The day they went into the Carrington housing project to pick up Tyrone Walker for armed robbery, the weather was so humid they could practically drink the air. Hawk was sweating in suit pants, t-shirt, long-sleeved dress shirt and tie, but at least he wasn’t one of those poor bastards on patrol in full uniform.
“Jesus, it’s hot,” said Nick, as they drove slowly down Grand Avenue.
Hawk didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His partner knew exactly what he would have said, anyway: What are you gonna do? It was Hawk’s trademark, a verbal expression of his practical approach to those things in life that could not be changed and therefore had to be accepted; and then, of course, summarily ignored.
The detectives’ eyes moved constantly, each staring intently out his window, scanning the crowded, color-drenched street for that one particular face or a sudden movement among the throngs.
Hawk was remembering the last time he saw Tyrone. It was about a year ago, a real scorcher like this one, when the City was like Hell: sticky, sweaty, full of irritations that too quickly escalated into savage violence. It was never clear what started the altercation, and later, no one would say exactly who was involved, but Tyrone’s niece, a little girl of nine, was caught in the crossfire. She took a bullet in the back and died in the street.
“How can all these people be out here in this heat?” Nick complained, bringing his partner back to the present.
“Can’t stay inside. No one can afford air-conditioning anymore.”
“Tell me about it. I told my wife to go live with her mother till the Fall.”
“Where does that put you?”
“In the doghouse.”
Hawk laughed. Then, suddenly, he was opening his door and jumping out of the moving car. “That’s him,” he called behind him and was off running.
Nick hit the accelerator, making a screeching right turn onto Payton Lane, which led directly into the projects. He saw Hawk streak by, a white blur flying between buildings C-South and D-South. It looked like Tyrone was aiming for A-East, but Hawk was closing the distance fast. Tyrone zig-zagged a few times, trying to throw off the hunter that hounded him, but Hawk was no amateur and could not be tricked so easily. Tyrone would have to take this inside.
Nick saw him turn sharply left. Oh no. He was headed straight for E-North, the worst building in the Carrington housing project – maybe of all the projects in Brooklyn – sometimes referred to as Evil North, but most commonly known as The Jungle. Hawk was in for a very hard chase, and now, Nick thought, the outcome was no longer certain. Nick quashed his doubts immediately for fear of jinxing his partner. Cops were a superstitious lot. Besides, his worry was more habitual than realistic considering that Hawk rarely, if ever, lost his prey. He was the fastest runner Nick had ever seen.
Hawk had been athletic in his youth, though, surprisingly, he had never gone out for track and field. He played basketball, lacrosse and hockey throughout high school and college. Now, at thirty-seven, Hawk was in better shape than Nick had been since leaving the academy.
Not that Nick was soft or past his own prime. He was good-looking in a boyish way, with blue eyes and an abundance of light brown, wavy hair. When he smiled he had dimples. He was charming, playful, easy-going; women loved him and he knew it. The female ADAs nicknamed him Kenickie, from the movie “Grease”, and Nick was secretly pleased by it.
Hawk, on the other hand, with his narrow, chiseled face and serious expression, looked stern and forbidding unless he was smiling. His slate gray eyes were hooded and aloof; it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. At 6’4”, Hawk was half a foot taller than Nick, and though he looked slim in his clothes, he was 200 pounds of nails. Hawk was able – and often required – to take on much bigger, heavier opponents, laying them flat on the ground in seconds. He moved with the speed and precision of his namesake, and nowhere was this more evident than when he was chasing a perp who was trying to outrun him.
Nick could see why women were attracted to Hawk, even though they were more cautious around him. It took them a while to realize that the severity of his looks was not reflective of his personality, but the effect of his unselfconscious masculinity was immediate: women automatically acted more feminine around him. And, of course, when he chose to flash that rare smile of his, they seemed willing to do anything he asked. Yeah, Nick thought, he and Hawk made a very good team.
He watched as Hawk ran into The Jungle after Tyrone. He noticed two uniformed cops, out on foot patrol, standing nearby, doing nothing. They had seen Hawk chasing Tyrone at a dead run, but that had produced no reaction from them. Rookies, he thought angrily. He sped across the grass, driving right up to the iron gate at the entrance to the small courtyard in front of E-North. He tore out of the car, shouting back over his shoulder at the uniformed officers to get their asses over there. They roused themselves with a jerk, as if from a dream, and came running toward him as he entered the broken, dilapidated front lobby. It was airless, humid as a sauna, stinking of sweat and garbage. Who could possibly run in this?
Nick stopped at the back hallway leading to stairwell B and cocked his head to listen for sounds of the chase.
But by then, Hawk was halfway up stairwell C, still in hot pursuit. It was pitch black in the stairwell and the stench of urine and feces was overpowering. Trash clogged the stairs, everything from used needles and crack pipes to soaked, rancid blankets and empty White Castle wrappers, for this was where many of the addicts camped out each night. Stairwell C was the deepest, blackest part of The Jungle; Tyrone knew what he was doing, luring Hawk in there. Usually, the stairs, coated with layers of filth and slime accumulated over decades, were slippery, dangerous to navigate. Today, factoring in the overbearing heat and humidity, they were positively lethal.
An inexperienced cop would probably have gagged, given up the chase. Not Hawk. The adrenalin coursed through him as he concentrated on not slipping as he ran up, up, gripping the handrails, hauling himself up two stairs at a time. Now he was one flight away from Tyrone, who was crashing about, making a lot of noise as he, too, tried to avoid slipping on the stairs. Tyrone was kicking garbage down behind him in an attempt to impede Hawk’s progress. Each time something wet and reeking slapped against Hawk’s face or body, he accelerated. He was like a hard rain turned torrential downpour, fairly flying up the stairs. Tyrone was panting painfully, slowing down, his heart beating frantically in fear and exhaustion before the cop’s relentless advance.
