I, Michael Bennett

CHAPTER 73

IN THE MIDDLE of the night-3:00 a.m. on Monday, to be exact-I got a call from DEA chief Patrick Zaretski. It was big news. Good big news, for a change.

A tip had come in on a group linked to Manuel Perrine. Apparently, a team of killers was holed up in a house in Staten Island. It was being speculated that they were there to plot another brazen assault at Perrine’s trial. The house was currently under surveillance while an arrest team was put together.

“There’s word that there’s an attractive brunette at the location,” Patrick said. “We think it’s that bitch Marietta, Mike. Hughie’s killer. We might have finally caught a break on this.”

By 4:00 a.m., I was on the New York State Thruway, flying at nearly a hundred miles an hour, with Jimmy Sanchez, a DEA agent from the joint task force who lived in Orange County. His car was an undercover vehicle, a souped-up Dodge Charger, and the bubbling roar of its 6.4-liter HEMI V8 was the perfect sound track to my mounting adrenaline and anticipation. My foot was aching to kick a door down-and even more aching to finally kick some scumbag, drug-dealer ass-as we headed toward New York City like bats out of hell.

We toned it down considerably by the time we got to the rallying point. We rolled up to the wagon train of DEA and NYPD unmarked cars already waiting in the deserted parking lot of a Chili’s on Richmond Avenue near the College of Staten Island.

All stops had been thoroughly pulled. There were almost three dozen detectives, DEA agents, and Emergency Service Unit cops helping each other into Kevlar and prepping guns on the trunks of their cruisers. They looked like a pro football defensive squad getting their game faces on, just about ready to mix it up. I know I was ready to trade some helmet paint with Perrine’s people. Raring to go, in fact.

It was a strange and sort of wonderful moment there, getting prepared with those men. Though no one said anything, we knew that this was bigger than just a drug raid. The audacious violence of Perrine’s men had turned his trial into an international event. The man hadn’t just broken American laws, he’d gleefully spat in the face of everything we stood for.

And the rest of the planet was waiting to see what we were going to do about it.

The dedicated cops around me were aching to show the world exactly what we were going to do about it. Because they were tired of the evil and the drugs, tired of the terrorists tearing at the fabric of our great country. We were completely freaking sick of it.

After we divided up the raid duties, a quick prayer was said as the sun came up over the restaurant’s giant red plastic chili. I don’t know who started it, but mostly everyone joined in. We probably flew in the face of several Supreme Court decisions by actually having the unbridled audacity to bring God into government proceedings, but we just went ahead and did it anyway. I guess we were feeling really wild and crazy that morning as we prepared to stare death in its ugly face. Just completely off the hook.

Jimmy gunned the engine of the muscle car as I got in, the air around me vibrating with every surge of its deep, rumbling thunder. Who needed coffee?

“It’s ass-clobberin’ time,” Jimmy said as he dropped it into drive.

“Amen to that, brother,” I said, shucking a round into my tactical shotgun as we peeled out.

CHAPTER 74

THE TARGET WAS a cruddy stucco two-family house on Hillman Avenue. If it stood out at all on the worn suburban street, it was because of the just-off-the-lot black Chevy Tahoe in its concrete driveway. There were five entrances, including the one to the basement apartment, and the plan was to hit all of them at once, very, very hard, with everything in our arsenal-battering rams, flashbang grenades, tactical ballistic shields.

The word was that the people inside weren’t your run-of-the-mill dopers, but highly trained killers and mercenaries. We weren’t taking any chances. We parked a block away, and a moment later, thirty armed-to-the-teeth cops were jogging quickly and quietly down the dim, narrow street.

When we arrived at the address, Jimmy and I and our five-man team split off through the house’s short alley to the backyard. It was a hot summer morning, and under my body armor I was sweating quite profusely as I knelt in the dirt of a small vegetable garden by the house’s rear sliding glass door. I had to wipe my hand on my pants several times to keep the shotgun from slipping.

From a house on the other side of the backyard, I could hear an a.m. news station rising in volume as a clock radio’s alarm went off. Don’t bother slapping it this morning, buddy, I thought. This whole street is about to hear one hell of a wake-up call.

It happened right before we got the go-ahead. We were crouching there like runners at the starting line when all of a sudden we heard the metallic, clacking plah-plah-plah of a machine gun. Our team stared at each other. It was coming from the front of the house, along with a lot of hollering over the tactical microphone.

“What do we do?” Jimmy said. “Go in or go out front?”

I answered him by shattering the sliding glass door with the butt of my Mossberg and tossing in a flashbang. It went off like a stick of dynamite, and then we were inside.

“Freeze! Police! Police!”

As the grenade smoke cleared, we saw a shirtless Hispanic man, maybe eighteen years old, standing wide-eyed in the kitchen in front of an open closet door. First he put his hands up, but then, snake-quick, he reached into the closet and swung something out of it. Both Jimmy and I shot the kid as he lifted the AK-47 to his shoulder. Our three-and-a-half-inch-barrel 12-gauge Mossbergs were loaded with double-aught buck, and the shooter went down as if he’d fallen through a hole in the floor.

As Jimmy and I entered the living room, we could clearly hear the chopping sound of the machine gun upstairs. Rattles of gunfire were also coming from outside in the street and hitting the house. We crouched as rounds shattered the living room window and thumped into the walls. It was return fire from our guys, who must have been pinned down outside.

“Cease fire on the lower level!” I called into the microphone. “Cops on the ground floor!”

The firing stopped, and Jimmy and I had just shucked new rounds into our guns and were heading toward the stairs when it happened. There was a thunderous ripping sound from above, and I was suddenly airborne. It was the weirdest feeling, almost pleasant, as though I were on some carnival ride.

I grayed out for a second as I landed hard on my back in the kitchen. When I came to, the first thing I noticed was that my shotgun was missing, as well as my shoes. The room and everything in it, including me, were completely covered in plaster and debris. Every inch of my exposed skin felt like it had been slapped. My ears were ringing, and blood was pouring from my nose.

Jimmy rose from beside me, coughing. I just lay there for a minute, trying to reorient myself. The house was roofless, the second floor completely open to the sky.

I smelled fire and grabbed Jimmy, and we ran out into the backyard.

It had been a bomb, of course. Not a large enough one to kill me, but almost. After the FDNY put out the fire, we found two bodies in the charred debris. Another Hispanic man with an AK-47 and a middle-aged white guy with an enormous sniper rifle in his lap.

There was no sign of Marietta. We found the cellar door open right next to where we breached, so she must have escaped during the confusion. The speculation was that there had been bomb-making materials upstairs, and one of our guys must have hit it during the firefight. My pet theory was that Marietta detonated it remotely as a distraction in order to escape.

I certainly wouldn’t put it past her to kill some underlings or anyone else in order to get away.

CHAPTER 75

I’D TAKEN A licking, but I kept right on ticking. Well, at least for the moment.

Actually, I thought I’d feel more screwed up, having so narrowly missed buying the farm, but after the explosion I felt strangely exhilarated and energized. In fact, for a few buzzing hours, I felt about as invincible as a sixteen-year-old motocross champ, and that’s truly saying something.

And why not be joyful? There weren’t too many people walking around who had the “experience a truly massive explosion” box checked off their bucket list. The luck o’the Irish indeed!

After the EMTs cleaned me up and the Staten Island crime scene was secured, I went back to my Manhattan apartment for a shower and a change of clothes. I couldn’t believe it was only eleven o’clock when I plopped down on my couch. Talk about a full morning.

I checked in with Seamus to let him know I was okay. I was about to tell him that I was planning on crashing in the city tonight until he told me that there was another late-evening Newburgh town meeting being called.

I immediately changed my plans. I had to be there. Because in spite of all their frustration, it was obvious that there was an incredible thing going on with the folks of Newburgh. It might not have been exactly the moral crusade Seamus had been talking about, but it was powerful nonetheless. These good people had had it. They weren’t going to stop coming together until their bad situation was changed.

Not only that, but I’d thought of something that might help.

I grabbed a cab downtown and had a long lunch with my assistant U.S. attorney friend, Tara McLellan. I remembered that Tara had been on a violence task force in Boston, where the feds and local authorities had come together and helped several of the violent, gang-ridden communities come back from the brink. I was eager to get her feedback.

“What do you think, Tara?” I said over the remains of the massive, greasy, life-affirming pub-style bacon cheeseburger I’d just devoured. “I know you work in the city, but these people in Newburgh are so desperate. Do you think we could get the federal ball rolling for them?”

Tara lifted her light beer.

“Actually, I work for the Southern District, Mike, which includes Newburgh. I also know full well what gangs do to a community-the insidious fear, the old ladies who can’t go outside. I’ll do everything I can.”

She wasn’t kidding. I went back to her office with her, and for the rest of the afternoon, she did nothing except phone old colleagues and call in favors. She even insisted on coming back with me to the meeting and giving me a lift up the Thruway in her battered Jeep.

She looked surprised when I told her to pull over for some Starbucks near Yonkers around six.

“Coffee?” she said. “With the day you’ve had, I thought you might want to nap a little on the way.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Never better. Just getting my second wind.”

“No rest for the weary, huh?” she said, smiling, as she hit her turn signal.

“Not even weary, almost-blown-to-smithereens, workaholic cops,” I said.

CHAPTER 76

IT WAS SEVEN thirty when we came through Saint Pat’s battered doors and back down into the meeting hall. Several of the people whom Tara had called were already there, including Ann Macaulay, the liaison from the local ATF office, and Larry Brown of the New York field office of the FBI.

We gathered all the feds together with the Newburgh detectives at the back of the meeting hall. After I made all the introductions, Tara gave a brief explanation of how the gang violence reduction initiative in Boston had worked.

“First, we got all the various local agencies together in a room-the prosecutors and cops, the state probation office, the school safety cops. Then we put our heads together to identify all the gang players. On a huge map, we ID’d the gangs and their turf boundaries. We put together the various beefs they had with one another, which ones in the gangs were the wannabes, which ones were the worst offenders. That was the hardest part.”

“Not here in Newburgh, ma’am,” Groover said. “We know who the players are all too well. This is a target-rich environment, believe me.”

“That’s good. Step two is the casework, which in this scenario would be undercover buys.”

“Buy-and-busts, yeah, we do that all the time,” Walrond said skeptically. “Then they’re out in six months with new friends they met in jail.”

“Actually, in this plan, all we do is buys with no busts. At least not yet,” Tara explained. “We gather ammo on the organizations slowly and surely, until we can prove that what we’ve identified is, in fact, a criminal organization. That way, under federal law, we can use the RICO statute and prosecute everyone at once to the fullest extent of the law. Clear out all the bad apples in one harvest, so to speak.”

“You don’t know how good that sounds. Music to my ears,” Groover said.

“We also give everyone involved maximum sentences of at least five years, which in federal prison means at least four years before probation,” Tara said.

“As an added benefit, in federal lockdown, they’re away from their homies, so they can’t coordinate anything from behind bars,” said Agent Brown. “We break the camel’s back with one snap.”

“You do know the Newburgh PD has only ninety cops, right?” Bill Moss said. “What you’re talking about requires massive manpower.”

“That’s where we step in,” said Brown. “We’ll get you man-power, overtime, money, vehicles, and equipment. The whole shebang.”

“Federal disaster relief. Finally,” Groover said.

“But there are roughly two hundred gang members here,” Ed Boyanoski said.

“Not a problem,” Agent Macaulay said. “We’ll get you all the guys you need.”

“This all sounds great, but won’t all the wannabes just step in? The second-tier people?” Detective Walrond said. “Newburgh is the most thriving drug market in Orange County. Won’t the demand still be there?”

“That’s when we go to phase three,” Tara said. “After we clear out the worst offenders, we get social workers, gang members, and community members-along with all the cops-and we do a sit-down. One group at a time, we give the gangbangers a presentation, a little class on what they’re looking at if the violence starts back up.

“We educate them fully on the law, the sentencing guidelines, what that’s going to do to their lives. We tell them straight up that if someone gets shot, we are coming down with the full weight of the federal government. That’s usually enough.”

“That’s it?” Bill Moss said. “That actually works?”

“Not perfectly, but yes,” Tara said. “Violent homicides go down, way down, in every place it’s tried. You have to do it one gang at a time and concentrate on one aspect of what they do-in this case, shootings. And you have to back it up. Someone gets shot, you drop the hammer. The gangs aren’t stupid. They’ll know the jig is up, especially since they know what just happened to the previous leadership. They might not stop dealing, but it’ll go further underground. What’s most important is that they’ll put their guns down and dial it back.”

Ed Boyanoski slapped me on the shoulder painfully hard as the townspeople began filling up the hall. He didn’t look so depressed anymore. In fact, he looked ecstatic. Finally, you could see it in his eyes and in the eyes of the other Newburgh detectives.

It was hope. Just a glimmer, but undoubtedly there.

“Gee, Mike. Why didn’t you just tell us that you had friends in such high places?” Ed said, smiling.

“I’m a humble man, Ed,” I said, smiling back. “Unlike you hicks up here, we NYPD detectives don’t like to brag.”

CHAPTER 77

SPIRITS WERE STILL high as we headed out of Saint Pat’s to the parking lot just before ten.

The attendance at the meeting had been even larger than the night before. Even though the FBI and ATF agents had only spoken briefly and vaguely about their plans to tackle the gang problem, just the sight of federal officials was enough to ease the minds of the people in the seats. Even the most skeptical in the crowd seemed glad that the grave nature of the problem was finally being given some serious due.

Saying my good-byes to my colleagues, I spotted Tara by her Jeep, talking on her cell phone. As I approached, she turned it off, grinning from ear to ear.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Reservations,” she said. “I just scored us one.”

“Reservations? To where? What do you know about this neck of the woods?”

“That’s my little secret,” she said. “Just tell me you’re hungry, Mike.”

“Okay. I’m Hungry Mike,” I said, smiling back.

“Yay,” she said, grabbing my hand and opening the door of her Jeep. “I think you’re in for a happy surprise.”

She wasn’t kidding. She took me fifteen minutes west on I-84 to a place called the Back Yard Bistro, in the town of Montgomery.

