I, Michael Bennett

CHAPTER 50

I WOKE WITH a start in the predawn dark of my lake cabin bedroom, bathed in a pool of cold sweat.

It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence of late, unfortunately. In fact, every night of the week since my kids had been assaulted, I kept having a terrible recurring nightmare.

In the dream, I’m running, frantically searching for Eddie and Brian through some dark city streets, and right at the moment I finally spot them in the distance, at the end of some impossibly long alleyway, I hear these awful reverberating cracks of gunfire and wake up with a stifled scream in my throat.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to interpret the dream, since I was spending much of my time feeling horrendously guilty for not being there for them, for failing to protect them when they needed me most. Mary Catherine and Seamus told me several times that I needed to stop beating myself up about it, but try as I might, I just couldn’t.

I guess if there was any consolation, it was that the boys were home from the hospital and seemed to be healing. Dr. Mary Ann Walker from St. Luke’s had been right about there not being any complications with either of my sons’ wounds, thank God, but I guess it wasn’t the physical damage I was most worried about.

Brian seemed to have come around the emotional corner, already making jokes about how the bullet left in his neck would make him a lifetime TSA target. It was Eddie who was most concerning. Normally the life of the party, he seemed to have drawn into himself like a turtle into its shell. The other kids told me he was also yelling in his sleep, no doubt reliving the horror of what had happened to him.

It just broke my heart to see him like that. Thirteen-year-old boys have enough on their plates in the growing-up department without throwing post-traumatic stress disorder into the mix.

That’s why over the last seven days, I’d been meeting up with the Newburgh police. Even though I was probably harassing Detective Bill Moss and his friendly grizzly bear of a partner, Detective Edward Emmanuel Boyanoski, with my constant inquiries, they’d been more than tolerant. In fact, as fellow cops and fathers, they couldn’t have been more understanding.

They let me ride along with them on canvasses and even let me sit in on a few interviews. So far, no one in the tightly knit Lander Street drug neighborhood was talking about the shooting, but the two veteran detectives assured me they wouldn’t stop until they got to the bottom of it.

I hoped they were right. For my boys’ sake and everyone else’s.

I finally sat up, yawning. Outside the window, over the still, dark lake, there was only the faintest light in the sky, but already the whippoorwills were whippoorwilling to beat the band.

They actually weren’t the only early birds out to get a worm this morning. I had to go back into New York City today. The Perrine trial was resuming after the shooting of Judge Baym at the federal courthouse, and there was a possibility that I might be called to testify. For my departed buddy, Hughie, I needed to go in and do whatever I could to nail the coffin shut on the evil, bloodsucking cartel king Perrine.

I was finally getting to my feet when there was a soft knock on my bedroom door, and Mary Catherine came in with a cup of coffee.

“You’re up already. Good,” she whispered, quickly handing me the chipped blue mug. “Do you want to eat a little first, or shower?”

If there was anyone worried about our gang as much as I was, it was MC. She was one of those people who, when nervous, gets busy. So from sunup to sundown, when she wasn’t directing camp activities, she was a domestic whirlwind of baking and cleaning and cutting the grass. When she went out to paint the mailbox the day before, one of the neighbors asked us if we were fixing to sell the place.

Over the rim of my coffee mug, I noticed the blue glow of the stove light in the kitchen just as I caught a heavenly aroma.

“Bacon?” I said, walking into the kitchen and setting my empty mug onto the countertop. “I thought I told you not to fuss, Mary Catherine. I’m glad you didn’t listen to me.”

“It’s not me who’s fussing. That’s Seamus manning the stove. He insisted on a hot meal for you before your trip into the city,” she said, smiling.

“Wow, I’m really touched,” I said, refilling my coffee. “The old codger really does care about me after all, huh?”

“Why? Because he woke up so early?” Mary Catherine said.

“No,” I explained. “Because frying bacon is how we stoic Irishmen say I love you.”

CHAPTER 51

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, clean-shaven and wearing my best trial suit, I waved good-bye to Mary Catherine after being dropped off across the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge at the Beacon Metro-North train station.

As I got onto the Grand Central Terminal-bound 7:21 train a few minutes later, I noticed something odd. Over the tops of their Wall Street Journals and smartphones, some of the business commuters sitting near me were giving me double takes. Not warm, fuzzy ones, either. Even though I was wearing dapper attire, they kept glancing over at me suspiciously, as if they thought I was about to star in the latest YouTube subway fight video.

I thought maybe my picture was in the paper concerning the Perrine trial, or maybe there was a huge piece of Irish bacon stuck in my teeth, when I suddenly realized what it was.

Commuting into New York City from the hinterlands of the tristate area is a strange business. Regular passengers on the rush-hour trains see each other every morning or every evening for years and years. Friendships form; floating card games; affairs.

All the fuss was about me being a new face, I realized. Their furtive, spooked glances were a result of the fact that I’d upset their regular morning routine.

You want spooked? I thought. How about cleaning out your young teen’s bullet wound? I felt like asking them as I found a window seat and stretched out before closing my eyes.

Though Beacon was sixty miles north of New York City, we arrived at Grand Central Terminal only about an hour and twenty minutes later. I shuffled out with the throng, walking up one dirty underground tunnel until I found another one for the downtown subway.

Instead of heading straight to the courthouse, the plan was to go over the case with Tara McLellan first. She had sent me a text message, asking me to meet her at an inconspicuous office building on lower Broadway that the federal prosecutor’s office was now renting due to the trial’s unprecedented need for security.

Running early and dying for light and oxygen, I decided to get off the number 6 train at Canal Street and walk the rest of the way. I walked west to Broadway, and then made a left, going south, down into the Canyon of Heroes.

New York can truly drive you nuts, but every once in a while, you glance around and realize you live in one of the most beautiful man-made places that has ever existed. Washington, D.C., evokes the long line of American presidents, but for me, it’s the Canyon of Heroes, with its history of old-fashioned showers of ticker tape, that always reminds me of our country’s most shining human triumphs-driving in the golden railroad spike, Edison’s lightbulb, the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, Armstrong’s not-so-small step on the moon.

As I walked, smiling up at the high, massive walls of the majestic buildings, a much more vivid and personal memory suddenly occurred to me. It was the first time I actually came to lower Manhattan with my father, to see the 1977 world champion Yankees in their ticker-tape parade.

Glowing with Yankees pride-and warmed by three or four pints of Guinness from a nearby Blarney Stone pub, packed wall-to-wall with customers-he hoisted me to his shoulders. With me riding on his broad back, we went up and down Broadway, where he pointed out all the landmarks-Trinity Church, where George Washington attended services following his inauguration at Federal Hall, across from the New York Stock Exchange; John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Building.

“Look around, Michael. Take it all in,” he said, a happy tear in his eye as we finally watched the tape glittering down over Reggie Jackson and Ron Guidry and George Steinbrenner, who were passing by in convertibles.

“Never forget we’re the good guys, Michael,” he said. “We win. They lose. End of story.”

I teared up a little as I thought about that. I thought about my life, the state of the country, the state of the world. I was the man now, and it was my turn to be the good guy, wasn’t it? A good father, a good cop, a good man. I’d like to think I was trying to fight the good fight, but I was starting to wonder more and more if the good guys weren’t becoming an endangered species these days-if we weren’t quickly getting outnumbered, outmaneuvered, outgunned.

No wonder the people on the train were spooked, I thought, shivering in the cool morning air as I walked. I, too, was spooked. Being spooked, I guess, was the only sane response to watching the world come apart at the seams.

CHAPTER 52

NINE MILES TO the southwest of the dazzling glass-and-steel skyline of lower Manhattan lie the Maher Terminals in Elizabeth, New Jersey, North America’s largest container-ship facility.

It was coming on 8:30 a.m. when the dockside crane along the southern wharf sounded its horn, and the train-like column of trucks idling beside it finally began to move into position.

At the head of the line, a boyish, silver-haired trucker by the name of Norman O’Neill quickly stubbed out his tenth Marlboro of the morning before pulling his rumbling Volvo VN 630 semi beneath the massive steel legs of the towering unloading crane. He felt like lighting up a fresh one as he listened to the overhead cable’s shrill whine. Since all the paper and manifests had been stamped hours before, it was looking good, though he wasn’t out of the woods yet, he knew. He’d breathe again after he got the box and got the heck out of there.

O’Neill glanced to his right at the rusty hull of the small container vessel, called a feeder, that the crane was starting to unpack. Named the Estivado, it was a Costa Rican ship with a French crew that flew a Panamanian flag. Having picked up containers from her before, O’Neill knew there was nothing on the Estivado’s cargo manifest, such as machine tools, that would set off any Homeland Security threat-matrix alarms. In fact, most of the nine hundred LEGO-like red metal boxes aboard the ship contained navel oranges and tangelos out of Toluca, Mexico.

Most, O’Neill thought, as the weight of the lowered container settled onto the trailer attached to the truck with a slight thump and a creak.

But not all.

He shifted the five-hundred-horsepower Volvo into gear and pulled away from the crane and around a red brick warehouse to the end of another line of idling trucks. He nervously drummed the top of the Marlboro box sitting in his cup holder as he sat waiting.

This last part was the gut check. The line he was in was for the Homeland Security vehicle imaging scanner, where the in-sides of all containers had to be inspected by an X-ray machine before they were allowed to leave. Remembering his very specific instructions, O’Neill waited until it was right before his turn and then immediately sent a wordless text message to a number he’d already preprogrammed into his phone.

