Read The Cross: An Eddie Flynn Novella for Free Online Page B

which arrested their movement.
    “Hey, buddy, watch out,” said the driver.
    I climbed in, swiped my card. The driver looked at me, shook his head, and muttered under his breath, “New York City.”
    I lost myself in the crowd standing on the bus. I got plenty of looks. Even in Manhattan, where people have seen everything and heard everything, a soaking-wet guy in a crumpled shirt and squelching shoes was enough to catch me some attention.
    The doors closed and we moved into traffic. Glancing over the shoulder of the guy in the baseball cap, I caught a glimpse of the two cops coming back up the steps that led down to the river. They were looking left and right, arms by their sides, chests heaving. They were too far away for me to get much of a look at their faces. One cop was black, the other white and older.
    Watching those two gulping for air, I suddenly became aware that I, too, was out of breath. The short run to the bus, or the pain from the cold, it didn’t matter. I looked and smelled exactly like a guy who’d hauled his ass out of the East River only moments before.
    I took a bill out of my wallet, folded it, and ran my fingers along the note, pulling out the moisture with the pressure from my grip. The guy in the cap who’d gotten on board justbefore me was tapping away on his cell phone. I offered him the five dollars if he’d let me make a couple of calls.
    He turned his back on me.
    “You forget your swimming costume, son?” said the old lady on the seat in front of me, the grandma who’d taken her time with her change.
    “Something like that. A gust of wind blew rain water off a store canopy. Just my luck to be standing beneath it. Say, could I borrow your cell phone? Mine got wet. I need to call my wife and tell her I’ll be late home.”
    She looked at me sideways. It hadn’t rained all day.
    “I can give you ten dollars for the call,” I said, handing her my last wet bill.
    “Okay, just don’t run off with it,” she said.
    I dialed home. Answering machine. I tried Christine’s cell phone, and she picked up. I could hear eighties rock in the background, and I knew she was with her sister, Carmel, at her place.
    “Hi, it’s Eddie. I lost my phone, again. I called the house.”
    “Looking for me?” she said. “I got bored waiting in an empty house, so I put Amy in the car and came to Carmel’s. Amy is asleep upstairs and we’ve got wine, Van Halen, and Ghost on DVD for later. You don’t mind, do you?”
    “No. I don’t mind.”
    “You’re not even home yet, are you?”
    “No. I’m glad you’re at Carmel’s. You didn’t notice anyone hanging around outside the house tonight? No strange cars in our street?”
    I heard her tell Carmel to turn down the music.
    “What’s going on?” she said, an urgency to her tone now.
    “Nothing. The Hernandez case is getting hot. That’s all. We’re not popular with the NYPD at the moment, so it might get a little hairy for a while. It’s best if you and Amy stay with Carmel for a couple of days. Let Amy stay home from school. In fact . . . it would be better if you all stayed inside until this blows over.”
    “Have you been threatened?”
    “No . . .”
    “Bullshit, Eddie. This is the Rockmount case all over again. I told you to be careful. We don’t need this kind of pressure. No case is worth that kind of hassle, not again.”
    She went quiet, but I could hear the tears and the panic welling in her throat.
    “You promised me,” she said.
    She was right. I did make a promise.
    Before Amy was born, while we were still living in a damp basement apartment in Brooklyn, I took on a case against Rockmount Pharmaceuticals that became real messy. Stones through the windows, car tires slashed, dog shit left in our mailbox. And worse.
    I was used to it. I’d had guys trying to take my head off since I was thirteen years old. Mostly they didn’t fare too well and never tried again. But Christine was terrified, and that killed me. When