“Just keeping you on your toes, Harvey,” she said with a laugh and pulled away. One more Montrose attempt. Nikki tried his cell. It didn’t even ring, but went straight to voice mail. Heat left another brief message and tossed her phone on the passenger seat. She’d try again in five minutes, back at her desk.
She crossed Fifth Avenue for her cut across Central Park, taking the Transverse. As always, Nikki’s gaze drifted to the right for an appreciative glimpse of one of her favorite buildings in the city, the Metropolitan. On that raw winter’s day it looked to her like a brooding hulk, damp and icebound, hibernating among bare trees of a mean winter. The blare of car horns brought her to the rearview, where she saw a white step van, tagged with graffiti, lurch to a stop across the road behind her, blocking it. More horns. Then she could hear the double chirp of a siren and The Discourager’s command voice on his PA. “Move the vehicle . . . now.”
The 79th Street Transverse is a two-lane road cut like a narrow canyon ten feet below ground level across Central Park. An urban compromise, its submersion allows traffic to flow without spoiling the view. As the street lost elevation descending beneath the park’s East Drive, Heat entered the shelter of the underpass and the Crown Victoria’s wiper blades chattered across the dry windshield. As she emerged, a loud pop echoed in the tunnel and her steering wheel lurched in her hands. Not a flat tire, she thought. But instantly came another series of pops, and the rear of the car fishtailed in the slush. She took her foot off the gas and corrected as best she could on the icy road, but without air in any of her tires, it was more like skating than driving. Her car slid sideways until the front end smacked hard into the wall of rocks lining the road. At impact, Nikki lurched against her seat belt, and papers, pens, her cell phone—everything loose in the car—flew. Shook up but unhurt, Heat couldn’t figure how she got four flat tires. She craned to look behind her. Since her car was diagonally across the road, she had to look through the rear side passenger window. Just as she made out the traffic spike strip lying across the underpass, the back window exploded. A bullet struck the side of her headrest, ripping it off the seat and shattering the driver’s window beside her.
Nikki dove, flattening herself as far down as she could, clawing the two-way out of its bracket. “One-Lincoln-Forty, ten-thirteen, officer needs help, Seventy-ninth Transverse at East Drive, shots fired.” She unkeyed the mic and listened. Nothing. She tried again. “One-Lincoln-Forty, ten-thirteen, Seventy-ninth Transverse at East Drive, shots fired, do you copy?” Silence. She was groping on the floor trying to find her cell phone when another bullet tore through the seat back and into the dashboard just above her head. If the shooter was a professional, the next one would be lower. She had to get out of that car, fast.
The angle of the skid worked in her favor; the driver’s side door was away from the direction of the shots. She threw herself out onto the icy, wet pavement and rolled under the car door to shelter herself behind the front tire and the engine block. That’s when the third bullet fractured the steering wheel.