JULY 13, 1977
SOUTH BRONX, NEW YORK
Martha shook her head, leaning over the wheel again. They’d been traveling for all of fifteen minutes, the back streets relatively clear. It seemed like most people had gone out into the wide main avenues in the chaos. Hopper didn’t blame them. Here, in the narrow streets between tall buildings, the darkness was almost like a physical presence, a thing alive, a serpent coiled around the city itself, squeezing, squeezing.
Hopper told himself to stop imagining things.
“We’re going the wrong way,” said Martha, slowing the car to a gentle stop in the middle of a residential block. “If we’re going to reach the authorities, we need to head south, into Manhattan.”
A moment later the idling engine spluttered to a stop again.
Hopper turned in his seat. “So why are you helping me?”
Martha sucked in her cheeks, and tapped the wheel with both hands before dropping them to her lap and twisting to face Hopper.
“Look, you’re a cop, and where I come from, cops are bad news.”
Hopper shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
Martha sighed. “What I mean is, can I trust you? I need to be able to trust you. I made a bet with myself, and right about now I’m hoping that bet was a winning one.”
“You’re right, I’m a cop. I am—I was—undercover. My job was to find out what Saint John was doing with the Vipers, what his plans were, and how to stop him. When I had all that, I was to take it back to a federal task force, and they’d move in. So, yes, you can trust me, but now I need to know I can trust you. Because I need to get my information to the authorities, fast, and I might need your help on that.”
Martha nodded. “And you’ve got it. I know I waited too long, but maybe there’s still a chance we can do this.”
“Waited for what?”
“Look, I’m no cop,” said Martha, “but I was just looking out for my brother—Leroy.”
“You were looking out for him? He was trying to get you out. That’s how I got involved in the first place. He came to the cops and asked for protection if we helped him.”
Martha’s jaw hung open. “That’s where he went?” Then her astonishment turned into amusement, and she smiled. “Shit. But that’s my little brother.” She adjusted herself in her seat and shook her head, like she was considering this revelation again. Then she turned back to Hopper. “It took me years to find him— Listen, life at home was no piece of cake, and sometimes I don’t blame him. The gangs, they made him promises, gave him a look at some other kind of life, and he took it. Our mom, she was real cutup. You know how old he was?”
Hopper said nothing.
“Eleven,” said Martha. “That damn fool was eleven when he started running with the Bronx Kings. I tried to help him then, and more than once, but it never took. Finally I lost touch completely—most of our family figured he was dead, gotten himself killed on some damn street corner, most likely. But not Mom. She never gave up on him. And neither did I. So eventually I told her I would go and find Leroy and bring him back, you know? So I quit my job, and I said goodbye to my mom, and then I went looking. By then he’d moved on from the Kings, was hanging with the Furies. Didn’t take much to get in with them. Leroy spoke out against me. He was afraid I’d come to take him home—and of course he was right. But I’m his big sister and I knew how to play it and I knew if I was going to get him out then it was going to take a while, you know? He was in pretty deep, and I knew there was more to go before I could reach in and pull him out.”
“So you stuck around, keeping an eye on him?”
“Damn right I did. I made a promise to our mom. You’d do the same thing, right? Wouldn’t you?”
Hopper nodded.
“Right you would,” said Martha, turning her gaze to the footwell. “And it was okay—we got talking, Leroy and me, I mean. He seemed less angry with me around, which I took to be a good thing. So we stuck it out together. Then the Vipers came along, and the Furies joined up with them, along with all the other gangs. Slits, Fixers, Crazy Jacks, the whole lot.”
“And you went in with them?”
“Oh, trust me, I was looking for a way out, but that is something easier said than done. All I could do was keep us safe and keep my eyes open.” She looked back up at Hopper. “And like I said, I’m hoping I made the right choice here with you. Because I need to get out, and I need to get Leroy out too. We need to go back home.”
“You’re not the only one,” said Hopper. “We can help each other. You seem to know a lot about Saint John and the Vipers—and about whatever the hell is going on now.”
Martha shrugged. “Some. More than others. I rose up in the Furies, and Saint John kept me around. So yeah, I know some.”
“You know more than me, that’s for sure,” said Hopper. “We need to take as much intel to the feds as possible.” He paused. “So you’ll help?”