But as it turned out, I had a surprise for her.

Before we got out of her Jeep, I started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Tara said.

“I cannot tell a lie, Tara. I’ve been here before. And you do have excellent taste. I should know. My cousin owns the place.”

“So much for my surprise,” Tara said, deflated.

“Not to worry,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll be disappointed.”

The Back Yard Bistro was a tiny, intimate restaurant. So cozy that Tara and I were almost touching knees under the small table. The waitress couldn’t have been more pleasant, and the food was mind-blowing.

The kitchen kept sending out course after course. Tidbits of tuna tartare, foie gras, some rye-crusted pork loin, a truly amazing duck breast. All of it matched with wines. My head and taste buds were spinning.

As we ate, Tara regaled me with family stories of her cousin and my dearly departed pal, Hughie. My favorite was when Hughie and the rest of his ADD-afflicted Irish clan visited a cousin’s farm in Ireland. Finding a tiny, deserted-looking house back in the woods, the Yank punks commenced firing rocks through the windows until the tam-o’-shanter-wearing pensioner living there came out with a double-barreled shotgun.

“Wow,” I said after our waitress, Marlena, dropped a humongous slice of maple mascarpone cheesecake in front of me and a crème brûlée in front of Tara. “This was fantastic, Tara. I hope you forgive me for ruining your surprise,” I said.

“If anyone needs to be forgiven, it’s me,” Tara said. “After all, I made such an ass out of myself at the St. Regis. Pretty much bare-assed, too, if memory serves me right.”

“Were you?” I said. “When was this?”

“Very funny, Mike. I haven’t forgotten that night. I probably never will. At least the parts I can remember. You tucked me in. That was so sweet, so genteel. Cary Grant couldn’t have been more… Cary Grant. But even now, part of me wishes that you hadn’t, Mike. Is that wrong to say? Part of me wishes that you had stayed.”

I took a sip of the Champagne at my elbow. Low on the speakers, an opera diva was singing a beautiful aria.

The woman in front of me was pretty much flawless. Dark and voluptuous, smart as a whip, tough, and yet caring and kind. There are women you meet in life that you know you could-and probably should-fall deeply in love with. Tara was exactly that. She was a keeper. One ripe for the keeping. All it would take would be for me to reach across the table through the candlelight and take her graceful hand.

And yet, I didn’t do it. In the end, I couldn’t. My hand stayed on my glass, the aria ended.

“Ah, Mike. Whoever she is, she’s lucky,” Tara said, putting her head down and digging into her dessert hard enough to make the plate clink. “Luckier than she’ll ever know.”

CHAPTER 78

TARA DROPPED ME off in front of the lake house half an hour later. It was pin-drop quiet on the way back. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t her. That it wasn’t about attraction. But even I knew how lame that would sound. I wisely kept it zipped, for once.

“Thank you for dinner,” I said as we stopped in the gravel driveway.

Somewhere between rage and tears, Tara sat motionless behind the wheel, staring dead ahead as her motor ticked. I took the half minute of her complete silence as my cue to get out. Gravel flew as she peeled back out onto the country road. A tiny piece of it nailed me in the corner of my right eye and became pretty much embedded. Then there was just me and all my friendly chittering cricket friends as I stood there in the dark.

“Way to go, Mike,” I mumbled to myself as I climbed, half blind, up the creaky wooden steps to the front door. “Way to win friends and really influence people.”

As I reached for the front door, something funny happened. It opened by itself as the porch light came on. I blinked in the light with my left eye as I rubbed furiously at the right one. My crazy day wasn’t over, apparently. Not even close.

My kids’ loving nanny, Mary Catherine, appeared in the miraculously open doorway with arms crossed over her chest. Even with only one peeper working, I could see that the expression on her face was more than vaguely familiar. It was the same one I’d just seen on Tara’s face before she gave me a face full of gravel.

Will Shakespeare was wrong, I thought, rubbing at my eye as moths whacked into each other over my head.

Hell hath no fury like two women scorned.

Standing there, I suddenly thought of a dumb expression from my childhood. It arrived instantly, like a mental text message from Mike Bennett, circa 1978.

Your ass is grass, it said.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Michael Bennett, finally home, drunk, after his many adventures abroad,” Mary Catherine said, clapping her hands together sarcastically.

“That is who just dropped you off, correct?” she said, cocking her head. “A broad?”

She had me dead to rights. Even under the direst of circumstances, I always made every effort to contact her about my status and inquire about what was going on at the house, about the kids. And I hadn’t. I’d gone off to work pretty much yesterday, and I hadn’t lifted the phone once. Not only that, but I knew full well what Mary Catherine thought of my new friend and colleague, Tara McLellan.

With nothing in the holster, I tried drunken charm.

“Mary Catherine, hello,” I said with a courtly bow. “Long time no see. How is everything?”

“Bad, Mr. Bennett,” she said, tears welling in her blue eyes. “Bad and about to get worse.”

“Mary Catherine, come on. I can explain,” I said.

She stood there, glaring furiously at me through her soft, wet eyes.

“Actually, I can’t,” I said after a moment. “Only that I screwed up. I should have called you.”

“And told me what? That you were going to be late tonight because you were out on a date?”

I stood there, wincing, as I remembered what Mary Catherine had said on our walk. The date I was supposed to plan but never did.

“It’s not what you think. That was Tara McLellan, the prosecutor on the Perrine case,” I said. “It was work, Mary Catherine. She came up to the Newburgh meeting to discuss the feds helping out with the gang problem.”

Mary just stood and stared at me, the sadness in her blue eyes really killing me inside.

“You mean the Newburgh town meeting that ended at ten?” she finally said.

CHAPTER 79

“YES,” I SAID. “We had dinner after.”

“Dinner,” Mary nodded. “How special. Three hours of it, too. I guess I can toss the plate of ziti the kids and I saved for you. And the slice of cake from Jane’s birthday.”

“Shit,” I said, closing my good eye. “Mary Catherine, I completely forgot. I’m sorry. Let me come in and we’ll talk about it.”

“Oh, by all means come in,” Mary Catherine said, opening the screen door, which gave out a deafening squeak.

I saw then that she was dressed-jeans, a T-shirt, and a backpack on her back. No! Wait. What?

“The house is all yours, because I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m leaving, Michael Bennett. And I’m not coming back.”

“Mary Catherine, come on. I know you’re angry, but that’s crazy. It’s… it’s one in the morning.”

“No,” Mary Catherine said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s actually two in the morning, and I won’t come on. Not anymore.”

She stepped forward suddenly. For a second, I thought she was going to belt me one. It was almost worse when she stopped herself and didn’t.

She brushed past me and hit the stairs.

I tried to say something, tried to come up with words that would make her stop in her tracks, but there was nothing to say. She walked past me where I stood rooted to the porch and right out into the summer night.

I would have gone after her immediately, but my eye was on fire, so I ran inside to splash water on my stinging face. After I finally worked loose the gravel grit from my burning eye, I rushed back to the front door.

I was convinced that I’d see Mary Catherine there on the porch, her I’m-running-away ploy finished now, ready to give me more of the grief I definitely deserved. But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t even in the driveway anymore. I jogged out to the road and stood peering left and right into the darkness.

You’ve gotta be kidding me, I thought. There was no sign of her. She was really gone.

I went back up the driveway and hopped into the minibus. Driving after having had a few drinks was irresponsible, I knew, but I didn’t care. Panic was building inside of me at that point, the kind of pure panic reserved for a shitheel who realizes that he might have just taken advantage of the special woman in his life one too many times.

I almost took out the mailbox as I reversed it out onto the country lane. Trees wheeled by in the sweep of the headlights as I screeched the stupid clunky bus out onto the road. Then I put it in drive and floored it.

At every curve on that twisty rural road, I was sure that I was about to see her. I’d pull over, there’d be some yelling, some tears, but we’d fix it. I’d fix it somehow. The problem was, I didn’t see her. She wasn’t on the road five miles in each direction. I raced to the parking lot of the pizza parlor and then the bowling alley. I went in and asked the turbaned clerk at the 24-7 gas station if Mary Catherine had come in, but he just shook his head and went back to the cricket match he was watching on his laptop.

I even drove out to I-84 and went up and down it for over an hour, but it was fruitless.

I’d lost her, I thought, near tears as I stared into the roadside darkness. I’d finally done it. I’d finally gone and completely ruined everything.

CHAPTER 80

I WOKE UP the next morning on the porch just before dawn. I sat up, my back and neck stiff as plywood from falling asleep on the ancient wicker love seat. Head ringing from my hangover, I lifted my itchy arms to see that I’d been eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Then I remembered the night before, and I really felt bad.

I lurched back into the house. I was hoping that perhaps Mary Catherine had come home while I was asleep and that I’d find her fast asleep in her room. I crossed my fingers as I came through the living room. I even said a little prayer by her closed door, one of those childish if-you-give-me-this-one-God-I-promise-to-be-a-better-person specials. Then I cracked the door and dropped my head in despair.

God must have been off duty this morning, because Mary Catherine’s bed was completely empty. “What’s going on?” Seamus whispered, suddenly appearing in the hallway beside me in his robe and slippers.

Great, a priest, I thought. Just what I needed. I was going to need last rites when everyone found out I had driven Mary Catherine away.

I stared at Mary Catherine’s empty, made bed and then back at him, speechless.

“I heard the yelling last night, Mike. Something happened with you and MC? What is it?”

“Mary Catherine,” I said. “She’s, um, left.”

“What?” Seamus said in shock.

I shook my head.

Rather than wait for an explanation, Seamus put on the coffee and waited patiently.

It actually took two cups of joe and a couple of eggs over easy to give my full confession to the old priest.

“Well, you can’t blame the lass, can you?” he said, slathering butter across a piece of multigrain toast. “Running loose with wild women tends to irk the little lady at home.”

“The funny thing is, I wasn’t running loose with a wild woman,” I argued. “I was tempted, don’t get me wrong, Father. Sorely tempted, but I resisted. I could never do that to Mary Catherine.”

“You’re an idiot, Michael Sean Aloysius Bennett,” Seamus said. “How many Mary Catherines do you think are out there? Exactly how many good-looking, caring, strong females dumb enough to fall head over heels for the likes of you do you think presently exist? You string people along long enough, the string withers, then it breaks.”

“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that, Seamus,” I said, groaning. “I need to get her back. How can I get her back?”

Seamus just shook his head and pointed at the toast stack in front of me.

“Eat some carbs, son,” he said. “You’re going to need them for all the creative thinking you have to do.”

I was in the bathroom rubbing calamine lotion on my skeeter bites after my shower when my cell phone started ringing. I raced into my bedroom, thinking it was Mary Catherine, but of course it wasn’t. It was a number I didn’t know. Manhattan; 212. I answered it anyway.

“Hello?”

“This is Patricia Reese, Tara McLellan’s assistant. Is this Detective Michael Bennett?”

“Speaking,” I said with mock cheeriness.

“Detective, Ms. McLellan wanted me to let you know that it looks like your testimony is going to happen today, and we need you in court.”

I took the phone off my ear and just looked at it. Of course I had to go to work today. What was I thinking? That I could actually have a day off to repair my wrecked family life? How silly.

“Ten o’clock, Foley Square. Will you be there?” Tara’s personal assistant wanted to know.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “where else would I be?”

After I found a suit, I went to the powder room, where Seamus was shaving.

“This just in. I’m going to work.”

“Work? What about Mary Catherine?”

“I’m testifying today in the city on the Perrine case. You’ll have to be in charge of the brood for now.”

“Me?” Seamus said, putting down the razor. “Who’ll take care of me? I’m elderly.”

“Please, I’m dying here. Juliana and Jane know where everything is. Refer to them. That’s what I do when Mary Catherine isn’t around. Also, you need to be on the lookout for Mary Catherine. Please text me the second she comes back. If she comes back.”

“Ah, don’t be too worried,” Seamus said, dipping his razor into the sink before passing it down his pale cheek. “I’m sure she’s around here somewhere. I have a funny feeling she hasn’t just flat-out left the kids. You, maybe, but them? No way. We’ll find her, but you have to stop losing her.”

CHAPTER 81

IT WAS HURRY-UP-AND-WAIT time when I arrived in the witness room at Foley Square that morning. I was growing more and more anxious until I got a chance to speak to the parents of the murdered Macy’s waiter, Scott Melekian, in the courthouse cafeteria during the lunch break.

The Melekians were retired restaurant owners from Bethesda, Maryland, and told me that their only child, Scott, had attended the U.S. Naval Academy before coming up to New York to fulfill his lifelong dream of playing sax for a living.

“He’d worked on cruise ships and sold some stuff on iTunes, but once he subbed for someone at The Phantom of the Opera, that was it,” the beefy dad, Albert, said. “Down in the pit with the stage lights and all the excitement, he’d found his destiny, he told us. He’d also finally gotten the call from the Local 802 of the musicians’ union to work on an upcoming musical. Can you imagine? He’d just given Macy’s his two-week notice. Then this bastard kills him.”

The round-faced mom, Allie Melekian, started crying.

“He used to play for the whole family every Christmas Eve. ‘O Holy Night’ and ‘Silent Night.’ We’d all be sitting around, smiling and crying our eyes out, it was so beautiful,” she said. “And whenever he’d come home, he’d always come down into the kitchen and play ‘You Are So Beautiful.’ I always thought it was a corny joke, but I know now that it wasn’t.”

The red-faced woman looked up at me, trying to gather her tears with her fingertips and failing.

“Did you ever think, Detective Bennett, that there would come a day in your life when you wanted to die? When you actually longed for it?”

I squeezed the woman’s hand.

“I know one thing, ma’am,” I said. “I know your son is watching us right now, and he couldn’t be more proud of you guys for coming here today to see that his killer never gets a chance to hurt anyone ever again.”

When we went back up after lunch, Ivan Vogel, the chief prosecutor of the narcotics unit in the U.S. attorney’s office, stood at the front of the small, windowless gray courtroom.

“The prosecution would like to call its first witness,” the short, stocky, former collegiate wrestling champ said. “We call Detective Michael Bennett to the stand.”

