Four others answered Mike's call and formed a circle around us. Mike helped me to my feet and we brushed ourselves off, reassuring the men that we had not been hit
Take her into the gatehouse," he said. "I'll catch up with Pete."
"Could you just stay here with me a minute?" I didn't want to be left with strangers while Mike exposed himself to whoever had been shooting at us.
Mike wasn't going to indulge my nerves. He walked away and inspected the holes in the side of the building. "Might as well get Crime Scene out here. Let them dig these bullets out. See what they are," he said to one of the guys trailing behind him.
"You don't even know where Pete is," I said. "You don't know who's out there."
"Inside for you, Blondie," he said, grinning at me to try to ease my anxiety. "Some nut's running around with worse aim than you have. Should make you feel better already."
The fifteen-minute wait for Mike and Pete to return seemed like hours. All the windows in the little shack were open for ventilation, and I could hear the endless volleys of gunshots.
"What'd you get?" I asked, standing at the door as I saw the men coming back.
Their arms were covered in scratches, and Mike had a long, thin trail of blood down one cheek. The thick foliage had been hard for them to penetrate.
"What did we get? STDs, in all likelihood."
"What?"
"This may be the first case where the Center for Disease Control can count poison ivy as a sexually transmitted disease," Mike said, dabbing at his face with his handkerchief.
The other officers looked at me and Pete Acosta said, "What?"
I could feel myself reddening.
"Only for the love of Coop would I take off into a briar patch. The rest of you must be dumber than I am. It's itchy already," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "and you don't even know the broad. You got a hard line in there?"
"Yeah," one of the cops said. "There's no cell reception."
"I noticed," Mike said. He walked past me, patting me on the shoulder, and dialed his office. "It's Chapman. Give me Lieutenant Peterson."
"Will you tell-?"
He put his fingers to his lips. "Ssssssssh. Anybody know you were coming here today?"
"No."
"It wasn't in the gossip columns, was it? You didn't give it out to Liz Smith? Or the Social Diary?" he said, trying to defuse the tension in the group by poking fun at me. "What blond prosecutor had a midmorning tryst with a thug on the old Pell's Point estate, once the private reserve of Samuel Rodman?"
"Somebody was shooting at us, Mike. Why is everything a joke to you?"
The cops were laughing.
"Hey, Loo. I'm up at the range. Just had an incident. I think you'd better call headquarters and let them know."
Mike was going up the proper chain of command. He explained to his boss what had happened as we walked near the perimeter of the restricted area.
"No reason to take it personally," Mike said. "Coop? Other than eating a mouthful of Bronx dirt, she's fine. She's having an outer-boroughs experience this week."
Peterson was asking all the questions.
"Pete Acosta-he's one of the instructors-he'll sit down when the CO comes on for a four to twelve. Pete's guess is that it's somebody on the job, a member of the department with a major problem. Better let the commissioner's office know. Check who's been put on the rubber gun squad lately," Mike said, referring to cops ruled psycho who've had to surrender their service weapons.
"The shooter was aiming at us," I said.
Mike held his finger to his lips again as he listened to Peterson.
"Hard to tell," Mike said. "You know how the range is set off from everything around it. If someone was hunkered down in a clearing, he'd have been completely hidden by the undergrowth. We trampled it pretty well when we went after him-or them-whoever it was. Crime scene'll have to go back into the area and look for spent shells. Of course, the whole damn place here is covered with cartridges, Loo."
He ended the conversation.
"Maybe one of you wants to explain why you're ignoring me," I said to Mike and Pete.
"I asked you if anyone knew you'd be here."
"Just Mercer and Laura."
"You see what I mean? Your pals, that's all. And by the way, did you get hit?"
"No. But the shooter didn't miss any of us by much."
"I got more enemies just on the force than you'll ever have to worry about. Yours are all nicely tucked away in the Cooper wing up at Attica," Mike said. "Most of mine are out and about, and they all have toasters."
That was the latest street name for handguns.
"Alex, we've got hundreds of cops coming here five days of the week-Sundays just for sport," Pete said, "and every one of them is armed. A service weapon, an off-duty gun or two. Thirty-seven thousand cops in the NYPD? C'mon, we've got some loose cannons. Here I am feeling guilty, thinking someone is taking a potshot at me, and you just happen to be along for the ride. What are you worried about?"
"Let's let these guys get back to work," Mike said, still scratching his neck.
I didn't move from my seat. I wanted to reargue my case to Pete.
Mike pointed to the door and I hesitated. He was the only one who caught it. "What is it with you? You need a bulletproof vest to get to the car?"
I wrote down my name and number on a slip of paper I ripped off the phone pad and gave it to Pete. "I'd like to talk to your CO later, too."
"Sure."
Mike went out of the gatehouse first. I looked around as I stood on the top step, sweeping the trees and bushes on the far side of the paved parking lot, but saw no movement. Then I walked beside him to his car.
We drove out the road that led back to the small traffic circle that would take us to I-95.
"Hard to believe this is the Bronx," I said.
Mike was driving slowly for a reason. Like me, he was scouring the trees for signs of intruders, although all of this forested land leading up to Rodman's Neck was public.
Within ten minutes, we were back on the highway, deep in weekend traffic headed to Manhattan and New Jersey. Housing projects and tenements stood cheek by jowl along the six-lane asphalt interstate.
"What will you do now?" I asked.
"After I drop you off, I'll go up to the office to make some calls. Check in with Dickie Draper. Pull up the old records on Amber Bristol's superintendent."
"Who? The guy who let us into the apartment the other night? The one who said she was always attracting trouble?" I thought of his smile as he talked to us earlier in the week, cracking his thick knuckles as he commented on Amber's lifestyle. "I knew you were going to run him, but you didn't tell me he had a sheet."
"Came up blank the next day. Vargas Candera. The lieutenant had the brains to run it in reverse. Candera Vargas. Bingo! Two collars for using his girlfriend like a punching bag. Bronx County. He deserves another knock on the door."
"Can't I-?"
"Peterson's on it. I'll let you know when you can be useful. I'll probably swing by the hospital and have a chat with Herb Ackerman."
"Don't you want me to be there?"
"You've earned a pass."
"Not with my shooting skills."
"Your agility under fire. I'd hate to think you might have gotten shot on my watch. I'd never get another cigar from Battaglia," Mike said. "Ride out your conviction from yesterday. Enjoy the weekend. Let's see how I do with Herb. Maybe I can fill in some of the blanks."
"Like what?"
"I think you were distracted when you spoke to him because you had to go to court." I had told Mike about the conversation. "You left out a few things, that's all I'm saying."
"You think he's going to open up to you?"
"It would help to know whether Amber Bristol was a free agent or worked for an escort service, wouldn't it?"