He assumed the text was a signal to someone working in the security office, but he wasn’t sure and he didn’t really want to know. He just held his breath as he slowly rolled between the goalpost-like metal X-ray poles that bookended the security lane.

There was a traffic light with a gate arm on the other side, where you had to wait after you went through the scanner. O’Neill stared at the red light, his heart ticking like a clock attached to a bomb. He was wondering how much prison time they would give him for smuggling several metric tons of coke, and what his clueless wife and daughters would think, and how did one actually hang oneself in a prison cell, when the green light suddenly flashed and the arm tilted up.

O’Neill Zippoed himself a victory cigarette as he clutched and shifted and pulled out.

CHAPTER 53

AN HOUR LATER, still following specific instructions, O’Neill pulled into an I-95 rest stop just south of the New York State line and unhitched the trailer. A minute after he pulled away, a spanking new cherry-red Peterbilt 388 swung in front of the cargo container, and three hard-looking Hispanic men in jeans and denim work shirts hopped out. The largest of them checked the container’s seal and locks carefully before nodding to the other two to hook it up.

The final destination of the shipment was a warehouse on the East River in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Inside, just beyond its open steel overhead door, a white Mercedes S600 sedan with tinted windows was parked beside a large silver Ford van. After the warehouse door was safely back down, an effeminate Hispanic man in seersucker shorts and a butter-colored tennis sweater exited the van and checked the seal and locks on the container. When the foppish man nodded, the driver of the truck, who had been waiting with a pair of bolt cutters, clipped the container’s heavy padlocks and swung the doors back.

“Vámonos!” the truck driver called.

There was a pause, then out of the mouth of the container came young girls. Sweaty and disheveled, they gasped and squinted at the clean air and light after spending three days in the box. They were dirt-poor Mexican country girls who’d been told they were being recruited for factory jobs in the U.S. fashion industry. Not one of them was over fourteen. One of them was only eleven.

As the men helped them down to the floor of the warehouse, the driver’s door of the white Mercedes popped open and out came Manuel Perrine’s right-hand woman, beautiful Marietta herself. Even in their exhaustion, the girls marveled at her white Chanel summer pouf dress, the white Chanel purse draping from her slim, cinnamon-tan arm, her white Chanel watch. Beautiful and serene and all smiles, she went among the tired girls with a checklist and a digital camera, taking pictures and pausing here and there to inspect skin and hair and teeth.

She quickly divided the girls into categories and prices. The last shipment had been overpacked, and there had been some damage to the material. A girl had died on the second day, and several of the rest of them had become so ill, they, too, had to be destroyed.

What had Manuel called it?

Spillage. Exactly.

There had been no spillage this time. The sex-slave trade was a new avenue for the cartel, but, as she did with everything, Marietta was picking up the learning curve quickly.

Marietta clopped to the van on her pristine white heels and handed the dapper pimp her checklist and camera. They spoke quietly for a moment, the wiry, almost pretty dark-skinned Dominican nodding thoughtfully at her recommendations before returning his hungry gaze to the line of unkempt girls.

“Who wants a treat?” Marietta called in Spanish as she took a plastic bag of snack-size Milky Ways from her white purse and tossed it into the van.

The famished girls flooded into the vehicle, giggling. In a moment, they were buckled into their seats, chewing ravenously, chocolate on their cheeks and chins. The pimp, already behind the wheel, looked at them over the driver’s seat, his soft, seemingly friendly face beaming like a proud father’s.

“This is Mateo. He will take you to where you’ll be staying,” Marietta told them gently in Spanish as the warehouse’s steel door rolled back up. “He’ll make sure to get you to a phone right away so you can call home and tell your parents that you’re okay, okay?”

The girls-like Madeline and her friends responding politely to Miss Clavel-thanked Marietta in unison.

Marietta slipped on a pair of whimsical Chanel sunglasses and stuck her tongue out at them playfully.

“Bye, now. I’m so proud of you all,” Marietta called, tossing a wave and a blown kiss over her sleeveless shoulder as she headed back for the Mercedes.

“You made it, girls!” she said. “You really made it. Welcome to America!”

CHAPTER 54

AT LEAST THE lobby security guard wasn’t lying down on the job, I thought as I arrived at the U.S. attorney’s secret office on lower Broadway. Even after I flashed my shield and showed the guard my driver’s license, he made no less than three phone calls before he allowed me to go upstairs.

Tara was on the other side of the elevator door when it opened on the seventeenth floor. I was instantly reminded how lovely she was. She was wearing a crisp Tiffany-blue blouse and a tobacco-colored skirt, her dark hair shining.

She surprised me by giving me an affectionate hug and planting a fat kiss on my cheek. As she guided me through a maze of cubicles into a conference room, I think I might have blushed a little. Or, to be more accurate, quite a lot.

She sat me down at a table stacked with law books and legal pads, and for the next half hour, we drank black coffee as she brought me up to speed on the prosecution strategy. She hadn’t seemed to have heard about my kids and what happened to them, so I didn’t bring it up. I’m a man who, if possible, always likes to compartmentalize the disasters in his life.

“As you already know, Mike,” she said, slipping on a pair of glasses as she showed me the indictment, “Perrine’s original warrant for the murders of the Border Patrol agents was put on the back burner while we shifted our focus to the murder of Scott Melekian, the Macy’s waiter Perrine killed while fleeing from you.”

She suddenly let out a huge yawn that turned into a sigh.

“My bad,” she said, blinking. “It’s been nothing but late nights since Judge Baym was killed.”

“Perfectly understandable,” I said, stifling a yawn myself.

“Anyway, we thought it was going to be a slam dunk at first,” she said. “We interviewed fifteen eyewitnesses who were ready to testify that they saw Melekian turn and stumble into Perrine as he was running into the restaurant. Then they saw Perrine grasp Melekian by the head and violently snap his neck with his bare hands, causing almost instantaneous death.”

She sighed again.

“That number of witnesses is now down to seven. Only three of the wait staff and four patrons are willing to say what they saw. We’re not sure if the witnesses are apprehensive since the courthouse shooting or if Perrine is getting to them in other ways, but people are becoming less and less willing to testify. That’s why I need you to be ready to go as soon as the jury is picked. We need to jump right into this with both feet-put you on the stand to set the whole thing up and get the ball rolling quickly. Because the longer we delay, the more witnesses we’re going to lose.”

I shook my head.

“You’re right,” I said. “With Perrine’s money and global reach, he’s already started to go all-in to ruin the government’s case through violence. It’s unbelievable.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Tara said. “The Mob used to do the same thing at the height of their power in the nineteen freaking thirties. All they seemed to do was find witnesses and kill them. The most depressing thing about it is that the bloody tactic has a tendency of being highly effective.”

She checked her watch and stood, stacking papers.

“Come on. Tempus fugit. We need to get to the courthouse. Grab one of these file boxes for me.”

Back at the elevator, Tara smiled at me sort of slyly after she pressed the button.

The last time we’d been in an elevator together was that night at the St. Regis.

I stood there in the pregnant silence, thinking about that night-Tara bringing me up to her room, how nice she looked in her fuzzy white bathrobe. For all its nuttiness, it was actually quite a fond memory. A man could get used to putting this vivacious young prosecutor to bed. In theory, of course.

The elevator binged open.

Tara stared at me, puzzled.

“After you,” I said.

She suddenly smiled again as we got into the car.

“Sir Michael Bennett, New York City’s last, and perhaps only, chivalrous knight.”

CHAPTER 55

AND I THOUGHT Foley Square in front of the federal courthouse had looked like a zoo when the trial first started.

As Tara and I exited our cab and mounted the marble steps, it again looked like a zoo, only this time with open cages. There were reporters, protesters, cops, and sidewalk barriers everywhere. Most of the faces in the crowd looked even more nervous than the ones on the 7:21 out of Beacon. And why wouldn’t they be afraid?

The federal court in New York had been around since the days of Alexander Hamilton, and this was the first time a judge had been murdered in her own courtroom in the middle of a trial!

I elbowed Tara gently and pointed my chin up at the NYPD chopper that sailed into view above the courthouse.

“Wow, this is the first trial I’ve ever been on that required air cover!” I yelled as we moshed our way through the nervous crowd of photographers and newsies at the top of the stairs.

“Come on, Mike. Didn’t you read the paper?” she said. “The mayor insists that Perrine’s trial will move forward. New York City will not be intimidated by a drug cartel and its boss!”

“Of course. Not intimidated. How silly of me,” I said over the deafening rotor wash. “Isn’t it funny, though, how our job is not to be intimidated down here, at the site of a potential attack, while for the duration of the trial our fearless billionaire mayor will be busy not being intimidated at his Upper East Side town house, guarded by his double-digit-strong security detail?”

Because bullet holes were perhaps not the greatest visual stimulus for potential jurors, the trial had been moved from the majestic courtroom where Judge Baym had been gunned down to a much more modest one on the fourteenth floor.

Perrine was already sitting at the defense table when we arrived. I’d seen a lot of security inside a courtroom before, but this was over the top. There were at least eight uniformed court officers and another half dozen or so U.S. marshals standing in a wide semicircle around him. The men were all huge and intimidating, like an angry, violent defensive squad on a football team waiting tensely for the snap.

But if Perrine was intimidated or even noticed all the fuss, he hid it quite well. His demeanor and posture were as impressive as always, his head canted back commandingly, his crease-free prison jumpsuit worn officiously, as though it were formal military dress.

