NYPD Red

Chapter 74



“WE CAN’T CLIMB up seven stories,” I said, “but we can climb down one. What’s on the eighth floor?”

As soon as I asked, I saw a spark in Kylie’s eyes. Hope.

“Dino. Dino Provenzano. He’s an artist. He works at home.” She turned to the door and yelled back at Spence. “I love you. We’re coming to get you.”

We took off for the stairwell. “Dino was the first to buy an apartment here,” she said, bounding up the steps. “He grabbed the top floor front, which has the best light: 8A.”

Within seconds, she was banging on the apartment door directly above hers. “Dino, it’s Kylie. Open up. Emergency.”

Nobody answered. Kylie kept banging and yelling. “Dino! Coralei! Anybody? NYPD. Emergency!”

Ten precious seconds later, Dino flung the door open, a paint-stained rag in his other hand.

“Dino, there’s a bomb in my apartment,” Kylie said, pushing her way in. “Get Coralei and get out.”

“She’s not here. She’s out walking the dog. What did you say was in your apartment?”

“A bomb.”

“Jesus,” he said.

“Ring all the bells,” Kylie said. “Warn the neighbors and empty the building. Then call 911 and tell them to clear the streets and evacuate the building next door. And tell them they only have fourteen minutes. You have a cell phone?”

Dino patted his pants pockets. “Yes,” he said, and started to go back inside. “Just let me get my laptop.”

“Get out. Now,” she said, shoving him into the hallway and slamming the door.

The living room was sparse. The furniture and the carpeting were all monochromatic shades of beige and earth tones. It was the walls that brought the space to life. Three of them were filled with color. At least twenty paintings. If they were Dino’s, he was damn good.

Kylie ran to the fourth wall. It was almost all glass. She pulled open a sliding door, stepped out onto a typically tiny New York City apartment terrace, and looked over the railing.

“It’s a fifteen-foot drop to our terrace,” she said. “I can do it. Oh shit—”

“What?”

“Rope. We need rope. Look around.”

There were no drapes—nothing at all in the living room that we could use to lower someone to the terrace below.

“Check the kitchen,” Kylie said. “I’ll try his studio.” We took off in opposite directions.

The kitchen was all stainless steel—neat, organized, orderly—not the kind of place where someone would store fifteen feet of rope. I was going through the motions of opening drawers and cabinet doors when Kylie called out.

“Zach, I’ve got it. In the bedroom. I need help.”

I headed toward the sound of her voice, figuring I’d find her ripping the sheets off the bed and tying them together. But I was wrong. She was kneeling on a dresser, her hands under a flat-screen TV that was mounted on the wall. It was a monster, at least five feet across.

“Help me get this down,” she said, grabbing one side. I jumped up on the dresser, grabbed the other side, and we lifted it up and off its mount.

It must have weighed sixty or seventy pounds. Kylie set her end down on the top of the dresser, and then, without warning, let go. I got caught off balance. I couldn’t hang on to it on my own, and the TV went crashing to the hardwood floor.

Kylie didn’t care. She grabbed onto the cable that was coming out of the back of the set.

“Co-ax cables,” she said. “Heavy-duty, all copper and plastic. It’s probably stronger than rope.”

“Probably stronger?”

“We’re about to find out,” she said. “The whole place is wired, but it’s all behind the wall. Help me rip it out.”

She yanked the cable hard enough that three feet of it tore right through the Sheetrock.

I grabbed on, and we pulled together, chewing up the wall from one end of the bedroom to the other, then up to the ceiling and into the next room.

“Get a knife!” she yelled.

I dug a small Swiss Army knife out of my pocket.

“Bigger,” she said, tearing at the thick cable.

I ran back to the kitchen, pulled a large Henckels knife from the wooden block on the counter. By the time I got back, Kylie had at least forty feet of co-ax exposed. I cut through it in one whack.

We ran back to the terrace and lashed it to the metal railing.

“You stay and secure this end,” Kylie said. “I’m going down.”

“No,” I said. “I’m going.”

“Zach, I weigh less, and it’s my husband.”

“Damn it, Kylie, you can’t control every goddamn thing!” I shouted. “When you get into that apartment, do you even have a clue about how to dismantle that booby trap?”

“I…no, but I figured I could…”

“Did you ever take a weeklong course in demolitions at Quantico?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then shut up and wrap this cable around me,” I said. “I’m going down.”