Run For Your Life

Chapter 1

It was coming on three A.M. when I finally managed to get myself smuggled out of Harlem by a uniform who owed me a favor.

As we negotiated the gridlock maze of news satellite vans, barricades, and mounted crowd-control cops, there still wasn’t the slightest hint about who had killed D-Ray.

Any standoff that led to a death would have been bad enough, but this bizarre shooting was the department’s worst nightmare come true. No matter how much evidence suggested that the NYPD wasn’t responsible, it looked like we were. The rabble-rousers, conspiracy theorists, and their many friends in the New York City media were going to have a field day.

And if that wasn’t enough to make me rip into a blister pack of Prilosec, there was the mountain of reports and other red tape I’d be facing come morning. I’d have gladly accepted another caning from D-Ray’s grandaunt instead.

When the cop dropped me off in front of my West End Avenue apartment building, I was so burnt out from fatigue, unresolved tension, and worry about what lay ahead that I almost stumbled to the door. I craved a few hours of peaceful sleep as a man who’d been crawling for days through the desert craves an oasis.

But the oasis turned out to be a mirage. Right off the bat, my crazy Dominican doorman, Ralph, seemed pissed off that I had to wake him up. I liked Ralph, but I was in no mood for petty surliness, and I gave him a look that told him so.

“Any time you want to trade jobs, Ralph, just let me know,” I said.

He lowered his eyes apologetically. “Rough night, Mr. Bennett?”

“You’ll read about it tomorrow in the Times.”

When I finally made it into my darkened apartment, the Crayola products and Polly Pocket debris that crunched underfoot were actually welcoming. I mustered up enough energy to lock up my service weapon and ammo in the pistol safe in my front hall closet. Then, totally wiped, I collapsed onto one of the high stools at the kitchen island.

If my wife, Maeve, were still here, she’d be standing at the stove right now, handing me an icy Bud while something wonderful fried – chicken wings or a cheeseburger, heavy on the bacon. With divinely sent, cop-wife wisdom, she knew that the only panaceas for the grim reality of the streets were grease, cold beer, a shower, and bed, with her warm beside me.

A strange moment of clarity pierced my weariness, and I realized that she hadn’t just been my love – she’d been my life support. On nights like this, the really bad ones, she’d listen for hours if I needed to talk, and understand completely when I couldn’t.

Right then, more than anything in the world, I longed to feel her fingers caress the back of my neck as she told me that I’d tried my best. That sometimes there’s nothing we can do. I would circle her waist with my hands, and her magic would make all my doubts and guilt and stress disappear.

Maeve had been dead for almost a year now, and in all that time, I hadn’t found any new ways to cope with it – only new ways to miss her.

I’d been at the funeral of a homicide victim one time and heard his mother quote a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It kept ringing in my ears lately, like a song you can’t get out of your head.

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender the kind…

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

I don’t know how much longer I can live without you, Maeve, I thought. My head sagged, and I leaned my forearms on the counter for support.

But I jerked back upright when I noticed that my left hand was resting in a pool of something sticky. I examined the stuff, sniffed it, then tasted it: grape jelly, Welch’s finest, covering not just my hand, but my whole suit jacket sleeve.

Living without you isn’t the only thing that’s impossible, I told Maeve while I stood up on tired legs to search for a paper towel.

How can I take care of all our kids the way only you could?

Chapter 2

I was hopeless on the domestic front, all right. I couldn’t even find a paper towel. I rinsed off the jelly with water as well as I could, and put the suit coat in a closet with some other clothes that were waiting to be dry-cleaned. My luck started looking better when I poked around inside the fridge. There was a Saran-wrapped plate of baked ziti on a shelf, and I dug up a can of Coors Light buried beneath half a case of Capri Suns in the drink drawer. I set the microwave humming, and I was just crunching open my Silver Bullet when a hair-raising sound emanated from the dark interior of my apartment – a sort of howling moan followed by a long, unholy splatter. Then it happened again, only in a different tone.

As I slowly lowered my untouched brew, I was visited by one of those blink moments I’d read about. Though my conscious mind wasn’t sure what was causing those noises, some deeper instinct warned me that it signaled a danger that any sane person would flee with all his might.

Against my better judgment, I staggered down the hall in that direction. Peering around a corner, I spotted a bar of light under the rear bathroom door. I tiptoed to it and slowly twisted the knob.

I stood rooted there, speechless with visceral horror. My instincts had been all too correct. I should have fled when I had the chance.

Not one, not two, but three of my children were projectile-vomiting into the tub. It was like looking at an outtake from The Exorcist while you were seeing triple. I reared back as Ricky, Bridget, and Chrissy hurled again, each one’s upchuck triggered by the previous one, like they were trying to puke a campfire round. Think Vesuvius, Krakatoa, and Mount Saint Helens all going off in musical succession.

Before I could catch myself, I made the mistake of breathing through my nose. My stomach lurched precariously. I blessed my stars that I hadn’t had a chance to eat during the Harlem siege, or to get started on the ziti. Otherwise, yours truly would have chimed in a fourth eruption of his own.

My Irish nanny, Mary Catherine, was right beside the kids, her golden ringlets bouncing out from beneath a red bandanna as she mopped furiously at the blowback they left. She had wisely put on elbow-length, industrial rubber gloves and covered her face with another bandanna, but I could see from her eyes – usually crisp blue, but now damp and faded – that she was as exhausted as I was.

She gave me a quick wave, then pulled off the bandanna and said, in her lilting brogue, “Mike, remember before you left for work, I told you Chrissy was looking a little green?”

I nodded mutely, still struggling to absorb the enormity of the situation.

“I think that flu that’s been going around school has arrived,” Mary Catherine said. “Repent, for the plague is upon us.”

I crossed myself solemnly, trying to pick up her joke to make us both feel a little better. But a nervous part of me wasn’t entirely kidding. The way things had been going, maybe this was the plague.

“I’ve got it from here, Mary,” I said, taking the mop from her. “You’re officially off duty.”

“That, I most certainly am not,” she said indignantly. “Now, the Tylenol is in the cabinet over the sink, but we’re running out of cough syrup, and? -”

“And enough,” I said, pointing toward the stairs to her upstairs apartment, formerly the maid’s quarters. “I don’t need any more patients to take care of.”

“Oh? What makes you think you won’t get sick?” She folded her arms in stubborn loyalty, which I’d come to know well. “Because you’re a big tough copper?”

I sighed. “-No – because I don’t have time to. Get some sleep and you can take over in the morning, okay? That’s what I’m going to need.”

She wavered, then gave me a weary but sweet smile.

“You’re not fooling anybody,” Mary Catherine said. “But okay.”

Chapter 3

I moaned along with the kids as the door closed behind Mary Catherine.

It’s not that I don’t love my children. I really do. But I’m the guardian of the kind of brood that would send Mother Teresa doctor-shopping for pharmaceutical assistance.

How’s this for the Bennett lineup? Juliana, thirteen; Brian, twelve; Jane, eleven; Ricky, ten; Eddie, nine; twins Fiona and Bridget, eight; Trent, six; Shawna, five; and Chrissy, four. A total of ten, count them: two Hispanic, two black, one Asian, and the rest white. All of them are adopted. Pretty impressive, I know. Not many families can field a multicultural baseball team, plus a bench player.

It was primarily Maeve’s idea. We started taking in her “stray angels,” as she called our gang way back before Brangelina got into the act. How could either of us have foreseen the nightmare of her death from cancer at the age of thirty-eight?

I wasn’t completely alone, thank God. Mary Catherine had appeared like a gift from heaven while Maeve was dying, and for some unfathomably merciful reason, she still hadn’t fled screaming. My crotchety grandfather-turned-priest, Seamus, was pastor of Holy Name Church, just around the corner. He’d wangled the job so he could help with the kids and disapprove of me, but the disapproval was a small price to pay for his help.

But it had been nearly impossible to take care of my young ones even when their mother was still alive and they were perfectly healthy. What was I going to do with the apartment transformed into a children’s ward at a hospital?