There was a playful sparkle in his blue eyes as he smiled at something that his thousand-bucks-an-hour lawyer said. You could tell the mass murderer thought the whole thing was a joke, that he was playing us and loving every minute of it.

CHAPTER 56

THE NEW JUDGE, Mary Elizabeth Fleming, was a tall, elegant black woman with a striking resemblance to Condoleezza Rice. She was just entering the courtroom from her chambers with the court clerk when it happened. There was a sound from outside, a sudden and tremendous window-rattling bang that seemed to increase in volume as it rose up from the street fourteen stories below.

At the massive booming noise, the courtroom broke into complete bedlam. Spectators immediately hit the deck in the seats behind me as the dowdy stenographer screamed. She knocked over her typing stand in a clatter and left a shoe behind as she dove into the witness box for cover.

It was unbelievable how fast all the court officers drew on Perrine, as though it were a Wild West show.

“Hands!” they screamed at him.

A six-foot-five redheaded cop circled in front of Perrine, the chunky device in his freckled hand pointed a foot from Perrine’s chest.

“Hey, you deaf? Hands up now or you will be Tasered, you son of a bitch!” he yelled.

The ghost of a smile played on Perrine’s lips as he sat as still as a paperweight in his chair. After a moment, he raised his hands in a slow, graceful motion.

“What’s that expression? ‘Don’t Tase me, bro’?” he said in the tense silence.

He turned toward the judge then, laughing softly.

The towering redheaded cop’s radio gave off a loud beep followed by the long squawk of a message.

“It’s okay. All clear, Judge,” the cop said, listening to his radio. “Looks like a truck at the construction site on Centre Street dropped a load of scaffolding.”

“How ironic. I almost dropped a load myself,” Perrine said with a girlish giggle.

“Can the comedy routine, Perrine,” the judge said. “I mean it. One more word out of you, and I might not Taser you, but I will gag you… bro.”

Closest to the witness stand, I went to help the shaken stenographer up from the floor of the witness box. I exchanged smiles with Perrine at the nearby defense table as I helped right her stenotype. When he gestured me over toward the defense table with his shackled hands, I was more than happy to oblige.

As I leaned in over the table, the drug lord flashed me a grin.

“You don’t scare easily, do you, Michael Bennett?” he whispered. “Neither do I. Believe it or not, I like you. With all your antics, I find you a very funny man. This circus needs a clown, and you’re doing a great job. Despite your silliness, my offer still stands. You could take a nice long vacation from all this stress, a permanent one, in fact. I hear the Maldives are quite pleasant this time of year.”

“The Maldives?” I said, raising an eyebrow as if I were considering it. “They do sound pleasant, but the question is would they be more pleasant than what I’m going to do to you on that witness stand? More pleasant than watching your face when the verdict is read?”

I could see a vein pulse on Perrine’s neck as I slowly shook my head.

“Sorry, Perrine. Truly, my apologies,” I whispered back. “But even a silly clown like me wouldn’t miss that for the entire world.”

CHAPTER 57

THE METRO-NORTH TRAIN back to the lake house in Newburgh was half empty that night after nine o’clock. I didn’t read a paper or send out any e-mails. All I did for an hour straight was sip the Budweiser tallboy I’d bought in Grand Central as I sat in a window seat on the Hudson River side, listening to the clickety-clack of the train. If I’d had a harmonica, I would have busted into the saddest blues solo ever heard as I stared out at the dark water and chugga-chugga choo-chooed it north up the Hudson Valley.

And I didn’t even know how to play the harmonica.

That pretty much summed up how good things weren’t going in United States v. Perrine. Due both to Perrine’s unsettling presence and his legal team’s constant stream of delays, I didn’t get anywhere near testifying. By day’s end, only the selection of the final members of the jury had been nailed down.

The whole day had been nothing but one long, exhausting, frustrating emotional grind. At least for all the good people involved. The worst part was having to watch Perrine sit through the proceedings, sipping Perrier, with his dream-team legal counsel alongside him. Every few minutes, he’d swivel around to give me a little wink along with his arrogant Cheshire cat smile.

After court and a quick powwow with Tara and the rest of the prosecutors, I’d thought briefly about staying over in the apartment, then decided against it. Everyone would probably be asleep by the time I made it back to the lake house, but it didn’t matter. The need to be with my guys, especially Eddie and Brian, over the last week was undeniable.

Was it guilt over not being able to protect them?

No doubt it was.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what a miracle it was that they weren’t dead, and that we weren’t planning their funerals right now instead of finishing our vacation.

As the lonely lights of the Tappan Zee Bridge swung past on my left, I got a text message from Mary Catherine asking me if she should come to pick me up in Beacon. I begged off, texting back that I’d just get a taxi.

Though she’d certainly be a sight for my very sore eyes, I actually had one more stop to make before calling my heck of a long day a night.

I needed to meet up with Newburgh detectives Moss and Boyanoski, who had notified me that there was some potential progress on my kids’ case.

Forty minutes later, after exiting the train, I waved over a beat-up Chevy gypsy cab waiting in the Beacon train station’s otherwise deserted parking lot. The cabbie was a surprisingly young Hispanic girl with blue hair and earrings in her lower lip and colorful tattoos covering one arm, as though she’d been attacked by a gang of graffiti vandals. I could see that underneath all the junk was a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old young lady with gentle blue eyes who should have been home packing her book bag with paper and sharpened pencils for the new school year instead of out hustling for fares.

“Where to?” she asked before I could ask her if her parents knew where she was.

I shook my head. I had enough on my plate, I decided. Too much, probably.

“The Newburgh police department,” I told her, plopping down into the backseat.

CHAPTER 58

WE ROLLED OVER the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge back into the run-down town that had almost taken the lives of two of my kids.

I still couldn’t get over the dichotomy between the town’s Gilded Age history-not to mention its pleasant layout and architecture-and its current decrepit state. Every other house seemed to be a Carpenter Gothic or a Greek Revival or a Queen Anne. These “painted ladies” had definitely seen better days, though, since many of their windows were either missing or boarded up and their gingerbread molding was blistered and rotting.

I continued to shake my head as we pulled onto the four-lane thoroughfare called Broadway. With its forty-five-degree parking and three-story brick buildings, it looked quintessentially American, like a street scene in an Edward Hopper painting. I was almost expecting a trolley car to turn one of the corners or a soda jerk to walk out of one of the corner stores in a bow tie and white paper hat. But like so many Rust Belt towns in the northeast, Newburgh reminded me of the scene from It’s a Wonderful Life in which George Bailey gets to see his hometown as it would have been had he never been born.

Talk about wasted potential, I thought. What the heck had happened to this once beautiful place? Staring out at Newburgh’s blighted streets, I wondered if George Bailey had maybe caught a bullet in a drive-by.

“I knew I should’ve taken Water Street,” the cabbie said before letting out a loud, slow, scared breath.

We stopped at a red light near Lutheran Street. I leaned forward and watched as a group of teenage black kids crossed in front of the cab. Every one of them was wearing a red do-rag, whether tied to their wrists or peeking out from under their hoods and ball caps. Staring back at their swaggering and arrogant malevolence, I was reminded of Perrine’s demeanor in the courtroom. Like Perrine, these kids seemed quite used to driving fear into people’s hearts. In fact, they seemed to enjoy it.

I instantly felt myself getting worked up, really starting to seethe. The Newburgh detectives had already told me that the town’s drug trade was run by the Bloods and the Latin Kings, and that it looked like it was a member of the rag-wearing Bloods who had shot my sons.

I couldn’t take my eyes off them as the group made the opposite corner. I was seeing red, all right. All I kept thinking was that my outgoing son Eddie wasn’t so outgoing anymore. That these bastards might have screwed him up for the rest of his life.

By the time the light turned green, I was done. I literally couldn’t take it anymore.

“Wait. Stop. Let me out here,” I said to the driver.

“What the heck? What are you doing?” my young blue-haired cabbie said. “You don’t want to get out on this block. This is like the ’hood, you know what I’m sayin’? The police department is only a couple of blocks down.”

Instead of answering her, I dropped a twenty into the front seat.

I opened the door with the hand that wasn’t holding my quickly drawn and cocked Glock.

Now it was time for some answers.

CHAPTER 59

“HEY, WHAT HAVE we here?” one of the gangbangers said as the cab sped away. “That Men’s Wearhouse two-for-one you wearing says you definitely ain’t no pimp. You one of Newburgh’s Finest? Or maybe you Bill O’Reilly from the TV?”

The rest of his crew broke up laughing as I approached the north side of Broadway. Every ground-floor business up and down the beat-up block was closed, I noticed. Nothing but steel gates in both directions as far as the eye could see. Everyone had gotten out of Dodge, which was only smart because drug gangs like these Bloods protected their turf with beatings and stabbings and shootings.

The head jokester was a thin, six-foot-three kid of about nineteen. He was relaxed, smiling, enjoying himself. A broad-shouldered youth sitting on the corner mailbox beside him took a toke of the blunt he was smoking and blew the rancid smoke in my direction.

As I approached them, I felt a flicker of fear for the first time as the sane part of my mind began to realize what kind of situation I was putting myself in. There were six of them. Two of them were skinny high school kids, but the others were hardened-looking street punks, tattooed and prison-jacked under spotless XXXL white tees. I could tell at least one of them had a gun in his waistband by the way he was standing a little hunched to one side.

Armed cop or not, I was all alone and didn’t even know where the hell I was. What the hell was I doing? You needed backup in an area like this. SWAT, maybe.

