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Informationen zum Autor Carsten Stroud is the author of the New York Times bestseller Close Pursuit , and the award-winning Sniper’s Moon, both set in the New York City Police Department. He lives and writes in Thunder Beach. Klappentext "The action is breathtaking and the book is a spellbinding view of a world like no other."-Detroit News Another night falls on New York City. A victim screams. A siren wails. Eddie Kennedy is on his beat. He's a gold shield homicide detective! and his next week of investigations is a journey you will never forget-an electrifying rite of passage into the heart of what it takes to be a cop. From hookers to murderers! from street-wise muggers to stationhouse rats! from the hectic squad room to a bloody alley! Kennedy takes on a killing city-and takes the reader on a rare ride into a frightening hidden world. CHAPTER 1 DREAM SEQUENCE This little black kid is running, he’s got one knee out of the fabric and every time his right leg comes up the cap shows like the top swivel of a camshaft rod, down it goes again and up comes the other. Kennedy is watching this from his car and he can see that the kid isn’t running for fun: His blue-black skin is streaming wet and pulled back tight and his mouth is wide and gasping, the bony little body stretching out for every yard of sidewalk. Kennedy can see the kid coming from two blocks away but the scene is compressed: just a small nigger kid racing toward Kennedy, straight into the slanting sundown so that the dusty yellow light is glinting off the kid’s cheeks and his eyes are almost closed, he’s flying up this street with a solid wall of grills and smashed headlights and rusting fenders on his left and the tenement stoops and the garbage on his right. Kennedy can hear the pam pam pam pa-pam of the kid’s shoes and see the dust puff up each time the toe comes down. Kennedy’s own heart is working and his breath is short and chuffing, keeping a pace with the kid. He feels he ought to get out of the car, get down there on the street but he’s in a post here, can’t leave that or the whole number’s blown. In his mind he’s saying come on come on, kid, move move. The kid seems to hear this, Christ knows how, and he gets some speed from somewhere and now he can see Kennedy in the car, something to run to, so his eyes change and some of the panic is going from his face … … THERE! There that’s the son of a bitch, Kennedy’s belly muscles jump and the skin across his shoulders tightens up. A sharp-faced white guy with bottle-blue eyes, half-hidden, he’s got a black satin jacket, come on, kid, run, but the guy’s between them, between Kennedy and the kid, the man’s too close. Kennedy sees all this in the time it takes for the kid’s leg to come forward, toe out, heel drops and takes the shock and the dust comes up. Kennedy reaches for the door latch, he can see the thick gold ring on his heavy hand, and he starts to get out. Now he’s out on the sidewalk and down on a knee, he’s yelling to the kid and his arms are wide like he’s a catcher or a saint. Kennedy can feel the sidewalk grit digging into his knee through the gray wool of his slacks. Maybe the gun, should he have the gun out? No, this is a street kid, he’ll think it’s for him, he knows I’m a cop but the gun will slow him up. Kennedy calls again, he can feel the places in his arms where the kid will hit, he can feel the skinny body and the weight of it as he takes him in and picks him up off the ground, his left hand locked around his right wrist, he’ll swing the kid straight into the car and then go for the asshole down the street. He lives this future-second five times and each time the kid makes it to him his chest fills up with a lightness so liquid he can feel tears start. Safe safe and home. Now a car door slams from up the block behind him, he’s back in real time, the kid is still closing fast, and the lieutenant is sev...