A thousand worries sprang up in my already stress-racked head. How was I going to get the well kids to school? What about taking the sick ones to a doctor’s office? How much sick leave did I have left? Had I paid this month’s health insurance premium on time? And what about the missed schoolwork? An image of the kids’ strong-willed, meticulous principal, Sister Sheilah, loomed in my mind like a specter.

I palmed my forehead and took a deep breath. I was a trained problem solver, I reminded myself. I could get us through this. It was temporary – a rough spot for sure, but a brief one. Like in any survival situation, the worst thing I could do was panic.

I bent down over Chrissy, my youngest, as she began to wail at the tippity-top of her lungs. Through her thin Backyardigans pj top, I could feel her burning up with fever. So were her copatients, Ricky and Bridget. They all started whining for ginger ale.

Me, too, I thought, searching around frantically for Mary Catherine’s spare bandanna. And let’s not spare the Jack Daniel’s.

Chapter 4

The man in the beautifully tailored, two-button Givenchy suit had finished his morning’s work with his usual expertise and speed. Many things in his life had changed since he had seen the truth – he was a new man now – but his superior intelligence and skills remained intact.

As he stepped into the garage of the stately Locust Valley home, he heard the lawn sprinklers kick on. He glanced at the black dial of his stainless-steel Rolex Explorer. Seven A.M. sharp. Excellent: he was running ahead of schedule, just the way he liked it.

He opened the gleaming door of the BMW 720Li, placed his Vuitton briefcase on the passenger seat, and swung his long, muscular legs under the steering wheel. As he adjusted the rearview mirror, he caught his own reflection. With his lean, brutally chiseled features, his razor-straight, collar-length black hair, and piercing, almost royal blue eyes, he looked like a model in a Vanity Fair ad. He smiled, showing himself his dimples and his perfect, gleaming white teeth.

He had it all, didn’t he? he thought.

The V12 engine of the luxury BMW sedan came to life with an elegant explosion when he turned the key.

Too bad “it all” wasn’t nearly enough.

While the engine warmed, the New Man took a Palm Treo 750 smart phone from his silk-lined inside jacket pocket. The little gadget could do everything: phone, e-mail, surf the Web. He clicked on Microsoft Tasks and opened the file he’d been working on.

It was a mission statement, a brief written summary of his goals, philosophy, and ambitions. He’d actually gotten the idea from the movie Jerry Maguire, of all places. In it, Tom Cruise’s character sends out a mission statement that gets everyone all riled up.

That was precisely what the New Man was going to do today.

Except this was no movie.

He still liked Cruise, even though Cruise had made a fool of himself on Oprah with his couch-jumping antics. Maybe it was the slight resemblance they shared, but the New Man considered him a kind of a role model, almost a psychic brother. Cruise was a perfectionist, a peerless professional, a winner – just like himself.

Rereading the document for the hundredth time, he knew it was complete. The only problem that remained was how to sign it. There was no way he could use his real name, and the “New Man” wasn’t distinguished enough. He could feel the true name hovering at the edge of his mind, but he couldn’t quite reel it in. Well, it would come, he thought, closing the Treo down and tucking it back into his jacket. The important things always did.

He jauntily tapped the garage door opener on the Beemer’s visor, and backed out smoothly toward the daylight flooding in through the rising door.

Then his passing glance caught the rearview mirror again – just in time to see the immense grille of a Lincoln Navigator, parked in the driveway directly in his path.

He slammed on the brakes barely in time to keep from ramming the Navigator and turning the shiny, showy grille into a twisted chunk of metal.

He exhaled a seething breath through his gritted teeth and wrenched the gearshift into park. Goddamn Erica! She had to leave her monster SUV right there, didn’t she? Exactly in the one spot where he couldn’t get around it. Now he’d have to go back inside the house, find the keys, move it, then start all over again in the Beemer. Like he wasn’t in a distinct rush here. Like he didn’t have important things to do. Erica wouldn’t understand that – she’d never had anything important to do.

And now, she never would.

That thought made him feel a little better, but when he strode back to the Navigator three minutes later, his annoyance erupted all over again. This was cutting into his comfortable extra margin of time.

He twisted the key in the ignition so hard it bent, floored the accelerator, and threw the tranny into reverse. The SUV’s seventeen-inch tires screamed as it rocketed backward, streaking rubber down the length of the herringbone-patterned limestone driveway. Instead of curving along with it, he kept going straight, onto the immaculate lawn. The spinning tires tore deep gouges and threw up tufts of shining green grass.

Leaving the Navigator’s engine running, he parked the BMW, much more carefully, on the deserted suburban street. He was feeling a little calmer now. He was almost done with this crap, almost back where he’d started, and still ahead of schedule.

Then, as he was getting into the Navigator to return it to where it had been, a cold jet of water from a sprinkler pop-up lashed across the back of his designer suit from his shoulders to his waist.

His blue eyes practically smoked with fury, and he almost started pounding on the steering wheel with the heels of his hands. But a memory cut in, from an anger management therapy session he’d been ordered to take part in several years before. The therapist had concentrated on techniques to ratchet down his destructive rage: count backward from ten, breathe deeply, clench his fists, and pretend he was squeezing oranges.

Squeeze your oranges, he could almost hear her soothing voice saying to him. Then flick, flick, flick off the juice.

He gave it a try. Squeeze and flick. Squeeze and flick.

The sprinkler jet shot across the Navigator again, pissing into his face through the open window.

“I’ll show you anger management, you idiot bitch!” he snarled, and stomped on the accelerator.

Spraying grass and chunks of limestone, the SUV hurtled straight through the garage and into the back wall at thirty-five miles per hour. The crash was like a bomb going off in a phone booth, with studs splintering and clouds of drywall dust billowing through the air.

He managed to switch off the ignition around the deployed air bag, then squeezed himself out of the seat. Things were nice and quiet now, except for the hiss of the cracked radiator and the soft spattering of the lawn pop-ups.

“That’ll teach her,” he said.

Then he stopped dead.

Teach her. Teacher.

That was it – the perfect name he’d been looking for!

“Erica, you finally did one useful thing,” he said softly.

He shook the Treo out of his damp suit coat and blooped it on.

At the bottom of his mission statement, below “Best wishes,” he typed across the glowing screen: “The Teacher.”

One last time, he checked the recipient boxes to make sure the address for the New York Times was correct.

Then he hit Send.

He tucked the Treo into his pocket and jogged along the elegantly sweeping drive toward the waiting BMW.

He could hardly believe it. Finally, the deed was done.

He was the Teacher, the world was his students, and class was about to begin.

Chapter 5

The Teacher zipped the 720Li into the resident parking section of the Locust Valley, Long Island Rail Road, station, between a Mercedes SL600 convertible and a Range Rover HSE. Even the cars in Locust Valley insisted on expensive neighbors, he thought.

He cut the engine and checked his suit coat, which he’d spread out on the backseat to dry. With the warm, sunny weather helping, the fine fabric had recovered nicely. No one would notice the slight dampness that remained.

His good mood had returned. In fact, he was feeling great. Things were going his way again. He was on top of the world. Whistling the first aria from Mozart’s Idomeneo, he lifted the butter-soft Vuitton briefcase off the passenger seat and got out of the car.

As he approached the platform, he noticed a tall pregnant woman struggling with a baby stroller on the platform steps.

“Here, let me help you with that,” he said. He gripped the stroller’s front axle with his free hand and helped her boost it the rest of the way up the stairs. It was one of those complicated-looking Bugaboo models – expensive, like everything else around here. Including the mother. She was in her early thirties, a head-turning blonde with a diamond tennis bracelet blazing like an electrical fire around her right wrist. Did she notice that her breasts were practically popping out of her skintight lace cami above her swollen belly? he wondered, and decided, Yes. The package was very tantalizing in a kinky way – a way he liked.

He smiled as she appreciatively sized up his Givenchy suit, Prada shoes, and tanned, chiseled face. Of course she was impressed. He had looks, the kind of high sheen polish that came only from money, and unerring taste, and balls. The combination wasn’t all that common.

“Thanks so much,” she said, then rolled her eyes at her sleeping, angelic little boy. “Wouldn’t you know it – we flew back from the Maldives yesterday, I have a lunch date at Jean Georges today that I simply can’t break, and on the flight, our nanny quit. I should have left her there.” She lowered her voice to a teasing, conspiratorial tone. “You wouldn’t want to buy a one-year-old, would you?”