But then I did a smart thing. I told the rational Dr. Jekyll part of me to put a sock in it, and let the unhinged Mr. Hyde part of me begin to roll.

“No, no. I’m not Bill O’Reilly,” I said with a laugh as I finally showed them what was in my hand.

They reared back, whoa-ing and raising their hands in unison as I leveled my chunky black polymer Glock in their faces. The gangbangers stood in complete shock, absolutely frozen, as though I’d just conjured up an elephant or a cruise ship out of thin air.

“But I am looking for news,” I said. “You guys hear about some little kids that got shot over on Lander Street last week? Speak up, fellas. I can’t hear you. I heard the shooter was wearing a red Yankees cap. You guys look like red’s your favorite color, like maybe you shop at the same store. I’ll ask nice one more time. Who shot those kids?”

They kept staring at me in mute wonder.

The funny thing was, at that moment, I was willing to shoot them, and they knew it. They could see it in my eyes that I was about as far from messing around as one can get.

As a cop, you draw your gun for one reason: to kill someone. You don’t wing people, you don’t let off warning shots. When you take out your gun, it’s for putting bullets into someone’s head or chest before they can do the same to you. If you’re not willing to go that far, then you leave it in the holster.

“Hey, chill, Officer,” the pot-smoking tough finally said. “We didn’t do nothing. This ain’t Lander Street. This be the east end. Just chill. We got no beef with you.”

“Oh, yes, you do, homey,” I growled, my knuckles whitening around the grip of my gun. “See, those kids who got shot, they were my kids. I’m not a cop here. I’m a father. Now you tell me right now which one of you red-rag-wearing jackasses shot my kids or by tomorrow morning, your girlfriends and mommas are going to be laying out so many damn memorial candles on this corner it’s going to be lit up like Times Square.”

That’s when I heard it. It was the high squeal of tires behind me. For a second, I panicked, thinking my Irish temper had finally gone and gotten my dumb ass killed. For a moment, I was seriously convinced that I was about to get run over or hosed in a drive-by.

Then over the engine roar of the rapidly approaching car, I heard a glorious sound. It was the metallic double woop of a squad-car growler. The flickering blue and red lights made the darkened north side of Broadway look like a carnival as the car screeched to a stop at my back.

The gang kids scattered as I turned around, holstering my weapon.

Two cops got out of the unmarked car and stood behind its flung-open doors.

“Hi, Mike. Um, out for an evening stroll?” Detective Bill Moss said, rolling his eyes.

His partner, Ed Boyanoski, shook his head at me with an expression somewhere between disappointment and awe.

“Well, what do you know? The cavalry, right on time,” I said.

“Let me guess. Long day at the office, Mike?” Bill said as I climbed into the backseat.

I smiled.

“It was, but that little meet and greet has rejuvenated me all of a sudden,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “I think I just got my second wind.”

CHAPTER 60

INSTEAD OF HEADING to the police department, the detectives took me to an all-night diner a little north of the city, near the interstate, to meet their colleagues.

At a semicircular red vinyl booth toward the rear of the chrome-and-mirrored space, I was introduced to Sergeant Grant Walrond and Officer Timothy Groover. Walrond was Mike-Tyson stocky, a young friendly black cop with a dry sense of humor. Groover, on the other hand, was white and tall, with a mullet hairdo that made him look more like a farmer than a cop. Both of them were extremely dedicated veteran cops and were the major players in the Newburgh PD gang unit.

Bill Moss said, “Sergeant Walrond here received some information this afternoon that the shooter was a Blood, but not from Lander Street.”

“The kid we got word about is pretty well known,” Walrond said. “His name’s James Glaser, but they call him Jay D. He’s a Blood from the east end, a low-level punk who jumps from crew to crew because he’s a loose-cannon troublemaker. He’s eighteen years old, and he was shot on two different occasions last year.”

“Got more holes in him than a colander,” Groover mumbled over the rim of his coffee cup.

“Crew to crew?” I said. “How many Bloods are there?”

“About a hundred and fifty members altogether,” Walrond said.

“In a town of thirty thousand?” I said in shock. “When the heck did all this start? I thought the Bloods were an L.A. thing.”

“It’s true that most of the gangs, like the Bloods and the Latin Kings, originated in L.A. and Chicago,” Groover said. “But because selling drugs is so profitable, members started branching out to expand their markets. Most of the gang members in Newburgh are offshoots of the gangs in New York, primarily those on Rikers Island, which are predominantly run by the Bloods and the Latin Kings.”

“Usually, the gang will make contacts among the locals and contract out the street sales,” Walrond added. “The locals are brought into the gang, taught its culture and rules, and pretty soon you have yourself a serious problem. The Newburgh kids are like kids anywhere else-just bored teenagers looking for direction and excitement. When the gang rep shows up, it’s like a match on gasoline.”

“The gangs provide direction, all right,” Bill Moss piped in. “How to get to the graveyard before your twenty-first birthday. We had seven murders last year. Six of them were male gangbangers under the age of twenty-five. The seventh was a second grade girl caught in the crossfire.”

I shook my head. And I thought New York was bad.

Sergeant Walrond excused himself as he received a text message.

“All right. Here we go,” he said. “That’s Pops. He’s one of my informants. Why don’t you come meet him with us, Mike? He’s sort of a street guy, but he actually feels for how bad Newburgh has gotten. He feels especially horrible about what happened to your kids.”

Walrond didn’t have to ask me twice.

We met Pops a block away, in the empty parking lot of a medical office building. He was a heavyset, kind of goofy, fast-talking black guy with a deep voice who reminded me of the clownish old-school rapper Biz Markie.

“Like I was tellin’ you, Sarge,” Pops said. “It wasn’t the Bloods shot those kids. Shootin’ customers be bad for business, ’specially white ones ’fraid to come into the ’hood in the first place.”

“But Jay D is a Blood,” Walrond argued.

“Aw, he just a peewee. He got no rank,” Pops said dismissively. “Plus the kid’s just damn crazy. The way I heard it, he was working with the Kings, man. He was like hired out.”

“Hired out?” I said, my blood beginning to boil for the second time this evening.

Walrond put a hand on my shoulder.

I shut my mouth. Which wasn’t easy, considering I just wanted answers. I bit my tongue and allowed the detective to do his job.

“Why would they do that, Pops?” Walrond continued.

“Beats me,” Pops said. “All I know is the Bloods ain’t happy because tensions already be runnin’ high lately between the nations. They say it’s that Mexican cartel dude they got on trial. What’s his name? Perrine? Yeah, Perrine’s been franchising out all that good pure Mexican dope for cheap to the Latin King Nation from South Beach up to Boston. The Kings keep dropping their price, and the Bloods are getting crushed, losin’ business like crazy.”

Perrine? I thought. Perrine was connected to the Latin Kings who hired someone to shoot my kids? It couldn’t be. How could that be right?

Walrond immediately sensed I was about to jump out of my skin.

“Thanks, Pops,” Walrond said, sending him on his way. “Keep in touch.”

CHAPTER 61

I HAD A lot on my mind by the time Walrond and Groover finally dropped me back at the lake house. Fortunately, Mary had left me dinner, a homemade Italian sub with a side of German potato salad, which I found in the back of the old vintage fridge, deftly hidden from hungry teens. To complete my culinary trip around the world, I washed it down with a bottle of cold Pilsner Urquell beer from the Czech Republic.

Who says the effects of globalization are all bad?

After my late-night dinner, I went into the family room and turned on Leno. There was a box of movie candy on the coffee table called Lemonhead & Friends. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten candy, but for whatever reason, I started gobbling up the sweet-and-sour jelly-bean things like they were going out of style.

As I scarfed down the sugary garbage, I watched Leno interview a bullying British celebrity chef who really needed a punch in the mouth. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the informant, Pops, had said about Perrine’s involvement with the Latin Kings, and the Latin Kings’ involvement with my kids’ shooting. Was it just street bullshit? His own personal fantasy? The guy did kind of seem like a flake.

It nagged me so much that I found my cell phone and made a call. It was to the DEA SWAT head, Patrick Zaretski, who had been my departed friend Hughie’s mentor in the agency. Ever since Hughie had been killed, Zaretski had been doing nothing but delving into the intricacies of Perrine’s cartel and trying to find all those responsible for his death. If Pops’s story had any truth to it, Patrick would be able to confirm it.

Patrick answered on the fourth ring.

“Hey, Patrick. Mike Bennett. Sorry to call you so late, but I need a favor. I got a guy in Newburgh, New York, who’s claiming that Perrine is supplying the Latin Kings with dope on the East Coast. Does that sound right to you? You think there’s a connection there?”

“I don’t know, Mike,” Patrick said. “But give me an hour and I’ll find out.”

It actually only took half an hour before my phone rang again.

“Mike, you’re spot on. We do have intelligence that the two organizations are working in concert. It started up late last year. Apparently, half the Latin Kings’ heroin and almost all their coke is coming from Perrine’s people. Perrine is also supplying the gang MS-13 and pretty much all the Latin drug trafficking gangs in the entire country. That’s how deeply these Mexican cartels have penetrated into the U.S.

“I hate to ask, Mike, but does this have something to do with your kids?”

We’d mostly kept the boys’ shooting out of the paper, but I’d already told Patrick and a few other law enforcement friends what had happened.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, Patrick,” I said. “I thought it was just a terrible mistake-my kids being in the wrong place at the wrong time-but the informant up here is claiming that the kid who shot Eddie and Brian was hired by the Latin Kings. Could Perrine know that I’m up here on vacation? He targeted my children?”

