While the City Burns (Flynn & Levy Book 2) Read online

  WHILE THE

  CITY BURNS

  A Flynn & Levy Novel

  DAVID DELEE

  COPYRIGHT

  WHILE THE CITY BURNS

  Published by Dark Road Publishing

  www.darkroadpub.com

  While the City Burns, Copyright © 2018 by David DeLee

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Sibiria | Dreamstime.com

  Book and cover design copyright © 2018 by Dark Road Publishing

  While the City Burns is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarities or resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is wholly coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner or form whatsoever without written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  For information, contact us at www.darkroadpub.com.

  All Rights Reserved

  An ACTION-PACKED pOLICE PROCEDURAL FEATURING

  FRANK FLYNN & CHRISTINE LEVY

  BY THE AUTHOR OF MORAL MISCONDUCT

  WHILE THE CITY BURNS

  A storm-drenched night in the lower East Side of Manhattan. Amid pouring rain, breaking glass and barking dogs, a harrowing chase through a densely populated housing project leaves a young, unarmed black kid dead at the hands of the police.

  Tasked with leading the Force Investigation Team, NYPD detective Frank Flynn must once again team up with IA investigator Christine Levy to look into the deadly shooting.

  But before the investigation can get off the ground, community unrest boils over, sparked to violence by a flamboyant civil rights leader determined to get justice for the young man, regardless of the collateral damage. The investigation spirals out of control as cops are targeted, an overzealous prosecutor forces an indictment, and Flynn and Levy tug at the threads of a conspiracy that reaches the pinnacle of the city’s political leadership, threatens very powerful people, and leaves them scrambling to put all the moving pieces together while the city burns.

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  Vladeck Housing Project

  Corner of Water & Gouverneur Streets

  Lower East Side, Manhattan

  Monday, November 27th 3:37 a.m.

  POLICE OFFICER BEN STOKES leaned forward and looked up. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  He squinted but that did little to help him see through the windshield of his patrol car. The NYPD patrol car was a battered old Ford Interceptor two years past its expiration date. Rain sluiced down the smooth, foggy glass in a steady stream. The deluge of water came down so heavy it was impossible to see anything but the diffused, blurred starbursts of the white city streetlights.

  The curtain of rain came from what was left of a late season Category Four hurricane that had barreled up the East Coast over the weekend and brought with it extensive damage and power outages to homes and businesses from the Outer Banks of North Carolina all the way up to New Jersey, hitting the lower half of Virginia the worst before hooking a hard left and heading out over the Atlantic Ocean.

  If this is what the tail end is like, Stokes thought, I’m glad that sumbitch decided to track out to sea. Which raised the real question in his mind: Who the fuck was out in this weather, doing who the fuck knew what, to cause a fucking noise complaint on a fucking night like this?

  Stokes grabbed his plastic-covered uniform hat and reluctantly kicked open the driver’s side door. A gust of wind blasted sheets of driving rain into the car. He held his hat to his head and forced his way out into the lashing rain, pushing against the wind and water. His reflective rain slicker flapped around, snapping at his legs. He slammed the car door shut. This is why I can’t wait to be a goddamned detective!

  After the cloying odor trapped inside the blue and white—the prior shift must’ve been smokers—the air around the low-income, brick housing complex smelled fresh. For a change. As if washed clean by the unrelenting, driving rain.

  He put a hand up to the brim of his hat and panned his heavy flashlight, a powerful three-cell metal Maglite, around to survey the surroundings. Patches of worn grass lay behind two-foot-high wrought-iron posts linked by black chains which lined the cracked sidewalks. Pathways that wound through the dark cluster of buildings set on thirteen city acres and consisting of fifteen hundred apartments, home to over twenty-eight hundred people.

  Stokes didn’t need to be a detective to discover the source of the noise complaint. Dogs.

  A pack of them from the howling that was going on.

  He stepped out around the front grill of his vehicle. The flashlight held high and to his left, but the white halogen bulb did little to pierce the veil of rain coming down from the heavens in sheets. Rain pelted his slicker and dripped off the brim of his hat. More rain lashed at his face. The wind barreled into him from the west.

  Visibility was for shit, but he could follow the low, growling sounds. As he moved though the winding maze of sidewalks and deeper into the shifting shadows cast by the tightly packed looming buildings, he put his hand on the butt of his holstered service weapon, a Glock 19.

  A pack of wild dogs; wasn’t something to mess around with.

  Around the back of the first building were two green Dumpsters rolled up onto a concrete pad against the brick wall. From behind it he heard relentless scratching of nails on the pad—scritch, scritch, scratch—and dogs; sniffing, clawing, and growling.

  A jagged bolt of lightning flashed in the sky, illuminating everything with a silvery white burst, followed by a boom of thunder that shook the ground.

  Stokes jumped. “Jesus Christ.”

  With his heart racing, he shined the flashlight at the space between the Dumpsters and the brick wall. The silvery beam landed on four or five medium-sized dogs. He couldn’t determine breeds, but they were all wet, mangy, scrawny things. They crouched and froze in the light. Each stared up at Stokes and growled in his direction. After a time, they blinked their wet, glowing eyes and returned to pawing at the split open, dark plastic bags of wet cartons and foodstuff that had spilled from the overfilled garbage container.

