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  I shook my head in amazement. One man takes down two trained, armed officers at the same time, with two different guns? Outside of a spaghetti western or a John Woo movie, that didn’t happen. Drawing, aiming, and shooting with just a single weapon while under fire took an incredible level of skill and training.

  “This guy’s either got some kind of special ops military background, or he’s the luckiest idiot in the world,” I said. “Let’s pray it’s the latter.”

  “Oh, and get this,” Lavery said. “He yelled out that he liked cops, right before he opened up on them. Tried to warn them off, even apologized to Tonya Griffith.”

  Christ, on top of everything else, he was a cop lover?

  “With friends like that, who needs enemies,” I muttered. “Okay, round up any video you can get from the transit booth or the street. I’ll head over to the other crime scene.”

  As I walked to the corner, I saw an old Jamaican hot dog guy behind the tape waving at me. I changed direction and went to him, thinking he might have some information, but it turned out he was just handing out free water and sodas to all the responding emergency personnel.

  “My daughter’s an EMT in the Bronx, mon,” he said with a contagious grin. “Least I could do for all you good folks.”

  He refused to take my money, but finally accepted the PBA card I gave him. Maybe it would get him out of a ticket.

  As I went through the familiar ritual of looking for my car, it struck me that every time I was ready to throw in the towel as a cop, I bumped face-first into the reason why I did what I did.

  Chapter 35

  THE PLATINUM STAR HOTEL was just five blocks west on Sixth. Rolling over there, I constructed a mental outline of my impressions so far.

  The most obvious pattern emerging was that after each murder, the killer hid out, then popped up again—wearing different clothes—and committed another murder. He must have a hiding place somewhere in the area. An apartment? A hotel room?

  Then there were the words he’d yelled, according to witnesses, about liking cops. Maybe that was just raving. But as cool and organized as this guy was, I had the feeling he knew what he was saying. He’d shot them only because he felt he had to, in order to escape.

  That meant he wasn’t just out killing randomly—he was choosing his targets. Further, the Platinum Star Hotel was the third high-end establishment out of three.

  My early guess was looking strong. He had an agenda, and it had something to do with wealth.

  And unlike typical serial killers, this shooter didn’t operate in secret. He worked in broad daylight, and let himself be seen. Was he trying to send a message? Those kinds of guys were usually out to prove that they were smarter than the police. They wanted to taunt us, let us know that they could kill with impunity and never be caught. So why hadn’t he contacted us or the press?

  That was as far as I’d taken those thoughts when I pulled up in front of the hotel.

  At least a hundred cops were milling inside a crooked yellow line of crime scene tape that threaded two full city blocks around the hotel. Office workers on the other side of it just stood there, silent and gaping, shell-shocked, braced for whatever was going to happen next. I found myself actually preferring the manic looky-loo curiosity that was the usual at crime scenes.

  People were definitely starting to get freaked. And why shouldn’t they? Even by New York standards, the body count was alarming.

  I found Detective Beth Peters inside by the check-in desk. She was still cool and crisp, but subdued.

  She led me across the white marble lobby to the elevators. The body was covered with a sheet. I crouched down and lifted it away.

  The woman lying there was still beautiful, with a mane of blond hair spread out around her head—except for the small black entry wounds in her face and chest, and the sticky pool of blood that had seeped out onto the floor around her.

  I stared at the bouquet of flowers on her chest. The fallen petals on the marble around her seemed like offerings in a human sacrifice.

  The typed message from the 21 Club crime scene appeared in my mind like a computer pop-up.

  Your blood is my paint.

  Your flesh is my clay.

  “Are you getting anything from this, Mike, about what he’s trying to say?” Beth asked. “Because I’m not.”

  I replaced the sheet.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s saying, ‘Catch me,’?” I said.

  Chapter 36

  “HER NAME WAS MARTINE BROUSSARD,” Beth Peters said as we huddled together by the check-in desk. “She was an Air France flight attendant, due out on today’s two p.m. to Paris. Around eleven this morning, a tall guy with black hair comes into the hotel with a bouquet of flowers. The desk clerk tells him he can wait on the couch by the elevator. When Martine comes out, he shoots her point-blank with a gun that was hidden in the roses. Once in the head, twice in the chest. Real charmer.”