“Unfortunately, it’s more than possible, Mike,” Patrick said. “You’ve seen the pictures. You know Perrine’s tactics down in Mexico. You think you’d be the first cop he’s personally targeted? He’s a mass murderer, Mike. You put him in a cage. Of course, he’d love to get at you and your loved ones.”

I sat there holding the phone. All around me, my family slept safely in their beds. But for how long? I thought. How the hell could I keep them safe with this monster and his organization on my trail?

CHAPTER 62

MY CELL PHONE rang early the next morning. Before dawn, in fact.

It didn’t really matter, because I was already up with Seamus. I was teaching him how to load and unload the 12-gauge Remington shotgun I’d found behind some canoe oars in the cluttered garage a couple of days before. It killed me to have to teach the kind old man how to lethally defend himself and the rest of the kids. He was a priest, after all.

But what else could I do after my conversation with Patrick Zaretski? It was looking more and more like my family had actually been targeted by Perrine. These were truly desperate times.

It turned out to be Detective Ed Boyanoski on the phone.

“Sorry to call so early, Mike, but we got a witness who just ID’d your boys’ shooter. The county DA gave the go-ahead. We’re about to go grab him, and I thought you’d want to be there.”

“You thought right,” I said.

“We’ll come to you,” Ed said. “Be there in ten.”

That’s when Mary Catherine came into the kitchen. Her eyes just about detached from their sockets when she saw Seamus in his Manhattan College pajamas with the pump-action shotgun.

“What in the name of sweet holy God is going on here?” she wanted to know.

Seamus smiled devilishly.

“Nothing, really,” he said. “Young Michael here was just teaching me the finer rudiments of how to lock and load.”

“Give it here,” Mary Catherine told him.

She took the shotgun from him deftly and quickly thumbed four shells into the underside loading port.

“What model Remington is this? An eight seventy?” she said, blinking a curl of blond hair out of her eyes.

I nodded, blinking back in shock.

She clicked the safety on before pumping a round into the chamber. She swung the shotgun to her shoulder and aimed down the barrel at the wall, nodding to herself. Then she unloaded it, quickly pumping all the rounds out of the receiver onto the kitchen table, catching the last spinning red shell in her hand.

“Where’d you learn all that?” I said, hiding my smile as she handed me back the gun.

“I grew up on a cattle farm, Mike. There wasn’t as much rustling going on in Tipperary as in the Wild West, but we had some. Not at our farm, though.”

“I’ll bet,” I said, and started to laugh. This attractive young woman never failed to shock.

She put her hands on her hips, Wonder Woman-style, which made sense.

“Now, if there’s any locking and loading to be done around here when Mike is at work, I’ll be the one to do it. Agreed, gentlemen?” she said.

“You win, Annie O’Oakley,” I said, making her smile.

Seamus folded his arms, frowning at the both of us.

“Fine. I’m going back to bed,” he said after another half a minute.

“I never get to have any fun at all,” he whined as he left.

CHAPTER 63

A BRIEF HORN honk came from outside a moment later.

“And where are you headed this early?” Mary Catherine said as I clipped my holster to my belt by the front door.

I debated whether to tell her. I decided I didn’t want to say anything about bagging the son of a bitch who’d hurt Eddie and Brian until we had him.

“Ah, nowhere, really,” I said as I pulled down my shirt over my gun. “Just going to see a man about a dog.”

“Well, please don’t get bit, Michael,” Mary Catherine said. “We have all the Bennetts on the mend that we can handle at present.”

“Don’t worry, lass,” I said, showing her the handcuffs I had in the pocket of my Windbreaker. “I brought a strong leash.”

There were two patrol cars in the arrest team besides the unmarked one I rode in with Detectives Ed and Bill, who had brought me a coffee and had laid a Kevlar vest out for me in the backseat.

“Just my size, too,” I said, slipping it on. “You guys are the best.”

It took about twenty more minutes to roll up to the address in Newburgh. It was actually on a block of pretty well-kept houses on Bay View Terrace. Behind them, there was a pure, stunning view of the Hudson. How much would Newburgh real estate be worth if the city wasn’t riddled with crime? I wondered. It was only an hour and twenty minutes away from New York City. I stared out at the sky, just starting to lighten behind Beacon, as we pulled to a stop.

“This is where his aunt lives,” Bill said. “He’s been hiding out with her ever since he got word we were looking for him.”

A dog started barking nearby as we waited for one of the cruisers to get into position on the next block, in case Jay D went out the back. The Motorola in Ed’s hand suddenly crackled.

“Heads up,” said someone in the cruiser parked behind us. “We have a figure in the alleyway across the street with a long object in their hand.”

That tensed things up. There was word that the Bloods had automatic weapons, including AK-47s.

A moment later, an old thin black woman in a tracksuit appeared, mumbling to herself as she began haphazardly sweeping her porch with a broom.

“Stand down. It’s just Grandma doing her six a.m. tidy-up,” the radio said.

“Or the Wicked Witch of West Newburgh,” Detective Moss mumbled after a loud exhale.

CHAPTER 64

“OKAY. WE’RE SET. We’re in position at the back,” came word from the other cruiser.

“Roger Dodger,” Ed Boyanoski said as he grabbed the battering ram. “We’re going in.”

It turned out that we didn’t need the battering ram. As we came up the stairs, the door opened and a tall middle-aged black man wearing blue Dickies work clothes walked out. He waved his arms over his head.

“Now, now. Calm down. Calm down. You don’t need to be bustin’ my brand-new door down,” he said, eyeing us. “You here for James, I take it?”

“You take it right, sir,” Detective Moss said.

“Thank God,” the man said, turning and holding the door open for us. “Hallelujah.”

“Woman!” the man called back into the house. “Get that child out here now!”

A moment later, a petite black woman appeared with her arms around a hard-looking, stocky teenager. He was in flip-flops and wore white shorts, a white beater, and a blood-red Yankees cap.

“This is all wrong. All wrong,” said the aunt as Ed and Bill frisked and cuffed Jay D on the porch. “James is a good boy.”

“I’m sure he is, ma’am,” Detective Moss said. “We’d like to go and search his room now if that’s okay.”

“By all means,” Jay D’s uncle said. “This good boy’s room is just to the right at the top of the stairs. Try not to trip over all the Bibles and choir robes, now.”

“I didn’t do nothin’,” Jay D said after Bill read him his rights and got him into the back of the cruiser. Ed sat in the back with him, wisely leaving me in the front passenger seat, where I couldn’t get my hands around his neck.

“This is total bullshit, man,” the punk cried as he rocked back and forth violently against the seat. “You only doin’ this because those kids shot over on Lander were white kids.”

“Now, James, we’re not out of the driveway yet, and already you’re dropping the race card,” Ed Boyanoski said with a tsk. “Didn’t we investigate your shooting last year, James? I’m sorry, I mean shootings?”

“Bullshit, man,” Jay D repeated. He stomped on the floor of the cruiser. “You don’t think I know that the only reason you bugging everybody like this is because those white boys were the kids of a cop?”

Bill Moss and I exchanged a surprised glance before I turned around and stared the punk in his eye.

“You’re actually right about that,” I said, showing him my shield. “We cops do tend to get a little upset when you shoot up our children. See, I’m in a gang, too. It’s called the NYPD. They don’t issue us those ratty dishrags you guys like to sport, but we do have some pretty cool hats.”

The kid smirked and looked at me sideways. “You him, ain’t you?” he said.

He nodded with a sudden smile.

“Bennett, right? Knew it. This ain’t just racist-ass bullshit. This is some racist-ass cop bullshit.”

“Quick question, James,” Ed said. “How do you know who the kids were? I mean that stuff about them being the kids of a cop was deliberately left out of the paper.”

“How much did the Latin Kings pay you?” I yelled. “I hope it was worth it, punk, because if you think I’m pulling strings now, this is nothing compared to the favors I’m going to call in to make sure you earn every single goddamn penny of it.”

Jay D looked at us one by one. He started biting his lower lip like it was a chew toy. The punk suddenly squeezed himself into the rear seat’s corner as if it contained an escape hatch.

“That’s it. I want my lawyer,” he mumbled. “I ain’t talkin’ no more.”

“You’re shutting up?” Detective Bill Moss said as he finally put the unmarked into drive. “Is that a promise, James? Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!”

CHAPTER 65

WE HAD A cookout to end all cookouts that night. The three-burner grill out on the dock was completely covered with burgers, dogs, corn on the cob, peppers, lamb shish kebabs. I even had an Italian sausage wheel that I’d found in a terrific deli not too far from the lake house, where I also scored some real New York-style Italian bread to wrap around the sausage and peppers. Tony Soprano would have been impressed.

“Hey, Father. How do you say ‘fuhgeddaboudit’ in Gaelic?” I asked Seamus over the smoke.

Of course we were having a feast. That’s what your friendly neighborhood heroes did when they bagged the beast: got the grill going and broke out the mead, like Beowulf and his men after offing Grendel.

But Beowulf actually had to go and fight Grendel’s mother next, didn’t he? I thought, remembering how Perrine still needed to be deep-sixed. He certainly was a mother, wasn’t he?

Whatever, I thought, pulling on the frosty beer at my elbow and wiping sweat off my brow with my grill mitt. Line ’em up, and I’ll put ’em down one at a time. No, wait. That was Hughie’s policy on shots. Poor Hughie. Man, I missed him.

Half the Newburgh PD showed up. Ed Boyanoski was there with his wife, Celia, and three kids as well as Bill Moss and his wife, Cordelia, and their two daughters. Even the gang-unit cops, Walrond and Groover, showed up with their respective clans.