Mrs. Melekian’s words still rang in my ears as the court clerk asked me to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Then I lifted my hand off the Bible and turned and stared Manuel Perrine right in his pale blue killer’s eyes.

“Would you please state your name and occupation?” Vogel said.

“My name is Michael Bennett, and I am a detective with the New York City Police Department. I have been with the department for the last twenty years.”

“Could you please tell us in what law enforcement capacity you were working on the morning of June third of last year?”

“I was working with a joint task force of city police and federal authorities to facilitate the arrest of the defendant, Manuel Perrine, for international drug trafficking and murder.”

“I’m going to have to object there, Your Honor,” Perrine’s well-heeled lawyer, Arthur Boehme, said, standing with an affable grin. “The federal arrest warrant in question states that Mr. Perrine was wanted to stand trial for the murder of the two U.S. Border Patrol agents. It says nothing about drug trafficking. Also, my client has not as yet been convicted or even tried for those crimes.”

“Sustained,” the judge said as the Waspy, Jimmy Stewart-looking son of a bitch parked his impeccably tailored ass back into his seat.

I looked at Judge Mary Elizabeth Fleming. Her colleague had been murdered by the homicidal maniac slime at the table five feet away, and here she was, making sure all the hairsplitting bullshit Perrine’s mouthpiece was spouting got its due? What a load of ripe horseshit trials could be. Sustained, my ass. Perrine was a stain.

Vogel frowned as he paced in front of me.

“Detective Bennett, how was it that you had information that Manuel Perrine would be in New York City?” he said.

“Credible information was provided to us by a confidential informant. We set up surveillance at the location where we were told he would be, but after he did not appear, we reevaluated our information and suspected that he was in town to attend the graduation of his daughter from NYU law school. As we attempted to arrest him, gunfire broke out from Perrine’s bodyguards, which then resulted in the death of DEA agent Hughie McDonough and NYPD officer Dennis Jaeger.”

Perrine’s lawyer popped up again like a polished, boyishly handsome target in a game of whack-a-mole.

“Again, Your Honor, I need to object. At this time, my client is on trial for the murder of one Scott Melekian, a waiter at Macy’s. There is nothing in the charges leveled against him here today for the murder of any law enforcement personnel.”

“I knew we should have put the murders in sequential order, Mr. Boehme,” I said into the microphone. “Your client’s killed so many people, it gets quite confusing.”

Nervous chuckles erupted from the crowd, which would have been fine except for the fact that what I said was actually true.

“Your Honor!” Boehme said.

“Strike the witness’s last statement. Please just answer the questions, Detective Bennett. This isn’t a stand-up routine.”

You’re right, I felt like saying. It’s a frigging farce.

The prosecutor approached the bench.

“Please, Your Honor. My witness is testifying to his whereabouts and the circumstances surrounding the death of Scott Melekian. That is, he’s trying to, but defense counsel is making it impossible.”

“The prosecution is right,” Judge Fleming said. “Do I have to remind our prestigious defense counsel that he will soon have his very own chance to cross-examine the witness? In the meantime, please do shut up and stop interrupting, Okay?”

That’s when Perrine popped up.

“Bullshit!” he screamed.

The table before him heaved up and slammed down as he kneed it. Boehme squinted up at Perrine in abject puzzlement. He looked like he wanted to say something to calm his client, but then thought better of it. He quickly turned his head downward, as if suddenly fascinated by the pattern in the government-issue carpet.

“Bullshit!” Perrine repeated. “These accusations are false, you lying maggot! This is harassment. This proceeding is illegal! I wish to speak to the Mexican consulate. I am not a citizen of this country. I am a Mexican national. Your laws have no authority over me!”

In a moment, no less than a dozen burly court officers, corrections officers, and U.S. marshals rushed forward from their stations. Perrine seemed to calm a little, then he feinted and broke through them, screaming, as he ran directly at me. Immediately, I stood and lifted the metal chair I was sitting on, able, ready, and oh so willing to crush Perrine’s skull with it and finish this crap once and for all.

But unfortunately, before I had the chance, the court officers were able to loudly tackle him to the carpeted ground. After a moment, you couldn’t even see Perrine beneath the crush of people on top of him. From the bottom of the pile, there were grunts and the click of metal as they cuffed his legs.

“You will regret this, Bennett,” Perrine screamed where he writhed like a wild animal on the floor. “You will wish you had been stillborn by the time I am done with you and your family!”

He was still screaming as they took him out by his hands and feet. There was dead silence in the courtroom as everyone looked at each other, trying to recover and catch their breath.

“On that note, I believe these proceedings are done for the day,” the judge finally said. “And defense counsel, tomorrow the defendant will be gagged as well as heavily shackled under my order. So I don’t want to hear the slightest peep out of you about it. And with the next outburst, I promise you, he’ll be tried in a cage.”

She brought down her gavel like a blacksmith hitting an anvil.

“This trial will proceed, so help me. This trial will proceed if it’s the last thing I do.”

CHAPTER 82

AT A LITTLE before 8:00 p.m., the Fifth Precinct evening patrol supervisor, Sergeant Wayne Lozada, and his driver, Officer Michael Morelli, parked in their favorite cooping spot, the southeast corner of Canal and the Bowery, facing the ramp for the Manhattan Bridge.

After Morelli put it into park, he lifted a massive binder from the backseat. He flipped through the NYPD Patrol Guide to the section covering the use of the Taser on emotionally disturbed people. Morelli, who was actually quite proficient in the use of the electrical device due to the neighborhood’s proliferation of nuts, didn’t really need to go over it but was brushing up for a sergeant’s test he was scheduled to take at the end of the month.

As Morelli studied, Sergeant Lozada idly listened to the fizz and pop of the radio as he stared at the monumental arch and colonnade at the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. He never got sick of looking at that thing. Above the Chinese billboards, crappy stores, and skells selling fake handbags on the piss-stained Bowery sidewalk, the intricate baroque stonework looked fantastical, like a Rembrandt peeking out over the rim of a Dumpster.

Lozada, who briefly had been a high school history teacher before becoming a cop, was an architecture buff. After he retired at the end of the year, he was thinking about starting a walking tour.

“You see that thing, Morelli?” Lozada said. “That thing was built by the same architects who designed the iconic New York Public Library. It’s called a triumphal arch, and this one was modeled in the tradition of both the Porte Saint-Denis in Paris and the first-century Arch of Titus in Rome. It was part of the City Beautiful movement, started by a bunch of rich folks at the turn of the last century who thought they could promote civic virtue and harmonious social order through beautiful public spaces and grandiose buildings.”

“Real nice, Sarge,” mumbled Morelli, who couldn’t wait for his long-winded boss’s retirement party. “Classy stuff, all right.”

“A hundred years ago, they erected stunning works of classical art for the opening of a bridge, Morelli,” Lozada said with a sigh. “Today, a decade after the nine-eleven attacks, we can’t even rebuild two ugly skyscrapers.”

“I know, right? Exactly, exactly,” Morelli said, flipping a page in the gargantuan binder.

Lozada was still sighing when they heard the sound coming from somewhere off behind them.

“No, it can’t be,” Lozada said as the lazy ka-click ka-click ka-click ka-click came closer.

He glanced in the side-view mirror. A young Hispanic guy was walking up the sidewalk behind the cruiser, shaking a can of spray paint.

The guy stopped ten feet behind the cruiser and commenced painting. They watched in silence as he went to town, bombing the stone wall of the building they were parked beside.

Morelli and Lozada looked at each other for a moment, then broke into riotous laughter.

“Your iPhone charged, Morelli?” Lozada said, grasping the door handle. “Because I believe we either have a vandal with a serious vision deficiency or a contender here for world’s dumbest criminal.”

Lozada opened the passenger door and put his right foot out onto the sidewalk. He was just standing up when he heard a sudden engine roar and a long tire shriek.

As he glanced forward, he watched as a beat-up white Dodge van veered off the Bowery and stopped directly in front of the cruiser. Its side door rattled open and three squat Hispanic men wearing bandannas over their faces and baseball caps and mechanic’s coveralls tucked into construction boots stood there staring at him.

It took him a fraction of a second to register that they had guns in their hands. Long ones.

They were M4 automatic rifles, Lozada knew. He had one just like them in the trunk of the cruiser.

It would be the last thing he would ever know.

The assassins opened fire, muzzle flashes just visible in the twilight. Lozada was cut down to the concrete immediately as more than a dozen bullets struck his face and throat. Morelli, running from the cruiser at a loping backpedal, managed to just draw his Glock before he, too, was hit with a fusillade of automatic gunfire that struck him in the right side of his head. He was dead well before he and his unfired weapon hit the ground.

The shooters in the van continued to fire on the fallen policemen. When their guns were empty, they reloaded, and fired off another magazine apiece into the cop car.

When they were done, the spray-painter hurdled over the body of Lozada and removed a large red plastic jug from the knapsack on his back. Upending the jug, he poured gasoline all over the cop car’s trunk and roof and hood and interior. He tossed the empty jug into the car as he ignited a Zippo lighter with his calloused thumb. He was already in the van by the time the tossed lighter landed on the front seat and the car went up.

The van sped away. The light of the burning NYPD car’s flames flickered on the blood-drenched fallen cops and on what had been spray-painted on the side of the bank building next to their bodies.

DOS POR DÍA HASTA QUE SE LIBERA!

Two a day until he is released.

LIBERTAD! LIBERTAD!

FREE MANUEL PERRINE!

CHAPTER 83

AFTER THE TRIAL, I went straight out to Woodside, Queens, on the number 7 train to look for Mary Catherine.

Seamus had called and left a message to say that Mary Catherine had called the lake house. It was a cryptic call. She needed to spend some time with friends now, she said, and would call back in a few days. I remembered how she had stayed with friends out in Woodside when she first came to the States, so I took a chance of heading out there to see if I might bump into her.

It was a truly desperate move, the act of a madman, really. With more than eight million people in New York City, human beings don’t just bump into each other. I didn’t even know if she was staying in Woodside. She could have been out in the Hamptons or on a plane back to Ireland. Needless to say, I didn’t find her. All I found out as I hit a few bars and wandered up and down Queens Boulevard was how guilty I felt, and how incredibly lonely.

Officer Williams, the gung ho cop assigned to watch my apartment, flashed his lights and quickly got out of his cruiser as I came up West End Avenue to my apartment house around ten. There were two other squad cars on the block now, I noticed. This couldn’t be good.

“There you are! Everybody, and I mean everybody, is looking for you,” Williams said. “Don’t you turn on your phone?”

“The battery died,” I said. “What the heck’s up?”

Heck was up, all right. I sat on the hood of his cruiser, my head going lower and lower, as Williams told me about the double cop execution on Canal Street. When he told me about the message spray-painted on the wall, I closed my eyes. The sergeant who was killed had four kids, his oldest girl at Loyola University.

I sat there as the horror of it all sank in like a dull knife between my shoulder blades. This is what happened now? NYPD cops were being gunned down? Shot to smithereens with automatic weapons? How did that compute? It didn’t. How could it? I sat there, dizzy. The world was truly spinning off its axis. How in the name of God were we supposed to set it right again?

I left Officer Williams and went up to my silent and empty apartment. I thought I was lonely before. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After some rummaging around, I found a dusty bottle of Smirnoff Lemon Twist vodka with a Christmas ribbon on it in the back of my closet. I cracked the cap and sat on my bed, sipping it.

I didn’t bother taking off my trial suit or even my shoes as I propped myself against the headboard. Of course not. When I get shitfaced on discount vodka by myself, I always like to keep it as formal as possible. To cheer myself up, I spun the Christmas bow on my finger and thought about my dead wife, Maeve. I tried to picture her face in my mind, but I couldn’t.

I cried for a bit. For Maeve. For Mary Catherine. For those two dead cops. After a minute or two, I tried to break the bottle by slamming it down on the nightstand. But nothing happened, so I took another sip.

This wasn’t supposed to happen, I thought. None of it. This wasn’t in the original script.

What had I ever asked for? A chance to be a good man. And I had been. Just like my dad, I’d been a cop and put away bad guys. Cleared the streets so that the good people could live their lives, love their wives and husbands, love their kids.

But what was it all for? People weren’t even getting married anymore, and if they had kids, they soon abandoned them to the street, to the Internet. It wasn’t just the times, either. I was starting to think it was humanity. It was changing. People didn’t seem to want to be people anymore.

Ah, who the heck was I to talk? I thought, savoring the warm, lemony, burning Smirnoff. I couldn’t even keep my nanny from exiting stage left.

I looked out the window at the lights of the city, at the dark.

“Mary Catherine, where are you?” I whispered. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I need you, Mary Catherine. Please come home.”

CHAPTER 84

THE NEXT MORNING, I had the taxi drop me off on lower Broadway, and I walked across Duane Street in a light rain, past the bomb-squad vans, toward the courthouse. Helicopters rumbled overhead. Though I had declined a police escort, I knew I was being tailed anyway by two cars full of undercover cops, watching my back.

Showered, shaved, and rested despite a hangover, I was wearing my best suit. I’d briefly thought about putting a Kevlar vest underneath it, but then gave it a thumbs-down. Perrine was hiring highly trained mercenaries now. If they got a bead on me, they wouldn’t waste their time killing me with a torso shot but would do it properly, putting a high-velocity bullet or two directly into my head.

Besides, the bulky vest would have ruined the tailored line of my jacket, I thought as I headed across the plaza toward the courthouse steps. Perrine wasn’t the only one who liked to get his GQ on.

Because of the cop killing the previous evening, security had been beefed up, even on top of the already beefed-up security surrounding the courthouse. In addition to the guard booths and hydraulic metal street barriers and truck-bombproof steel pylons, the entire NYPD Hercules team was deployed. Beside a long line of black Suburbans stood a small army of submachine-gun-toting cops wearing helmets and knee pads and armor-plated vests over their NYPD blue fatigues.

For all the police presence outside, inside the courthouse, past the metal detectors, the halls were pretty empty. That was because all civil and all but the most urgent criminal cases had been postponed for the week due to the incredible circumstances.

