BLACK AND WHITE

Prelude

'NEW YORK!

'The city of lights, the city that never sleeps! The swinging town where big business, fashion, thrills, chills and excitement all collide! Where the nights are always an adventure! And, of course, the city of death. The city of crime. The city of horrors unimaginable. It's every bit as New York as Lady Liberty or the Velvet Underground. Murder most horrid. You can see it on every corner, you can smell it in the salt-tinged air of the city. Death.

'And this week has been a record for it. Six murders, all seemingly disparate, have left residents in the world's greatest metropolis walking the streets in fear. Among the dead are rumoured Russian Mafioso and small time crook, Alexandra Litvenko (32), found dead in the Hudson river. His gang, or what was left of them, were later found in a warehouse in Union City…'

I gently dropped the paper in a bin and lit up a cigarette. Plumes of ice-laden breath rose up stark against an indifferent sky. They were damn right, it was there plain as day, in black and white. This was a city of death.

You didn't notice it so much in the day. In the day you passed the delis and the tourists and the school buses, and you came round to thinking the Big Apple was a safe place to raise a kid. Everything seemed quiet, sun-kissed, safe.

Not so when the sun went down. All those happy families took the sane option and cleared the streets. Like Travis Bickle said in that old film Taxi Driver, night time was when all the animals came out to play. Junkie kids who'd knife you for ten bucks just to get another hit. Sex fiends with rape and pain on their mind, who weren't happy till they'd killed a girl's innocence forever. Dealers and hookers and mob bosses, all with nothing but sleazy green and hedonism on their minds. This was the real face of New York.

I was mad to think raising a kid in this god-forsaken city was a good idea. But when Michelle came back just a few days ago with the pregnancy test results, I hadn't even though about it, had I? It had been daytime then, the haggard old whore that was the Big Apple was still done up like a doll. I'd been watching the kids cycling up and down the street in the safety of New Jersey, the only thoughts in my mind birthday parties and family gatherings and graduation. A few days from promotion to detective, everything was looking sweet.

Right now, sat on a bench in some hopeless, forgotten park near the Bowery, I was starting to think this had all been a bad idea. What was I thinking? This was no place to bring up a child, not here. Not on a night like tonight.

I kept one focussed eye on the apartment window midway up the dirty grey tenement across the park. A single light was on. Occasionally my partner Alex Balder would wander to the window and flick the blinds. All clear. Inside was some reporter, due to make a federal deposition tomorrow morning. It seemed he had some major information on a string of murders that had rocked the city over the past week or so, information he wasn't happy to talk about until he was safe in the courtroom. Me and Alex were just two of the poor saps charged with spending the night watching over his apartment to make sure no-one took him out before he spread the incriminating evidence. There were about a million things I'd rather have done that night.

I sucked dry what was left of my cigarette and flicked it to the ground, crushing it under one boot. Reluctantly reached for a pack of Luckies in my shirt pocket. Two left. I frowned, and lit another up. I'd have to give the habit up soon. Bad for the baby. I'd have to consider making a lot of changes. No way could I keep putting my ass on the line night after night, not with a kid at home. Maybe I'd transfer to some safer part of the NYPD, white collar crime or something.

Then again, who was I kidding? There was no such thing as a safe part of the NYPD.

Alex crossed to the window again, his hunched-over figure slumping a little more with each trip. I watched as he flickered the blinds, shattering the light, bathing the apartment in an explosion of shadow, and then flickering them open again. He flicked the butt of a cigarette through the smallest crack. For a moment it plummeted like a shooting star against the black walls of the building, before disintegrating.

All clear.

I half considered making another pass, checking out the park. Took a drag on my cigarette.

And then a single gunshot told me not to bother.

As I watched the window shattered inwards, dead-on shot, spraying shards of glass like icicles, flickering and bouncing and throwing fire reflections in all directions. Alex ran to the window. Stupid mistake.

I leapt up, screaming, "ALEX, MOVE!" One hand reached instinctively for my Beretta, instantly forgetting everything I'd been taught about playing it cool, my eyes looking in all directions at once.

Alex's body cast a silhouette against the dim orange light. He peered around, keeping his body to the side, clutching his own firearm. Turned his head occasionally, talked, told someone to get down. He didn't seem to notice me.

A single red light flickered across the wall.

"Oh, sweet Jesus," I muttered, trying to follow the beam. "Oh, no…"

My free hand was reaching desperately for my phone, slamming in Alex's number instinctively. Misspelled, delete, come on, come on!

The red light vanished. Alex went to move back.

Too late.

Another shot rang out in the still of the night. As I watched a clot of blood, horribly black, flew up into the air of the apartment and someone cried out. Alex tumbled out of sight inside, away from me.

"Oh, no, oh, sweet Jesus, no," I muttered, running to a better position, scanning the city's jagged skyline. "God!"

Not the priority, a tiny voice screamed in my head. Forget Alex for now. The witness. Think of the witness!

It seemed to be screaming at me through a haze of panic and fear. More cops were edging around the window, all scanning the skyline. Acting instinctively. Not even thinking of…

Another shot, but not at my window. The other side.

Damn, damn, damn!

My phone rang briefly. I reached for it.

"Payne?" Thick Brooklyn accent. Sounded like Kapowski. "Jesus, man… the witness is dead. You'd best come up here, man. This is a real mess."

"Alex?" I balked. "How is he?"

"Jesus…" Kapowski muttered. "Just… just get up here, Payne. Man…"

I hung up.

Things had suddenly gone from bad to worse.