I sat down on the boulder and moved crab-like back to the boat. I stepped over the side of it and grabbed the metal frame that edged the canvas T-top to lower myself down.
I lifted the cover of the bench and looked down into the head.
Cormac Lonigan—my hostage—was exactly where I had left him.
I pulled him to his feet and told him to walk up the three small steps to the deck. The sock in his mouth would keep him quiet. There wasn’t much I had to worry about, but I made him get to his knees.
He was shivering with just his jockey shorts and long-sleeved shirt on.
I bent down in the storage space beyond the toilet. There were a few sets of waders and other boating clothes.
I climbed up next to Lonigan. “These will be too big for you, but they’ll be warmer,” I said.
I helped him pull on the one-piece black rubber overalls. He didn’t fight me. I didn’t dare remove his handcuffs, so I fastened the clasps over his shirt but decided against letting his hands free for long enough to put on an all-weather jacket.
I had no intention to kill the kid. I just wanted him to be my bait.
I walked to the stern to get the extra length of rope that was stowed there. I rolled up the legs of my chinos, almost to my knees. When I turned back to Lonigan, I could see him taking in the landscape. He must have recognized the bridge overhead but might have made no sense of the location.
I got back onto the boulder where we were anchored and told Lonigan to follow me.
He hesitated. He had no ability to speak, but his eyes were asking me Why?
“Gotta test the water,” I said. “In case we have to go for a swim.”
His head shook violently from side to side.
“Just sayin’, Cormac. Now, take a walk with me.”
He was off-balance from hours of being hunched up on the toilet with his hands behind his back. In addition, he had the bulky waders on, and their footed rubber overalls made walking difficult.
I held on to him to steady him on the slick surface, carrying the length of rope over my shoulder like a lariat.
We were thirty yards or so north of the red lighthouse and walking toward it. We were on much lower ground and hidden by the boulders, so it wouldn’t be possible for anyone to spot us. I couldn’t see signs of life from within, and I wasn’t sure that there were cops in place yet on the girders of the great gray bridge.
To our right, sticking up from the river like a series of large tombstones, was another outcropping of rocks.
I held on to Lonigan’s handcuffs, his back to me, and extended my right leg so that my foot dipped into the water.
“Ooooh,” I said. “Pretty nippy.” I tugged on the cuffs and pulled him so that his booted feet were standing on the base of one of the rocks, covered up to his ankles by the Hudson.
I talked to him as I laced one end of the thick nautical rope around the links of his handcuffs and then through the shoulder straps of his waders.
“What do you know about hypothermia?” I asked.
Lonigan couldn’t speak if he wanted to.
“I didn’t think so. It’s a dangerous thing, Cormac. Cold water accelerates its onset because body heat is usually lost twenty-five times faster in cold water. It gets to the core of your body,” I said, going about my business strapping the rope around the back side of the naturally made tombstone. “Gets the brain, the heart, the lungs—all the vital organs. And skinny people like you? Well, it tends to get to them faster.”
I kept my balance as I wrapped the rope around Lonigan’s body and then again around the vertical rock.
“Nobody wants you to live more than I do, kid. I’m needing you badly to make a trade, okay? For that woman you don’t know anything about, remember? The one your uncle snatched? So in water this cold—and remember, I put these waders on you for a reason—you’re good out here for two and a half hours.”
Cormac Lonigan closed his eyes.
“Now, it will get colder, because the tide’s coming in and the water will keep rising. Good thing you’re nice and tall. And holding still increases your survival time,” I said. “I took a course once at the Police Academy. A chance to train to be an Emergency Services cop. I got through all the crap about heights and elevator shafts and jaws of life. The one thing I couldn’t deal with? It was hypothermia. It was jumping into the frigid East River—like, doing it voluntarily—to save the ass of some drunken fool who had fallen in, who was kicking and screaming and flailing his arms, and more likely to drown by doing that. I gave up on the idea early on. More suited to dead bodies.”
I was knotting the rope at the rear of the rock. My toes were already ice-cold.
“But that’s when I learned how important it is, in the case of hypothermia, to keep a positive attitude.”
Lonigan’s head was hanging.
“Don’t blow me off when I’m talking to you, kid. I’m not joking with you. You need a will to live, and you need to keep as still as possible.”
Cormac Lonigan twisted in place. I thought it was as likely to remove himself from the sound of my voice as it might have been to try to break free.
“Squirming around like that won’t help you. If you get loose enough to slide into the river? Well, that’s my worst nightmare,” I said. “The thing about those chest-high waders is that they will fill right up to the top with water and just float you away with the current. Fast and furious as she goes. Most likely you’ll crack your head on a boulder before you freeze to death. So take my advice and hold as still as you can.”
There was little chance that Cormac Lonigan could break free.
It was time to talk to his uncle about Coop.