The Teacher gazed into her eyes for a long, leisurely moment, the kind of look that told her he was everything she imagined, and much, much more besides. Her lips parted a little as she stared back at him, rapt.

“I’d certainly rent him for an hour or two if the mom came with him,” he said.

The full-bodied stunner arched herself like a cat, giving him a sly smile of her own.

“You’re naughty and sexy, aren’t you?” she said. “I go into the city two or three days a week, usually about this time – and I’m usually alone. Maybe we’ll bump into each other again, naughty man.” The bastion of elite modern motherhood winked, then sashayed away on her Chanel peep-toe pumps, giving him a show of her long, firm calves and rolling hips.

The Teacher stood there, puzzled. Naughty? He’d meant his remark to insult the whore, to shame her by letting her know how much her assault on human dignity disgusted him. Hadn’t his sarcasm been clear? Obviously, it had gone right by her.

But he’d been plenty clear enough. The problem was that you couldn’t possibly shame someone who had none.

There had been a time in the not-so-distant past when he would have used his formidable charm to get her “digits,” as they said – a time when he’d have taken her to a hotel and let his sadistic lust, inflamed by her pregnancy, run rampant.

But that man was someone he had once been and no longer was – someone he’d left behind in the dust as he trod the path that had made him the Teacher.

Now he could vividly imagine beating her to death with the Bugaboo stroller.

The roar of the arriving New York City-bound train mounted in the Teacher’s ears, and its weight subtly tilted the concrete platform beneath his feet.

“All aboard!” the conductor called from the ringing doors.

Next stop, the Teacher thought, as he joined the other passengers stepping onto the train: Revelation.

Chapter 6

About an hour later, the Teacher stepped onto the 34th Street subway platform for the 2 and 3 trains. It was eight thirty-five A.M., the height of rush hour, and the strip of cement was jam-packed with all stripes of humanity from one grimy end to the other.

He walked to the platform edge’s warning line, near the southern end of the downtown side. On his right was a homeless man who smelled like an open sewer, and on his left, a young female strap hanger, talking loudly on her cell phone.

The Teacher tried to ignore them both. He had tremendously important things to think about. But while he succeeded with the homeless man, it was impossible to shut out the brazen young hussy who was punishing everyone within earshot with the details of her boring, pointless life.

He watched her out of his peripheral vision. She was eighteen or nineteen, tall and thin, and, like her squawking voice, her appearance was all about calling attention to herself – dark tan set off by hair bleached an unnatural white, oversized shades, and a pink cutoff designer hoodie that revealed a diamond belly stud in front and one of those oh-so-original, above-the-butt, slut tattoos in the back.

Forced to hear her rant about her purebred dachshund’s hernia operation through mouthfuls of her onion bagel, he actually found himself leaning more and more toward the reeking Dumpster diver.

The dime-sized lights of an approaching train appeared in the distance of the far tunnel. The Teacher relaxed – relief from this petty torment was on its way.

But the human Bratz doll stepped closer to the platform’s edge, brushing past him as she moved. A blob of cream cheese fell from her breakfast and plopped onto the toe cap of his Prada shoe.

He stared in disbelief, first at his six-hundred-dollar footwear, then at her, as he waited for an apology. But so entrenched was she in the profane hollowness she called her life that she either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care that she had offended a fellow human being.

He felt a sudden lightness in his belly – a hatred and contempt that went far beyond mere anger.

But just as swiftly, it turned to pity. People like her were the very ones that he had come to educate.

Do it now! It’s the perfect opportunity. Start the mission! came a barrage of voices in his head.

But the Plan, he protested. Don’t I have to stick to the Plan?

Can’t you take a fucking bonus when you see one, you anal prick? Improvise, overcome, remember? Now!

The Teacher closed his eyes, as a purpose that he could describe only as holy descended upon him.

Very well, he thought. So be it.

The girl weighed barely a hundred pounds. It took him only a slight hip-check to send her over the edge of the platform.

Too shocked even to scream, she clawed at empty air as she plunged the four feet onto the tracks and landed spread-eagled on her tattooed ass. With beautiful symmetry, her cell phone landed at the exact same instant and clattered along the rails toward the oncoming train.

Yes! the Teacher thought. It was a sign – a perfect beginning!

Now she was screaming. Her mouth was open wide enough to stuff in a tennis ball. For once in her life, instead of drivel, something genuine and human was coming out of it. Congratulations, he thought. I didn’t think you had it in you.

But it wouldn’t do to let his amusement show. “Oh, my God! She jumped!” he called out.

She was trying to drag herself off the track with her hands, as if her legs wouldn’t move. Maybe her spine had been injured in the fall. He could just hear her words before they were drowned out by the roar of the approaching train: “Help me! Somebody, please, God? -”

Too bad you lost your cell phone, you could call for help on that! he felt like yelling at her. He knew he should leave, but her pitiful crawling and the freaked-out crowd were too delicious a sight.

Then out of nowhere, a neatly dressed, middle-aged Hispanic man shoved people aside and leaped down onto the tracks. He scooped up the girl in a fireman’s carry, as naturally as if he’d been doing it all his life.

Which meant he just might be a cop.

At the same instant, someone in the crowd yelled, “She not jump – he push! Him, in suit!”

The Teacher’s head jerked toward the voice. A gnarled, stooped old woman wearing a babushka was pointing at him.

People on the platform had dropped to the floor, reaching down to the hero and the girl. The train’s horn blared and the sparking brakes shrieked as it tried to make the impossible stop in time. It wasn’t more than twenty feet away when the helping hands from the crowd hauled the pair back to the safety of the platform.

“You! You push her!” the old lady cried, still pointing at the Teacher. You’ve got to be kidding, the Teacher thought, furious. Not only did the White Knight appear out of nowhere and save her, but some old bag lady had seen him. His fingers itched to grab her and throw her under the still-moving train.

But with the danger past, other heads were turning toward him. He put on his best charming smile and tapped his temple with his forefinger.

“She’s crazy,” he said, edging backward. “Wacko.” Instead of boarding the subway car, he turned and walked away casually. People still watched him, but no one was going to challenge a man who looked like him, on the word of a woman who looked like her.

But when he got to the stairs, he went up them fast and kept a watch for pursuers, just to be sure. Unbelievable, he thought, shaking his head. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned New York apathy? What a pain in my ass!

Still, there was always something to be learned from experiments. He knew now never to veer from the Plan, no matter how tempting.

He blinked as he stepped out into the different world aboveground. The light-and-shadow-striped gully of Seventh Avenue was crammed with people – thousands, tens of thousands of them.

Good morning, class, he said silently, as he pointed himself toward the geyser of lights in Times Square.

Chapter 7

Getting my kids cleaned up, hydrated, medicated, and back into their beds took me over an hour. I wasn’t able to tuck myself in until after four A.M. Outside my bedroom window, the sky was actually beginning to lighten above the East Side.

Hadn’t pulling an all-nighter once been fun? was my last thought before I fell unconscious.

It seemed like just a finger snap later when my eyes shot open again. The sonata of coughing, sneezing, and wailing that had awakened me continued at full pitch through my open bedroom door. Who needed an alarm clock?

Being a single parent was tough in a lot of ways, but as I lay there staring up at the ceiling, I decided on the absolute worst one: there was nobody beside me to nudge with an elbow and to mumble, “Your turn.”

Somehow I managed to get to my feet. Two more of the kids were down: Jane and Fiona in the bathroom, taking turns at the Bennett vomitorium. A dizzy, pleasant fantasy suddenly occurred to me – maybe I was just having a nightmare.

But it lasted only a couple of nanoseconds before I heard my six-year-old, Trent, moan from his bedroom. Then he uttered a chilling premonition, another thing that fell into the worst-possible category for parents.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” his little voice quavered.

My bathrobe wafted out behind me like Batman’s cape as I hightailed it to the kitchen. I ripped the garbage bag out of the pail, sprinted back to Trent’s room with the empty barrel – and threw open his door just in time to watch him lose it from the top bunk.