Arriving early at the fourteenth-floor witness room, I declined a coffee from Tara’s assistant, but I did accept a bottled water. I didn’t ask her where Tara was and, funny enough, she didn’t tell me.

As I waited, I checked my smartphone for messages. There was only one that I was looking for-Mary Catherine’s, of course. She hadn’t contacted Seamus again, and I was worried as hell.

But there was nothing. No matter how many times I shifted all the stupid screens on the phone back and forth with my thumb.

“Detective Bennett?” the assistant whispered as she stuck her head through the cracked door. “You’ve just been called to the stand. It’s time.”

All eyes shifted to me as I came through the double doors into the soundproofed, windowless courtroom. The expressions from the rows of seated people were solemn and sort of surprised, as if I were a black-sheep relative arriving out of the blue for someone’s funeral.

It was a funeral, all right, I thought. Manuel Perrine’s. And it was high time we slammed the lid on his casket.

He was sitting up front, heavily shackled. I could hardly see him behind a larger-than-usual retinue of cops and court officers. He didn’t have a gag on, as the judge had promised, I noticed as I sat. Like all dangerous animals, he definitely deserved one. I would have preferred a dog muzzle or Hannibal Lecter-style hockey mask, at the very least, but there was nada.

I glanced at the judge and shook my head. No wonder trust in the government was at an all-time low.

Prosecutor Vogel stood.

“Detective Bennett, good morning. Yesterday, you were telling us about a gunfight that arose during your attempt to arrest Manuel Perrine. Where did that gunfight take place?”

“In an alley alongside Madison Square Garden.”

“Why did you go to the location?”

“We learned that Manuel Perrine had come to New York to see his daughter graduate from NYU law school.”

“Exactly!” Perrine screamed. “I come here to this shithole of a country to this utter shithole of a city only to see my daughter, and then I am accused of things I had nothing to do with.”

He stood and banged on the table with both fists.

“These are false accusations and lies brought against me. You think I’m afraid of you? Of these trumped-up charges? I’ll cut that black lying tongue from your throat, cop. I’ll cut it out and feed it to you until you choke!”

“That’s it,” the judge said. “Strike three. You’re out, Mr. Perrine. We’re going to try you in absentia. Officers, remove him now.”

At first, Perrine resisted, pushing the cops back and forth. But then he suddenly stopped completely. One second he was in a rage, and the next, he was calm, as though he had hit a switch. Strange, I thought. He actually smiled at me as he was leaving.

I sat there as the door closed.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” the prosecutor said. “Now back to what you were saying, Detective. You learned that Manuel Perrine had come to New York to see his daughter graduate from NYU law school. Please continue for the jury, Detective Bennett.”

I stood, a quizzical look on my face. This didn’t feel right. Not at all. Perrine was acting. It seemed like the whole outburst was staged.

“Wait,” I said, climbing out of the witness box.

“What in good God are you doing, Bennett?” the prosecutor said under his breath as I passed him.

“This isn’t right,” I said. “Something isn’t right.”

CHAPTER 85

PERRINE AND HIS scrum of jailers were turning the corner of the outer corridor to my right, toward the elevators, when I pushed out the doors into the hallway. Not knowing exactly what I was doing, going solely on gut instinct, I hurried after them.

I was next to an ancient pay-phone recess ten feet from the hall corner when I heard it. It was a sudden, heavy wumpff sound, followed immediately by the trailing crinkle of breaking glass. It sounded as if, nearby, a giant baseball had just punched a home run into a giant windshield. I felt the floor shake a little under my wingtips as well.

What the hell now?

I barreled around the corner. Perrine and the police were in front of the elevators. The cops must have heard the weird sound, too, because they were all looking around, some with their guns out. Most of them were staring at a doorway opposite the elevators.

“We have a situation here,” one said into his radio. “Some sort of situation.”

There was the impatient click of the elevator call button being pressed over and over, and then the doorway opposite the elevator bank exploded outward with a concussive roar.

I fell to my knees and drew my gun, my ears ringing. When I looked up, thick yellow smoke was already billowing from the blown-open doorway and filling the hallway. When a waft of it passed over my face, I knew it was tear gas.

Eyes burning, snot pouring from my nose as from a faucet, I plastered myself into a recessed doorway on my right and covered my face with my tie. A moment later, a crisp gunshot went off so close it sounded like a pencil being snapped in my ear. Crouching, I found a doorknob and opened the door beside me, ducking into an empty courtroom.

Then I saw what was in the courtroom’s large south-facing window, and I wondered if I was hallucinating.

On the outside of the building, pressed against the window of the room just to the east of me, was a large yellow metal cage. It was a heavy machinery basket being suspended by the tower crane of the construction site nearby. In it, plain as day, maybe ten feet away from me, stood two men in tan construction coveralls, wearing gas masks and holding automatic weapons.

It looked like a SWAT team. But not our SWAT team.

They were trying to break out Perrine, I realized. Literally trying to break him out of the building from the fourteenth floor!

Without thinking about it, without saying “Freeze,” I lifted my gun and started shooting at the two men through the window. My Glock’s 9mm rounds sprayed holes through the heavy window glass, but the bullets were either deflected by the glass or the metal grate of the basket, because neither of the two armed-to-the-teeth men went down.

All I did was get their attention. A moment later, I backpedaled as they raised their weapons over the metal rim of the basket. I dove back into the hallway as the window and half of the empty courtroom’s wooden pews were ripped to shreds by automatic gunfire.

I peeked through the doorway a moment later when I heard a high-rpm hum. Through the shattered window, I saw the yellow basket on the move. The tower crane arm above it swung as it pivoted the metal rig away from the courthouse. I also saw, sitting in the basket between the armed men, a light-skinned black man in a prison jumpsuit.

The audacity of it was stunning, literally amazing. This couldn’t be happening, and yet it was.

They were really doing it, I thought, staring up at the basket as it started to ascend. As hard as it was to believe, it was happening before my very eyes.

Manuel Perrine was actually getting away.

CHAPTER 86

THE TEAR-GAS SMOKE was clearing as I ran down the hallway among the fallen cops. Half of them were shot up pretty bad.

“Gun!” I yelled to a burly black federal cop who was holding his hand over a bleeding thigh. I caught his SIG Sauer as I turned the corner, hit the stairwell door, and went up.

There were another ten floors to the roof, but I didn’t feel them. With my adrenaline pumping the way it was, I could probably have ascended the stairs on my hands. The next thing I remember, I was out on the roof and running across to the south side of the building.

I arrived at the edge just in time to see the crane dropping the yellow cage onto the roof of the building across from the courthouse. A moment later, as I was trying to get a bead on the men with my handgun, I heard the close sound of a helicopter. Turning, I thought it would be the overhead NYPD chopper, but incredibly, it was an NBC News chopper!

“Get lost, you idiots!” I screamed at it. “Get your damn scoop somewhere else!”

But I was wrong again.

The chopper swooped down and descended right onto the roof! It was part of the escape plan!

I started firing as Perrine and his gunmen clambered aboard the chopper. I emptied the SIG Sauer at the pilot’s-side door. I must have missed, because a moment later, the nose of the chopper lifted, and it swung in a lazy circle westward, over the courthouse, and disappeared behind the FBI headquarters on Federal Plaza.

I couldn’t believe it. Perrine had done the impossible.

The Sun King had gotten away!

CHAPTER 87

IF THERE WAS any consolation in the wake of the whole fiasco, it was that no one had been killed. In addition to the federal cop, three other corrections officers had been shot, but they were all in stable condition and would survive.

I was livid. I’m talking bed-bath-and-beyond pissed. Obviously, the drug boss was able to buy off people everywhere outside and inside the justice system, probably even inside the damn courthouse itself.

Back downstairs in the street, I went immediately over to the construction site near the courthouse. The leader of the NYPD Hercules team was already there talking to the workers and the site’s general contractor, a man named Rocco Sampiri.

“He claims the tower crane operator was on a break,” the ESU cop said. “No one on the site saw who got into the basket.”

I stared at Sampiri. He looked pretty well groomed for a construction worker-silk-screened T-shirt showing off his tan, muscular arms, spotless designer jeans and boots. With his gold Rolex and tidy manicure, it seemed like the only work this musclehead really did was at the gym, lifting dumbbells while gazing lovingly at himself in the mirror.

“Really?” I said to Sampiri. “A guy climbs up three hundred feet into that cab and swings up a bandito SWAT team into the courthouse and no one saw? What kind of break was this? A nap?”

“That’s funny, Officer, but really, we didn’t see nothing,” Sampiri said, his steroid-deepened voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a barrel.

“Come on, guys,” I said, turning toward the laborers standing around. I pointed at the sky. “You know who that guy was who just got away? He’s a mass murderer who’s declared war on this country, no different from a terrorist. Please, anyone. I need some help here. Didn’t anyone see anything?”

In my peripheral vision, I watched Sampiri glare at his workers. They all seemed to put their heads down at the same time.

“See? Like I said. No one on my crew saw shit,” Sampiri said with a shrug. “We don’t know what the hell happened. Maybe you should be looking for this guy instead of busting our crank. He sounds really dangerous.”

I stared at the general contractor. I didn’t need to type “Rocco Sampiri” into an FBI database to come to the conclusion that he might’ve been involved in organized crime. Or to make the jump that the Mafia would be more than willing to help out Perrine for the right price. This musclehead had probably given the person who had swung the cage over to the courthouse a cup of espresso before he busted out Perrine. And he was actually smirking a little. Even with all this heat, Rocco couldn’t help but enjoy telling bald-faced lies to us idiot cops.

That’s when I guess you could say I lost it. It was the smirk that did it. There aren’t too many things I truly hate, but the Mafia is one of them. People acted like the Mob was cool-The Sopranos, The Godfather. They only kill their own, everyone said. But that’s the problem. The secrecy of it, the conspiracy of it. As they were at this work site, normally decent people are induced through intimidation to “not see nothin’,” allowing evil animals like Perrine and Rocco here to just go to town.

“Okay, Rocco. You win. I guess I’m done here, then. Thanks for your help,” I said, turning.

“Actually, there is one more thing, Rocco,” I said, taking the collapsible baton off my belt and flicking it out by my leg as I turned around.

The next thing I knew, the metal baton and Rocco’s crotch had collided violently. I must have tapped something important, because he immediately went down on one knee like he was about to propose, tears springing onto his suddenly beet-red cheeks. I quickly slipped the baton into my pocket and put a hand to his gym-chiseled shoulder.

“Jeez, Rocco. You all right? You don’t look so good. Can I get you something? A glass of water?” I said.

“You son of a bitch,” he finally got out in a gasping voice, which was much higher than it was before. “You prick. Why did you do that?”

“I’m not sure, Rocco. Everything happened so fast, I didn’t see anything,” I said into his ear. “Weird, isn’t it? That I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-happened shit really seems to be catching around here.”

CHAPTER 88

OVER THE NEXT couple of frantic hours, I tried to position myself front and center on the Perrine escape investigation, but my, oh, my, how the attempt failed.

Almost immediately, a young FBI special agent in charge by the name of Bill Bedford had taken charge of the scene. I’d heard about Bedford. Tara had told me that Bedford was an up-and-comer in the Bureau, a former running back at Duke University who never hesitated to plant a cleat or two between the shoulder blades of his blockers on the way to his touchdown dance.

After I introduced myself, Bedford took me into an empty courtroom on the Foley Square courthouse’s ground floor for a few questions. It was more like a grilling than an interview. The fair-haired agent’s demeanor was reserved, but a few times, I caught something in his eyes. Something angry, the shining surface on a well of hostility.

After I was quite professionally interviewed about everything that had happened, I was told he’d be in touch.

“But wait, Bill,” I said as he started thumbing his BlackBerry at the speed of light. “I can help you on this. I know Perrine. I’ve been on this from day one.”

“I’ll call you,” Bedford said without looking up.

Yeah, right. I’d heard that before. I was being completely boxed out, I knew. It was obvious the feds didn’t want me anywhere near the investigation. Even when I tried to get some assistance from the higher-ups in the police department to bring me on board, I was told in no uncertain terms that the brass didn’t want me on the case, either.

For once, I could hardly blame anyone. Because I’d had Perrine. Had him and then lost him in the worst, most publicly embarrassing way imaginable. My boss, Miriam Schwartz, even let me in on a few nasty rumors she heard-a few whispers that maybe I was actually in on the escape, since I had spoken to Perrine in court and interviewed him alone in prison.

In my defense, I thought about bringing up Perrine’s quarter-billion-dollar bribe, which I’d rejected, but then I came to my senses and kept my lip thoroughly buttoned. It was obvious the brass was already sizing me up for a scapegoat suit. Why pour more fuel on my own bonfire?

There was no way around it. I was toxic now, a bad-luck charm. Standing around in Foley Square with no one to talk to, I felt like a little kid at the moment he realizes he hasn’t been picked for either side in a game of sandlot baseball.

And the tacit message coming in from my law enforcement colleagues was just as clear.

You suck, kid.

Go home.

CHAPTER 89

SO THAT’S EXACTLY what I did. I hightailed it out of Manhattan on the Beacon-bound 6:12, went back up to Orange Lake, and stayed away for the next two weeks.

I thought I’d be stressed out with Perrine in the wind and all the bad stuff hovering over me, but I surprised myself by having a really fun time hanging out with the kids. These were the last weeks of summer vacay, and we didn’t waste a second of them. We did something fun every day-go-kart racing, miniature golf. To the girls’ delight, one morning we got up at dawn and drove to a farm over in rural Sullivan County and rode horses.

The best time of all was driving up to Massachusetts for a day to check out a massive state fair called the Big E, at which all the New England states were represented. My city kids’ heads were spinning at all the Ferris wheels and tractors and petting zoos. After we gorged ourselves on massive stuffed baked potatoes on the midway, we even attended a blue-ribbon cattle show just for the hell of it. I stood at a rail, shaking my head, as bright-faced young country boys wearing bow ties came into the tent, walking cattle on a leash as though they were in a dog show.