Walrond’s clan included his new wife and beautiful four-month-old baby girl, Iris. My girls-including Mary Catherine, for some strange reason-surrounded Iris’s car seat and could not be peeled away during the entire party.

All’s well that was ending well, at least for the current moment.

Even the kids’ surgeon, Dr. Mary Ann Walker, showed up for a quick ale. It turned out that she and Ed were already friends because they both served on the board of the Newburgh Historical Society. I learned that Ed, a former marine, was also a deacon at downtown Newburgh’s Saint Patrick’s Church and spent much of his free time coaching basketball at the Boys and Girls Club.

“So many people have written off this town to the gangs, Mike, but I know we can turn it around,” Ed said. “This place is my home. I’m never leaving.”

Ed was a top-notch guy. They all were. Good people who truly cared about their community and were trying to do their best in a bad situation.

“Man, you know how to toss a soiree here, Mike,” a swim-trunk-clad Groover called from a floating inner tube off the dock. He had a sausage-and-peppers hero in one hand and a beer in the other.

“I haven’t had too much to celebrate in a while, so I’m pulling out all the stops, my man. You guys deserve it. Now my family can put all this nonsense in the rearview.”

“How many kids do you have, anyway?” Groover wanted to know.

I shook my head. “Dude, I lost count a long time ago.”

Groover looked down into his beer thoughtfully before raising his plastic cup.

“The more the merrier,” he called.

I looked over at my son Eddie, talking and laughing with one of Ed Boyanoski’s kids, and raised my own.

“The more the merrier,” I agreed with a smile.

Damn right.

It was the Bennett family motto, after all.

CHAPTER 66

AT AROUND NINE, the party wrapped up pretty much the way all cop parties do-with some beery high fives and fist bumps and promises to do it again real soon.

It had really been a fun time, even for all our cop kids, who had broken into teams and had wrapped up the night playing an epic game of ring-a-levio. Eddie had been the last one caught as he made a heroic attempt to free his team from jail.

Hearing his squealing laughter again as he was tackled was by far the best part of the night. Hell, the best part of the month.

“These Newburgh guys are all right in my book,” I said to Mary Catherine as we waved good-bye to the last set of retreating headlights from the porch.

“Is that just the beer talking?” Mary Catherine asked, eyeing the half-full Heineken in my hand.

“Well, maybe not just the beer,” I said sheepishly.

Even though the house and backyard and especially the dock looked like they’d been attacked by a host of marauding barbarians, Mary Catherine and I turned our backs on the paper plates. We left all our sleeping, sunburned charges in Seamus’s care and decided to take a long walk around the lake.

We ended up taking the secluded forest path I’d frantically scoured the week before when I’d searched for Eddie and Brian. At the top of the hill, Mary Catherine suddenly stopped and turned around.

“Look. It’s beautiful,” she said.

I followed her pointing finger just above the treetops to a bright, glowing sliver of quarter moon, tinged with pink. All around it, stars-too many to count-sparkled against the seemingly endless navy-blue sky. We could have been the only people in the world, in the universe.

We sat, and I broke out the midnight picnic I’d packed. An old flannel blanket, some Cheddar and grapes, a cold bottle of sauvignon blanc that I had to laboriously work open with the Leatherman tool on my key chain, since I’d forgotten to bring a corkscrew.

I laid out the blanket in the middle of the forest clearing and poured wine into a couple of plastic glasses.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to mix beer and wine,” Mary Catherine said, leaning back with the cup on her stomach and staring up at the sky.

“Midnight picnics are the exception,” I said, sitting cross-legged across from her.

Mary Catherine yawned and closed her eyes.

“You know what would be really great, Mike?”

“What’s that?” I said.

“If we could really go on vacation. You know, one where you’re not working and actually here?”

I laughed.

“That’s quite a concept,” I said. “A nonworking vacation, is it?”

Mary Catherine sighed.

“Or how about for once we could go on a real date, Mike? Three or four hours of just me and you. No kids, no phones. Just two adults together alone, enjoying each other’s company. I would like that so much. Wouldn’t you?”

“You’re right, Mary Catherine,” I said feeling suddenly very guilty.

How could I be such an insensitive clod? I had to stop taking this wonderful woman for granted or I was going to be very sorry.

“Enough of squeezing in a moment here and there,” I said. “You’re absolutely right. I’ll arrange the whole thing. We’ll put Seamus on duty and go wherever you want. Down into the city. We’ll paint the town red. Where do you want to go?”

I waited for a few moments. But even after a full minute, she was still silent. I turned and glanced at her, laughing to myself as I watched her sleep.

“Oh, Sleeping Beauty,” I said as I gathered up the remnants of our picnic. “What did I do to deserve someone as lovely as you?”

CHAPTER 67

IT WAS STILL dark when I heard the doorbell ring the next morning. Hungover and bleary-eyed, I went ass over teakettle into a beanbag chair as I tripped over an inner tube in the unlit family room. I was still in my boxer shorts, dusting myself off, as I peeked out the window and saw a Newburgh police cruiser in the driveway and a uniformed cop on the porch.

“Good morning,” I said, opening the door.

The young, attractive, black female cop smiled and blushed a little when she saw my bamboozled face and skimpy attire.

“Detective Bennett, sorry to bother you so early,” she said, quickly recovering. “Detective Boyanoski sent me. He tried your phone, but you didn’t pick up. Something’s come up. It’s about the assailant who shot your boys. The gang member, Jay D-James Glaser?”

“What about him?” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“He was murdered in jail last night,” she said.

That got me moving. I threw on a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, grabbed my gun, and took a ride into town with the good-looking rookie cop, whose name was Belinda Saxon. Bill and Ed were already outside waiting for me in the Newburgh PD parking lot. Behind them, the sun was just coming up over the Hudson.

“Let me guess. The party’s over?” I said as I got out of the cruiser.

“So’s our friend James Glaser,” Bill Moss said, opening the unmarked Ford’s back door as though he were a chauffeur.

After some coffee and a quick breakfast at the diner out by I-84, we headed to the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in nearby Wallkill, New York, where Glaser had been transferred. The sunny green farm fields we passed had horses in them, rows of corn. I thought about the eighteen-year-old kid we’d picked up the day before and shook my head. How could he be dead on this beautiful summer morning? And how could this bucolic area have a gang problem?

After being processed just inside the steel gate of the maximum-security prison, we were brought into a formidable building to meet with the assistant warden, Kenneth Bozman, in his ground-floor office.

“Twenty inmates from B block went to B yard for evening rec around seven,” the well-groomed, round-faced bureaucrat explained as he drummed his chewed-to-the-nub fingernails on a metal file cabinet next to his desk. “Come seven thirty, James Glaser was seen in a scuffle with another black male. Glaser was dead as a doornail upon arrival of staff. His attacker was still hovering over him. The assailant’s name is Gary McKay, a lifer. He’s been segregated in our special housing unit since the incident.”

“How’d he kill him?” Ed Boyanoski asked.

Bozman stopped drumming and pointed to the hollow of his throat above his tie.

“He buried the sharpened end of a broken mop handle into Glaser’s clavicle,” Bozman said, shaking his head. “Stabbed it all the way down into his heart like a skewer. Unbelievable. What a shitstorm. We’re max security, but we run a tight ship. We haven’t had a murder here since oh three.”

“What’s McKay’s story?” Bill asked.

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him,” Bozman said. “He’s old-school. Drug dealer who used to run the Newburgh drug scene back in the eighties. He’s in for a triple homicide and attempted murder of a cop. Now he heads the Bloods here in the prison. I take it this is a Bloods thing, some kind of street beef?”

“You take it correctly,” Ed told him.

“I figured,” Bozman said. “I mean, McKay’s a homicidal maniac, but skewering a son of a bitch is a little excessive for having a newbie look at you funny.”

“We’d like to talk to him, if that’s okay,” Bill Moss said.

“Wait here,” Bozman said. “I’ll go into the warden and ask.”

Bozman came back less than a minute later.

“Shit. Sorry, fellas. They actually just took him to the courthouse in Shawangunk for his arraignment. Maybe you can catch him there.”

CHAPTER 68

WE PULLED OUT of the prison and went into the town of Shawangunk, which, I was told, was pronounced “Shawn-gum” by the locals. Go figure.

It was a neat and tidy town-hedgerows and farmland, white picket fences. The main drag, as far as I could tell, consisted of a pizza parlor, an industrial building, a water tower, and a fieldstone library. The court was in the new town hall at the outskirts of town, a handsome brick building with a recently cut patch of manicured green grass in front.

Inside, we found McKay with his nine-man entourage of corrections officers and state police sitting inside the courtroom. McKay was a rough-looking character, an extra-large tattooed black man with a beard who looked a little like Rasheed Wallace when he played for the Detroit Pistons. Since everyone was still waiting for the judge and McKay’s public defender to arrive, we asked the staties to let us interview him. They readily agreed.

We proceeded into a large meeting room adjacent to the courtroom. The room, which smelled as though it had just been painted, was filled with folding chairs and a podium bookended by the American and New York State flags. McKay, in wrist and ankle shackles, shuffled in, escorted by two state troopers. He parked his ass in one of the folding chairs with a clink of chains and sat, scowling, with his eyes closed.

Without missing a beat, Bill Moss opened a folding chair and placed it down in front of the large prisoner. When the cop sat and opened his notebook, he was almost knee-to-knee with McKay.