Trent ’s guess had been right, and then some. I stood there helplessly, wondering which was worse. That the thick rope of his projectile vomit had demolished his pajamas, his sheets, and the carpet. Or that I’d been forced to witness another scene straight out of The Exorcist.

I gingerly picked him up under his arms and lifted him out of bed, shaking the excess vomit off him into the mess on the floor. Then I carried him, crying, toward my shower. At that point, I was seriously considering taking up crying myself. It wouldn’t help, but if I wailed along with everybody else, maybe at least I wouldn’t feel so alone.

For the next half hour, while dispensing children’s Tylenol, ginger ale, and puke buckets, I wondered what the procedure was for getting a national disaster declared. I knew it usually applied to geographical areas, but my family’s population was almost up there with Rhode Island ’s.

I’d been checking on our baby, Chrissy, every few minutes. She was still giving off more heat than the radiator. That was good, wasn’t it? The body was fighting the virus or something? Or was it the other way around – the higher the fever got, the more you had to worry?

Where was Maeve, to tell me in her sweet but no-nonsense way exactly how much of an idiot I was?

Chrissy’s hacking, crushed-glass cough sounded as loud as thunder to my ears, but when she tried to talk, her voice was just a weak whisper.

“I want my mommy,” she cried.

So do I, honey, I thought, as I did the only thing I could think of, cradle her in my arms. I want your mommy, too.

Chapter 8

“Daddy?”

The speaker was my five-year-old, Shawna, watching me from the kitchen doorway. She’d been following me around all morning, a faithful lieutenant delivering frontline dispatches to a doomed general. ‘Daddy, we’re out of orange juice.’ ‘Daddy, Eddie doesn’t like peanut butter.’

I raised my hand in a wait gesture as I squinted at the microscopic Sanskrit on a bottle of children’s cough syrup. Which patient was this for? I tried to remember. Ah, yes, Chrissy. One teaspoon for somebody two to five years and under forty-seven pounds, I managed to decipher. I didn’t have any clear idea of how much she weighed, but she was four and normal size, so I decided to go with it.

“Daddy?” Shawna inquired again, as the microwave timer behind me started beeping like a nuclear reactor approaching meltdown. Between tending to the sick kids and getting the well ones ready for school, our household had now apparently entered DEFCON 3.

“Yes, baby?” I yelled above the din, now looking around for the medicine bottle’s plastic measuring cup, which had gone AWOL.

“Eddie’s wearing two different-colored socks,” she said solemnly.

I almost dropped the cough syrup and collapsed in laughter. But she looked so concerned that I managed to keep a straight face.

“What two colors?” I said.

“Black and blue.”

Finally, a no-brainer. “That’s okay,” I said. “Cool, in fact. He’s a trendsetter.”

I gave up on trying to find the measuring cup – it could be anywhere on the planet by now – and started looking for an alternative. My roving gaze landed on my oldest son, Brian, eating Cap’n Crunch at the kitchen table just three feet away.

“Hey!” he said as I snatched his spoon out of his hand.

“All’s fair in love and especially war,” I said, drying the spoon off on my bathrobe.

“War? Jeez, Dad, I’m just trying to eat breakfast.”

“Slurping works pretty good with cereal,” I said. “Try it.”

I was tilting out the dose of cough syrup when I noticed that a pregnant silence had taken over the kitchen.

Uh-oh.

“Well, good morning, Mike,” Mary Catherine said behind me. “What do you think you’re doing with that spoon?”

I tried giving her my warmest smile while I groped for an answer.

“Uhh – a teaspoon’s a teaspoon, right?” I said.

“Not with medicine, it’s not.” Mary Catherine set a shopping bag on the counter and took out a fresh new package of Vicks children’s cough syrup. “This is what civilized humans use,” she said, producing the bottle’s plastic measuring cup and holding it up.

“Daddy?” It was Shawna again.

“Yes, Shawna?” I said, for the thousandth time that morning.

“You’re totally busted!” She ran away down the hall, giggling.

Busted or not, I didn’t think I’d ever been so glad to see anybody in my life as I was to see Mary Catherine just then.

“You take over the brain work,” I said, and picked up a vomit pail. “I’ll go back to swamping.”

“Right,” she said, pouring the dose of cough syrup carefully into the cup. Then, impishly, she offered it to me. “Care for a shot of this to brace you up?”

“You bet. Neat, with a beer back.”

“Sorry, too early for beer. But I’ll make some coffee.”

“You’re a miracle, Mary,” I said.

As I squeezed past her in the tight kitchen aisle, it suddenly struck me that she was a very warm and lovely miracle. Maybe she read my mind, because I thought I saw her start to blush before she turned hastily away.

She’d brought a bunch of other supplies, too, including a packet of Flents ear-loop surgical masks. We armored ourselves with them and spent the rest of the hour treating the sick. And by we, I really mean her. While I stayed on relatively undemanding bucket-emptying and sheet-changing patrol, she took care of dispensing medicine and getting the survivors ready for school.

Within twenty minutes, the moans of the dying had stopped, and the living were in the front hall, lined up, scrubbed, combed, and even wearing correct socks. My private Florence Nightingale had done the impossible. The insanity was almost under control.

Almost. On the way out the door, Brian, my oldest boy, suddenly bent double, clutching his belly.

“Ohhhh, I don’t feel so hot,” he groaned.

Mary Catherine didn’t hesitate a second. She pressed the back of her hand against his forehead to feel his temperature, then lightly swatted her fingers against the side of his ear.

“The ‘didn’t-study’ flu is what you’ve got, as if I didn’t know about your math test,” she said. “Get moving, you malingerer. I’ve well enough to do around this house than to deal with your messin’.”

As they left, I did something I’d written off for this morning. I smiled with genuine good humor.

Cancel the National Guard, I thought. All this situation required was one petite young Irish lass.

Chapter 9

The Teacher walked into Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library, at eleven A.M. – still ahead of schedule. He’d stopped by his headquarters, a rented apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, and changed his appearance from head to toe. The Rolex was gone, replaced by a Casio sports watch. So was the Givenchy suit. Now he was wearing wraparound shades, a Jets cap, a traffic-cone-orange Mets spring training jersey, and baggy yellow basketball shorts.

No one could possibly have recognized him as the elegant businessman who’d pushed that worthless bitch in front of the train – which was precisely the point. To make the mission succeed, speed and surprise were key. He needed to strike like a cobra, get in and back out again before anyone even knew he’d been there. Melt into the crowds and use them as human shields. Exploit the multilevel, mazelike streetscape of Manhattan. Totally change his appearance – then strike again.

He found an empty folding chair in the park, removed his Palm Treo from his fanny pack, and brought up the other vital document it contained. To accompany his mission statement, the Plan was a fourteen-page blueprint for what he needed to accomplish. He scrolled to its last and most important page, a long bullet-pointed list. Almost in a trance, he read it over slowly, mentally rehearsing each and every possibility as he went along, visualizing how he would perform every act with calm, serious perfection.

He’d first learned about the power of visualization when he was a pitcher on the baseball team at Princeton. He wasn’t especially gifted – just a basic power righty, with a fastball in the low nineties. But his coach had taught him to go over the lineup of the opposing team before every game, imagining each strikeout in detail.

That coach had taught him a couple of more down-to-earth techniques, too. One was a velvety smooth delivery that made him seem faster. Another was to throw inside, which led to his well-deserved reputation as a headhunter.

And that was what had gotten him kicked off the team in his junior year. He’d plunked some blond pansy from Dartmouth so hard that the baseball cracked his helmet and gave him a concussion. The Dartmouth team assumed that he’d done it on purpose, because the asshole had gone three for three against him. The field had erupted in a bench-clearing brawl.

They were right that the Teacher had thrown the beaner deliberately, but wrong about the reason. What had pissed him off was the other guy’s hot girlfriend, sitting in the front row of the stands, who jumped up and cheered every time he was at bat. No way did that faggot deserve a girl like her. So the Teacher had decided to show her what a real man was all about.

He smiled at the memory. It had been his last game, but far and away the best of his life. He’d broken the Dartmouth third-base coach’s nose and all but spiked the ear off their catcher. If you had to go out, that was the way to do it. Too bad he’d never seen the girl again. But she’d remember him for the rest of her life.