Just before the fifth floor landing, eight stairs below where Tyrone had stopped and was gasping for air, Hawk felt his hands touch upon some slimy substance coating the rail. He lost his grip a second before his feet lost touch with the stairs; he was airborne. He felt himself falling backward as if in slow motion. His one clear thought was that this was going to hurt.
He heard the thud as his body hit the fourth floor landing. He lay there stunned, trying to discern the damage. He had struck several stairs on his way down and he could feel the sharp pain in his side where he knew at least one rib was broken. His right hand throbbed painfully, and he felt the skin tightening at his fingers as it swelled. It, too, was broken, but Hawk was relieved; it was not his shooting hand.
Before he could take full inventory of his injuries, Hawk heard Tyrone’s boots crushing glass and aluminum cans on the steps right above him. His heart lurched in his chest. Tyrone was coming down! Hawk’s left hand automatically grabbed for his gun, causing an excruciating stab of fire at his ribs. He forced back a groan. He struggled to roll onto his right side so he could try to sit up, but the agony was too great and he lay back gasping, gripping the gun, breathing slowly, deliberately through the pain, willing himself not to pass out. He did not allow his mind to wander back to the conversation he had had with Nick last week about why he never wore his vest. He knew there was only one reason Tyrone would come back. He told himself that if he died now, at least Nick would know who did it. Maybe Tyrone would even be stupid enough to shoot him with the same gun he used in that robbery last week.
It was darker than night, but Hawk thought he could see the dense black shape of Tyrone’s tall frame crouching near him, a few steps from his left elbow. He slowly eased the gun from its holster, purposely giving a hurt moan to drown out any sound of the gun brushing against the leather. In one split second, he would be pointing it in Tyrone’s face. He listened with every particle of his being for the click of Tyrone’s finger on the trigger of his own gun.
“Hawk? Man, you hurt?”
“Just lying here in this garbage ‘cause I got sleepy,” he panted.
He did not shout out as Tyrone’s hands reached beneath his armpits and pulled him up to a sitting position. Smoothly, surreptitiously, he holstered his gun and then grabbed Tyrone’s shoulder with his good hand, letting himself be dragged up till he was standing. He inhaled raggedly, still leaning on Tyrone’s shoulder, as he waited for his legs to stop trembling. He nearly vomited from the pain. When he could balance on his own , he reached behind him, though it was agony to do so, unhooked his handcuffs, and snapped them onto Tyrone’s loose wrists in one swift move. He was dizzy and his head was pounding.
“You arresting me? Man, I just helped you. I coulda left you lying here all damn day!”
“Thank you for helping me, Tyrone. Really. But look at it this way: none of this would have happened if you didn’t rob Pedro Ortiz’s bodega and shoot him in the chest in front of a store full of witnesses.” Hawk fought a shudder and hoped he wasn’t going to be sick. Throwing up would just be too painful to withstand.
“Man, that was not me. I don’t even go into Ortiz’s.”
“Did I mention a store full of witnesses?”
“He’s a thief hisself. You see what he charges for beer? You should arrest his ass, not mine.”
“You know, Tyrone, if you came back to help me you can’t be all bad. Why don’t you change your ways and stop robbing people for a living? You can live a decent life.”
“Yeah, what kinda life is that, Detective? Where I’m gonna live that life you describing? ‘Cause it shore ain’t here in these projects. Look around you. This is where I live. You got ideas how to make it decent?”
“Yeah, I do. Work for us. We pay up to a thousand dollars a gun.”
“You want me to be a snitch? You think that’s decent?”
“Saving lives is decent. Earning a living by giving us information that we’re just gonna get anyway is a whole lot better than shooting old men in bodegas for a lousy three-hundred bucks.”
“Four-fifty. And keep your voice down. You’re gonna get me killed in a minute.”
“Okay,” Hawk said, lowering his voice though they had been talking pretty quietly all along. “But think about it.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking. I’m thinking.” Hawk could tell he really was.
They emerged from Stairwell C just as Nick and the two uniforms burst into the lobby out of Stairwell B. Nick took one look at his partner and had to stop himself from punching Tyrone in the face. With a pointed look and a small shake of Hawk’s head, Nick whirled upon the two rookies and, in his most imperious, condescending tone, told them to put Tyrone in the car. As they led Tyrone away, Nick overheard one of the cops say, “That was him. The one that got the medal for taking down Carl Armstrong in that shootout couple years ago. They call him The Hawk, I think.”
Nick looked back at Hawk to see if he’d heard it, too. Hawk was grinning, albeit somewhat sickly. He’d heard.
“You smug bastard. Look at you, you look like you’ve been in The Jungle for a month. And you reek.”
Still trying to smile despite the pain that seared like fire throughout his entire body, Hawk said, “What are you gonna do?”
“Man, you’re gonna stink up that car. Glad it’s not mine.”
They made their way slowly toward the car, Nick muttering epithets relating to Hawk’s noxious presence, and Hawk hobbling along, trying not to jar the left side of his ribcage while cradling his right hand.
Nick glanced at him and then kept his eyes focused straight ahead. He knew his partner was hurting, but as long as he could walk out of The Jungle on his own two feet, he was going to be alright. “How many did you break this time?”
“Maybe just one. Two, at most.”
“Hospital or EMS at the squad?”
“The hand’s definitely broken. It’ll have to be the hospital. But take me to the squad first. I need a shower.”
“Uh huh, I know why you want to go to the House first. You want everyone to see how messed up you are. Maybe earn yourself another medal, huh?”
“Please,” Hawk winced, “don’t make me laugh.”
“Did I ever tell you the one about the cop, the priest and the lawyer?”