The differences between the two black men were stark. Bill was a teddy bear, one of the friendliest, most approachable-looking people I’d ever met. McKay was more like a starving grizzly. Even sitting, he was easily a head taller than Bill, who looked uncharacteristically tired, almost depressed. I felt bad for the thirty-year Newburgh PD vet. He’d actually grown up in the now-rough part of Newburgh, near Lander Street, and you could tell that its recent rapid decline was really taking a personal toll.

“Fuck’s this?” McKay said, opening one eye at Bill. “More cops, man? Shit, c’mon. How many times I gotta tell you? I’m tired a this shit.”

“I’m Detective Moss,” Bill said, as if McKay hadn’t spoken.

He took a pen from his pocket and clicked it a few times.

“We’re from the Newburgh PD and would like to ask you a few questions.”

“Fine. Whatever, man. I told them. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell everyone. Ma boy, Jay D, was murdered because he was a traitor to the Blood Nation. He worked with the South Americans and made the Blood Nation look bad. I got the call to do something about it, so that’s what I did. I did something about it. Now tack me on another life sentence and get it over with already. Sheesh.”

Ed and I looked at each other, stunned. The arrogance and complete disregard for human life McKay was displaying was remarkable, even for a hard-core gang member.

Bill, on the other hand, just nodded as he wrote in his notebook.

“Concerning the call you received, who was on the other end of that? Can you elucidate?”

“E-loose-a-what? C’mon, brother,” McKay said, closing his eyes again. “This is the easiest case you’ll ever have. Write this shit down. Jay D needed to get iced. I iced him. Then I’ll sign that shit, and I can get back before lunch. We’re havin’ grilled cheese, and it’s my favorite. We’re done now. My statement here is over.”

Again Ed and I looked at each other. Bozman had been right about this guy being a maniac. Wow, this McKay was one cold-hearted bastard.

“All right. That’s fine. Thanks for speaking with us, Mr. McKay,” Bill said, closing his notebook and tucking his pen carefully back into his jacket.

Bill stood and was about to head for the door when he stopped and turned.

“Actually, there is just one more thing, Mr. McKay,” he said, walking back and sitting down in front of the prisoner again.

McKay tsked impatiently as Bill again retrieved his notebook and pen with slow deliberation.

“What now, man?” McKay said.

“Tonight’s my fiftieth birthday,” Bill said, spinning the pen between his fingers. “I’m going to the Peter Luger Steak House in Brooklyn. Ever been to Peter Luger’s? It’s the best steak house in New York City. Some say in the whole world.”

“Yeah, good for you, dog. I’m trying to sleep,” McKay said.

“All my friends and family will be there, including my twin brother. Obviously, it’s his birthday, too. My eighty-year-old mom, my kids. After we get up to speed with hugs and kisses and showing each other pictures on our cell phones, I’m going to order a T-bone the size of a phone book and wash it down with a hundred-dollar bottle of Pinot Noir. Then I’m going to go home, drink an ice-cold bottle of Veuve Clicquot Champagne in my Jacuzzi, and make love to my wife on the new Bob-O-Pedic mattress we just bought.”

McKay opened his eyes and looked at the cop in stark wonder.

“After I’m done with all that, you know what I’m going to do, Mr. McKay? I’m going to get down on my knees and pray to God Almighty that New York brings the death penalty back so that you can finally be erased like the horrible mistake you are. Society showed you mercy by not executing you for your first three murders, and what did you do with that mercy? You used it to kill a fourth human being with a sharpened piece of wood.”

“There a question in there, officer?” McKay said after a long beat.

Bill pointed his pen at him.

“No, more like a moral,” Bill said. “Remember a minute ago you called me brother? Well, the moral of my tale is that I’m not your brother and never will be, you murdering sack of goat shit. My brother, like me, has a family, a life, kids, coworkers, people he loves who love him back. What do you have? Victims.

“Before I leave, I just wanted to let you know that if I had the misfortune of having a human disgrace like you for a brother, I’d look for the tallest building I could find and fling my ass off it.”

Bill Moss clicked his pen one last time as he stood.

“Now we’re done,” he said as he left.

CHAPTER 69

IT WAS A little past midnight when Newburgh police sergeant Dermot McDonald drove south in his cruiser down River Road in Newburgh. He rolled past the cruddy industrial heating-oil company that abutted the Hudson twice before he pulled into its driveway.

The company was closed, its parking lot deserted. There was just him, some oil trucks behind a tall fence, the railroad tracks, and the big old rolling Hudson River. It was an absolutely perfect secluded spot for a night-shift cop to grab forty winks.

Or anything else that served his fancy, McDonald thought as he looked inside the knapsack in the footwell of the passenger seat.

Inside were three fat, plastic-wrapped, whitish-yellowish bundles that almost looked like large bars of soap. It was cocaine-three kilos of pure uncut nose candy that he had stolen from a Latin Kings drug bust the week before and was looking to unload on his old friend and high school basketball teammate, Dave Crider, one of the current leaders of the Newburgh Bloods.

The fit, middle-aged cop with silver hair and rimless eyeglasses zipped the bag closed. He took out a piece of Nicorette gum from his uniform shirt pocket, popped it into his mouth, and smiled as he chewed. He could practically taste the seventy-five grand in beautiful, greasy, tax-free tens and twenties that his drug-dealing buddy was on his way with right now.

He’d already decided to take his new girlfriend, Amelia, to Ibiza on Labor Day weekend for her birthday to see one of those techno bands she was gaga about. Amelia was twenty-eight to his forty-six; she had dark hair and dark haunting eyes and lines of tattoos running down the fronts of both of her legs from her waist to her toes. Felt like he was doing it with a carnival freak sometimes-conjoined twins or the bearded lady-but damn, who cared if she scribbled on herself? She was young and freakin’ hot.

Funny where life took you, McDonald thought. Up until a year ago, he’d actually been the proverbial happily married man. He’d only gotten divorced after he found out his wife had been cheating on him with the neighbor at the end of their cul-de-sac.

Her lover was, of all things, a Turkish physics professor at Mount Saint Mary College, a diminutive, balding man in his fifties who sounded and even looked sort of like the Count from Sesame Street. Even now, McDonald sometimes closed his eyes to see the Muppet laughing at him. “I slept with your wife one, two, three, four times. Ah-ha-hah!”

But it had turned out okay. Divorce had changed him, transformed him, made him reevaluate his priorities. He got into truly excellent shape for the first time in his life, started eating healthy, running, lifting, mountain biking, meeting new people, young people. Amelia. The most important change of all was deciding to finally become a full-blown player in the Newburgh drug game and start raking in some real cheese instead of the pathetic sucker peanuts he was paid by the city.

Alimony? he thought, patting the drug-filled bag. Alimony this!

That’s why he’d decided to rekindle his old friendship with Dave. Now instead of setting picks at the top of the key, he supplied his buddy Dave with protection and tip-offs, and Dave supplied him with a tax-free two grand a week. He also used the tips Dave supplied him with to stage busts where he could steal drugs from the rival Latin Kings. One of your win-win situations if there ever was one.

Just yesterday he’d earned $5K from Dave. Pulling some strings with a friend in corrections, he’d helped to set up a turncoat in Dave’s operation, some punk-ass kid named Jay D, for a jailhouse murder. Amazing the amount of moneymaking opportunities out there once you had a mind to capitalize on them.

To hell with everyone, McDonald thought. His wife, the department, the people of Newburgh. He had finally wised up. He was on his own side now. He was only sorry he hadn’t thought of becoming a corrupt cop sooner.

He checked his phone for the second time. That was funny. Dave was late. That wasn’t like him.

Sergeant McDonald ruminated on that for a minute and then decided to turn the cruiser around to face the street, keeping his back safely to the Hudson.

Dave was a bud, but it was a dog-eat-dog world out here, and you could never be too careful.

He chewed his gum and pictured his new girlfriend’s haunting eyes, lit by strobe lights.

CHAPTER 70

A LITTLE MORE than half a mile northeast of Sergeant McDonald’s parked cruiser, a brand-new fifty-foot sport yacht stood at anchor in the middle of the pitch-dark Hudson River, rising and dipping.

So did the night-vision-enhanced crosshairs of the sniper rifle trained on Sergeant McDonald’s right temple.

The rifle that the scope was attached to was a CheyTac M200. The almost thirty-pound big bastard of a weapon had an effective range of nearly 1.2 miles and was made in the good ol’ USA. The big bastard of a sniper at its huge night-vision eyepiece happened to be an Englishman, a fifty-seven-year-old SAS-trained mercenary named Gabler.

Dressed in black fatigues, Gabler was sitting on a camp chair on the forward deck of the five-hundred-thousand-dollar pleasure craft. Beside him, the massive gun was propped on a shooting bench, as though Gabler were a contestant in a competition.

He’d already zoned in the distance-to-target at 826.23 yards, according to the range finder in his bag, and made his windage adjustments. He’d even checked the barometric pressure, 1011 millibars per hectopascal, which would have negligible effect at the range he was looking at. Except for the sway of the boat, it was simple enough.

So easy a caveman could do it, Gabler thought, slipping his finger into the trigger guard.

Gabler turned his signature tweed cap around on his head as he made a minor adjustment to the scope’s eye rest. With his pale scrunched fist of a middle-aged Celtic face, he could have been a soccer analyst or a kindly Scottish sheep farmer, a look that was quite useful considering that he was, in fact, one of the most ruthless and sought-after assassin snipers on planet Earth.

