Page 28 of One of Us Is Guilty

Bloch wore a Yankees baseball hat and shades, blue jeans, Doc Marten boots and her usual blue blazer over a white tee. A laptop bag was slung over one shoulder, and she had her cell phone in herhand with the Maps app open as she made her way along Mott Street. Chinatown has the largest population of Chinese people, per square mile, anywhere in the West. It’s one of the city’s tourist highlights, and a constant delight for New Yorkers who like good food, friendly people and colorful streets.

This time of the day, it was Tourist City.

And Bloch looked like any other tourist.

On purpose.

She stopped. Looked up at the buildings, then back at the phone, as if she was trying to get her bearings. Really, beneath the sunglasses, she was checking out the four white guys huddled outside Mann’s Chinese restaurant, smoking cigarettes, and deciding which one would come up behind her and snatch her laptop bag, and which one would take her phone.

They appeared to have decided that the big guy in the Knicks shirt was going for the bag, and the smallest of the crew would take the phone. The small guy could grab the phone and run, whereas the laptop bag required more brute strength.

Bloch turned her back to them, pretending to be guided by the phone. She faced the window of a Chinese grocery store, kept an eye on the reflections in the glass of the two men crossing the street toward her. The little guy had a shaven head, black sweatpants and a black shirt. He broke left as he crossed, so he could come up on Bloch from her left, running fast, right past her, snatching the phone out of her hand. Then the big guy would hit her from behind, grab the bag.

That was the plan.

The little guy disappeared from her view, but Bloch heard his sneakers flapping on the sidewalk, as he started his run toward her.

Bloch tensed.

She wasn’t nervous.

She was getting ready.

Phone in her left hand, outstretched. Transferred her weight onto her right foot.

The little guy was moving fast, maybe ten feet from her now. Coming in from her left.

She threw her weight onto her left foot as he stepped forward, then using the momentum, she swung out her right boot, heel first, leg raised, and stamped down.

It had to be timed perfectly, stepping into the path of the runner moving at speed.

Her boot smacked onto the top of the little guy’s shoe, and if he had been standing still, he would have felt some pain. But he wasn’t standing still. He was running. The problem for the little guy was that while his body was still moving at speed, his foot wasn’t. It was trapped flat on the sidewalk.

The sound of his Achilles tendon snapping was much louder than the small bones in his foot breaking, or indeed his ankle dislocating. When major tendons break, it’s like a gunshot. The little guy collapsed, face planting into the sidewalk where he slid along with a horrible scraping sound until he came to a stop, five feet away, a trail of blood from his ruined face behind him.

Bloch slipped the messenger bag off her right shoulder, and continued her turn in one fluid motion, letting the strap fall to her hand, then flinging out her arm, spinning on her heel, as if she was tossing the hammer at the Olympics, and watched as the messenger bag swung into the surprised face of the big guy in the Knicks shirt.

There was a dull thump as the bag hit him on the left cheek and mouth, the arc continuing into his nose, his feet leaving the ground, such was the force of the swing.

Bloch wasn’t worried about her laptop. It was still in Eddie’s office, at her desk. And she was pretty sure the five-pound red clay brick in her laptop bag wouldn’t be damaged either.

The bag had excellent padding.

The guy’s face didn’t. His nose broke left and a great gout of blood erupted into the air.

Their two pals stood frozen to the spot outside the restaurant. Their cigarettes stuck to their lips as their mouths opened in shock.

‘You want to help your boy pick up his teeth?’ she asked.

One of them slapped the other on the arm, said, ‘Let’s go,’ and they both sprinted away.

A stocky, elderly Chinese man in a brilliant white shirt and black pants came out of Mann’s restaurant and approached Bloch.

‘You didn’t get all of them,’ he said. ‘What if they come back? They’ve been hanging around here for weeks, robbing tourists. The police do nothing. You said you would stop them all.’

‘They’re not coming back, Mr. Mann,’ said Bloch.

She leaned over the big guy, who was lying on his back, his hands over his mouth, blood bubbling up through his fingers.