  Fucking dogs.

  Stokes shivered as rainwater leaked past his collar and wormed its way down his back. Wet and miserable, he turned away from the starving dogs. He had no intention of getting between them and their scrounging. Let animal control deal with ’em. Besides, the rancid smells coming from the Dumpsters turned his stomach. He headed back toward his cruiser with the back of his hand pressed under his nose. He frowned, sure he’d never be able to eat Kung Pao again.

  Then the sound of shattering glass stopped him in his tracks.

  Shit! Now what?

  He swung his flashlight around—

  The beam landed on a kid backing out of a broken ground floor window of a nearby building. Shards of glass littered the wet ground around him like shimmering diamond chips. A black male, young, wearing a dark hoodie—of course—red sneakers, and a black and midnight blue backpack slung over one shoulder. Stokes yelled, “Police! Freeze!”

  The kid froze, for like a second.

  He stared at Stokes with a fearful expression on his face, like a deer caught in oncoming headlights. A split-second later, he bolted.

  His sneakers splashed through puddles and sla
pped the wet path that would take him to Jackson Street. Stokes took off after him. With his gun holstered, his hand gripping the butt of it tightly, he keyed his shoulder mic as he ran. “This is Officer Stokes! In pursuit of a ten-thirty-one suspect! A male black, approximately eighteen to twenty-two years old! He’s on foot. Going north on Jackson!”

  Don’t gotta catch ’im…just gotta keep him in sight...keep ’im in sight…until backup gets here.

  Stokes came out onto Jackson Street in time to see the perp a half block up the street. The kid cut right and leaped over the front bumper of a car parked too close to an SUV at the curb. Like a damned gazelle.

  A swollen river of water sluiced along the curb, carrying leaves and bits of litter and a Big Gulp soda cup to a swirling cesspool around the choked storm drain at the corner. Stokes darted between two parked cars as well. A car sped by. It blasted its horn and splashed Stokes with a wave of icy cold water. Son of a bitch.

  In its headlights, Stokes saw his perp running balls to the walls toward Cherry Street.

  He shouted his position into his mic and darted across the road. Back in its ring and hanging off his gun belt, his Maglite banged annoyingly against his thigh.

  Detectives…don’t get into fucking foot chases…carrying all this…fucking equipment.

  Stokes rounded the corner. Cherry Street was lined with more project buildings. On the opposite side were Corlears Hook Park and the East River. The Williamsburg Bridge was lit up bright in the distance. Streetlamps glowed white along the park’s perimeter. Parked cars lined both sides of the street.

  The kid ran past the first two buildings—somewhere along the way he’d ditched the backpack, Stokes realized—and vaulted over a chain link fence with the practiced elegance of a gymnast. Stokes’ leap was anything but.

  The metal rattled as he climbed and then pulled himself over the fence. He cut his hands on the twisted wire tips. With a wince and a curse, he dropped to the ground on the other side with all the grace of a drunken sumo wrestler.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Still, he kept the little bastard in sight.

  Security lamps attached to the housing project’s facade provided irregularly spaced pools of piss-yellow light. The rain caught in the radiance sparkled like sickly colored Christmas icicles. Somewhere a dog barked. A car whooshed along Cherry Street behind him.

  Stokes kept running, panting. His shoes pounded the pavement. He splashed through puddles of standing water. His pant legs were soaked through. Cold and wet. By now his heart hammered inside his chest. Adrenaline pumped a euphoric high through him. He was jacked, and pissed.

  About halfway down the length of the building, the suspect—quick—cut left. Stokes almost missed it. The kid disappeared into the overcast shadow of the building behind a small copse of trees and a graffiti-tagged bench. Trees planted by the city in a half-assed attempt to beautify the low-income housing. Too bad they didn’t come back and paint over the graffiti-tagged walls or pick up the empty beer cans, whiskey bottles, and used condoms littering the green space.

  Stokes had lost sight of his perp. He slowed to a walking pace and squinted into the darkness.

  The building was constructed in a giant H pattern. The kid had vanished into the void between the legs of the H, trapping himself. Stokes stepped deeper into the gloomy shadows. He shivered, but this time he couldn’t blame that on the water that trickled down his back. His guy had to be in there, hiding. The building loomed large, creating an almost impenetrable blackness. At that hour of the morning, light appeared in only a few apartment windows. But none of them helped to pierce the impenetrable darkness.

  Stokes tried to quiet his breathing, listening for a sound, for anything that would give away his quarry’s position. He slipped his Maglite from its ring and pulled his service weapon from his holster. Hearing the Glock clear leather calmed Stokes’ nerves. He was in control. He was a cop. He crossed his arms at the wrist, gun hand on top, flashlight hand supporting. He snapped on the Maglite.

  A soft click, barely audible.