The Teacher shook away the reverie and tucked the Treo safely back into his fanny pack. He stood, spent a moment stretching, then lowered himself to a runner’s on-your-mark stance, fingers digging into the gravel path.

He had his game face on now. It was time to get to work.

Bang! went an imaginary starting pistol in his head.

With his strong legs churning and gravel flying behind him, he bolted into a sprint.

Chapter 10

Step one of the plan was to create a smoke screen. The Teacher was racing along the pavement between 41st and 40th when he spotted a perfect opportunity – a middle-aged businessman jaywalking across Sixth Avenue.

Strike like a cobra, he thought, instantly changing the course of his pounding footsteps.

He crashed into the suit like a linebacker, catching him in a headlock and dragging him to the curb.

“Hey! What the hell?” the guy gasped, struggling feebly.

“Cross on the green, not in between,” the Teacher sang, and spilled him to the pavement. “Like a human being – not a worthless animal.”

He spun away, and within seconds he was back at full speed, arms pumping, alert for his next target. He spotted it in an Asian restaurant deliveryman who was rushing south down the opposite sidewalk, jostling other pedestrians as he wove in and out of the crowd.

The Teacher made another instant turn, dashing out in front of the oncoming traffic and across the street, accompanied by a symphony of blaring horns, screeching brakes, and shouted curses.

Take-out food bags flew into the air like startled pigeons as he clotheslined the deliveryman with a forearm across the throat.

“Where’s the fire, buddy?” the Teacher roared. “This is a sidewalk, not a racetrack. Show some fucking courtesy, you got me?”

He took off again, his flying feet barely touching the pavement. He felt incredible, invincible. He could run straight up the fronts of the glass canyon office towers and down the backs of them. He could run forever.

“WE WILL, WE WILL, ROCK YOU!” he screamed into startled faces. He’d always hated that song, but damn if it didn’t feel spot-on right now.

People stopped and stared. The street-smart ones, hot dog vendors and waiting radio car drivers and bike messengers, were wisely getting the hell out of his way.

It was hard to rouse attention on the jaded streets of Manhattan, but he was doing a bang-up job.

The light bouncing off the dark glass curtains of the monstrous buildings poured down on him like a holy baptism. His face split into a huge grin, and his eyes filled with happy tears.

He was actually doing it. After all the planning, all the obstacles, it was showtime.

He jumped out into the curb lane of the wide avenue and sprinted full bore toward the trees of Central Park.

Chapter 11

Twenty minutes later, the Teacher emerged from Central Park on the Upper East Side. Though he’d run more than thirty blocks, he hardly noticed it. He wasn’t even winded. He raced out across tony Fifth Avenue and kept going east down 72nd.

Then he finally slowed to a halt, in front of a fabulously ornate four-story French château-style building on the southeast corner of 72nd and Madison – the flagship Ralph Lauren store.

The first target that really counted.

The Teacher glanced at his watch to make sure he was still on schedule, then took a long look up and down both the side street and the avenue. There were no cops in sight, which wasn’t surprising. This store sat smack-dab in the middle of the city’s most populated precinct. Roughly fifty officers, probably fewer counting sick days and vacation, were supposed to protect more than two hundred thousand people. Good luck, the Teacher thought. He pulled open the store’s shining brass door and stepped inside.

He gazed around, taking in the Persian rugs, chandeliers, and oil paintings on the fifteen-foot mahogany-paneled walls. Not exactly your local Kmart. Among the antiques and flower arrangements, piles of cashmere cable knits and oxford-cloth button-downs were distributed with artful casualness. The overall impression was that you’d walked in and caught the Vanderbilts unpacking from a summer in Europe.

In other words, it was disgusting. He jogged up the wide mahogany stairs to the men’s shop.

A slick-haired man in an impeccably tailored three-piece suit stood behind an antique glass display case filled with neckties. One of his eyebrows rose just enough to signify his contempt for the slovenly buffoon he saw approaching.

“May I help you?” he said with a condescension that bordered on vicious. The Teacher knew that if he answered “yes,” the salesman would laugh out loud.

So he just smiled.

“Are we a trifle language-challenged, sir?” the malicious bastard crooned. Then he dropped the polished pretense and spoke in much coarser, and much more natural-sounding, Brooklynese. “We’re all outta fanny packs today. Maybe you better go to Mo’s instead.”

The Teacher still didn’t speak. Instead, he unzipped the little pack and took out a pair of objects that looked like Cheez Doodles. They were actually firing-range earplugs. Without hurrying, he pressed one of them into his left ear.

The haberdasher started to look flustered, and took on his piss-elegant tone again.

“I beg your pardon, sir, I didn’t realize you needed hearing aids. Still, if you’re not here to purchase something, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

The Teacher paused, with the second earplug still between his fingers, and finally spoke.

“I’m really here to give you a lesson,” he said.

“Give me a lesson?”

“In salesmanship,” the Teacher said, mimicking the prick’s supercilious tone. “You’ll be sew much more successful if you learn to treat all your customers with respect. Watch how it should be done.”

He pushed in the second earplug, then reached into the fanny pack again and drew out an oiled pistol.

“And here,” he said, with his words muffled in his own ears, “we have the Colt M1911 semiautomatic in.45 caliber. Would you care to try it, sir? I dew believe you’ll be impressed by its performance.” He flicked off the safety and put the hammer on full cock.

The clerk’s mouth opened in an O. His lips moved as he stammered words that the Teacher could barely hear. “Oh, my God… terribly s-sorry…” One soft, manicured hand flew to the cash register and punched open the drawer. “Please, take everything…”

But his other hand moved, too, dropping under the counter, no doubt to reach for a hidden alarm button.

The Teacher was expecting that. His finger twitched, and the first big.45-caliber round boomed like a stick of dynamite, blowing the display case into a cymbal crash of shattering glass. The clerk screamed, staggering backward, clutching at his mangled, bloody hand.

“I’m not here to take,” the Teacher said quietly. “I’m here to give you something you’ve wanted your whole life, but were afraid to ask for.”

“Redemption.” He emptied the rest of the clip point-blank into the salesman’s chest.

Watching him careen backward, limbs flopping spastically like he’d been hit by a giant sledgehammer, was the most electrically satisfying moment of the Teacher’s life.

There were going to be more of those soon.

He reloaded the Colt with smooth, practiced motions as he hurried back down the steps. As he got to the door, he noticed another suave clerk, crouched beside a cashmere upholstered club chair. This man was shivering in shock, too terrified even to scream for help.

The Teacher paused long enough to press the Colt’s barrel against his cheek. Then he spun the big gun off his finger, caught it in the air, and stuffed it back into his fanny pack.

“You are the witness to history,” the Teacher said, patting the sniveling fop on the head. “I envy you.”

He opened the door enough to scan the streets again, then stepped out of the store and blended in with the passersby on 72nd – once again, just another anonymous guy in the crowd. But he headed straight for the westbound side of the street and hailed the first cab he saw. He instructed the turbaned driver to take him to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, then settled back in the seat and took out the Treo.

“Ralph Lauren Clerk” was the first item that came up on the screen. He deleted it from the list and checked his watch. The operation had taken just two minutes from start to finish, plus he’d caught a cab right off the bat – all even smoother than he could have hoped.

He wasn’t just the Teacher. He was the man.

Chapter 12

At nine that morning, I called my office to take a personal day. It was another no-brainer. If half a dozen sick kids wasn’t a personal crisis, what was? Then, after Mary Catherine and I made sure the troops were accounted for and tended to, I did something I hadn’t done in over a week. I pulled on my FULL-BLOODED IRISH T-shirt and a pair of sweats and went for a run.

As usual, I huffed it up to Grant’s Tomb at 122nd and Riverside to pay my respects to the general. It would have taken magic to make me resemble the lean Manhattan College Jasper center fielder I’d once been, but I managed to keep a steady, strong pace the entire way.

I studiously avoided newspaper stands that would have thrown last night’s debacle in my face, and not a single person started shooting at me. It was by far the nicest morning I’d had in recent memory.

