Rook’s driver also took the blind curve too fast and Nikki had to goose her bike to avoid getting hit. The other rider careened past her and struggled against a wipeout. Just as it looked like they were going over, he managed to correct and brought the bike to a stop without falling.
“Take care of this one,” said Nikki, “he’s hurt.” And then she drove her motorcycle across the grass after Soleil, who was pulling herself up and over the chain-link fence separating the path from the train tracks.
The West Side Line was historically the conduit for Manhattan freight service with its tracks emerging from a tunnel at 122nd Street and running along the bank of the Hudson River from New York to Albany. Nineteen years before, the line had been taken over by Amtrak for northbound passenger service out of Penn, and as Detective Heat dismounted her motorcycle, the low rumble of a locomotive signaled one of those long passenger trains was coming. Soleil jumped down from the fence and ran across the siding in an attempt to make it onto the other side of the rails before Nikki got there, buying herself getaway time as the Empire Service rolled past and blocked the cop. But the locomotive got there first, and now Soleil was walled in by the long, lumbering train as Nikki also began to climb the fence.
“It stops here, Soleil,” she called over the groan of metal and the screech of steel wheels passing behind her suspect. “Get away from the track. Lie down and put your hands behind your head.”
“Come closer, I’ll jump.”
Nikki leaped down from the top of the fence, landing on both feet, and Soleil made a move closer to the track and leaned, canting her body toward the train, making as if she was going to throw herself under its passing wheels. “I’ll do it.”
Heat stopped. She was thirty feet away. Even though it was a flat surface, the gravel made poor footing and the singer was quick. Nikki couldn’t hope to cover that distance and stop her from hurling herself under a wheel. “Soleil, come on, step away from there.”
“You’re right. It does stop here.” She turned to look down at the track, metal rusted and coated with dust and carbon on the sides but gleaming brightly, like a fresh sheet of aluminum foil, on top, where the wheels churned by and friction carried away all grime. When Soleil looked up, Nikki was a few yards closer, and Soleil shouted, “Nuh!” and so she stopped.
“Just be still, then, Soleil. Take a minute, I’ll wait.” Nikki saw all the signs she didn’t like on her. The woman’s posture was deflating. Her body was turning in on itself, making her seem small and alien to the show wardrobe she had on. Every bit of arrogance and hardness was gone from the singer’s face. Her mouth trembled and Nikki could see red blotches surfacing through her stage makeup. And she kept staring down at those wheels grinding by two feet away from her. “Are you hearing me?” Nikki called over the noise, knowing she was but just trying to pull focus.
Soleil said, in a barely audible voice, “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Then don’t.”
“I mean go on anymore.”
“You’ll work it through.” Both of them knew she had to arrest her, but the detective was trying to get her to look past the immediate. Move her out of The Now.
“What happened to that guy? You know, from yesterday morning?”
“He’s fine. Be out of the hospital tomorrow.” Heat was guessing but told herself this was the time for positive thoughts. She flashed back to Interrogation 1 the day before and the cut on Soleil’s knuckle, the one she kept nibbling at. At the time she assumed it came from rehearsal, having seen how physical the routines were. The god of hindsight visited her, and she now saw it as the mugger’s battle scar.
“I had to get it. He wouldn’t let go, so I had to . . .”
“He’s going to be OK. Come on, get away from there.”