NYPD Red 6 - James Patterson Page 0,79

I’d see if a friend of mine was working the game today. But I guess he’s not.”

“What’s his name?” Hunter said.

“Banta. Gary Banta.”

“Gary’s around.”

“I can’t stay long. My partner’s all antsy about getting back, but I’d love to catch him for a few minutes. I haven’t seen him in a while. I used to run into him all the time when I was at the Five Two.”

“Well, then, you know he never drinks coffee,” Hunter said. “He took a run over to the juice bar to pick up a spinach smoothie or some healthy crap like that.”

“That’s Gary,” I said. “He’s going to outlive us all.”

“What’s your name? I can raise him up on the radio for you.”

“I’m Zach. But do me a favor, don’t radio him. Do you know which juice bar? I want to see the look on his face when I surprise him.”

“It’s the one over on Gerard Ave. next to the Foodtown. There’ll be a big red and white bus in front of it with FDNY plastered across the side. You think you can find it, Detective?”

The other three laughed again. “You guys are bigger ballbusters than Gary,” I said, laughing with them.

I thanked the EMTs, walked back to the car, and got in. “Gary’s at a juice bar,” I said, pulling up Google Maps. “Go straight and make a left on Gerard. At least we get to arrest him without the four of them giving us a hard time.”

Thirty seconds later Kylie made the turn onto Gerard, and I could see the Foodtown. What I didn’t see was a juice bar. Or an FDNY ambulance.

“Shit,” I said. “I’ve been suckered.”

I was about to call Joe Donahue at DOI, but my cell rang. He’d beat me to it.

“Zach,” he said, “did you make it to the Bronx yet?”

“Yeah, but Banta’s crew sent me on a wild-goose chase. By now, I’m sure they radioed him and told him we’re coming.”

“That would explain why he left the stadium and is headed north on the Deegan doing eighty miles an hour.”

CHAPTER 70

THEY SAY THAT police work, like war, is hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. The monotony of filling out DD-5s and sifting through surveillance videos was suddenly behind us, and while the prospect of a high-speed chase produced more adrenaline than terror for me, knowing that Kylie was behind the wheel was not without its sense of dread.

“Buckle up,” she said, firing up the light bar and hopping onto the sidewalk to make a U-turn. She gave the siren a couple of whoop-whoops, yelled, “Out of my way, people,” to pedestrians and drivers who needed no verbal warning, and barreled the wrong way down a crowded one-way street.

By the time I grabbed the radio and turned it to a citywide channel, we were tearing across Jerome Avenue toward the service road to the Deegan.

I keyed the mic. “Central, this is Red One. Be advised we are in pursuit of a homicide suspect driving an FDNY ambulance. He’s headed north on the Deegan from Yankee Stadium.”

Some calls bear repeating. Central didn’t disappoint.

“Unit,” she said, “you are advising me that you are chasing an FDNY ambulance, and that it is being driven by a homicide suspect.”

“Affirmative. Notify aviation. The bus number is three-one-four.”

I still had Joe Donahue at DOI on my cell. “Joe, I need an update.”

“He just passed Van Cortlandt. He’s heading into Westchester.”

There’s a confounding rule about pursuing a vehicle outside of our jurisdiction. Technically we couldn’t chase him unless we had him in sight. We weren’t close enough to see him, but I wasn’t exactly about to broadcast that.

“Central, notify state, county, and local that we are crossing into Westchester.”

“Ten-four, Red One. Will notify them immediately.”

Immediately in dispatcher-speak doesn’t mean “instantaneously.” It takes a while for one dispatcher to contact the other, and then it takes another while for the second dispatcher to get the word out to her troops.

While that was going on, Kylie was eating up the distance between us and Banta. He had a head start, but city ambulances aren’t as fast as people might think. They get where they’re going in a hurry because they can break traffic laws and clear a path for themselves. But on a drag strip, a cop car would leave Banta’s bus in the dust.

A new voice came over the radio. Male, deep, with a Jamaican lilt. “Bronx Auto Crime, Central. Get me a current location on Red One.”

Kylie’s eyes were glued to the road,