“Now there’s something you don’t see on West End Avenue,” Seamus said, standing beside me. “Why are we here again?”

“Well, Gramps,” I said. “My career as a city cop seems to be coming to a close. I might have to look for another line of work, so why not farming?”

It goes without saying that being so close to my guys wasn’t just about fun and games. I knew my friend the Sun King wasn’t done with me. Even though he was free now, I’d seriously inconvenienced his arrogant ass. Not only had I caught His Highness, I’d actually broken his nose for him and laughed in his face. I knew there probably weren’t too many people in this world who had screwed with him as much as I had.

Not living people, anyway.

So throughout all the summer fun, I had my guns attached to me at all times. I’d even illegally sawed off the barrels of the lake house shotgun so I could keep it handy under the seat of the bus. I kept it there with the mirror I used every morning to see if there was a bomb attached to the underside of the bus’s chassis. Paranoid, I know, but sometimes it’s the little things in life that count most. This kind of crap never happened to the Partridge family, I bet.

After the cattle show, we went into one of the Big E tents and listened to some country music. I was getting into it, too, had almost forgotten all my troubles, when the cowboy-hatted singer started a sad tune about losing his girl.

Talk about bringing things down. I didn’t need this. My life had become a country music song. If I hadn’t been the designated bus driver, I would have ordered a beer to cry into.

Because just like Perrine, Mary Catherine was still MIA. No calls. No contact. I wasn’t the only one missing her, either. Despite all the fun vacation activities, I could see the kids were quite confused and upset.

So even with the sad-sack serenade wailing from the stage, I didn’t leave the music tent. Even after the kids went off with Seamus to go to the hay maze, I sat there and listened to every word as the cowboy sang about broken hearts and empty beds and watching the red taillights on his girl’s car driving away.

CHAPTER 90

THAT NIGHT AFTER the fair, we arrived back home after midnight. I checked the house as I always did, namely, from stem to stern with my 9mm cocked. After placing all my sunburned, carb-stuffed guys into the loving arms of Morpheus, and after enjoying a nightcap with Seamus, I played messages on the house phone.

My boss, Miriam, had called and said that the Times wanted to speak to me, as did someone from ABC News. Even though I’d been pretty much unplugged, I knew Perrine’s escape was front-page news not just across the country but throughout the world. Some British politician said it was just another example of the decline of U.S. dominance in world affairs.

Gee, thanks, old boy. I always knew I’d make history one day. What was worse was that some of our own talking heads were agreeing with him.

Another message popped up.

“Mike, hi. Bill Bedford here. I need to reinterview you concerning a few things on the Perrine escape. Specifically about an incident at the federal lockup. Some sort of scuffle between you two? I can be reached at… ”

I promptly hit the erase button. Screw this guy. He wanted to talk to me as though I were a suspect in the Perrine escape. I wasn’t about to make it easy for him. The handsome Duke-educated prick could drive up here to the sticks in his shiny G car.

A moment later, I was actually about to unplug the phone when it rang. I stared at it for a bit and, against my better judgment, finally answered it.

“Hello?” I said.

“Mike?” said a woman’s voice.

For a split second, I thought it was Mary Catherine. My heart kicked against my chest. She was okay. She was coming back.

But it was just wishful thinking.

“Mike? Hello? It’s me, Tara. Are you there?”

“Hi, Tara,” I said wearily. “How’s it going?”

“Mike, listen. I’m sorry about the silent treatment at the trial. I’ve been a complete jackass, and I apologize. I’ve made a resolution to stop being nuts, okay? Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

“Okay,” I said, startled.

“Still friends?” she said.

“Always, Tara. Always.”

“Good,” she said. “Now, did you hear the news?”

“No, what? They bagged Perrine?” I yelled, sitting up.

“No, no. I wish,” Tara said. “I’m talking about the progress in your neck of the woods. This afternoon, the U.S. attorney just signed two RICO-statute federal indictments aimed at taking down the Bloods and Latin Kings in Newburgh. We’ve already reviewed the open gang cases and are red-balling more than eighty arrest warrants. We’re amassing a huge multi-agency strike force. A couple of days from now, we’re going to take down both gangs at once. You interested in helping us out?”

“I’d love to, Tara, but I guess you didn’t get the memo. I’m persona non grata with you Federales these days.”

“Bullshit, Mike. I already spoke to my boss and told him how you lit the fuse on this thing. He’s agreed. It’s only fair that you be front row center when the fireworks go off. What do you say, Mike?”

This was good news. Not for me. For Newburgh.

“I do love fireworks,” I said.

CHAPTER 91

TWO MORNINGS LATER, around 4:00 a.m., Newburgh detectives Moss, Boyanoski, and I rolled up on an imposing old castle-like brick building on South William Street.

As we parked and crossed the darkened lot of the old National Guard armory, I thought I was hearing things. Even before we got to the steps, you could hear voices coming from inside the thick stone walls. It was an amazingly loud rumble of voices, as if maybe a midnight session of the New York Stock Exchange were under way.

When Ed opened the front door, I just stood there for a moment, as if nailed to the floor of the brightly lit, cavernous space. In the indoor drill shed of the old building, where the state National Guard had once trained their horses, stood the largest gathering of law enforcement personnel I’d ever seen. There had to be nearly five hundred federal, state, and local cops. Wearing raid jackets and faded, drab SWAT fatigues, they stood in clumps before whiteboards or in semicircles around warrant folders laid open on the hoods of black SUVs.

I knew Tara had said that this was going to be a mass operation, but holy moly. There were folding tables everywhere, laptops, phones going off. It looked like some kind of strange college open house. But instead of young Republicans and glee club representatives, the tables were manned by people standing behind placards that said things like MUG SHOTS and FINGERPRINTING and EVIDENCE CONTROL.

“Newburgh hasn’t seen anything this big since Washington’s Continental Army was here,” Ed said in amazement.

“And wouldn’t you know it? The bad guys are still wearing red,” Bill Moss said.

We came across Tara behind one of the folding tables. In her official blue Windbreaker, with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was busily collating one of the nearly eighty arrest packages that were being put together.

“Bill, Ed, Mike,” she said with a nod. “Glad you could make it. You wanted some action from the feds, right? Well, how’m I doing so far?”

“Well, if this is all the guys you could get,” I said with a shrug, “then I guess we’ll just have to make do.”

Ed Boyanoski started laughing. It didn’t look like he was going to stop. No wonder he was so mirthful. He had worked so hard for so long to try to effect some change in his hometown, and it finally looked like it was going to happen. Both he and Bill were practically speechless, not to mention unbelievably pleased.

“I’ve been waiting on this for a long time, Ms. McLellan,” Bill Moss said, looking out on the army of law enforcement. “Longer than you know.”

“Let’s not count our chickens before they’re hatched, gentlemen. You still have a teeny-weeny bit of work to do,” Tara said, handing us each a folder. “You bag ’em, we tag ’em. You’ll find your fellow team members on the assignment sheet two tables down. Happy hunting.”

CHAPTER 92

HAPPY HUNTING IT was!

Two hours later, just before dawn, I was kneeling in my hunting blind, which in this case was a gutter on Benkard Avenue in southeast Newburgh.

I peeled away the shirt where it was clinging to the back of my sweaty neck and looked through the night-vision scope. Across Benkard, under a streetlight the color of a chain-smoker’s grin, was our target, the end unit in a decrepit row of dust-gray town houses.

I panned my scope up the unstable stack of bricks that held up its stoop-an arrangement that looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book-and checked the door and windows. Nothing. No movement in the house. No movement in the street, which we had just blocked off with two unmarked black SUVs.

If the task force had come up with a deck of cards showing the faces of the most-wanted criminals, Ed, Bill, and I would be holding the ace of spades. The town house we were about to raid belonged to Miguel Puentes, the city’s most ruthless dealer and chief Latin Kings enforcer, who ran the drug trade on the southeast end of town. His brother, Ramon, had already been picked up at the strip club they owned out by the airport.

Talk about getting ready to rumble. I really couldn’t have been more psyched as I crouched, squeezing the gummy rubber grips of my drawn Glock. Things were just where I liked them. God was in his heaven, the happy, amphetamine-like buzz of caffeine and adrenaline was in my bloodstream, and a bad guy was snoozing behind a poorly locked door.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Alley and rear are clear. What do you think?” Bill Moss said in my ear.

“I think,” I said, lowering the scope, “it’s time for a Puentes family reunion.”

A moment later, it was showtime. The word “go” came crisply over the tactical mike, and we went.

The next seconds were a delicious blur of sounds and sights. The sharp crack of a police battering ram against a lock, and then the sound of wood splintering. We poured inside, flashlights raking the doorways of the darkened house.

I was actually the one who found Miguel in a back bedroom, off the kitchen. I saw him immediately as I came through the doorway, a muscular, bug-eyed tough with the word “magic” tattooed on his neck. He was in his skivvies, scrambling up off a sheetless king-size bed that barely fit the room.

“Hands! Let me see your hands!” I screamed.

“No hablo inglés!” he screamed back, leaping for the closet to the right of the huge bed.

I jumped up on the bed, took a step on the mattress, and tackled him. We both whammed into the cheap closet door almost hard enough to crack it. Miguel continued to struggle a little, but then stopped as I stabbed the barrel of my gun as hard as I could against his tattoo.

“No English, but he seems to understand German pretty well, don’t he, Mike?” Ed Boyanoski said as he came in the room and body-slammed Miguel back onto the bed.

“Sprechen sie Glock, Miguel?” he said as he clicked a pair of handcuffs on him.

“My arm! That hurts, you fuck! I want my lawyer. I want my goddamn lawyer!” Miguel said as Ed lifted him onto his bare feet.

“And I want a goddamn Advil,” I said, rubbing my knee where it had slammed into the closet’s door frame.

CHAPTER 93

BY EIGHT IN the morning, we were done. In addition to our new buddy Miguel, we rounded up another two Latin Kings and two Bloods.

“This catch is full,” Ed said, smiling, as he slammed the sliding door of our Ford Econoline paddy wagon near Lander Street. “Let’s bring ’em back in and get another list.”

“I can’t tell who you look like more, Ed-my kids on Christmas morning or my kids on Halloween. This is supposed to be work, buddy. You’re having way too much fun.”

“Love what you do, and every day is a vacation, Mike,” my big Polish-American friend said, knocking on the hood of the van.

We headed back toward the armory. We honked and waved at another passing arrest squad and spotted several more up and down the side streets off Lander. Talk about kicking ass and taking names. Newburgh was under siege. And by the good guys, for once!

No wonder Ed was so ecstatic. It was the first time I’d ever driven down Lander Street when I didn’t want to run all the red lights.

As I looked into the rear of the paddy wagon while Ed drove, the thing that struck me most about the gang of fools we’d just bagged was how sad, cheap, and dumb they looked. With their bedheads and their cheap hoodies and baggy jeans, they didn’t look dangerous. They looked sloppy, like a not-so-merry band of young, tired losers.

Staring at them, I thought what a shame it was. What an incredible mess they had made of their young lives. Miguel Puentes, who was going to be charged with three murders, was pure evil, but the rest of them were low-level, B-team knuckleheads, morons who had seen too many rap videos. They looked stunned and scared, mired in self-pity. The thing they always feared would happen was happening. I felt like asking them if staying in high school or getting a degree in AC repair or joining the army would really have been that bad.

I guess the only thing going for them was that they were young, mostly in their early twenties. Some of them were looking at serious time, five or ten years, but maybe in the end, it would help them. Maybe they could get out at thirty, when they wised the hell up. Who knew? Like everyone said, hope springs eternal.

Speaking of hope, by far the best part of the day happened when we were pulling back into the armory.

A group of about thirty people was standing in the parking lot. I recognized a lot of faces from the meetings we’d attended. As I exchanged a wave with Dr. Mary Ann Walker from St. Luke’s hospital, I spotted a coffee urn in the back of a pickup beside a tray of pastries. All these moms and construction workers and business owners must have heard about the unprecedented police effort and had come out to support us.

They cheered as though we were rock stars when they saw the arrested gang members in the back of the van. They even offered us refreshments as we passed, just as they would hand them out to marathon runners. Everyone laughed as Ed opened his mouth to accept a jelly doughnut.

“We’re so proud of you,” a smiling old black woman in a yellow tracksuit said to us as we frog-marched the punks up the steps of the armory. “My grandkids can play in the street this evening. At least for one night, my babies won’t die.”

Proud of us? I thought, looking wide-eyed at the group. It really was a touching thing. It reminded me of right after 9/11, when so many regular people lined the West Side Highway and handed out water and food to cops and utility workers heading down to Ground Zero.

I exchanged a stunned look with Ed, who seemed equally touched. We didn’t have to say it. This spontaneous and unprecedented outpouring of humanity from the good people of Newburgh was one of those brief moments in a cop’s career when it’s all worth it. All the pain and bullshit and nut-cracking and nonsense and slogging through the mess. I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

CHAPTER 94

THAT SAME NIGHT, around 7:00 p.m., Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” was pumping at deafening levels from the overhead speakers as neon disco lights alternately circled and strobed all around me.

Over the pounding dance track, a DJ suddenly urged me to throw my hands in the air and shake it like I just don’t care. And I would have, except I didn’t want to drop the Hannah Montana sheet cake I was carrying through the middle of the Tarsio Lanes bowling alley.

Nope, I wasn’t out clubbing. The disco sound track was for “cosmic night” at the bowling alley, and the party people in the house tonight were me, Seamus, and my ten kids, here to celebrate the twelfth birthday of my twins, Fiona and Bridget.

The kids’ birthday wasn’t the only reason to party. We’d put away a grand total of seventy-two criminal gang members that afternoon. In eight hours, we’d cleared the town of just about every bad guy. And not one cop had been hurt. It was an insanely successful day.

I spent the next few hours after we left the armory doling out pizza and tying bowling shoes. Which was a lot more fun than it sounded. The kids had never bowled before and were having a complete panic. Especially when Eddie and Trent stood on their plastic chairs beside the ball return and did a spirited square-dance routine to the song “Cotton-Eyed Joe.”

