward to.”
Mike and I were still trying to feel our way through the rhythms of a relationship. We each had apartments of our own and had spent few nights together since we’d starting dating. The irregular assignments of a homicide detective rarely synched with my litigation schedule.
“Sounds like you’ve got a full plate till then,” Mike said.
“Tomorrow I get to put my head on the block for Battaglia to chop away at.”
“Estevez?”