Even before the cop car drove into the kill zone, Gabler knew he was working for some serious-as-cancer Mexican dope dealers. Duh, as a thick Yank would say. Wasn’t like a knitting circle could fly him in on a private aircraft from his vacation house in Portugal and come up with his four-hundred-thousand-dollar fee.

It didn’t matter in the slightest. Like the man he was about to erase from existence, Gabler, too, was in it for numero uno.

The customer is always right, he thought.

“You ready?” Gabler finally asked with a thick Glasgow burr.

At his elbow stood the client, a sexy, light-skinned Latina in a skintight black pantsuit. Gabler didn’t like looking at her. There was something terrible and fierce in her pale, striking eyes, something scary, something that said the lass wasn’t quite all there. Throughout his preparations, she’d kept unconsciously licking her lower lip, as if she were turned on by what was about to occur.

The wacko, beautiful bitch held up a restraining hand as she thumbed a smartphone.

“The mark is where we were informed he would be, as planned,” Marietta said. “We have a clear shot. Shall we take it?”

“Yes,” Perrine said on the line from his downtown Manhattan prison cell. “By all means. Kill the son of a bitch.”

Marietta raised a pair of night-vision goggles and trained them on the Newburgh shore. Then she tapped the mercenary gently on the shoulder.

“Do it now!” she said enthusiastically. “Blow the cop’s fucking head off!”

Gabler waited and waited, and then just as the boat rose up from a dip, he squeezed the trigger. The shot, even suppressed to the maximum, made a crisp firecracker pop as the big gun hopped up off the bench rest.

In his sight, Gabler watched the satisfying red explosion of the.408-caliber bullet striking home. It was a direct hit. The huge round entered the cop’s right temple and came out his left, cleanly shearing off the top of his head.

Gabler let out a proud breath as he ejected the warm casing. It was a nice shot, considering all the factors. A tidy little piece of work, if he did say so himself. Even those Navy SEAL wankers who had snipered those Somali pirates would have been impressed.

“I wish you could see this, darling,” Marietta said into her phone. She was still gazing through her night-vision goggles at the carnage as Gabler went below deck with his gear.

“I’m there in spirit, Marietta,” Perrine said as one of the bodyguards winched up the anchor and the streamlined yacht’s engine softly rumbled to life.

CHAPTER 71

IT WAS DARK that Sunday night when Seamus and I pulled into the almost-full parking lot of Saint Patrick’s Church on Grand Street in downtown Newburgh.

No sultry moonlight or romance in sight on this particular summer night, I thought as I got out. Not even close.

The night before, a uniformed on-duty cop had been shot to death in his cruiser. Actually, I guess “assassinated” would be a better term, since it seemed to have been done with a very high-powered rifle. As if that weren’t bad enough, beside the veteran cop was a bag with three kilos of cocaine inside of it.

That’s why Seamus and I were here. Ed Boyanoski had told us about a special emergency meeting of several law enforcement, church, and civic groups who wanted to discuss the latest atrocities and see what could be done about them.

As we crossed the parking lot, I looked out on the lights of Newburgh and thought of the big rip theory in physics. Scientists speculate that the ever-expanding universe will reach a point where forces like gravity can’t hold things together anymore, and everything in the entire universe will tear apart at the same time.

Maybe that’s what was going on, because this killing wasn’t just a hard blow to this small city already on the ropes with drugs and gangs and so many young people shooting each other. It was really starting to look like the knockout punch.

After we passed through a battered metal door, we descended some steps into the church’s dank basement, where the meeting hall was. The people there were a mix of Spanish-speaking businessmen and laborers, concerned-looking black moms and grandmoms, and blue- and white-collar Caucasians. The Newburgh PD was well represented, too. Ed and Bill were in the center of the front row, with Walrond and Groover and most of the guys from the gang unit. I passed trauma surgeon Dr. Mary Ann Walker sitting in a chair by the front, staring at the floor as she shredded a napkin.

If there was a common thread among them, it seemed to be devastation. There was also some shock, and even more fear.

I walked over to Ed, who was standing beside a plate of cinnamon churros.

“Is this the part where I say, ‘Hi, my name’s Mike, and I’m an alcoholic’?” I said as I grabbed a coffee.

“I feel like becoming an alcoholic with the way things are looking around here,” Ed said dourly.

Okay, then, I thought as I found a metal folding chair. So much for the witty banter.

An older Hispanic woman with brightly dyed blond hair spoke first.

“I have a seventeen-year-old nephew in jail for murder,” she said. “My son isn’t even in a gang, but he’s been shot. It’s like the Wild West out there, or Iraq. Please, won’t someone help us?”

After she sat back down, a regal young black woman wearing business clothes and carrying an infant in a baby carrier stepped to the front of the room.

“Hi, everyone. I’m Tasha Jennings. I’m nobody, just a citizen of Newburgh like you. I came tonight to tell everyone that this situation is not hopeless. Things were just this bad when I was a kid in Brooklyn in the early nineties. Actually, they were even worse. We used to get like a hundred murders a year in my neighborhood. But they turned it around. I’m not sure how, but they did it. Someone needs to look into those methods. We need to find out what those cops did there and do it here. Thank you.”

As she sat, a mustached white guy in an Orange County Choppers T-shirt and dusty jeans stood up.

“She’s right,” he said angrily. “That’s exactly what we need. We need a Giuliani. Some hard-ass who will make the cops do their goddamn jobs instead of stealing drugs!”

That got some hearty applause from the let’s-make-the-cops-put-down-the-doughnuts crowd. I looked over at Ed and Bill, who paid informants out of their own pockets and didn’t look like they had gotten a good night’s sleep in years, let alone taken a vacation.

“Giuliani?” someone called out. “That guy was a Nazi!”

“Damn straight he was a Nazi,” Mustache said. “The Nazi who saved New York City.”

The rest of the meeting wasn’t very effective. There was a lot of yelling, people venting their frustration. You couldn’t blame them. The Newburgh residents wanted their city back. They wanted to do the right thing for their town and for their families.

But how?

CHAPTER 72

THE FIRST TIME Seamus spoke was when we got back into the minibus.

“I was thinking about what that nice young woman said,” he said after he clicked his seat belt in place. “About turning around New York. Did you know that Giuliani wasn’t the first crusader to clean up New York?”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“It happened in the late eighteen hundreds. The plight of the Irish in New York City after the 1849 potato famine was far worse than that of the poor people here in Newburgh. The Irish were considered a menace to society, and the run-down parts of the city where they lived were rife with crime and drugs, prostitution and gangs, and deplorable conditions.”

“We were the original gangsters?” I said with a grin.

“Exactly,” Seamus said in his brogue. “What turned it around was a moral and cultural revolution. A bishop named John Hughes went into the slums and took the people to task, condemning their criminality on the one hand and offering a sense of self-respect and hope through God on the other. Hughes was actually the one who started the Catholic school system. With his efforts, in a generation, all the criminals were cops and the Irish were solid citizens.”

“You think that might work, Father?” I said skeptically. “Me and you should walk down Lander Street thumping a Bible? I mean, really? Could I hollow mine out for my Glock?”

My grandfather looked very old as he shrugged and looked out the window.

“It’s in the DNA of young male human beings to enjoy acting like hooligans,” he said. “Everyone knows that. Nothing will ever stop that. The only effective curb to that unacceptable behavior is the presence of a larger male human being known as a father who will kick the young man’s keister when he acts up. Where are the fathers here?”

“So that’s it? Fatherlessness is the root of the gang problem?”

“It’s not rocket science, Mick,” Seamus said. “I don’t need to tell you how much hands-on help a teenage boy needs to become a self-reliant, law-abiding man.”

“You have a point there,” I said.

“Exactly. A mother can’t control a fifteen-year-old young man by herself. School can’t. So these kids run wilder and wilder until they get killed or the police have to step in.”

“They are wild,” I said.

“See, the Church emphasizes the family and frowns on premarital sex and divorce, and people laugh and call us killjoys and plug their ears,” Seamus said. “There are many ways to raise children and none is perfect, but anyone who says a traditional nuclear family isn’t the best way is flat-out fooling himself.”

He sighed.

“People say it’s society’s fault, and they’re right. In our society, fatherlessness is considered a lifestyle choice. But it’s not. To have a child and not be its father is criminal abandonment. You might as well leave your baby in his stroller on the corner and run away, because that’s basically what you’re doing. Without a father, these kids have been abandoned to the street, and hence the situation here in Newburgh. Lord of the Flies with drugs and guns.”

“So all of a sudden these gangbangers are going to put away their nine-millimeters and drugs and settle down with formula and diapers? How’s that going to happen? And why didn’t you say all this at the meeting?” I said. “Put the message out there?”

“They don’t want to hear it from an old Irish priest,” Seamus said. “They’d shut me out as an interloper before I got to the podium.”

“Who should be the messenger, then?”

“I don’t know. Jay-Z might be a start, or that P. Diddy fella. The message has to come from someone prominent, someone who already has their respect. Bill Cosby tried to say some sensible things a few years back, but the secular crowd shouted him down. It has to be someone who won’t be shouted down by anyone. Someone with fire in his belly.”

“Jay-Z, Seamus? C’mon. That’s just not going to happen.”

“In that case, we need to start building more prisons and graveyards,” Seamus said. “Because if someone doesn’t come along and somehow convince these young men to live their lives in a different way, they’re going to go right on killing each other. Generation after generation after generation.”

“As much as I hate to say this, old man,” I said as I finally put the bus into drive, “I think you’re actually right.”