Blind Man's Alley by Justin Peacock Read Free Book Online Page B

going up and down twenty flights of stairs.”
    “So we going to do Tower Four?”
    “Half an hour,” Garrity said, after checking his watch and then pulling out his activity log, calculating how much time their phantom patrol of Tower Three was taking.
    Dooling scanned the empty surroundings. There’d been a couple of people on a bench twenty feet away when the two cops had crossed over from Tower Two, but they’d ghosted away as soon as the uniforms had planted their flag along the building’s back wall.
    “Standing out here isn’t much better than walking a vertical, you ask me,” Dooling said, mostly just to say something.
    “I didn’t,” Garrity said, lighting a fresh cigarette off the nub of the one he’d been smoking.
    “I’m sure usually when you smell like piss this time of night, at least it’s your own.”
    “Hey, I get that you feel right at home trolling the projects, but I had a father growing up, was raised in a house.”
    Dooling’s retort was lost to the snapping sound, three quick bursts, the noise echoing a little in the valley created by the high-rises. Garrity looked a question at Dooling, who replied with a curt nod, taking out his gun before launching into a sprint down the walkway between two buildings in the direction of the shots. Garrity dropped his cigarette before getting his own gun out, taking off behind his faster partner.
    Dooling rounded onto Tenth Street at a small traffic circle, eyes scrambling for danger, spotting a crumpled body across the street, a man in a uniform crouching nearby. Dooling skidded to a stop, looking for movement, anything wrong in the scene beside the guy on the ground. Although the streets would still be buzzing with people a few blocks over in the heart of the East Village, on the far side of Avenue D it was quiet, nobody else nearby. He heard Garrity catching up, Dooling on his walkie-talkie now, calling in shots fired, person hit, asking for backup and an ambulance.
    Garrity jogged past Dooling toward the fallen body. The crouched man put his hands up by his shoulders, fingers spread wide, showing them he wasn’t a threat. Dooling recognized the uniform: the private security company that was patrolling the construction under way throughout the northern part of Jacob Riis. Dooling had interacted with the private guards a little: there’d been at least some effort to coordinate with them; plus the security people, mostly ex-cops, had fed some low-level busts to the Housing Bureau rank and file. This had made them friends among the beat cops.
    “Chris Driscoll,” the security guy called to them as the cops approached. “I was on the job at the Three-two.”
    “He conscious?” Garrity asked.
    “I wasn’t catching a pulse,” Driscoll said, shaking his head, looking down but not quite at the fallen man, who was also dressed as a security guard. “I think it’s already too late.”
    “What happened?” Garrity said.
    “I was coming over to sub Sean out for his break, saw him arguing with someone. No sooner had I turned the corner on D than the shots went off, Sean going down. I got a decent look at the shooter: male Hispanic, young, close to six feet, thin.”
    “Where’d he go?”
    “He ran into the project, must’ve been running along the front side of that building right there while you two were coming along the back.”
    “He ran in there?” Dooling said, pointing to a walkway about half a block from the one he and his partner had just come down.
    Driscoll nodded. “By the time I got over here and checked on Sean, I figured there was no way I was catching him.”
    Dooling sprinted off in the direction Driscoll had pointed. Garrity asked Driscoll if he was okay staying with the victim till backups and the EMTs arrived, then went chasing after his partner.
    When he caught up, Dooling had buttonholed a couple of sullen young men from off a bench, Garrity pegging them as dealers, or at least lookouts, teenagers he recognized on sight