"The Beat"

My heart thundered like a jackhammer beneath my shield, pumping blood that seared like hot coffee through my aching legs and arms.  Everything begged me to stop.  My legs, full of sand after three straight blocks of sprinting.  My lungs, which turned a breath of fresh air into acid.  My head, which was starting to throb from lack of oxygen as my out-of-shape body sent it to the parts that kept me moving.   

“NYPD!  Stop where you are!” I cried.  Ahead of me, the perpetrator shoved a woman aside, sending her armful of shopping bags scattering like bowling pins.  Bystanders screamed and ran in all directions as I cried out my warning again.  With a burst of adrenaline I didn’t know my legs still possessed, I leapt the shopping bags, my trench coat flapping behind. 

I held my hat on with one hand and produced my service revolver from its holster with my other.  The perp turned into an alley so quickly that he almost fell when his shoes skidded on the sidewalk.  I gained about five feet on him before his hand whipped from the waistband in his pants and produced a gun of his own.

I was barely thirty feet from the perp when the piece appeared.  Time seemed to slow down, and my jumbled mind whizzed through the hours I’d been briefed on what to do in such a situation.  Raw, naked fear took over, and my feet stopped on their own volition, sending me pitching forward. Only after stumbling a few feet was I able to pull some useful advice from my training, and I spun behind a newspaper stand a split-second before he started firing.

Two claps of thunder split the afternoon air.  Screams rang out from, I hoped, bystanders that were simply terrified and not hurt.  Three feet from my head, the wood of the newspaper stand exploded, showering the sidewalk with splinters.

My back pressed against the stand, I listened for more gunshots through my heart jackhammering in my ears.  A happy flow of adrenaline now dampening the other symptoms of the chase, I counted off five more seconds before venturing a peek around the corner.

Clear. 

I dove from behind cover, keeping my head down, and dashed into the alley after the perp.  It was empty, aside from a dumpster that belonged to the Chinese restaurant next door and a rapid jangling of metal from over my head.  My eyes followed the sound and I spied the perp, and beneath his arm the file that he had pilfered from headquarters under the guys of a delivery boy.  He clambered up the last run on the ladder of the neighboring building’s fire escape, and took off up the metal stairs two at a time.

Not wasting another second, I threw myself down the alley and leapt to grab the first rung on the ladder.  My arms screamed in protest, but I forced past their voice and pulled myself up high enough to get my foot into the lowest rung.  My hat tumbled off in a breeze that smelled of mushu pork, but I quickly forgot it as I ascended after the fleeing man. 

When I reached the first landing, a clap of thunder roared in the alley, and at the same instant sparks showered from one of the steps above my head.  A metallic ping met my ears before they filled with a high-pitched whine.  I only took a second to blink through the confusion of the gunshot before I charged up the stairs after him, barely able to make out the sound of his footsteps (or mine, I can’t really tell) through the white noise.

I passed through the landing he had been standing on when he had taken a shot at me. It still smelled of gunpowder and cordite. 

When I reached the last landing, I was alone.  Holstering my revolver, I ascended the final ladder and cautiously peeked over the edge of the building’s roof.  I spotted a fleeing man, a folder tucked under his arm, and a nearby building that he was recklessly charging toward. 

I dove over the edge and cried “NYPD! Stop where you are!”, and had plenty of time to duck behind an air conditioning unit before he fired recklessly over his shoulder.  The shot didn’t even come close to me, but I couldn’t have him firing wildly.  There’d be no telling where those bullets might up. 

I charged after him. 

Suddenly the perp was airborne, leaping from the edge of the roof.  He seemed to hang, suspended, in air for days until he landed on the roof of the next building.  His knees gave way and he rolled in an attempt to reduce the impact of the fall, but it was less coordinated than he had intended.  Dizzy, he sprawled in a heap on the roof. 

It was my chance. But, once again, my body and its perfectly rational fears took over.  I skidded to a stop just short of the edge of the building, the chasm between the two like a gaping maw, ready to swallow a beat cop who was still twenty years from paying off his mortgage.  The alley below looked much further than seven stories; not that it needed to be, because seven stories would do just fine for turning me into a pile of pulp. 

Across the alley, the perp was finally starting to pull himself together.  It would be a matter of seconds before he was on his feet and running again, or he got his gun hand working again and risked his remaining two bullets on perforating me. 

So, once again, I tuned out the voice that screamed in my head to turn around, backed up twenty feet on the rooftop, sprinted, and jumped.