When I got back home, I started at the top of my priority list – substituting a dollar bill for the tooth that Fiona had lost and left under her pillow. In the confusion last night, I’d forgotten all about it. The tooth fairy’s job performance ratings, like a lot of other things around this place, had gone way downhill since we’d lost Maeve.

With that taken care of, I brewed a pot of coffee and went on to less important tasks, like paying bills online. I took my time, letting my thoughts wander as I poked along. It felt great playing a little hooky for a change. Maybe I should have felt guilty about all those DD5 incident reports I needed to file, but they could write themselves as far as I was concerned. I was home with my own crew, feeling the love, and especially ecstatic to be taking care of people who weren’t trying to kill me for it.

For about the billionth time, I found myself thinking about how I’d been burning myself at both ends lately – burning myself out, really. That, in turn, led me to contemplate some of the job offers I’d gotten in the past few months, since a major hostage incident at St. Patrick’s Cathedral had made me into a sort of celebrity cop.

The best prospect was a corporate security management position at ABC. The job consisted of coordinating security at the local news studios they had over on Columbus Avenue in the Sixties. The commute was easy, the hours were human, and it paid about twice my current salary.

But I still had five years to go until my twenty-year pension, and frankly I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to hand in my shield just yet. The main problem was that I loved being a cop, especially a homicide detective. It was who I was.

Then again, I also loved my family, who needed me more now than ever. A job where I could count on being home every evening and weekend would be a godsend, and so would the extra money. What to do?

As usual, no clear, easy decision came to me. When I finished with the bills and some other busywork, I rounded up my sick kids and sat everybody down in front of the TV for a game of Harry Potter: Scene It?

Then my cell phone rang. I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good news. Still, I couldn’t ignore it.

“Mike Bennett,” I said.

“Hi, Mike. This is Marissa Wyatt. Would you hold for Commissioner Daly?”

I sat up, blinking. I knew that calling in for a personal, after the chaos of last night, might cause a few grumbles. But a call from the commissioner’s office? What did he want with me? Had the Harlem fiasco turned that bad that fast?

“Mike?” Daly said.

I’d met Daly at a couple of upper-level meetings I’d been invited to. He seemed like a straight shooter, at least as straight a shooter as could be found in the puzzle palace that was One Police Plaza. I decided I might as well make my case right away.

“Hi, Commissioner,” I said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the way things went last night? -”

He cut me off brusquely. “We’ll talk about that later. I need you on the bricks, right now. Strange things going down this fair morning. A couple of psycho assaults, including somebody pushing a young woman in front of a subway. Then an ugly shooting at the Polo store on Madison about fifteen minutes ago. Since today looks like a catastrophe in the making, and you happen to be the department’s only former CRU section chief, I’m handpicking you to coordinate our team.”

Damn, I thought. Not fair. The commissioner must have been looking through my personnel file. In another life, back when I was single, I’d spent some time working for the CRU, or Catastrophic Response Unit, a federal forward-response team that helped out and investigated disasters, especially ones that seemed to have a criminal element.

But to call me a section chief was ridiculous. Because of my Irish gift o’ gab, they just put me out in front to distract everyone while the real heroes – my team of forensic anthropologists, environmental engineers, and clinical psychologists – made me look good.

“C’mon, Commissioner. That was a long time ago. I’ll admit it. I lost my head and worked for the Feds for a few years. You can’t use that against me,” I said. Besides, doesn’t the Nineteenth Precinct have detectives anymore?

“Oh, yes, I can. You’re my star, Mike, like it or not. And this one’s a big red ball. Make me look good, okay? There’s a payoff for you, too – you’re on assignment, so you don’t have to write reports about the Harlem thing, or deal with the media jackals. The office of information has just about lit on fire with requests to interview you.”

The truth, I knew perfectly well, was that Daly didn’t want anybody talking to the media about last night until all the facts were in. But he was using it to make me think he was doing me a favor. Add public relations savvy to his skill set, I thought.

“Get on your horse and go straight to Seventy-second, ASAP,” he finished. “Chief of Detectives McGinnis will fill you in.”

Get on my what? I thought, listening to the dial tone. No wonder he was commissioner. The man was a professional manipulator. Not only did he show no respect for my personal day, he hadn’t even given me a chance to tell him about my sick kids.

I put the phone away, pissed off at Daly and at all the idiots out there who used guns to solve their problems, but mostly heartbroken because my rare quality time with my kids was ruined. At least Mary Catherine was here to take over, and they’d probably have more fun with her, anyway. I was the big loser.

I decided I’d better take a quick shower. I hadn’t washed off the sweat from my run, and I might not get another chance for a couple of days. Distracted by thoughts of the crime scene I was about to face, I stepped into the bathtub without looking – until my toes squished in the vomit-choked drain.

I’d failed at playing hooky from work, and I couldn’t even get away with it here at home, I thought, reaching for the toilet paper.

Chapter 13

Straddling his Frejus ten-speed, the Teacher clung with one hand to the rear fender of a number 5 city bus barreling along Fifth Avenue. Just as it got to 52nd, he let go and peeled off down the side street. Legs already pumping, he was just able to thread the bike between a town car and the huge wooden wheels of a Central Park buggy.

After being dropped at the Port Authority, he had jogged back to his apartment and changed into another, entirely different outfit – frayed Bianchi bike shorts, faded Motta top, and bike helmet – and picked up the ten-speed. Now he looked like any other low-rent, imitation Lance Armstrong bike messenger.

Stick and move, he thought, wrenching the ten-speed high into the air to bunny-hop a construction plate.

And this disguise had another beauty of its own. It was bursting with irony and symbolism. Because he was delivering one mother of a message this morning.

To: World

From: The Teacher

Subject: Existence, the Universe, the Meaninglessness of Life

Like background music to his thoughts, a cacophony of car horns on full blast rose from the vehicles clogged motionless in the narrow trench of the street as a delivery truck tried to parallel-park.

“Shaddup, ya dirty scumbags!” the truck’s ape-faced driver was yelling out the window.

You have a nice day, too, the Teacher thought, lasering the bike through the mess.

The stink of garbage and piss assaulted his nostrils as he sailed past a waist-high line of black Hefty trash bags piled along the curb. Or was it coming from the hot dog cart beside them? Hard to tell. He spotted a parking sign with the pleasant greeting DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE! Jesus – why not just cut to the chase and say, COMMIT SUICIDE?

He gaped in disbelief at the gutless herds of secretaries and businesspeople milling around on the corners, waiting like sheep for the stoplights that controlled their lives. How could they even pretend that this living hell they were zombie-shuffling through was acceptable? Legions of the walking dead, with a brainlessness that defied reason.

But wait. They weren’t necessarily brainless, or even stupid – that was a bit harsh. They were ignorant. Uninstructed.

And that was where he came in: to show them the way.

He brought the bike to a skidding, tire-squealing stop in front of a restaurant on the north side of the street.

This morning’s second lesson was going to be even more impressive than the first one.

The line of jockey statues on the 21 Club’s balcony looked down arrogantly as he slipped his OnGuard lock over his head and chained the Frejus to the wrought-iron railing. As he maneuvered through the throng of well-dressed businesspeople under the awning, a barrage of new scents wafted to him – this time, rich cigar smoke, succulent steak, and expensive perfume. Stepping inside the place was like entering another dimension, one of muted lighting and classy jazz, of fireplaces and draperies and wingback chairs.

For just a second, his will wavered. For the slightest of moments, he was tempted to keep on walking to the dark wood-paneled bar in the back – to order a cold, stiff, alcoholic drink, to lay down his burden at one of the plush red leather banquettes, to put aside the mighty cup of his destiny.

He steeled himself. The cup was heavy, yes – it would crush most men. Only an equally strong resolve, like his own, could bear it. That resolve would not fail.

“Excuse me! Whoa!” a voice said. The Teacher turned to see a tall maître d’ zeroing in on him like a smart bomb. “Jackets are required and restrooms are for customers only. If you’re making a delivery, use the service entrance.”

“This is the Twenty-one Club, right?” the Teacher said.

The mâitre d’s lips curved in an icy smile. “Very good. What company do you work for? I’ll be sure to use it next time I need a very clever delivery boy.”

The Teacher ignored the sneer as if he didn’t notice it. “Package for a Mr. Joe Miller,” he said, opening the flap of his Chrome courier bag.