“Hell yes. If it gets Leroy home to his mom, I’ll do anything.” Martha looked at the row houses on either side of their stationary vehicle. “I don’t suppose there’s much chance of using a telephone?”
“Well, the telephone system is separate from the power grid,” said Hopper. He turned in his seat. “There. There’s a booth on the corner. See if you can get this thing going again.”
Martha turned the key, and the car grumbled to life. She put it in reverse and it heaved backward, arrowing into the curb by the booth. Hopper got out, and as he walked around the car he kept thinking he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, shapes and shadows dancing along the rooftops of the row houses, but as he looked around, there was nothing to see. Just dark buildings against a lighter sky, the cloud cover now lit by more and more fires as the Bronx burned. In the distance he could hear the sirens of fire engines, but they sounded miles away. So far, he hadn’t heard—and they hadn’t seen—any police presence of any kind.
The telephone booth was relatively untouched by vandalism, which gave Hopper a cautious optimism. The telephone itself was in place, and appeared to be all in one piece.
It was, however, dead in his ear. He rattled the hook a few times, but it made no difference. It seemed the phones were out along with the power.
As he stepped out onto the sidewalk, he listened to the sirens and the honking of cars far away, and he thought he could hear something else. He stepped out into the middle of the street, scanning the houses.
“Any luck?”
Hopper glanced over his shoulder, and saw Martha standing beside the station wagon, one foot in the car as she leaned on the driver’s door.
“No,” he said, then looked around again. “Can you hear that?”
Behind him, the car door thunked shut and he heard Martha approach. He walked forward into a T-junction. Dead ahead was a small park ringed with trees, a paved path cutting across, curving around a dry fountain in the middle. On the other side of the park, on the parallel street, Hopper saw that the top level of the middle row house was lit. People moved in the light, and he heard tinny music.
“I guess the rich don’t need to worry about having no power,” said Martha. Hopper glanced at her, then looked around again. She was right, the area around the park did look relatively nice. The row houses were five levels, and some of them seemed to share a large, open veranda on the top level, with big French windows behind. It was on one of these verandas that the party seemed to be in full swing.
Martha clicked her tongue. “You think we can use their phone?”
Hopper shook his head. “Phones are out,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at the booth on the corner. “What we really need is to find a cop and use their radio.”
Martha laughed. “You seen any cops yet? I tell you, they’re leaving the Bronx to burn.” She paused. “What about a fire crew? They’d have a radio?”
“We could try, but I think they’ve got their hands pretty much full as it is.”
A shrill whistle echoed around the street, like someone trying to hail a cab.
“That you, Frankie?” someone yelled from the veranda.
With a frown, Hopper moved forward, so he could at least get a better look past the trees. As he crossed the park, Martha alongside him, he saw about a dozen people on the veranda, talking, smoking and drinking. There was a table in the corner and a large battery-powered tape deck, from which came the sounds of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.”
“Not Frankie, sorry,” Hopper called back. At this, some more of the party gathered at the veranda’s rail, leaning out to look. Hopper couldn’t make them out, backlit as they were by the lights from the French windows.
“Charles?” called a woman.
Hopper exchanged a look with Martha, then turned back to the party.
“Sorry, not Charles either.”
“Well, for the love of Mike, you’d better have brought some more champagne.”
As if to emphasize the woman’s point, there was the sound of a cork popping. Someone laughed.
Then came another kind of pop—a gunshot, and close. Hopper and Martha instinctively ducked, while someone at the party screamed in fright, and the veranda went quiet, save for Bruce and the E Street Band.
Crouching, Hopper turned to Martha; then came another gunshot, then a third. He tapped her on the shoulder, and together they darted over to the cars parked at the curb, underneath the party house. Martha looked up over the trunk of a car, Hopper back at the house. The veranda was still lit, and someone was looking down over the rail at them.
“Get everyone inside,” Hopper called up, as loud as he dared. “Shut off the music and the lights and stay indoors.”
The shadow at the veranda didn’t give an answer, but disappeared. A moment later the music stopped and the lights went out, followed by a clatter as the French windows were closed.
Hopper turned to Martha, who was still scanning the area.
“That sounded a little close for comfort,” he said.
“I can’t see anything,” said Martha. “Sounded like it was maybe the next street.”
“Come on, we need to get moving. You know where you are now?”