  I let out a long, tired breath.

  “But there’s some good news,” Beth said. “Come on.”

  She led me into the large back office behind the check-in desk and introduced me to the hotel security chief, a white-haired ex–FBI agent named Brian Navril. He looked pretty nervous as he shook my hand. After what had just happened, I guess he was worried that he was about to become an ex–hotel security head, too.

  “I think I found something that might be useful to you,” he said, motioning us over to his desk. “At least I hope so.”

  He brought up the video feed of the hotel’s various surveillance cameras on his laptop and quickly clicked on the square that showed the registration desk. When the screen popped up, he hit Zoom and then Pause.

  A relatively clear image appeared of a man in sunglasses and an expensive leather jacket. He was holding a bouquet of roses and grinning, apparently chatting with the check-in clerk.

  Beth and I exchanged satisfied looks. Bingo! Finally, a solid lead! With the sunglasses it wasn’t the best of pictures, but not the worst either by any stretch. He had a stack of the already printed photos on the desk, ready for distribution.

  “Where’s the clerk?” I said. “I need to talk with her.”

  Her name was Angie Hamilton. She was a petite, attractive brunette in her midtwenties, who still looked shaken up as Beth brought her into the office.

  “Hi, Angie,” I said. “I’m Detective Bennett. I know this is tough for you right now, but we need to know everything you can tell us about the man who shot Ms. Broussard. You talked to him, right?”

  “He asked if Martine Broussard had left yet,” Angie Hamilton said. “He told me they’d just met, and he was bringing her flowers because . . . because . . .” She was starting to cry. Beth put an arm around her, murmured sympathetically, and fished a tissue out of her pocket. Angie dried her tears and continued stammering.

  “H-he said he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t let her know how he felt. I thought it was so romantic.”

  Double score, I thought, catching Beth’s eye. She nodded back. The shooter had asked specifically for Martine Broussard. He had known the victim. Now, for the first time, it was certain that we were looking at a nonrandom shooting. And the odds were greatly increased that this was connected to the other incidents.

  We’d caught another break, and it gave us another avenue to run down.

  “How did he act, Angie? Did he seem nervous? Cocky?”

  “Not cocky,” the desk clerk said. “A little nervous, but sweet . . . kind of charming, really. That’s what made it even more awful. I told him to go wait on the couch so he wouldn’t miss her when she came out of the elevator. But—but I killed her.” Angie broke into tears again, bending forward with deep wracking sobs.

  This time I joined with Beth in putting an arm around her.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong at all, Angie,” I said. “You were just trying to be decent. The only one who did wrong is this madman who’s going around shooting innocent people.”

  Chapter
37

  THE FIRST COPS ON THE SCENE had transported the victim’s fellow flight attendants to Midtown North. The Air France women were hysterical—so freaked out, in fact, that the first responding detectives couldn’t get anything but French from them. Being typical cops, their mastery of French began and ended with -Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir. They’d sent for a translator, but nobody had shown up yet.

  Fortunately, I wasn’t a completely typical cop.

  “Je suis vraiment désolé pour votre amie,” I said to the ladies as I entered the upstairs interview room. “Je suis ici pour trouver le responsible, mais je vais avoir besoin de votre aide.”

  Basically, that told them that I needed their help in finding the killer. At least, I thought that’s what I was saying. Years ago, my French had been pretty fair, but I was rusty. Maybe my words had really come out more like “Have you seen my sister’s wolverine?”

  Whatever I had said, the gorgeous women jumped up excitedly and converged on me. I’d never engaged in a group hug with five blond French supermodel look-alikes before. Somehow I managed to endure it, thinking about the dean of students at Regis, who’d urged me to take Spanish because it was more practical.

  I showed them the photo of the shooter from the surveillance video. One of them, Gabrielle Monchecourt, stared at it with widening eyes, then started jabbering a mile a minute. After getting her to slow way down, I managed to piece together what she was saying.

  She thought she’d seen the shooter before! She wasn’t a hundred percent positive, but maybe at a British Airways party in Amsterdam a year ago—where there’d been a lot of pilots from a dozen different airlines.

