Cat & Mouse

Her skin was smooth and my fingers tingled at the tips. It was as if I had been without air for a long, long time and suddenly could breathe again. I could breathe. I felt alive.

Christine had shut her eyes, but now she opened them. Our eyes met, and held. “Just like I imagined it,” she whispered, “times about four hundred and fifty.”

Then the worst thing imaginable happened-my pager beeped.

Chapter 22

AT SIX o’clock in New York City, police cruisers and EMS van sirens were wailing everywhere in the always highly congested five-block radius around Pe

People stopped walking on the busy avenue to watch Goldman. Heads turned everywhere, trying to find out what was going on, and how this ru

Goldman had long, wavy caramel-and-gray hair and a gray goatee. A gold stud glinted from one earlobe. Goldman looked more like an aging rock or jazz musician than a homicide detective.

Goldman’s partner was a first-year detective named Carmine Groza. Groza had a strong build and wavy black hair, and reminded people of a young Sylvester Stallone, a comparison he hated. Goldman rarely talked to him. In his opinion, Groza had never uttered a single word worth listening to.

Groza nonetheless followed close behind his fifty-eight-year-old partner, who was currently the oldest Manhattan homicide detective working the streets, possibly the smartest, and definitely the meanest, grumpiest bastard Groza had ever met.

Goldman was known to be somewhere to the right of Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh when it came to politics but, like most rumors, or what he called “caricature assassinations,” this one was off the mark. On certain issues-the apprehension of criminals, the rights of criminals versus the rights of other citizens, and the death penalty, Goldman was definitely a radical conservative. He knew that anyone with half a brain who worked homicide for a couple of hours would come to exactly the same conclusions that he had. On the other hand, when it came to women’s right to choose, same-sex marriages, or even Howard Stern, Goldman was as liberal as his thirty-year-old son, who just happened to be a lawyer with the ACLU. Of course, Goldman kept that to himself. The last thing he wanted was to ruin his reputation as an insufferable bastard. If he did that, he might have to talk to up-and-coming young assholes like “Sly” Groza.

Goldman was still in good shape-better than Groza, with his steady diet of fast foods and high-octane colas and sugary teas. He ran against the tide of people streaming out of Pe

The killer had chosen the rush hour for a reason, Goldman was thinking as the train-station waiting area came into view. Either that, or the killer just happened to go wacko at a time when the station was jam-packed with victims-to-be.

So what brought the wacko to Pe

“Ma

Groza’s habit of calling people by their first name, as if they were all camp counselors together, really got under his skin.

Goldman ignored his partner. No, he didn’t believe the killer was still in Pe

Two pushcart vendors were artfully blocking the way to the crime scene. One cart was called Montego City Slickers Leather, the other From Russia With Love. He wished they would go back to Jamaica and Russia, respectively.

“NYPD. Make way. Move these ashcarts!” Goldman yelled at the vendors.

He pushed his way through the crowd of onlookers, other cops, and train-station perso

As he got up close, he saw that the victim was probably in his late twenties. There was an unusual amount of blood. Too much. The body was surrounded by a bright red pool.

Goldman walked up to a man in a dark blue suit with a blue-and-red Amtrak pin prominent on his lapel.

“Homicide Detective Goldman,” he said, flashing his shield. “Tracks ten and eleven.” Goldman pointed at one of the overhead signs. “What train would have come in on those tracks-just before the knifings?”

The Amtrak manager consulted a thick booklet he kept in his breast pocket.

“The last train on ten…that would have been the Metroliner from Philly, Wilmington, Baltimore, originating in Washington.”

Goldman nodded. It was exactly what he’d been afraid of when he’d heard that a spree killer had struck at the train station, and that he was able to get away. That fact meant he was clearheaded. The killer had a plan in mind.

Goldman suspected that the Union Station and Pe

“You got any idea yet, Ma

Goldman finally spoke to his partner without looking at him. “Yeah, I was just thinking that they’ve got earplugs, bunghole plugs, so why not mouth plugs.”

Then Ma

Anything was a possibility these days.

Chapter 23

I ANSWERED my pager and it was disturbing news from the NYPD. There had been another attack at a crowded train station. It kept me at work until well past midnight.

Gary Soneji was probably in New York City. Unless he had already moved on to another city he’d targeted for murder. Boston? Chicago? Philadelphia?

When I got home, the lights were off. I found lemon meringue pie in the refrigerator and finished it off. Nana had a story about Oseola McCarty attached to the fridge door. Oseola had washed clothes for more than fifty years in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She had saved $150,000 and donated it to the University of Southern Mississippi. President Clinton had invited her to Washington and given her the Presidential Citizens Medal.

The pie was excellent, but I needed something else, another kind of nourishment. I went to see my shaman.

“You awake, old woman?” I whispered at Nana’s bedroom door. She always keeps it ajar in case the kids need to talk or cuddle with her during the night. Open twenty-four hours, just like 7-Eleven, she always says. It was like that when I was growing up, too.

“That depends on your intentions,” I heard her say in the dark. “Oh, is that you, Alex?” she cackled and had a little coughing spell.

“Who else would it be? You tell me that? In the middle of the night at your bedroom door?”

“It could be anyone. Hugger-mugger. Housebreaker in this dangerous neighborhood of ours. Or one of my gentlemen admirers.”

It goes like that between us. Always has, always will.

“You have any particular boyfriends you want to tell me about?”

Nana cackled again. “No, but I suspect you have a girlfriend you want to talk to me about. Let me get decent. Put on some water for my tea. There’s lemon meringue pie in the fridge, at least there was pie. You do know that I have gentlemen admirers, Alex?”