“Yep, I’ve got it. We good to go?”
Hopper stood slowly, checking around. There hadn’t been any more gunshots, and nobody else was in the street.
“Okay, we’re good. But move, quick.”
Martha ran out from behind the car and crossed the park. Hopper did another check of the area, then followed. He reached the station wagon at the same time as Martha, the pair jumping in. Martha turned the wheel as she executed a three-point turn in the narrow street. The station wagon was so long that she was forced to pump the gas and push the front wheel up onto the sidewalk, and by the time they were facing the right direction, both front and rear tires on the left side of the car were on the curb. The engine stalled again.
There was a thud, the car sinking down on its springs before bouncing back up and rocking slightly from side to side. Beside him, Martha looked up, then yelped in fright as the ceiling above her head indented with another heavy thud, the car bouncing again as something else landed on the roof. There were two more thuds, the front windshield cracking loudly at the top, just in front of Hopper, as the roof was bent down farther.
Martha struggled with the gears as the car continued to rock, then looked up again and yelped in surprise. Hopper saw a pair of legs appear in front of the windshield as someone slid down it from the roof, coming to a rest on their knees on the hood. Immediately they spun around and flattened themselves against the windshield, their mouth gaping as they whooped and laughed.
There was more movement all around them as more men slid off the roof of the car, front, rear, sides. Hopper turned this way and that on the bench seat, then quickly slammed his hand down on the door lock on his side, before diving across Martha and doing the same on hers.
The car was surrounded, the men having apparently jumped from the veranda of the house under which the car had stopped. Hopper counted seven of them, and as they began to rock the car from side to side, he saw more coming on foot from farther up the street. Some of them carried makeshift weapons—baseball bats, and one even seemed to be holding a fire ax. They were all dressed in pale blue denim, like a uniform.
Another gang. It wasn’t the Vipers, but Hopper didn’t think that was going to make much difference to their chances of survival.
Martha twisted the keys in the ignition and the car roared to life, but when she pushed the accelerator, it spluttered and died again. She repeated this while Hopper could only watch the men around them, the car rocking like a ship lost at sea. All it would take was a little coordination, and the gang could flip the vehicle right over, with them still inside.
He raised his arms instinctively as the head of the fire ax carried by one of the newcomers was embedded in the windshield in front of him. The screen didn’t shatter, but what cracks had already formed began to spider out across the glass. The gangster jumped onto the hood and heaved at the weapon. As it came free, he lost his balance and fell off the car, to the delight of his cohorts. His position was replaced by another gang member, who picked up the ax and swung a second time.
“Come on!” Hopper yelled, and grabbed a handful of Martha’s baseball jacket as he swung himself over the top of the car’s front bench seat, landing heavily in the rear, his legs flailing. He felt Martha grab him by the ankle, using his legs to pull herself into the back with him. She crashed onto the floor beside him, but he wasn’t stopping. He crawled over the top of the rear passenger seat, until he was in the spacious open trunk. Martha quickly followed, and they crouched behind the seat as the gang, their full attention apparently on the front of the vehicle, began battering the windows with their baseball bats, while the man with the fire ax now worked on the hood. Whether the gang even knew he and Martha were still inside, Hopper had no idea, but it was now or never. Looking out the rear, he saw the street was clear. He moved to the hatch, then turned his attention to the floor of the wagon, his fingernails tearing at the carpet as he levered it up, revealing an empty void where the spare wheel was supposed to sit. But he found what he was looking for: the tire iron sitting in its cradle on one side. As he pulled it free, Martha scooted past him and opened the rear hatch using the internal handle. With the escape route clear, she turned to Hopper.
He nodded ahead. “Go! I’ll be right behind.”
She turned and slid out of the car, and sprinted off down the street. Some of the gang finally saw them trying to escape; Hopper heard two men call out, the pair running around the side of the car to give chase.
Hopper jumped out, swinging the tire iron. His improvised club connected with both men, the pair dropping instantly, one out cold, the other rolling on the ground, clutching his face, blood already streaming between his fingers.
The others at the front saw the commotion, but by the time they got to their fallen comrades, Hopper was halfway down the street, arms pumping as he put as much distance between him and the gang as he could. Ahead, he saw Martha crouched by a parked car. He waved at her, and she set off again, Hopper on her tail.
They ran.