Scanning the street for the nearest available weapon—there was always something—he snatched up a broom handle from one of the fruit stands as he walked past and began using it like a walking stick. He didn’t run, hardly even looked up. The old man at the table simply nodded as if he knew what Clark had planned, or didn’t care.
One way or another, this was going to be over soon.
“Now,” Clark said, reaching his own ten-count. “Let them see you. Grab them both if you can. If not . . .”
“She’s coming at you, John,” Midas said, clipped but in control.
Half a moment later, Ding came over the radio. “The male is on the ground. You were right. They split up.”
Clark continued to walk north, using his peripheral vision to watch Rene Peng as she got closer. She looked well past him, as if he wasn’t even there. He could see the knife in her hand, half drawn up in her sleeve. A half-grin perked the corners of her lips, as if she thought she’d won. Clark stopped as if to catch his breath as she got nearer, looking up at the spectacle of someone being chased—as anyone might do. He rested both hands on the stick, loosely, absent any apparent threat, careful not to catch her eye directly. One of the few benefits to being old in this line of work was becoming invisible.
She never saw the broomstick coming. Clark swung it hard, aiming through instead of at her knee. He used one hand, swordlike, but put his hips into it, pivoting as he turned. Rene Peng was not a tall woman, but she had an incredibly long stride. The heavy stick connected with an audible crack while her leg was flexed and in the air. Wood and bone shattered on impact. The force of her foot hitting the pavement exacerbated the damage, causing her to crumple in a screaming heap.
Sirens yelped on Canal, just a few hundred yards away.
Rene tried to push herself up, the blade still clutched in her fist. Clark let her have another well-aimed strike with what was left of the broomstick, aiming for the bleachers as he took out her right elbow.
The knife—still smeared in Nick Sutton’s blood—clattered to the pavement at the same time a white NYPD cruiser fishtailed onto Forsyth from Canal. Clark dropped the stick and stepped out of the street onto the sidewalk, not running, but moving with purpose. He faded into the gathering crowd, making it almost to the underpass by the time the cruiser reached the injured woman. Dom had described her and her husband as dangerous and possibly having weapons, so the responding officers were more interested in getting her handcuffed than they were in who might be running from the scene.
A second set of officers found Garret Peng, his jaw broken in two places, handcuffed to a standpipe next to the Greek Orthodox church.
“Everyone clear?” Clark said once he was sure responding officers had not only the woman but her bloody knife in custody.
Everyone was. Except Dom and Adara.
* * *
—
The ambulance disappeared down Doyers Street, sounding the air horn periodically to move traffic and mindless pedestrians aside as it jumped on Bowery toward NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The proximity to One Police Plaza and the New York Field Office of the FBI left the narrow street crawling with responding uniforms and Feds.
A ruddy blond agent named Bolton, hands encased in blue nitrile gloves, appeared to be the one in charge of the scene. He nodded to an Asian NYPD officer, who led Adara to the back of her patrol car under the auspices of getting her cleaned up.
Caruso shook his head in disbelief, biting his tongue so he didn’t say something he’d regret.
“What?” Bolton said, studying Caruso’s credentials. “Something on your mind?”
“Seriously,” Dom said. “You’re splitting up my girlfriend and me like we’re suspects?”
“Everybody’s a suspect,” Bolton said. “You know that.”
“We called you, remember?”
“Matter of fact, I do,” Bolton said. “So let’s go over that again, shall we? You, an FBI agent, just happened to stumble onto Sutton, also an FBI agent, who stumbled onto someone who then stabbed him?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Caruso said.
“How’d you know him?”
“Sutton was in the academy that overlapped mine. I thought I recognized him on the street and we came over to say hi. We found him here.”
“Seems awfully convenient,” Bolton said. “What office are you out of?”
“Director’s,” Caruso said.
Bolton looked at him through narrowed eyes as he handed back the credential case. “Be that as it may, I’ll need a written supplement from you.”
“Of course.” Caruso shrugged. “It’ll be about three lines long, but I get that you need it. Listen, Sutton said he left his wife and kid at Vincent’s, over on Mott. Somebody needs to go and let her know what happened. She should be with him at the hospital.”
“I’ll do that,” a familiar female voice called from around Bolton’s SUV. Caruso glanced up to find Special Agent Kelsey Callahan walking his way. Her auburn hair was shorter than it had been when he worked with her in Dallas. He was surprised to see her in New York. She’d been doing a hell of a job running the North Texas regional task force focused on human trafficking.
“I thought you were in Texas,” Caruso said, smiling despite the blood that painted the front of his shirt.
“I still am,” Callahan said. “The powers that be detailed me here for a couple of months to cross-pollinate the Interdiction for the Protection of Children techniques we’re using in Texas with task force here in NYFO. Human smuggling is human smuggling, you know. Turns out there’s a hell of a lot of it going on in New York City—much of it right smack in the middle of Chinatown, if you can believe such a thing. You got your sex workers, domestic servants locked in basements after their eighteen-hour days, your garment industry slaves—and, as it turns out, a hell of a lot of undeclared spies. Sometimes their duties overlap. Rene and Garret Peng were two that kept floating to the top like the turds they are. I perked up when their names came out over the radio a few minutes ago when you or somebody called nine-one-one. And you know everyone responds when we hear an agent down . . .” She stared at him hard, then glanced at Adara, giving her a once-over. “So this is the girlfriend?”
“She is indeed,” Caruso said. “Adara Sherman.”
“I heard she saved Sutton’s life.” Callahan looked up and down the street, even checking the roofline, as if she expected to find someone working overwatch. “So, your mature badass friend isn’t with you? John . . . what was his name again?”
Caruso gave her a Cheshire cat grin but kept a tight lip.