  The cone of light flared brightly in the darkness. Like a spotlight, shattering Stokes’ night vision. Rain continued to fall in sheets. He blinked water and light bursts from his eyes as he panned the beam along the base of the building’s back wall, slowly traversing from right to left. His wrists locked, the forward sight of the Glock tracking the cone of light.

  The little shit has to be in there somewhere.

  “There’s nowhere for you to go,” Stokes called out. “You’re trapped.”

  In the distance, sirens. Backup was on its way.

  As the flashlight beam hit the left corner, the kid leaped out. He waved his arms wildly overhead and screamed. An exuberance of chaotic movement and sound.

  Stokes gasped and took a step back. “Stop!”

  But the kid kept coming.

  Stokes watched as the kid’s arms came down. In his right hand he held a black object. Shiny wet in the rain, the flashlight beam reflected off it. Stokes’ heart hammered in his chest. His first thought, his only thought was gun.

  “Drop it! Drop it now!”

  The kid ran at him. The object still in his hand. He pointed it at Stokes.

  “DROP IT!” Stokes shouted.

  He didn’t.

  Stokes squeezed the trigger of his gun—once, twice.

  The gunshots were an explosion of sound and muzzle flash. Like the thunder and lightning that followed. Stokes blinked.

  The kid stumbled back, a stunned expression on his face. Under his dark hoodie he wore a white T-shirt. Where the hoodie was only halfway zipped up, the white shirt was visible underneath. In the center of his chest, two red spots bloomed. They spread, soaking into the white cotton, forming one irregular, large splotch of red. Blood bubbled from the two black holes in his chest.

  The kid fell back and hit the sodden wet grass with a wet slapping sound. He lay with his arms spread out. Rain splashed his dark face. His eyes stared up into the sky. They were open but they saw nothing.

  Near his right hand the shiny, black object lay. It had bounced from his grip when he’d hit the ground. In the beam of the flashlight, Stokes could see clearly now what it was.

  A cell phone.

  It was a fucking cell phone.

  Homicide Division – Interview Room Three

  7th Precinct – NYPD

  Lower East Side, Manhattan

  Monday, November 27th 7:15 a.m.

  NEARLY FOUR HOURS LATER, Stokes sat at a metal table in the police interrogation room. To be politically correct, they’re called interview rooms now. Fuck that. It was an interrogation room and that was what he was about to be—interrogated. He was alone. He wrapped his hands around a hot, blue and white paper coffee cup. A ribbon of steam rose from the black liquid. The warmth felt good.

  In red letters, the cup read; WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU.

  He’d been stripped of his wet, blood-stained uniform—they’d been bagged in separate brown paper evidence bags—and he’d been given a pair of blue sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt with the NYPD emblem in blue over the left side of his chest. His hair was matted and had settled into swirling dark, still-damp curls around his head.

  Stifling, dry heat pumped into the room more resembling a prison cell than anything else. The cinderblock walls were painted midnight blue to a height of four feet and slate gray above that. A welded iron grill covered the single opaque window which was made of thick, frosted glass. Since he’d been sitting there the window had gone from black to gray. He’d long since lost track of time, but clearly dawn had arrived.

  Stokes sipped his coffee. Bitter, it turned his stomach. But it was hot. That helped.

  He stared at the one-way mirror. His reflection scared him. He looked haggard and drawn. Dark circles had formed under his eyes. The past few hours had aged him. Twenty-seven years old, he looked more like two-hundred-and-seven. He knew it was his imagination, but he felt that old, too.

  Over and ov
er, he ran the events of the night through his head. Each time he came to when he pulled the trigger. Two shots. He heard the gunshots in his head again. And jerked. What had he done wrong? What could he have done differently? He blinked, unable to get the dead boy’s face out of his head. His eyes open, staring up at him. Rain wetting the kid’s face.

  Stokes ran his hand through his stiff hair and leaned back heavily in the chair. He stared at the cuts in the palms of his hands. From the chain link fence he’d hopped. They stung. How much longer were they going make him sit and stew?

  As it turned out, not much longer.

  The door opened and two people walked in. His interrogators were to be a man and a woman. Stokes watched them carefully, trying to read them to get a clue to how precarious his situation was. The male detective had opened the door. He allowed the female to pass him, to enter the room first. Being chivalrous, Stokes wondered, or was it an indicator of who was the dominant partner?

  Once they were inside, the male detective shut the door behind them. The click of the door sounded unnaturally loud in the empty room.

  The man wore a dark suit, not a sport coat and slacks like most detectives. It wasn’t off the rack, either. Tailored, pricey, but not super expensive. Brooks Brothers or something along those lines. His gold badge hung from a chain around his neck. It winked in the harsh interrogation room lighting. He had thick, gray hair that made him look older than he was, Stokes suspected.

  The woman, she was another story. She dressed casually, wearing brown suede half boots, a pair of snug-fitting jeans, a wide brown leather belt upon which she wore her gold shield, a blousy top with a conservative collar and a brown suede jacket. Though her style was casual, her clothes were top-of-the-line expensive. Neiman Marcus, or somewhere even better. Her black hair was long and fine and cascaded flatly down her back.