“Hey, Dad! Dad! You have to see this. It’s Grandpa Seamus’s turn,” Ricky called as I was setting out the paper plates.

“Ladies and gentlemen, behold Seamus Bennett, legendary master of the lane, as he bestrides the golden hardwood,” the old man said in a mock TV announcer’s voice as he lifted his ball.

“What a perfect approach,” he said. “What perfect form.”

“What a perfect load of malarkey,” I called out.

Eyes locked on the pins in concentration, Seamus swung the ball back, stepped forward, and let her rip. His right foot swung dramatically behind his left during his release. He actually was pretty graceful.

“Go, Twinkle Toes,” I said, clapping.

“Come on, baby,” Seamus yelled as the ball hooked. “Cruise in the pocket! Cruise in the pocket!”

Cruise in the what?

Wouldn’t you know it? It was a devastating, pin-crushing strike. Seamus pumped his fist and high-fived everyone as the kids went crazy.

What the…? Who knew the old codger was a good bowler?

I was up next. My ball made a lot of noise, but instead of a strike, it was a four-ten split that I missed completely on my second roll. Worse than that, I received nothing but crickets from the kids.

“I thought you said you played this game before,” Seamus said, licking the tip of the pencil he was using to keep score.

“Granddad is better than Daddy. Granddad is better than Daddy,” Shawna called out to everyone.

“That really was awesome, Granddad,” Brian said. “Who taught you how to bowl?”

“A nice American fella I met when I first came to this country from Ireland,” Seamus said.

“Wait, it was a tall guy, right?” I said. “White wig, wooden teeth? George Washington?”

“‘O beware, my lord, of jealousy,’” Seamus said, holding up the pencil. “ ‘It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.’ ”

I held my hands up in defeat.

“Now he’s busting out Shakespeare? Okay, okay. You doth win, Father. I know when I’m beat. You’re firing on all pistons tonight.”

We cut the cake and sang “Happy Birthday” as Fiona and Bridget blew out their candles. I scanned the kids’ faces. They seemed happy. Sugar-crazed and binging around like pinballs with all the treats and dance music, but happy. A large contingent of safe, content, well-adjusted kids.

I thought of what the woman had said outside the armory.

At least for one night, my babies won’t die.

Exactly, I thought. What else was there? I couldn’t have said it better myself.

That’s when someone pointed it out. The eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the corner of the disco-pumping bowling alley.

“I wonder where Mary Catherine is right now,” Fiona said as I handed her the first slice.

That did it. The party was over right there, right then. Though the music still raged, the laughter stopped as everyone looked down at their bowling shoes.

At least they weren’t looking to me for the answer. Because for once, I didn’t have the slightest clue.

CHAPTER 95

AT LONG LAST, the dreaded moment had arrived. It was packing-and-cleaning day at the Bennett vacation compound.

Sunday was still two days away, but with Mary Catherine still AWOL, I thought it best to start the herculean task of moving my family back to the city as early as possible. I thought getting my guys to get their stuff together was going to be like pulling teeth, but I was in for a surprise.

Not only had Mary Catherine devised an effective system for the care, organization, and cleaning of everyone’s clothes and possessions, she had taken pains to teach it to the kids. In no time flat, the guys were working the dishwasher and the washing machine and rolling their little suitcases out into the hall one by one like a troop of seasoned business travelers.

If anyone was having trouble finding their stuff, it was yours truly. I was under my bed, scattering dust bunnies as I looked for my flip-flops when my cell phone rang. Still on my belly, I managed to retrieve it from the pocket of my shorts.

“Yeah?” I said into the hardwood floor.

“Mike? It’s me, Tara. I have big news. How fast can you get to Shawangunk prison?”

I flipped over on my back.

“Well, Tara, we hicks up here pronounce the prison ‘Shawn-gum,’ and I can get there fast. Why?”

“Cleaning out Newburgh is starting to pay unexpected dividends, Mike. Huge ones. You know the Puentes brothers, Miguel and Ramon?”

“The gentlemen who run the Newburgh Latin Kings?” I said.

“Yep. It seems like those fine young men want to play ball. I just got a call from their lawyer. They claim Manuel Perrine is still in the States. Not only that, they say they know where he’s hiding out and are willing to tell us in exchange for immunity and witness protection.”

I smiled up at the multitude of cracks in the lake house ceiling. I couldn’t believe it. Actually, I could. The connection made sense, since the Latin Kings were supposedly being supplied with drugs by Perrine’s cartel.

That’s exactly how it happened in cases sometimes. You’d be beating your head against a wall for months with no clue about a murder or a felony, and then one day, the phone would ring with a willing eyewitness or an out-of-the-blue confession.

“What do you know, Tara? Dumb luck happens to cops sometimes, too,” I said. “Have you contacted my pal Bill Bedford, the special agent in charge of the Perrine escape investigation, for his take on the latest development?”

“He’s number two on my call list,” Tara said. “The race goes to the swift, Mike. This was your case originally so I thought I’d give you a head start to get back in on it. You game?”

“See you at the prison,” I said, pulling myself up off the floor.

CHAPTER 96

TARA WAS WRONG.

It turned out the meeting with the Puentes brothers wasn’t actually at the Shawangunk prison, because Shawangunk is a state facility. Since the charges were federal, it turned out that the seventy-plus Newburgh gang arrestees were being housed in the federal lockup in Otisville.

Driving up to the second prison I’d visited during my summer vacation, I sighed. With all this running around in the country, I could write a fairy-tale romance novel for middle-aged cops, I thought. Call it The Prisons of Orange County.

I arrived at the white-brick bunker of the administration building first. An affable black female assistant warden showed me the conference room where the meeting was to take place. It was surprisingly unlike a prison-a windowless room with a carpet, a conference table, coffee service, and even a whiteboard.

I was pouring my second cup of joe when Tara came through the door with a mannequin from the men’s clothing store Jos. A. Bank. Actually, it was my tall, slim, nattily attired friend Bill Bedford, the FBI agent.

“Tara, Bill,” I said, turning, with a smile of pure innocence.

Bedford seemed to have some trouble preserving his unflappable demeanor.

“What the hell is he doing here?” he barked.

“Oh, did I forget to mention Detective Bennett, Bill?” Tara said. “He was part of the arrest procedures in Newburgh last night. He was the one who arrested Miguel Puentes. You know, the suspect we’re here to deal with?”

I nodded at Bill helpfully as I sat back down. What Tara failed to mention was that Miguel hadn’t spoken to me personally. But ol’ Bill didn’t need to know everything. What would be the fun in that?

“But why is he here?” the special agent in charge wanted to know.

“What do you mean, Bill? Not only is Mike already a part of the federal gang task force, he’s been an integral part of the Perrine case from the get-go. So of course I took the liberty of including him in this meeting.”

Bedford made a noise.

“I’m sorry, Bill. I didn’t catch that.”

“Yeah, uh-huh, whatever,” Bedford said, kicking out a chair and sitting. “Where are these Puentes people already?”

Tara had her video camera set up when the Puentes brothers came in a few minutes later. I waved to Miguel, who was now wearing prison coveralls over his boxer briefs. His larger brother looked like he’d just taken a huge bite of some bad meat. Their lawyer was a large, bald Dominican gentleman in a gaudy banker’s suit who looked like he could make a go at professional wrestling if the law thing didn’t pan out.

Everyone remained silent, sizing each other up as two corrections officers securely cuffed the Brothers McPuentes to a steel rail along the wall.

“You understand that my clients are putting themselves and their families in grave danger by speaking with you,” the lawyer started out.

“Bullshit,” Bedford said with over-the-top venom. “What I understand is that your clients here are looking at life in jail for murder and drug trafficking. Save the medal of valor application and cut to the goddamn chase, counselor.”

The lawyer opened his mouth for a moment, and then closed it, the overhead fluorescent lights gleaming off the brown wrecking ball of his head.

“I was told we were here to make a deal for my clients,” he said. “Maybe I heard wrong.”

“Exactly. We want immunity. Full immunity,” Miguel cut in.

“And witness protection,” said Ramon.

“Oh, is that all?” said ever-helpful Bill Bedford. “No problem. How about we toss in a flying pony that shits bars of gold?”

CHAPTER 97

“ENOUGH, OKAY? WE get it,” Tara said, suddenly jumping in before Bedford could do any more damage. “You want to skate. That’s a very tall order. What do we get?”

“We know where Manuel Perrine is,” Ramon said. “I’m talking right now.”

“No,” said Miguel, eyeing his brother. “He doesn’t know shit. I do. I know where Perrine is.”

“How would you know anything about Perrine?” I said.

“We’ve been doing business with his people for quite some time, purchasing cocaine and heroin from their distributor in the Bronx. People from the Perrine cartel contacted me three weeks ago and asked me to lease a house for them in a secluded location where a helicopter could land without looking suspicious. I was also asked to supply a staff of cleaning people and a chef who could cook French cuisine.

“The chef is an old friend of mine. He confirmed to me that Perrine is at the location, that he arrived the night after the escape. I was able to contact my friend this morning, and he confirmed it again. Perrine’s still there as we speak.”

“There was an attractive, dark-haired woman with Perrine,” I said.

“Marietta?” Miguel said, looking at me. “Yes. She’s there as well.”

“Why the hell is he still hanging around?” Bedford said.

“Arrangements are being made to get them out of the country, back into Canada, where they had been living before Perrine’s arrest, but there’s some sort of problem,” Miguel said. “We need to move on this before my arrest is made public. Once that happens, he’ll send a kill team to wipe out me, my brother, and our family. That’s what he does.

“He told me many times that sweet death is the noble price every man should happily pay for failure. He thinks of dealing drugs as a religious calling and himself as a messiah figure. He’s incredibly insane. Please, you need to help us. You need to grab this sick bastard. It’s our only chance.”

“Okay, okay,” Tara said, standing. “We’ll confer out in the hall for a moment.”

“What do you think, Mike?” Tara said after the door closed. “This info sounds credible.”

“Extremely credible,” I said. “Especially the part about Perrine being incredibly insane.”

“I agree,” Bedford said, trying hard not to lick his chops. “These two are sharks, but Perrine is Moby Dick. We need to make the deal.”

“I will, Bill, on one condition,” Tara said.

“What’s that?” Bedford said.

“That Mike is brought back in on this for Perrine’s arrest and capture.”

Bedford glared at her and then at me, but behind his eyes, I could see the calculator in his brain being furiously punched.

“Okay, fine. I’ll have to talk to my boss, but I think we can work that out.”

“Okay, then,” Tara said, winking at me as she grabbed the doorknob. “Let’s go back in there and make a deal.”

CHAPTER 98

AROUND 6:00 P.M. that summer evening, I was an hour and a half north of Newburgh in upstate Greene County, New York, standing on the shoulder of a two-lane country road.

As I glanced at the seemingly endless ribbon of blacktop curving upward through the gold-tinged pines, the free-spirited maverick in me felt like sticking out my thumb and lighting out for the territories. But then I suddenly remembered that I was a cop instead of Jack Kerouac, and I followed the FBI agent I was with past a freshly road-killed porcupine into the bucket of a tree-service cherry picker.

I held onto my borrowed yellow hard hat as the bucket hummed upward through oak leaves and pine needles. Halting just at treetop level, about seven stories up, I was greeted with 360 degrees of stark, breathtaking Catskill Mountains peaks shale ridges. Since there was no man-made structure to be seen, the experience was like going back in time.

To the seventies, maybe, I thought, since on the way up, I’d actually passed a faded old billboard bearing a picture of Smokey Bear in his Park Service hat with the words ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES.

We were three miles due south of Perrine’s rented wooded estate on West Kill Mountain, along a section of the Catskills called Devil’s Path, which made a lot of sense, considering we were here to find the devil himself. In the five hours since we had gotten the location of Perrine’s hideout from the Puentes brothers, earth and sky had most definitely been moved. In the space of the afternoon, a sixty-member contingent of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and all their equipment had been mobilized up from their headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, to Stewart Air National Guard Base, just outside of Newburgh, on two C-130 military cargo planes.

I met with HRT briefly at the base when they arrived, and they were formidable indeed. Think of an armored, and armed to the teeth, professional football team. Only they brought their own helicopters and were dressed like ninjas. The feds didn’t just want to capture Perrine after they got egg on their faces down in Foley Square. They needed to.

In the bucket beside me, HRT leader Kyle Ginther handed me a Canon SLR camera with a huge high-power zoom lens. Thirtyish, dark-haired, and boyish, Ginther looked friendly, like the young dad next door. Only when this dad wasn’t leaf-blowing his lawn, he was emptying sniper rifles and automatic weapons into range targets.

I glassed the terrain to the north with the camera. After a moment, I spotted the roof of Perrine’s hideout halfway up the south slope of West Kill and super-zoomed it in. Through hanging motes of pollen, a shingle-and-beam chalet-style lodge house came into view. It had river-stone chimneys and a massive deck out in front to soak in the view. I’d already seen the photographs, taken an hour earlier, of Perrine and Marietta on that same deck sharing a drink.

“We’ve received the building plans from the architect and have a shoot house mocked up,” Ginther said. “We know that there are two other guesthouses on the property, along with a barn. We also just learned that Perrine’s quarters are on the lower level of the main house.”

I blinked at him in shock.

“How did you find that out?”

“Intel from the Puentes brothers,” Ginther said. “Getting the phone numbers of the people up there with Perrine was gold, Mike. With the help of the phone company, we sent software into the targets’ cell phones that turned them into microphones. Their phones don’t even have to be on. Ain’t technology grand?”

“How many people do you think are up there?” I said.

“Twenty-five to forty, as far as we can tell,” Ginther said. “They’re armed mostly with shotguns, but we have seen a few assault rifles. The men we’ve observed patrolling the perimeter seem professional, definitely trained. We’re going to have to watch our step.”

“How are you going to do the raid?” I asked.

“Wait till it’s dark, put our snipers in a tight perimeter around the facility, then cut the power and fast-rope in onto that deck from our Black Hawk and Little Bird helicopters. With snipers covering the outside with suppression fire, the airborne assault unit will split into two teams, one securing the main and upper levels, the other the basement, where Perrine is at. We’ll be ready to go by tonight.”

