FORTY-NINE

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

For several seconds that’s all I heard—one boom after another, blast echoes overlapping as the noise bounced between buildings.

Sheer instinct had me crouched behind a steel lamppost.

The detectives behind me had different instincts. They were hugging the sidewalk, too, but they’d also drawn their weapons and were searching for a shooter.

“There!”

The man who yelled fired off a shot, then another. His two colleagues followed suit. Suddenly, the deafening din was in front of and behind me.

Scrunched into a ball with my hands over my ears, I peeked around the steel pole and spied bright white flashes on top of a latticework of construction scaffolding across the street.

I saw something else, too. Smoke. And I remembered what Quinn said in passing about those SWAT team assaults on the wrong buildings the day Sully was shot. After the fact, everyone was embarrassed by the miscalculation. Modern firearms don’t release smoke. Or as Quinn put it—

“We should have known: where there’s smoke, there’s fireworks.”

A metallic ping shattered my thoughts. One of the cops had clipped the No Standing sign high above me. Then the pole itself vibrated like a metronome, raining silver paint chips on my head.

I heard a grunt, turned, and saw a detective had been hit—no doubt by fragments ricocheting off the pole. He was on his back, clutching his shoulder.

More men rushed headlong out of the sports bar, some waving guns. They saw a man down, two cops shooting, and reacted instantly.

“Stop! Stop! Don’t shoot!” I cried. But in the heat of the moment, mine was the only cool head. “It’s fireworks. Just fireworks!”

Nobody listened, and the battlefield clamor went on until another ricochet cracked the sports bar’s plate glass window. Inside, customers still on their feet hit the floor.

The explosions across the street finally stopped around the same time as a wiry plainclothes detective flew out of the bar like an angry bird, frantically flapping his arms and squawking—

“Cease fire! Cease fire!”

The racket died, and in the sudden stillness I heard the urgent wail of approaching sirens—and then a long string of colorful curses. The diminutive man was now walking in a circle, ranting at the others. One man timidly interrupted him.

“Ah . . . Lieutenant McNulty . . .” He sheepishly pointed to the ranking officer’s gaping pants.

With a grunt, the lieutenant zipped his fly and continued berating his men.

“I can’t take a leak without you Keystone Kops screwing up? Who the hell ordered you to fire? Did you even see who you were shooting at—”

“Excuse me, sir. I saw the whole thing,” I firmly declared. “The explosions came from fireworks. I’m sure of it. On top of the scaffolding on that building across the street.”

One man helped me to my feet. The rest stared in shock and awe.

Apparently, one does not interrupt the great and powerful Lieutenant McNulty—unless one has news about his fly being down.

The lieutenant walked right up to me and glared. “You are mistaken. You hear me, little lady?”

Little lady? What was he talking about? In these red stilettos, I was eye to eye with him. And my eyes glared right back!

“I know what I saw, Lieutenant.”

“You don’t know a thing. My men don’t pop off at phantoms.”

“Well, there’s no shooting now, is there? And I saw smoke. So naturally, I thought: where there’s smoke, there’s fireworks—”

“Are you drunk?” He leaned in and sniffed my breath.

“I am not drunk. And I know what I saw.”

“I got a man down, here,” he pointed. “And over there a bullet punched a hole through that window. Fireworks didn’t do that!”

“Clare! Clare!”

Matt pushed through a gathering crowd to reach me.

“Are you okay? I heard the fireworks and came running.”

“Did you hear this guy?” McNulty threw up his hands. “Fireworks again!”

I had hoped the pyrotechnics were over, but, as it turned out, the evening’s explosions were just getting started.

First, my smartphone buzzed—a text from Quinn.

SRY Will B late. Crime Scn on 52 ST

At that same moment the police cars arrived.

One by one the sirens faded. Then an unmarked car rolled to the curb right in front of me and Matt. Two men stepped out. One was the young Sergeant Franco.

The other was his boss—and my brand-new fiancé.