“I’m Joe Miller. You sure? I’m not expecting anything.”

“Maybe somebody wants to surprise you.” The Teacher winked as he lifted a large envelope from the pouch. “Maybe you impressed one of your lady customers more than you know.”

Miller obviously found that an interesting thought. “All right, thanks. But next time, the service entrance, got it?”

The Teacher nodded solemnly. “Without a doubt.” You bet, buddy. As if there was going to be a next time.

“Here you go,” Miller said, thumbing a couple of dollar bills out of his wallet.

“Oh, no, I can’t take tips,” the Teacher said. “But I’m supposed to wait for a response.” He winked again as he handed Miller the envelope. “You might not want to open this in front of all those people, if you know what I mean.”

The mâitre d’ glanced around. The crowd waiting to be seated was growing. But his curiosity won out. Impatiently, he stepped into a small anteroom beside the reservation desk. The Teacher followed him, waiting at the doorway.

He watched as Miller tore open the envelope and stared at the letter it held. The maître d’s haughty face looked puzzled.

“?‘Your blood is my paint’?” he said. “?‘Your flesh is my clay’? What the hell is this crap?” He looked up at the Teacher, getting angry now. “Who sent this?”

The Teacher stepped into the room with him.

“Actually,” he said, pulling a silenced.22-caliber Colt Woodsman pistol from his bag and placing the barrel against the sycophant’s empty heart, “I did.”

He waited the split second it took for comprehension to dawn in the other man’s eyes. Then, before Miller could so much as blink, the Teacher pulled the trigger twice.

Even in the small room, the sound was inconsequential, like someone clearing his throat.

As the maitre d’ collapsed in a heap of dead flesh, the Teacher eased him into a chair, then quickly righted a sheaf of menus that had started spilling off a shelf. He tucked the bloody missive between the man’s shoes. Anyone who glanced in would think that Miller had sat down for a moment to read.

Shielding the gun from sight, the Teacher turned to the open doorway and scanned the scene outside. He preferred stealth, but he was more than happy to shoot his way out if he had to.

But in both the crowded dining room and bar, people continued to laugh and drink, talk and eat, like the pointless animatronic jackasses they were. The carnival wheel continued to spin. Nobody had noticed a thing. What else was new?

He slipped the warm gun into his bag, and a few steps later he was back outside, straddling his ten-speed. There was still nobody paying any attention to him. He shrugged. Might as well update the list. He took out his Treo, brought up the Plan on its glowing screen, and deleted “-Self-satisfied Prick at 21.”

“Hey, is that the 750?” a man’s voice said. A sleek, dressed-to-the-nines Wall Street type, jawing a hundred-dollar Havana, pulled out his own smart phone from his pin-striped jacket. “Treos kick ass, boyeee,” he said.

Boyeee? Even Wall Street Journal-reading, Ivy League bond traders were talking like crack dealers these days. It was bad enough that society had become a bunch of amoral, money-grubbing shitheads, but how had it turned into gangsta wannabes, too?

“Yeah, um, word to your moms, home slice,” the Teacher said, and gave the asshole a thumbs-up as he rolled the Frejus out into the street.

Chapter 14

My official NYPD vehicle was in the shop for repairs, so I was reduced to using the family car. It was a sturdy, battle-tested Dodge van, bought used a few months ago, although the way my luck was running, the horn would go any second now, like on the VW in Little Miss Sunshine.

I was on my way to 72nd Street, steering with one hand and knotting my tie with the other, when Chief of Detectives McGinnis called my cell.

“Where the hell are you, Bennett?” His voice was forceful enough to burst a blood vessel.

“Moving as fast as I can, Chief,” I said. “I’ll be there within five. What’s up?”

“The maître d’ at the Twenty-one Club just got popped!”

I felt an all-too-familiar twisting in the pit of my stomach. The Polo store and now 21? Two murders, at two of the city’s highest-profile places, within an hour of each other? This was starting to look as bad as last night, and maybe worse.

“You got any take on it?” I said.

“Maybe Donald Trump finally went postal. Maybe there’s a roving shooter, maybe a couple of them and it’s a coincidence. We’ve mobilized the Counter-Terror Unit, just in case that’s involved. That’s your specialty, right – terrorism? No, I’m sorry, catastrophes.”

I shook my head. The cat was all the way out of the bag about my working for the CRU, wasn’t it? Pretty soon the whole NYPD would learn my dirty little secret. Michael Bennett had once been a Fed.

“I wouldn’t call it a specialty,” I said.

“I don’t care what you call it. You’re the commissioner’s handpicked expert. Now get your ass over here and figure it all out for me, huh?”

So that was why McGinnis’s britches were in a knot, I thought. I wasn’t his first choice to handle this, but he’d been overridden by Commissioner Daly.

“You think I volunteered for this, Chief?” I shot back. But he’d already hung up.

I stomped down on the Dodge’s gas pedal, sending a tangle of errant soccer cleats and Happy Meal castoffs rattling around in the passenger-seat footwell.

Chapter 15

The front of the Madison Avenue Polo store looked like a police vehicle sales auction. There were cop motorcycles, Emergency Service Unit heavy rescue trucks, dozens of blue-and-whites.

I’d seen hot crime scenes before, but this was way over the top. Then I realized it must have been part of the NYPD Counter-Terror Unit’s new surge tactic, which I’d heard about but hadn’t yet seen. At the first hint of a threat, as many as two hundred cops would be sent in to blanket an area with an overwhelming shock-and-awe presence.

Maybe Daly was right, I thought for a moment. The lights and cops and chaos, the adrenaline rush stiffening my spine. What I was seeing was definitely reminding me of the disaster scenes I once worked.

It was impressive, all right. As I badged my way past the Emergency Service Unit guys on the sidewalk, I blinked warily at the cut-down M16s they were strapping on. Those had been issued after 9/11, but I still couldn’t get used to them, and I probably never would. If we could just go back to the good old days when only the drug dealers had assault rifles, I thought.

The inside of Polo’s flagship store looked satanically plush, especially to a guy who did most of his shopping at Old Navy and the Children’s Place. A sandy-haired man at the top of the mahogany staircase came forward to meet me – Terry Lavery, a very competent Nineteenth Precinct detective. I was glad to see somebody who I knew I could get along with, and who was smart, to boot.

“What do you think of the army out there, Mikey?” he said. “I haven’t seen this much NYPD blue since the DC convention.”

I snapped my fingers, like a lightbulb in my head had just gone on.

“So that’s why I want to get naked and slide down this banister,” I said. “Hey, right off, I just want to let you know that it wasn’t my idea to come tromping on your turf. I actually called in for a personal today. But the PC insisted. He wants me out of the way, so I can’t be questioned about that debacle up in Harlem last night.”

“Sure, sure,” Lavery said, rolling his eyes. “Just tell the Commish I said hi, next time you meet him for lunch at Elaine’s.”

With the ritual chop-busting out of the way, Lavery flipped opened his notepad.

“Here’s what we got so far,” he said. “Victim’s name is Kyle Devens. He was forty-six, gay, lived in Brooklyn, been working here eleven years. There was one witness to the actual incident, another clerk. He managed to whisper about a dozen words to us, then he went catatonic, so we don’t have a description of the shooter yet.”

“Near as we can put it all together, he walked in here before noon, pulled out a semiautomatic pistol, pumped a full clip into our boy, then walked back out.”

“That’s it?” I said. “No robbery, no struggle, nothing else?”

“If he was trying to hold the place up, he really botched it, because absolutely nothing’s missing. If there’s another reason, we don’t know it.”

“Did Devens have a boyfriend?” I said. Despite the antiterror response, we had to treat this as a regular murder until we knew otherwise.

“The manager said he lived with a guy a couple of years ago, but it didn’t work out, so he moved back in with his mother. We’re still trying to contact her. But there didn’t seem to be anything in the wind like a lovers’ quarrel, and he got along with his coworkers. No priors or indications that he might have hung out with bad guys.”

My lousy luck was holding. It was already clear that this wasn’t going to be an easy case.

My gaze moved to the scattered cuff links in a crime scene cop’s camera FlashPack, sparkling like ornaments on the expensive rug – except that mixed in with them were several fat.45-caliber brass shell casings.

