Hell of a Town

Saturday Early Morning, 9 December 1978

ASTORIA. QUEENS

Will Kane was running past Hell Gate when he spotted the mutilated corpse in the water. With regrets to his memory, Kane had seen numerous dead people over the years so he knew the half-submerged body, caught up on a rock ten feet from shore, was beyond help. Kane stopped, breathing slowly and deeply. He hardly felt the winter wind bite through his damp sweatshirt. He swiftly left the path and ducked behind a leafless tree. He checked the park, then the Hell Gate railroad bridge which was ahead and above, then in the other direction, at the Triborough Bridge. Finally, over his shoulder into the darkness of Astoria Park, waiting for any movement.

A long minute passed and Kane looked back to the water. It was a man, longish wet black hair swirled over the face, naked from the waist up, and he'd been terribly battered. A jump from one of the bridges and striking rocks? Hard to tell in the pre-dawn dimness. The dark water churned and frothed in the lights reflected from the part of the Triboroughugh Bridge complex connecting Randall's Island to Queens. The December water was cold and uninviting. Opposing tides and currents from Long Island Sound and New York Harbor via the East River collided in the narrow channel, located on the northwest edge of Long Island. The narrow Bronx Kill coming from the Harlem River made scant contribution immediately to the north of Randall's Island, which said a lot about the Bronx, Kane's birth borough.

Instinctively, Kane edged to the left, putting most of the tree between him and the Hell Gate Bridge. The steel arch bridge stretched from Queens to Randall's Island and was for rail traffic only, allowing trains coming to and from New England to loop onto Long Island and then via a tunnel to Penn Station in Manhattan. Two stone towers anchored each side of the eleven-hundred-foot span. But Kane wasn't appreciating the architecture. He remained perfectly still and scanned the bridge focusing on the off-center part of the retina, where the night vision is better. It was a learned technique and one that had served him well in multiple combat tours and in violent encounters since. Those experiences had also honed his instincts and right now they were tingling. Most people would attribute that to seeing the body, but Will Kane wasn't most people and he'd seen plenty of bodies.

The bridge was dark, except for aircraft warning lights at the apex of the arch. The two towers, lower than that, had a single blinking red light. The span which held three train tracks was dark. He didn't see any movement on the bridge, then he fixed his attention on the near side tower. It looked like part of a castle, with openings at the top.

Kane waited but picked up nothing.

He stepped from behind the tree, literally shaking off the feeling and also acknowledging how cold it was now that he was no longer running. The last pay phone he'd run gone past, at the southwest entrance to Astoria Park, had been missing its handset, the steel cable dangling uselessly, which was pretty much the standard for pay phones in the city. The few lights were either broken or the power off because of budget cuts.

A pair of headlights carved through the darkness and Kane slipped behind the tree, but then he saw it was a green and white patrol car, rolling slowly down the road.

Kane stepped out, holding both hands up and flagged it down. It rolled to stop. As he got within ten feet the driver's window rolled down and the muzzle of a revolver poked out.

"Hold it right there, buddy."

Kane kept his hands well away from his sides. "I need to report an incident."

"What da' fuck?" the driver. "A what?"

Kane jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "There's a body in the river."

"How do you know it's a body?" the driver asked.

"Quiet," the passenger cop said to his partner. "Drowned?"