I wiped sweat out of my eyes as I thought about things for a minute. On the way up to Greene County, I’d stopped at a country store to answer a text message and spotted a crow moving at the parking lot’s edge. It took me a second to realize with horror that it was plucking the feathers out of a smaller dead bird. For some reason, I couldn’t shake that sickening image-the large dark bird holding down the smaller one with his talon, fastidiously plucking out its feathers one by one-as I stood there sweating on the cherry picker.

“Something bothering you, Mike?” Ginther said.

“Despite your confidence and HRT’s obviously incredible abilities,” I said, “Perrine has the high ground. He brought heavy weapons to the midtown Manhattan shoot-out we had at the beginning of the summer, so he’s bound to have some more up here. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had RPGs. And he knows special operations tactics. The bad guys actually used flashbangs on us when my partner was killed. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had night vision, too, so a full-frontal assault, even in the dark, sounds dangerous to me. This bastard has sent me to enough cop funerals, thank you very much.”

“Okay, I’m listening. You have any ideas?”

That’s when it hit me. I did have an idea. At least the germ of one. I let it settle in for a beat, and then I grabbed the camera and looked back up at the house peeking out between the treetops.

“That driveway is the only way in or out?” I asked.

“By car, at least,” Ginther said.

“Smokey Bear,” I mumbled.

“What was that?”

I handed the commando back his camera.

“Take us down,” I said. “I think I have an idea.”

CHAPTER 99

TWO HOURS LATER, just after the sun went down, Ginther and I sat in the cab of a truck, looking out at the silent mountain twilight as we waited by the radio. We sat up when we heard the radio scratch.

“Okay, this is Rabbit. We’re in position,” came the word from the first HRT infil team.

I glanced over at Ginther as he checked his watch. We waited some more.

It took another three minutes before the second team crackled the mike.

“Okay, this is Merlin. We’re here.”

“Okay,” Ginther said back. “Pop ’em all, fellas. Everything you got.”

“Roger that, Cap,” Merlin said. “Affirmative. Fire in the hole.”

We waited, our eyes glued north, toward Perrine’s house. After a minute, we smiled in unison as an enormous column of black smoke rose into the pale, twilit sky.

But having two HRTs pop dozens of smoke grenades into the woods below Perrine’s hideout was only phase one. As the smoke billowed, Ginther made another call to the fire station at the base of West Kill Mountain’s north slope. A moment later, a blaring air horn sounded in the distance.

My last-ditch plan was under way. Perrine might suspect something fishy was up once he heard the siren and saw the smoke, but how could he be sure if it was a real forest fire or not? The answer was that he couldn’t. Because deception is basic to the art of war, we needed to cause as much confusion and chaos as possible as we went in. In fact, we needed to bamboozle the living shit out of Perrine if we were going to capture him without heavy resistance.

“Okay, buckle up. This is it,” Ginther yelled as he started one of the two fire trucks we’d borrowed from the nearby towns of Hunter and Roxbury. I slipped on a yellow fire helmet. I and the dozen other HRT members riding in the two trucks were already wearing firemen’s gear over our automatic weapons. I crossed my fingers.

Please let this work.

A second later, our blue and red lights started flashing and we were rolling along the country blacktop, sirens blaring. I held onto an overhead strap with my right hand and the strap of a borrowed M4 assault rifle with my left as the roaring, rumbling truck swung off the mountain road and onto the driveway of Perrine’s hideout.

We saw it almost immediately. After we had gone up the steep driveway for about a minute, we didn’t see just smoke anymore. Not good, I thought, staring open-mouthed out the front passenger-side window.

Tall orange flames were now engulfing the woods on both sides of the driveway. I stared out at the growing fire. On each side of the driveway, there had to be half an acre of forest already in flames as the fire climbed up the slope toward Perrine’s mountain retreat. Bits of burning black-and-orange embers were falling everywhere. Like confetti in a Halloween parade.

Our fake forest fire had somehow just become a real one!

Ginther halted the truck and lifted his radio.

“Rabbit! Merlin! This was supposed to be a pretend fire. Are you effing kidding me? What’s going on?”

“Those smoke rounds get hot, sir. Seems like too hot in this case,” replied Rabbit. “We didn’t realize how dry the forest floor was.”

Ginther shook his head at the flames, his face grim. I could almost see visions of the FBI Waco standoff dancing through his head.

The radio came alive with a metallic squawk.

“Ground one, this is air one. Do I see real fire down there?” asked the already airborne assault team.

“Man, is Smokey going to be pissed,” Ginther said, glancing at me. “Screw it. Accidents happen. Can’t worry about it now. We use it.

“Full speed ahead,” Ginther called into his radio. “All forces assault now. We’re going in. I repeat. We’re going in.”

“Through a forest fire?” I said.

“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to run this flea-flicker. Besides, worst-case scenario, we’ll exfil on the choppers,” Ginther said.

The crazy commando shrugged and gave me his all-American smile as he put the truck into gear and gunned it toward the flames.

“Come on, Mike. Get into it,” Ginther said. “This is what it’s all about. Improvise. Overcome. And by the way, welcome to HRT.”

CHAPTER 100

TWENTY SECONDS LATER, as we passed through the massive wall of flames, a hand banged hard on the roof above Ginther.

“Cap,” said one of the FBI commandos on top of the truck. “Twelve o’clock on the driveway ahead. We have a vehicle approaching.”

“Follow my lead, but be ready for anything,” Ginther said to his guys.

He didn’t need to tell them to lock and load, I knew. These elite commando types woke up locked and loaded. They probably couldn’t tell you where the safeties on their guns were.

My gaze shifted from the flames we’d just passed to the vehicle coming down the road. It was a black Jeep Cherokee with four hard-looking Hispanic men in it. It stopped in front of us.

“Private,” the driver said, waving his arms as he hopped out. “You need to turn around and go back. This is a private area.”

“Private? Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?” Ginther yelled, thumbing back his fire helmet as he stepped out onto the driveway. “See that hot orange stuff heading our way? That’s a forest fire, son. Winds are coming up from the south. You don’t have a minute to spare. You need to get yourself and anyone else up at that house off this mountain now.”

The Hispanic guys conferred quickly. One of them lifted a phone and started speaking rapidly into it.

Ginther lifted his own phone.

“Okay, Central. This is hook and ladder thirty-eight,” he screamed, loud enough for Perrine’s guards to hear. “We can’t get access to the fire site. You’re going to have to bring up the water chopper. I repeat. Bring in the water bird.”

Water chopper? I thought, remembering the already hovering HRT helicopters.

It’s going to rain in a minute around here, all right, I thought, glancing at Perrine’s thugs. It’s going to rain cops and lead.

The head Hispanic tough was putting away his phone when the four HRT commandos with us rolled off the top of the truck and put assault rifles in the bad guys’ faces. In a fraction of a second, the bad guys were facedown by their Jeep, hog-tied, with white plastic zip ties around their wrists.

“Oh, my God, Mike. Look at this,” Ginther said, showing me the back of the Jeep.

It was filled to the brim with military hardware. AK-47s, sniper rifles, three pairs of night-vision goggles, fragmentation grenades. They even had claymore mines.

“What did I tell you?” I said. “These jacks think it’s World War Three.”

After Ginther told his men to transfer all the weaponry onto our truck, he lifted each of Perrine’s thugs one by one and kicked them in the ass to get them moving down the driveway, toward the main road.

“Ándale, assholes,” Ginther said. “You have about five minutes before that driveway melts. Run, if you want to live.”

CHAPTER 101

GINTHER LEAPED ABOARD the rig and got on the radio to update the rest of the teams about the weapons cache. Then he hit the siren again and put the fire truck into gear. We could hear the buzz of helicopter blades as the truck stopped on the circular driveway next to the house.

“Evacuation! This is an evacuation!” Ginther bellowed over the fire truck’s loudspeaker. “A forest fire is in the area! I repeat. A forest fire is on its way!”

As we exited the fire truck, I was greeted by the glorious sight of the HRT Black Hawk hovering over the house, commandos fast-roping onto the deck. I was congratulating myself at getting this far in without resistance when the sound of gunfire erupted inside the house. Ginther told his men to watch the perimeter as we both shucked off our fire coats and raced over the driveway toward the house.

The closest entrance we found was a sliding glass door under the enormous deck. The finished basement was extremely elaborate-a pool table, a wide-screen TV, a bar with wine bottles stacked within two huge glass coolers. In a split second, the door was shattered with Ginther’s rifle butt and we were inside.

I turned to look back through the sliders when I heard a crackle. I paused, blinking. About thirty feet away, the woods below the house were completely on fire. There was so much smoke you could hardly see the sky. It was amazing how fast the forest fire had moved.

I felt like running back and grabbing some fire gear, but instead, I quickly followed Ginther through a door near the back of the room. I was in for another shock. Beyond the doorway was a huge indoor lap pool and a glass wall running along the entire width of the house.

Not only that, but there was someone in it. A pale form under the water.

The water bulged, and Marietta herself appeared with a splash at the end of the pool closest to us. She wasn’t wearing a stitch, and for a moment, Ginther and I stood arrested in place, staring at the water sluicing off her curves, at the long, black, wet wave of hair that clung to her shoulders.

Instead of being shocked, she was smiling, as though she’d been waiting there for us.

Then we heard the sound of engines. There were lights in the trees beyond the window. Then three or four ATVs blew past, roaring up behind the house, up the mountain.

“Freeze!” Ginther said.

I looked away from the window to see Marietta moving along the pool’s edge.

“No. My robe. I need to cover myself. I just want my robe,” Marietta said, reaching toward a white robe on a chaise longue beside the pool.

Waiting for her, my eyes pinned on her hands, I saw black and shot just as she was bringing the machine pistol up. The triple burst of my M4 rifle was amplified by and reverberated violently off the pool-room tile. I hit her in the side of her neck, and her gun clattered onto the concrete deck. I watched her go stiff and fall straight back into the pool in a move we used to call the Nestea plunge when I was a kid. For a long dumbfounded second, I stared at the glow of the outside flames, their pink reflection on the tile, Marietta’s blood making a pink cloud in the water.

“Where’s Perrine?” Ginther roared into his tactical microphone. “We heard ATVs going north. What the hell is going on? Tear this place apart!”

“We can’t, Cap. We’re done. The deck just caught,” came back one of his men. “You need to get the hell out of there. We need to exfil now. Everyone needs to head to the LZ behind the house.”

That’s what happened. We retraced our steps and went back outside. The heat was incredible; it felt like we were standing at the door of the world’s biggest convection oven.

The Black Hawk was filled by the time we got there, so we had to leave on one of the puny Little Birds, which reminded me of those toys you see at the mall. Ginther strapped me in and we lifted up. When we swung around the front of the house, I saw that it was completely engulfed. The living room curtains, the rugs, the furniture. Everything was burning.

The Devil’s Path, I thought, staring down as we sailed over the burning mountain through the smoke-dark sky.

CHAPTER 102

THE HRT RALLY point was the parking lot and field behind a rural post office in nearby Lexington, New York. When we landed between the tents, it was already chaos. About a hundred or so state troopers, local cops, and FBI agents were running around, coordinating a massive manhunt. I even spotted a few of the firemen we had borrowed the trucks from. It was going to be fun when we told them we left their new rigs behind in the inferno up on the mountain.

And this was the calm before the shitstorm, I thought as Ginther unclipped me from the chopper. We’d lit the world on fire to get Perrine, and it was looking like he’d still gotten away.

Ginther took me aside in one of the tents and handed me a baby wipe and a bottle of water. When I collapsed onto the bumper of their SWAT truck and wiped my face, it came back black. I poured the water over my head and watched it drip onto the beaten dirt between my boots.

I’d definitely had better days at the office. I was tired, filthy, and smelled like a smoked chicken. And I’d just killed a beautiful naked woman. A completely insane, homicidal maniac of a beautiful woman, but still. Actually, I didn’t feel bad about it, considering that the witch had killed my good pal Hughie. It was pretty much the highlight of the raid, since Perrine was still on the run.

“Mike, whatever happens, this was my plan,” Ginther said. “They want to transfer me to Alaska, I don’t give a shit. Because you were right about the night vision, about the weapons they had up there. We would have been sliced to ribbons if it wasn’t for you. We didn’t get this animal, but all my guys came back safe. That’s all I care about.”

“Thanks, brother,” I said, looking up. “But I have a funny feeling the blame-layers aren’t going to be satisfied with just one crucifixion. And screw the pencil pushers anyway, Kyle. They’re like eunuchs in a harem. They know how it’s done. They’ve seen it done every day, but for some reason, they just can’t do it themselves. We gave it our best shot, and we’re going home alive. Tomorrow’s another day.”

“For me, it’s looking like tomorrow’s going to be another day in the land of a thousand suns. We torched an entire mountain and got jack shit to show for it,” Ginther said. “I mean, I never even heard of that.”

I started laughing a little then. He was right. I’d been involved in disasters before, but this took the cake.

“But our heart was in the right place, Kyle,” I said. “Isn’t that what really counts?”

My phone started vibrating then. I had a funny feeling it was going to be doing quite a bit of that in the next few hours.

“Bennett,” I said.

There was a pause, then a strange voice.

“You killed her, Bennett, didn’t you? You killed Marietta.”

CHAPTER 103

I COULDN’T BELIEVE it. It was Perrine. I could tell by the stupid Pepé Le Pew accent. I jumped up and frantically waved at Ginther and pointed at my phone.

“Hey, buddy. You’re the one who left her there,” I said. “I would have said ‘high and dry,’ but you actually cut out and left her doing the backstroke in the pool.”

Ginther ran and grabbed an FBI phone tech, who whispered that she needed my cell number. I grabbed her offered pen and wrote it on the back of her hand.

“She was my wife. Did you know that, Bennett?” Perrine continued. “We were married right after my escape. My child was inside of her. You set that fire to smoke me out, didn’t you? You killed my pregnant wife.”