The Crime Scene Unit tech, an old friend named John Cleary, caught me eyeing them. “Don’t get your hopes up, Mike,” he said. “We already dusted them. No prints. And if that’s not good enough news, no exit wounds, from a.45 at point-blank range. I’m not the ME, but my guess is that means hollow points.”

More good news, all right. Not just a murderous psycho, but one who was locked and loaded with especially lethal ammo.

Kyle Devens’s body was still lying on the fancy rug, too. He’d fallen in such a way that he was reflected in the ten-foot-high corner try-on mirror – a composition of blood, death, and broken glass, multiplied by three. I stared down at the gaping wounds in his chest.

“Yeah, when you’re up against unarmed tie salesmen, everyone knows it’s all about stopping power.”

But almost more unsettling than the degree of violence was the shooter’s meticulousness. Not only had he been quick and efficient, he’d used gloves when he loaded his gun.

I thought of the 21 Club killing and I started to get the vague, uneasy hunch that we were dealing with the same man.

There was nothing vague about my feeling that this was going to be one heck of a long day. That settled down on me like a soggy raincoat.

Chapter 16

A minor commotion at the store’s ground-floor entrance signaled the arrival of the medical examiner. I got out of his way and put in a call to Midtown South to find out if any more information had come to light about the other assaults that Commissioner Daly had mentioned.

The detective who’d caught the case was a newly promoted woman named Beth Peters, whom I’d never met before.

“The girl in the subway says somebody shoved her. She wasn’t paying attention, so she didn’t see who. But a dozen witnesses saw a man standing right beside her. One elderly lady swears he bumped her deliberately with his hip, and several others think he might have.”

“Description of the guy?” I said.

“Not anything like you’d think. A businessman, very well groomed, wearing a quote unquote ‘gorgeous’ tailored gray suit. White male, around thirty. Black hair, six two, two hundred pounds. In other words, a metrosexual sociopath. Very twenty-first-century, right?”

Detective Peters was crisp, clear, and sardonic. I decided I was going to get along fine with her.

“Just right, unfortunately,” I said. “Anything on video, like which direction he headed?”

“We collected surveillance tapes from Macy’s and a few other places around Herald Square. The witnesses are viewing them as we speak, but I’m not holding my breath. Thirty-fourth and Seventh at morning rush, it looks like outside Yankee Stadium after a play-off game.”

A possible correspondence ticked in my brain – between a man who was beautifully dressed and groomed, and the ultra-high-fashion men’s store where I was standing. Was there some kind of upper-class angle?

“At least we’ll have your witnesses to ID this maniac once we catch him,” I said. “Thanks, Beth. Let’s keep each other posted.”

When I finished the call, I granted myself a sixty-second time-out to take a leak. The manager’s men’s room, though small, was almost as luxurious as the rest of the store. And it didn’t smell like puke. I gave it four stars.

I took the opportunity to phone back home.

“I’m really sorry,” I told Mary Catherine when she answered. “You know I wanted to take today off to give you a hand, but there’s this wacko – or maybe wackos – running around and… anyway, suffice it to say, I’m not going to be home for a while.”

“I’m doing fine, Mike. Truth is, I’m glad to get you out from underneath me feet,” she said.

I wasn’t sure that was a compliment, but I was damn sure that the lass was a trouper.

“Thanks a million, Mary,” I said. “I’ll check in again when I get a chance.”

“Wait, someone here wants to talk to you,” she said.

“Daddy?” It was Chrissy, my youngest. Her “sore froath,” as she called it, actually sounded a little better. Thank God for small mercies.

“Daddy, please tell Ricky to stop bothering me,” she said. “It’s my turn to watch TV.”

Yet another bonus to being a widower, I thought. Oh, the joys of teleparenting.

“Put him on, Peep,” I said.

That’s when somebody else tried to walk into the small bathroom, and opened the door so hard it crashed into my back. I fumbled for my flying phone and managed to save it from the urinal by sheer luck.

“Ocupado, you moron,” I yelled, kick-slamming the door closed behind me.

What a day, I thought. Then – day? What the hell was I saying? What a lifetime.

Chapter 17

The next priority on my list was to start comparing descriptions of the suspects in the different incidents. The problem was, I had only the one that Beth Peters had given me. That kind of information from the 21 Club hadn’t gotten to me yet. I’d learned from Lavery that the street search and canvass of local doormen around the Polo store had produced nothing. And we were still waiting for a coherent statement from the men’s shop clerk whose coworker had been gunned down.

I decided it was time for some coaxing.

His name was Patrick Cardone. He was being cared for by EMTs in an ambulance that was still outside, double-parked on Madison Avenue. As I walked up to it, I saw him through the open rear door, sitting on a stretcher and crying.

I didn’t like intruding on people who’d just experienced a tragedy, but it had to be done, and doing it was my job. I tried to handle it as gently as I knew how.

I waited until he was between sobbing spells, then tapped on the door of the ambulance, at the same time giving the paramedics the high sign that I was taking over.

“Hi, Patrick? My name’s Mike,” I said, flashing my badge as I climbed in and quietly closed the door behind me. “I can only imagine how awful you’re feeling. You went through a terrible, traumatic experience, and the last thing I want to do is make it worse. But I need your help – me, and all the other people in this city. Do you feel up to talking for a minute?”

The clerk wiped his tearful face with his hands, too distraught to pay attention to the box of tissues beside him.

“Here,” I said, setting the box on his knees. He gave me a grateful look.

“Tell me about Kyle,” I said. “Was he a friend?”

“Oh, yes,” Cardone said emphatically, dabbing at his eyes. “We used to ride in to work together on Saturday mornings, and when he picked me up at my place in Brooklyn Heights, he’d have a coffee for me. You know how many kind people like him there are in this city? I’ll tell you – exactly zero. And that… that bastard in the Mets jersey just shot him. Just came in and shot him and? -”

“Whoa, wait,” I said. “The man who shot him was wearing what?”

“An orange Mets jersey. ‘Wright,’ it said across the back, and these atrocious basketball shorts and a… a green Jets cap.”

“This is very important,” I said. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“One thing I know, it’s clothes,” Cardone said, with a trace of wounded dignity. “His were ridiculous. Like a comic advertisement for the Sports Authority.”

So we had men wearing completely different outfits. Well, the incident in the subway and the Polo shooting had taken place hours apart. It was conceivable that it was the same guy, and he’d changed clothes. Or were there two psychos? A tag team? Maybe there was a terrorist angle after all. As Mary Catherine liked to say, Shite.

“What else did you notice?” I said. “His hair color, all that?”

“He had big sunglasses, and the cap was pulled low. His hair was darkish, and he was white, fairly tall. Everything else about him was a haze. Except his clothes, of course. And the gun he put to my head. It was square and silver.”

White, darkish hair, fairly tall – that jibed with the subway suspect.

“Did he say anything?” I asked.

Patrick Cardone closed his eyes as he nodded.

“He said, ‘You are the witness to history, I envy you.’?”

That unsettling sensation came back again – that we were dealing with a maniac, and maybe a smart one.

I stood up to go, and patted Cardone’s back.

“You did great, Patrick. I’m not kidding – the best possible way to help your buddy Kyle. We’re going to catch this guy, okay? I’m going to leave my card right here next to you. If you think of anything else, you call me, I don’t care what time it is.”

I thanked him again and hopped down into the street, already opening my cell phone.

“Chief, I just got a description of the Polo shooter,” I said when McGinnis answered. “Same physical type as the subway guy, but he was wearing an orange Mets jersey.”

“An orange what?” McGinnis fumed. “I just heard from the Twenty-one Club scene, and they’re saying that the shooter was dressed like a bike messenger and actually left on a ten-speed. But otherwise, he looked like the subway guy, too.”

“It gets worse, Chief,” I said. “He spoke to one of the other clerks here, and told him that he was a quote ‘witness to history’ unquote.”

“Christ on a cross! Okay, I’ll put all that out over the wire. You triple-check the details there, then get down to the clambake at Twenty-one and see if you can make any sense of it.”

Now we were getting into the realm of nightmare, I thought.