She cuffed him to a brass handrail just as the first squad car came to a screeching stop on West End Avenue.
“Officers,” Kylie yelled, “make sure the lady in 7G gets immediate medical attention, then arrest this piece of shit for obstruction of justice. Take him down to Central Booking and make sure his paperwork gets the full bureaucratic monty. With any luck, he’ll get lost in the Tombs for a week.”
It was a bogus charge. But by the time Eddy got untangled from the city’s clogged justice system, he’d never mouth off to another cop again. Hell hath no fury. We raced to the car and headed south.
“Call Natty,” Kylie said, her spleen vented, her full attention on tracking down the fugitive psychiatrist.
Natalie Brown is a sultry-voiced singer with a progressive rock band. She has luxurious ringlets of red hair down to her shoulders and a kick-ass body down to her toes. But sexy and talented doesn’t always pay the rent, so by day she works for the Taxi and Limousine Commission.
If a detective wants to know where a certain cabbie was at a certain time, the TLC can track down that information. But not right away. That’s because they’re also busy tracking down lost briefcases, cell phones, and umbrellas for the six hundred thousand passengers who hail cabs every day. Natty Brown is our go-to person when Kylie and I need answers in a New York minute.
“Hey, Red,” I said as soon as she picked up. “Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald. This is a screaming emergency.”
“It always is,” she said. “Hit me.”
“A yellow cab, probably a Nissan, picked up a single white male on West End Avenue near the corner of Eighty-Fourth Street about five minutes ago. Passenger is a murder suspect on the run.”
“Gimme a minute,” she said, and I could hear the clacking of her nails on a keyboard. “Guys, I’ve got great news.”
“What is it?” I said, raising the volume on the speaker.
“The band is going to be on the cover of Prog magazine in October.”
“My cab, Natty! My cab!”
“Relax, Zach. I was just making small talk while I was waiting for the board to light up. Here we go. I’ve got two possibles. No, wait, this one is a Prius. I got your Nissan. License number is 8Y47. The driver’s name is—”
“I don’t care what his name is. Just tell me where he is.”
“Central Park West. He just turned onto the Seventy-Ninth Street transverse.”
“Seal off the other end,” Kylie said, making a hard left onto 82nd Street.
I grabbed the radio and barked orders at the dispatcher. “I need all available units to block off the transverse at Seventy-Ninth and Fifth. Officers in pursuit of a murder suspect riding in the back of an eastbound yellow cab, license 8Y47. Suspect is white, male, midforties, and may be armed.”
“Zach! Zach!” It was Natalie.
“We can take it from here, Natty,” I said. “Thanks for your—”
“Don’t hang up,” she said. “This guy has a gun, and you’re sending in the cavalry? You’re putting my driver right in the middle of a shoot-out.”
“Natalie, these cops are trained. They’re not going to start shooting with innocent bystanders in the line of fire.”
“And how about the murderer in the back of 8Y47? Is he also trained not to shoot bystanders? Sorry, Zach, but I’m calling the driver and warning him.”
“Wait: you can call him?”
“Of course I can. I started to give you his name and cell number, but you weren’t interested.”
“Change of plans,” I said. “I’m very interested. But if a cop calls him, he’s either going to freak out or he won’t believe me. Does this guy know you?”
“I’m the hot redhead singer at the TLC. All the drivers know me, honey.”
“Then tell him to stop his cab where he is, take the keys out of the ignition, and run as far from his passenger as he can. Tell him his life depends on it.”
“His life and my job,” she said. “Hold on.”
Kylie ran a red on Central Park West and turned into the transverse. The entire stretch of road through the park is a little over half a mile. About a quarter of a mile into it, the traffic started to back up. And then it came to a dead stop. The roadblock was in place. No cars were getting in or out.
“Zach, the driver is out of his cab and running in your direction,” Natalie said. “He’s bought all of our albums, so don’t shoot him.”
Kylie and I jumped out of our car and started running down the roadway, badges on chains around our necks, guns drawn, yelling, “Police! Stay in your vehicles. Get down and stay down,” as we ran. I could see the roof of the boxy yellow cab jutting up about a foot and a half above the passenger cars behind it.
A man ran toward us. It was the cabdriver. “He have gahn,” the man said in a thick Russian accent.
“Gone where?” I said.
“No, no, not gone. He have gahn.” He pointed a finger at me. “Bang. You dead.”
“He has a gun?”
“Yes. Small vun. Pistol.”
“Are you sure?” Kylie asked.
“Am I sure? The man point gahn at me. He says tell cops I have gahn.” The cabbie threw his hands up in the air. “You don’t believe me? Go see for yourself.”
CHAPTER 65
“A beloved therapist with not one but two gahns?” Kylie said as we ran toward the cab. “Clearly there’s more to Dr. Langford than his bio on Wikipedia would lead you to believe.”
We closed in fast. A hundred yards, fifty, twenty, and then…
“Don’t come any closer, Detectives.” It was Langford. He was still in the back of the cab, crouched low on the floor. I could see the top of his ginger hair through the window.
“You’re out of options, Doctor,” Kylie said. “There’s no place you can go.”
“There are always options, Detective. Sometimes it just boils down to the lesser of two evils.”
“Your best choice right now is to get out of the cab with your hands held high,” she said.
“I don’t think so. Not at my age, and certainly not in the state of New York.”
“I’m not following.”
“Don’t play me, Detective. You know what I’m talking about. I’m forty-seven, I’m healthy, and there’s no death penalty in New York. Dying is easy. It’s on everyone’s bucket list. But wasting away in a government-sanctioned dungeon until I’m seventy, or eighty, or ninety? Not an option.”
“Shit,” Kylie whispered to me. “He’d rather die than go to jail. You know what that means?”
I knew. Suicide by cop. It’s a time-tested way to avoid a long-term prison sentence. Just come out shooting so the cops are forced to shoot back and kill you.
“Keep him talking,” she said. Then, using the line of backed-up cars for cover, she made her way east toward the roadblock.
“Dr. Langford,” I called out, trying to keep my tone as friendly as possible. “Aubrey was blackmailing you. It doesn’t get you off the hook for killing her, but it means you were also a victim. A good lawyer could use that to negotiate a lighter sentence with the DA.”
“News flash, Jordan,” Langford yelled. “Aubrey wasn’t blackmailing me. A few weeks ago I spent the night in her apartment, and she made the mistake of leaving her computer on with no password protection. I found the videos. Her introduction spelled it out. You saw it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir. She had a backup of everything.”
“Then you know she wasn’t blackmailing anyone. She was making a documentary that would destroy as many men as she could, and I would be hurt the most.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “Having sex with a patient wouldn’t have hurt your career.”
“Maybe not if Aubrey were the only patient. But there are others. Dozens. They’ve been silent till now, but going public with that film would have opened the floodgates. I had to kill her. It was a smart plan. I told her to meet me for dinner at a restaurant that just happened to be near Janek Hoffmann’s apartment. Then I picked her up, told her I changed my mind, and we drove out to Roosevelt Island together. You should have seen the look on her face when she realized I wasn’t going to release the choke hold.”
My cell rang. It was Kylie. I picked up. “I don’t think I can keep him talking much longer,” I said.