For a moment, I almost felt sorry for the drug-dealing, murdering son of a bitch. He sounded depressed. You could tell the pain in his voice was real. He sounded like he really did love that crazy chick.

“Pregnant? Didn’t show, Manuel. Do you always let your wife swim in the buff?”

The sound of pain and outrage that erupted from the phone a moment later was something I was unfamiliar with. There was something primal about it, something Jurassic. The cry of a pterodactyl caught in a lava flow.

“Oh, I see how this works,” I said, hearing Perrine’s cries turn into sobs. “You can kill anybody in your path and that’s fine and dandy. But someone close to you takes a bullet to the back of the head and all of a sudden it’s Greek tragedy time? How does it feel, you piece of garbage? Choke on it. Boo-hoo, you fucking crybaby.”

Was what I said cruel? You better believe it was. But then again, Perrine had taught me all about cruel. I’d never said anything as remotely hurtful to anyone in my entire life, but this monster had killed my friend Hughie, and had actually put a hit on my kids. It was safe to say the gloves were off. I’d stab him in his broken heart with the cheap Bic pen in my hand if I got the chance.

“Do you know where I am right now, Bennett?” Perrine finally said with a sniffle. “Right this very minute? I’m in front of your house at the lake. I’m about to kill your family, Bennett. I’m going to tie everyone up and gather them around and make everyone watch as I carve out their little hearts one by one. Chrissy, Jane, Juliana, even the priest. All their heads will be on sticks by the time you get here. Just remember. You did this. You did this to yourself.”

Then he hung up.

CHAPTER 104

AN HOUR LATER, I was racing south down the Thruway in a borrowed FBI SUV, lights and siren at full strength. I threw it onto the shoulder without touching the brake as traffic backed up. I was still tearing ass when I threw the vehicle up on a grass berm around both the state police car and the ambulance at a highway accident scene that was causing the backup.

In my rearview mirror, in the red light of the road flares, I could see the trooper glaring at my taillights, as though he wanted to empty his service revolver at me, but that couldn’t be helped. I punched the SUV back off the berm onto the dark highway in a cloud of dust and continued south.

I’d already spoken to Seamus, who assured me that everything was fine. I’d even contacted Ed Boyanoski, who had sent a Newburgh PD squad car to watch the house. And yet I frantically needed to get back to the lake house. Perrine’s words, his promise to hurt my family, wouldn’t stop replaying in my mind. Perrine was capable of absolutely anything.

It was about twenty-five minutes later when I finally fish-tailed the truck into the lake house driveway. The first thing I noticed was Ed’s Toyota beside a Newburgh squad car out in front. All the lights were on in the house as I flew up the steps through the open door.

Ed was in the hallway. He caught me as I almost ran through him.

“It’s okay, Mike. Everybody’s okay.”

I finally looked over his shoulder and felt like crying as I saw he was telling the truth. Everyone was sitting around the dining room table in front of several pizza boxes.

“Is everybody here?” I said. “Is everyone here?”

I scanned faces.

Jane: check. Eddie, Ricky: check. Juliana, Brian, Trent: check. Little Shawna, with Chrissy-thank you, dear God: check.

“Fiona and Bridget,” I said. “Where are the twins?”

“Right here, Daddy,” Fiona said, coming through the kitchen doorway with a bowl of salad, followed by Bridget, who was holding a two-liter bottle of Coke.

“Why is Daddy’s face all black?” Bridget said.

“Good question, Bridget,” Trent piped in over his slice. “What I want to know is, why is he acting nuts?”

“You mean more nuts than usual?” Eddie said.

I smiled at my motley crew as I let out a breath. What Perrine said was a bluff. Of course it was. Thank you, God.

“Oh, we’re all here, Detective Bennett,” Seamus said from the foot of the table. “Everyone is present and accounted for. And I do mean everyone.”

That’s when the kitchen door opened.

And Mary Catherine came in with a bunch of napkins in her hand.

CHAPTER 105

WHEN SHE SPOTTED me standing there, she stopped in her tracks, the napkins in her hands fluttering to the floor. My jaw was already there waiting for them.

It was one of those movie moments. I waited for a sappy eighties love ballad to start playing so I could lift her up where we belonged or something. All the kids started giggling. Actually, that was the girls. The boys were too busy rolling their eyes.

“Okay, Bennetts. This is where I take my leave,” Ed Boyanoski said.

“Hi, Mike,” Mary said.

She bent down and started picking up napkins.

“Here, let me help,” I said, just about hurdling over the table and grabbing some napkins off the floor. Then I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the kitchen.

I kicked the door shut behind me, and before I really knew what I was doing, I lifted her up off her feet as I bear-hugged her. My arms tingled where I held her to me.

The door started opening behind us. I blocked it with my foot.

“Hey, what gives?” Seamus said. “What’s going on in there? And what’s wrong with the door?”

“It’s, eh… the napkins,” I cried as I held the door fast with my foot. “They’re jammed in the hinge. You should call a cop or something.”

“But you are a cop, Daddy,” Chrissy squealed.

“Um… it’s nice to see you, too, Mike,” Mary Catherine said, suddenly pushing me away.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I guess I’m a little overwhelmed. I truly never thought I’d see you again. It’s just… it’s just really good to see you, Mary Catherine, and… ”

“Just wait, Mike. This is hard, so just let me say it,” Mary Catherine said, staring at me levelly. “It’s not what you think. I’m not back back. I’m just willing to come back to handle all the back-to-school stuff for the kids. Then you have to find a replacement for me.”

I stood there trying to keep my heart from jumping through my chest. As if replacing her were possible, I thought as I stared at her. Why had I destroyed everything? I wondered. A replacement for her? God, that hurt.

“Of course,” I finally said.

But Mary Catherine was already on the move toward the dining room.

Cancel the eighties love ballad, I thought as I watched her walk away.

CHAPTER 106

THAT NIGHT, WE went back to New York in the most brutal end-of-summer traffic imaginable. To add some fun to the mix, Trent, after having probably one too many Cokes, barfed sausage pizza chunks all over the back of the Bennett bus.

Pulling the bus off the West Side Highway, we were greeted with more grief. Cops had West End Avenue completely cordoned off. In the distance, beyond the blue sawhorses, I could see a bunch of blindingly bright portable light carts positioned in front of my building.

Was it a movie? I thought, pulling up to the NYPD blockade.

“Hey, moron. Read my barricade. Move this hunk now,” a tall, helpful, uniformed New York City peace officer screamed at me.

“That’s Detective Moron to you, Sarge,” I said, showing my gold shield as I got out of the bus. “That’s my building there. Didn’t they cancel Law and Order? What’s up?”

“Supposed to keep it under wraps, but looks like the T word, Detective,” the white-haired cop said, nodding. “They found a truck bomb. Can you believe it?”

“What?” I said.

“You heard me. Some mother parked a Penske truck filled with ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel in the middle of the block. Bomb guy just told me it was bigger than the one that took out the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. They got the detonator or whatever licked, but they still gotta tow it out of here. Watch the potholes, right? If a sharp-eyed doorman hadn’t seen something and said something, the freakin’ West Side would be a crater.”

I stared at him, my mouth open. Then I stared down the block.

Perrine, I thought, shaking my head. Had to be. He wasn’t going to kill just me and my family. No, that would be far too common. In order to get to me, he was actually going to kill everyone on my entire block.

“Hey, Detective? You okay?” the cop said, but I was already on the move, scanning the street in front of me and the street behind as I jogged back to my bus.

“What is it, Mike?” Mary Catherine said.

“Um… gas leak. We can’t get back into the building. We need to hit a hotel tonight,” I said, popping it into gear.

CHAPTER 107

I TURNED AROUND and drove out of the city and checked into a hotel over the New York State line just outside of Danbury, Connecticut. On the way up, I had Mary Catherine confiscate everyone’s cell phones. Remembering what Ginther had said about cell phones being potential microphones, I even had her remove all the batteries.

For the next hour, as the kids watched TV in the other room, I exchanged calls with Tara McLellan and my boss, Miriam. About an hour or so after that, a team of FBI agents and U.S. marshals arrived at the hotel in unmarked cars.

“These gentlemen are from the gas company, I take it?” Mary Catherine said skeptically.

I nodded and left with them for a meeting in the lobby.

An hour later, I came back to the room, my head spinning. What I’d just been told made a lot of sense, but I still had trouble swallowing it. Talk about a shock to the system.

“Mary Catherine,” I said grimly. “I have news. Could you gather everybody together for a family meeting? Actually, have the twins take Trent and Chrissy and Shawna into the other room. I need to talk to all the bigger guys.”

“What is it, Mike?” Mary said.

“I’ll tell you in a second,” I said. “But you really might want to reconsider your position when you find out what it is.”

“What is it, Dad?” Brian said as they squeezed into the room.

I looked at their faces one by one where they sat on the chairs and the desk and the double bed.

“Well, what’s going on is, well… we’re moving,” I said. “We have to move.”

The kids stared at each other, giant-eyed.

“What? Why? Huh? Why?” everyone wanted to know at the same time.

“Quiet down, children,” Seamus cried.

“Our block was cordoned off because a criminal, a drug lord, a man named Manuel Perrine, whom I caught and who then escaped, planted a bomb in front of our building. He wants to kill me and hurt you guys because of how much I love you. That’s why we need to go somewhere where he can’t find us. Now. Someplace safe.”

“But what about school?” Juliana said.

“And Mass?” Seamus said. “Father Charles is out sick. I have to say Mass tomorrow morning.”

“We’re going to have to figure all that out, guys,” I said. “The U.S. marshals are sending over a team right now to take us to our new location.”

“What about our stuff?”

“They’re going to go by the apartment and pack it up for us. We can’t go home. It’s too dangerous.”

“We’re leaving New York?” Seamus said. He seemed flabbergasted.

“At least for now,” I said.

“But all our friends. Our lives,” Brian said. “How can this be happening?”

My sentiments exactly, I thought as I let out a breath. This sucked, and it was about to get worse. I didn’t even tell them we might have to change our names.

CHAPTER 108

THE WITNESS PROTECTION team arrived at four in the morning. Four more FBI agents and about a dozen U.S. marshals in cars and vans. Though they tried to keep their weapons under their Windbreakers, out of the kids’ sight, I spotted more than one submachine gun.

This was no joke. They wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if we weren’t serious targets. This was about as serious and scary as it got.

“Okay, Mary Catherine,” I said to her in the lobby as the agents were walking the kids out into the waiting vans. “I guess this is good-bye for now.”

One of the female FBI agents who was coordinating our transport turned around from the front sliding door as she overheard us.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Good-bye? What are you guys talking about?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “This is Mary Catherine, my nanny. She’s not coming with us.”

The brown-eyed, red-haired agent thumbed her smartphone.

“Mary Catherine Flynn?” the agent asked.

“That’s right,” Mary Catherine said.

“Yes, well, Ms. Mary Catherine Flynn, you can’t go anywhere. Not if you value your life. You need to come with us right now.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“We traced the rental truck used for the bomb in front of your building. It came back to a Dominican drug gang affiliated with Perrine. We raided them last night. They had photos of all of you. Folders with information about where you guys work, where the kids go to school, the works. Mary Catherine here was with all the rest of you. Perrine is paying top dollar to take every one of you out. She’s a target as much as you are. She can’t be left behind.”

“But-” I said.

“It’s okay, Mike,” Mary Catherine said. “I’ll go along for now. You’re going to need my help anyway with the children. They’re all so upset. We’ll figure it out.”

How? I thought as I stood there helplessly watching my world, my family’s world, and now Mary Catherine’s world turn upside down and inside out.

How would we be able to figure any of this out?

CHAPTER 109

THEY DIVIDED US between two vans. Mary Catherine and me with the girls. Seamus in the other vehicle with the boys.

We drove west, back into New York State, and straight on through into Pennsylvania. Neither of the jarheaded U.S. marshals sitting in the front seat told me where we were headed, and I didn’t ask.

I didn’t even want to know, I was still so depressed. As we drove along, I asked myself if I regretted pissing off the drug lord so much on the phone, and quickly decided that I didn’t. To hell with his evil ass if he can’t take a joke. Besides, he’d have come after me anyway.

If I had any regrets, it was that Mary Catherine had been roped into it. Especially with the mess I had made of things. Not only had I driven her off, now I’d put her life in danger. I didn’t know how to begin to apologize to her.

I fell asleep as the sun was coming up and when I woke, it was noon. We were somewhere flat. Ohio. Indiana, maybe. I stared out at the side of the highway into empty farm fields, wondering if I was dreaming. Despite everything, it felt good to be in the middle of nowhere and moving. There was something instinctual about it, that feeling of safety in motion.

I heard a strange sound and realized it was the new phone the marshals had given me in exchange for my old one. I looked at the 212 number as I clumsily thumbed it on. Tara, I thought.

But it wasn’t.

“Mike? Hi. It’s Bill Bedford.”

He was slurring a little, I noticed. In fact, he sounded drunk.

“Hey, Bill,” I said. “I take it you heard about what happened at my building?”

“I did, Mike, but that’s not why I called,” Bill said. “I don’t know how to tell you this. I just got off the phone with NYPD Homicide. Tara’s dead. They just found her.”

I sat up.

“No, no, no,” I said.

“They must have gotten her on the street on her way to work, Mike,” Bill said, sniffling. “She was taken to a motel in the Bronx, and God, Mike, they tore her apart. They found her head floating in the bathtub.”

I closed my eyes and let out a breath.

“Perrine did it himself, too,” Bedford said. “They have him on the motel’s security video waltzing through the door with a big grin on his face. He’s not human. That fucker isn’t human.”

“No, he isn’t,” I agreed as my mind spun.

“I’m so sorry, Mike,” Bill said.

He sounded completely wrecked. I thought about Tara at the St. Regis, how she’d said I’d saved her.

“Me too, Bill,” I said after a bit. “Thanks for calling. It couldn’t have been easy.”

Mary Catherine stirred beside me.

“What is it, Mike? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, looking back at my kids, then out at the fields, up at the sky.

“It’s okay,” I lied as I fought panic and tears. “Go back to sleep, Mary Catherine. Everything is going to be fine.”

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.