Say the Word(65)

I giggled.

“Guys!” Fae repeated.

“But anyway, I keep telling Fae she needs to ask him out. Those ab muscles alone would be rea—”

“GUYS!” Fae yelled, finally managing to get our attention. “Isn’t that him?”

Simon and I whipped around in our seats, trying to catch sight of whoever Fae had spotted leaving the precinct. The man was walking this way, toward one of the unmarked police cars parked across the street. Dressed in street clothes with a black duffle bag slung over one shoulder, he didn’t look like the uniformed officer I’d been expecting. I had to glance back at the photo on the dash to confirm it was him.

“That’s our guy,” I murmured quietly, watching as Santos climbed into his vehicle and pulled out onto the street. We were silent and still as his car rolled past ours and joined the flow of traffic.

“Let’s get him,” Simon added in a hushed tone, turning over the ignition until the car rumbled to an unwilling start.

“Why are we whispering?” Fae whispered.

“I don’t know, it just seemed appropriate,” I said, laughing as we pulled away from the curb and started to tail Santos’ car. Traffic in the city was rarely navigable at any time of day, but thankfully we were an hour or so beyond the nightly post-work jam that tied up each avenue in gridlock. There were enough cars to conceal our presence, but not so many that we lost track of Santos up ahead.

“The trick is to stay a half block behind them,” Simon advised us. “Use directionals and follow traffic laws. Go the speed limit. Otherwise, you draw attention to yourself.”

“Okay, Mr. Bond.” I snorted.

We followed Santos’ car for an hour as he looped around the Village, cut down through Alphabet City, and zigzagged his way across Chinatown. He stopped a few times — once to grab a coffee at 7-11 and again to grab a burger and fries at a greasy spoon near Columbus Park — but other than that, he was pretty much the most boring target of all time. As the minutes ticked by and gradually turned into hours, Fae passed out cold in the backseat and even Simon began to yawn.

It was past eleven. We were about ready to admit defeat and head back to Simon’s loft for the night, when Santos took an abrupt turn and headed for the bridge that crossed over the East River to Brooklyn.

I looked over at Simon, my brows raised in question.

“We’ve come this far,” he muttered, taking the exit that would lead us across the bridge. Twenty minutes later, we followed Santos into a rundown neighborhood on the west coast of Brooklyn. Red Hook or “The Point” as it was best known by its residents, was a gritty, working class district that jutted out into the bay, bounded on three sides by water. The former industrial port had at one time been viewed as a great location for gentrification, with transplanted businesses breathing new life into its downtrodden streets. Over time, though, the isolation and inaccessibility of The Point, coupled with a crumbling economy and a lack of funding, had stalled the efforts to revitalize, leaving Red Hook in a limbo state — half gentrified, half in ruins.

It seemed Santos was headed for the still-impoverished section, where overgrown weeds and garbage filled the vacant lots interspersed between Civil War-era brick row houses and Brooklyn’s largest public housing projects. Along with the empty warehouses that lined its waterfront, the neighborhood was marked by strips of deserted businesses and a series of ramshackle boat docks that no longer saw any traffic. During daylight hours, it wasn’t the most genteel of places; at night, it seemed even more desolate. It was empty of life — the forgotten, destitute, dark southern twin to Manhattan’s effervescent, ever-vital boroughs.

The traffic was thin here, with fewer cars to hide amongst as we trailed Santos deeper into the neighborhood. Simon put on the brakes and let a little distance grow between our cars. We slowed to a crawl when Santos turned onto a small side street by the water and parked in front of an abandoned brick warehouse. Its windows were boarded up, its foundation was chipping away, and if I had to wager a guess, I’d say it had probably been constructed at the start of the 20th century, when the Industrial Revolution swept the nation with a wave of new technologies and Brooklyn bloomed with factories and manufacturing plants. The building sat on the very outskirts of The Point, abutting a private dock which likely once served as a lively distribution port for shipped goods.

Now, the pier was dilapidated — the perfect counterpart to the factory it formerly serviced. Many of its wooden support beams hung down into the bay, waterlogged and termite-eaten with age. The planks were so brittle, one miscalculated stride might find you stepping down on sawdust and open air.

Santos’ brake lights glowed like twin red halos on the dark street around the corner. Simon cut his headlights and shifted into park on the cross-street just before the intersection — far enough away that we could watch inconspicuously through the vacant lot across from the warehouse. Fae stirred awake when the car jolted to a stop.

“Where are we?” she mumbled, her voice slurred with sleep.

“We’re not in Manhattan anymore, Toto, that’s for damn sure,” Simon whispered, his eyes following Santos as the officer climbed from his car and looked around.

“Otherwise known as Brooklyn,” I murmured, following Simon’s lead as he hunched down in his seat to avoid being spotted.

Fae wrinkled her nose in distaste as she peered out her window at the garbage and graffiti littering the abandoned streets. This was a far cry from the sleekly sophisticated bars of her usual late-night stomping grounds.