There was a brief lull, and Ochoa turned to Rook and said, “I wonder if I should—”
And then came the gunfire. First a heavy round, the AR-15, and then a volley of small arms. Rook moved to the observation port, and Ochoa pulled him back. “Stay down. You trying to get killed?” He shoved Rook down into the middle of the laundry sacks and then bailed out the back with his gun drawn, moving around the protected side of the truck.
There was another volley of fire, repeated rounds from the assault rifle, and Rook looked through the passenger-side window of the van in time to see Ochoa dive for cover in a discount smoke shop. More covering shots and next, the motorcycle fired up.
The biker revved and popped a wheelie off the curb and onto 19th. Heat and Hinesburg jammed it out of the store, bracing for shots, but were blocked by a passing taxi. The biker looked over his shoulder at them, and when he turned back, he was smirking. That was the expression Rook would always remember, right before he swung the laundry bag into the dude and knocked him clean off that hog and right onto the pavement.
A half hour later, the biker was in the jail ward of Bellevue Hospital, nursing a concussion. He was a true badass, not just the AR man but probably the leader, and wouldn’t break so easily. His two accomplices faced Nikki Heat in her Twentieth Precinct Interrogation Room. From the looks on them, she figured they were going to take some work. She sat across from both of them, taking her time looking over their arrest jackets. Both had done prison stretches for everything from petty theft to violent robberies and drug sales.
Detective Heat knew she would end up separating these two. But she’d first have to find a weakness in one of them; he’d be the one she cut from the herd. To do that, she had a strategy, and that required that they be together for now while she made her choice. She closed their rap sheets and began calmly. “OK, let’s have it. Who hired you for that gig yesterday?”
Both men stared with dead eyes that saw nothing and betrayed nothing. Prison eyes.
“Boyd, let’s start with you.” The big one, the one with the salt-and-pepper beard, let his eyes fall on her, but said nothing. He acted bored and looked away. She addressed the other one, a ginger redhead with a spiderweb tat on his neck. “Shawn, what about you?”
“You got nothing,” he said. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“Don’t insult me, OK?” she said. “Less than twenty-four hours ago you and your biker friend jacked a city vehicle, stole a corpse, brandished firearms at a police officer and a medical examiner, put a city driver in the hospital, and yet here you sit, busted and destined for long stretches in Ossining. Is that because I don’t know what I’m doing, or is it, maybe, because you don’t?”
Inside the Observation Room, Rook turned to Ochoa. “Harsh.”
“These guys need more than harsh, you ask me,” said the cop.
Nikki folded her hands on the table and leaned forward toward the two men. She had made her choice, decided which of the two was the bitch. You can always break the bitch. She half turned to the glass behind her chair and nodded. The door opened and Ochoa came into the room. She studied their faces as the detective stood behind her. Boyd, the iron beard, acted like he didn’t even see him, finding that no-place place to stare at again. Shawn flicked his eyes over and darted them away.
“You good, Detective?” she asked.
“Let me see the necks, left side of both.”
Heat asked the pair to turn their heads to the right, and Ochoa leaned across the table, looking at one then the other. “Yeah,” he said when he was done. “I’m good.” And then he left the room.
“What was that?” said Shawn, who had the spiderweb.