Memory speeded up, as if whirled in a turbine. He recalled events too fast to register as they had occurred. In memory, he could see Frost’s fist swinging at him. He could see that he had been caught flat-footed. If he went down at Frost’s feet, he was a dead man. His only chance to live was to make absolutely sure that Frost couldn’t follow up with another blow.

Harry Frost had obliged Bell by knocking him backwards into the Hudson River.

The current was swift, tide and river speeding toward the sea.

Isaac Bell was barely conscious, with an aching jaw and a throbbing head.

He saw Frost scrambling along the narrow shelf of mud that the falling tide had exposed on the shore under the piers. Dodging the pilings that marched from the land into the river, Frost tried to keep up with the current. He scampered like a dog wanting to jump in the water after a ball but afraid of drowning.

The current slammed Bell against pilings in the water. Bell seized hold of one. Less than fifteen feet separated the detective and the murderer. “Frost,” he shouted, gripping the slimy wood, fighting the current. “Give it up!”

To Bell’s surprise, Harry Frost laughed.

Bell had expected howling curses. Instead, the murderer was laughing. Nor was it insane laughter. He sounded almost cheerful when he said, “Go to hell.”

“It’s over,” Bell shouted. “You can’t get away from us.”

Frost laughed again. “You won’t get me before I get Josephine.”

“Killing your poor wife won’t do you any good, Harry. Give it up.”

Frost stopped laughing. “Poor wife?” His bloodied face worked convulsively. “Poor wife?” He raised his voice in an angry cry: “You don’t know what they were up to!”

“Who? What do you mean?”

Frost stared at him across the rushing tide. “You don’t know nothing,” he said bitterly. He shrugged his massive shoulders. An odd smile flickered across his mouth before his expression hardened like a death mask. “Say, look it this.”

Harry Frost bent down and pawed in the mud. He straightened up, holding Bell’s Browning.

“You dropped this when you ran away by jumpin’ in the water. Here you go!” He flung the pistol in Bell’s face.

Bell caught it on the fly. He juggled the muddy grip into his palm and flicked off the safety. “Elevate! Hands up!”

Harry Frost turned his back on the detective, clinging to the piling in the water, and stalked upstream against the flow of the tide.

“Hands up!”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Frost called over his shoulder, taunting. “You are nothing. You couldn’t even take one punch. You ran away.”

“Stop right there.”

“If you didn’t have the belly to take another punch, you sure as hell don’t have the nerve to shoot me in the back.”