Chapter 7
Bloch
New York, like most cities, goes through changes with administrative policy, migration, the economy, social and cultural dynamics, and political earthquakes. The result is usually mixed, but the current climate felt worse than perhaps other challenging eras.
Crime, which had plagued New York in the seventies and eighties, rendering parts of the city no-go areas even for cops, was going through a statistical spike.
So much so that the NYPD, the mayor’s office and the district attorney’s office couldn’t do what they normally did and massage the figures to make them look a lot better than they were in reality.
It was all over the news. Every day.
Robberies, homicides, burglaries, sex crimes and hate crimes were rising. Had been for a while. But nobody realizes they’re being cooked until they see the water in the pot bubbling.
Manhattan was on the brink of boiling over.
Cops were stretched thin on the ground. It was Christmastime for anyone with no prospects, no self-control and a dubious moral relationship with the law. And that was just the government.
Bloch wore a Yankees baseball hat and shades, blue jeans, Doc Marten boots and her usual blue blazer over a white tee.
A laptop bag was slung over one shoulder, and she had her cell phone in her hand with the Maps app open as she made her way along Mott Street.
Chinatown has the largest population of Chinese people, per square mile, anywhere in the West. It’s one of the city’s tourist highlights, and a constant delight for New Yorkers who like good food, friendly people and colorful streets.
This time of the day, it was Tourist City.
And Bloch looked like any other tourist.
On purpose.
She stopped. Looked up at the buildings, then back at the phone, as if she was trying to get her bearings.
Really, beneath the sunglasses, she was checking out the four white guys huddled outside Mann’s Chinese restaurant, smoking cigarettes, and deciding which one would come up behind her and snatch her laptop bag, and which one would take her phone.
They appeared to have decided that the big guy in the Knicks shirt was going for the bag, and the smallest of the crew would take the phone. The small guy could grab the phone and run, whereas the laptop bag required more brute strength.
Bloch turned her back to them, pretending to be guided by the phone.
She faced the window of a Chinese grocery store, kept an eye on the reflections in the glass of the two men crossing the street toward her.
The little guy had a shaven head, black sweatpants and a black shirt.
He broke left as he crossed, so he could come up on Bloch from her left, running fast, right past her, snatching the phone out of her hand.
Then the big guy would hit her from behind, grab the bag.
That was the plan.
The little guy disappeared from her view, but Bloch heard his sneakers flapping on the sidewalk, as he started his run toward her.
Bloch tensed.
She wasn’t nervous.
She was getting ready.
Phone in her left hand, outstretched. Transferred her weight onto her right foot.
The little guy was moving fast, maybe ten feet from her now. Coming in from her left.
She threw her weight onto her left foot as he stepped forward, then using the momentum, she swung out her right boot, heel first, leg raised, and stamped down.
It had to be timed perfectly, stepping into the path of the runner moving at speed.
Her boot smacked onto the top of the little guy’s shoe, and if he had been standing still, he would have felt some pain.
But he wasn’t standing still. He was running.
The problem for the little guy was that while his body was still moving at speed, his foot wasn’t. It was trapped flat on the sidewalk.
The sound of his Achilles tendon snapping was much louder than the small bones in his foot breaking, or indeed his ankle dislocating.
When major tendons break, it’s like a gunshot.
The little guy collapsed, face planting into the sidewalk where he slid along with a horrible scraping sound until he came to a stop, five feet away, a trail of blood from his ruined face behind him.
Bloch slipped the messenger bag off her right shoulder, and continued her turn in one fluid motion, letting the strap fall to her hand, then flinging out her arm, spinning on her heel, as if she was tossing the hammer at the Olympics, and watched as the messenger bag swung into the surprised face of the big guy in the Knicks shirt.
There was a dull thump as the bag hit him on the left cheek and mouth, the arc continuing into his nose, his feet leaving the ground, such was the force of the swing.
Bloch wasn’t worried about her laptop. It was still in Eddie’s office, at her desk. And she was pretty sure the five-pound red clay brick in her laptop bag wouldn’t be damaged either.
The bag had excellent padding.
The guy’s face didn’t. His nose broke left and a great gout of blood erupted into the air.
Their two pals stood frozen to the spot outside the restaurant. Their cigarettes stuck to their lips as their mouths opened in shock.
‘You want to help your boy pick up his teeth?’ she asked.
One of them slapped the other on the arm, said, ‘Let’s go,’ and they both sprinted away.
A stocky, elderly Chinese man in a brilliant white shirt and black pants came out of Mann’s restaurant and approached Bloch.
‘You didn’t get all of them,’ he said. ‘What if they come back? They’ve been hanging around here for weeks, robbing tourists. The police do nothing. You said you would stop them all.’
‘They’re not coming back, Mr. Mann,’ said Bloch.
She leaned over the big guy, who was lying on his back, his hands over his mouth, blood bubbling up through his fingers.
‘Hey, you! Knicks fan,’ said Bloch as she unsheathed Maggie from the shoulder holster. She held the Magnum 500 in front of the guy’s face, his eyeballs bulging with terror as he looked at the massive handgun.
‘You come back here I won’t go so easy. Do you understand?’
The man scrambled backwards on his elbows, his face leaking blood all over his shirt.
He tried to speak, but between the blood and the missing teeth, Bloch couldn’t make out what he said. Whatever it was, it sounded perfectly agreeable.
At that moment, a car came down Mott Street, stopped in front of the Knicks fan still trying to crawl away. The engine backfired, a cloud of flame and black smoke rising from the exhaust pipe. Then the engine stalled.
To say it was a car was perhaps too loose a description. It looked as if it had been designed by someone who had never seen a car before, but who’d once had a car described to them over the phone. It was brown, dirty, dented and those were the good points.
Gabriel Lake got out of his Pontiac Aztek with a squeak and a whine from the driver’s door.
His black suit jacket and pants looked to be in about as good a shape as the car.
His white shirt was creased, and although his curly black hair had been washed during his morning shower, it hadn’t been combed since a democrat was in the White House.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Community relations program,’ said Bloch.
‘Eddie’s looking for you,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a case.’