  Another big break! A pilot! And another connection to what I’d been guessing from the first—had never really doubted. Well, maybe for just a second. How about that? My diplomacy and ham-handed attempt at French had actually paid off. Go Regis!

  We finally had a lead solid enough to pursue.

  I took my cell phone out into the hall and communicated the breaks in the case to Chief McGinnis.

  “Nice work, Mike” was the first thing he said, stunning me. The second was almost as surprising—that he was giving me office space at the Police Academy on 20th Street, along with ten detectives to work my leads.

  I did some head scratching at the chief’s change of attitude as I drove to my new digs.

  Chapter 38

  WITH HIS ARMS FULL OF GROCERY BAGS, the Teacher had to use his foot to shut the battered door of the Hell’s Kitchen apartment behind him. He placed the bags on the kitchen counter, tossed his guns on top of the fridge, and, without pausing, tied on his apron with a snug bow. He was starving, same as he’d been after yesterday’s work.

  Past noon, the pickings were pretty slim at the farmers’ market in the north end of Union Square Park, but he’d managed to find some fresh Belgian endive and porcini mushrooms. He was going to use the porcini as a crust for the finely marbled Kobe fillet he’d scored at Balducci’s on Eighth Avenue.

  For a foodie like him, seeing what looked fresh at the market was the only way to decide what to make for dinner.

  After crusting the steak, he couldn’t resist a quick peek at the news. He washed his hands, went into the living room, and turned on the television. The first image that appeared showed a hovering helicopter and a million cops. Reporters were running around, interviewing scared-looking people on the street.

  He shook his head, inhaling deeply, as he relived the shoot-out with the cops. Even with his training and unerring instincts, he so easily could have died right there and then. It was another sign that what he was doing was the right thing, the only thing. His baptism by fire had actually made him feel even more committed and passionate.

  Back in the kitchen, he banged a cast-iron pan onto the Viking range and set the power burner on high. When the pan began to smoke slightly, he added a swirl of olive oil and carefully laid down the crusted Kobe, which gave a loud, satisfying sizzle.

  The smoky scent reminded him of the first time he’d met his stepfather, at Peter Luger Steak House out in Brooklyn. It was after his mom and dad had split up, when he was ten years old. He’d gone to live with his mom, and now she’d wanted him to meet her new boyfriend.

  His beautiful mother had been a secretary at the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, and her boyfriend turned out to be her boss, Ronald Meyer, a ridiculously wealthy and ridiculously old LBO specialist. The short, frog-faced geriatric had tried very stiffly to be buddy-buddy with him. The Teacher remembered sitting there in Peter Luger’s, staring at the doddering financier who had caused his family to be ripped apart, and being stricken with the almost irresistible impulse to ram his steak knife into the man’s hairy right nostril.

  Not long after that, his mother had become Ronald Meyer’s trophy wife, and the Teacher had moved with her into Meyer’s Fifth Avenue apartment. Overnight, like a kid in a fairy tale, he was suddenly setting foot in the strange new worlds of art and opera, country clubs, servants, Europe.

  How quickly his initial anger had faded. With what disgusting ease and completeness he’d been lulled into a sheeplike stupor by the luxury of his newly upgraded lifestyle.

  But now he realized that the anger had never gone anywhere. It had only grown, festering day after day through all the years since then, waiting to be unleashed.

  He flipped the Kobe in the pan and opened a bottle of ’78 Daumas Gassac that he’d been saving for a special occasion. He poured himself a tall glass and swirled it toward the good light coming in through the west-facing window.

  Thinking about his crotchety stepfather, Ronny, made him smile and cringe, both. There were all the things Meyer had bought for him—the clothes and cars, the vacations, the Ivy League education.

  But then, the graduation at Princeton. The awkward embrace he’d had to endure. The wretched “I’m so proud of you, son” that had emanated from the ninety-year-old’s liver-colored lips. To this day, his skin crawled at the mere thought of being related to the horrifying, ginger-haired skeleton his mother had used for a meal ticket.

  “Should have killed you when I had the chance, you old shit,” he said with a sigh. “I should have killed you at hello.”

  Chapter 39

  I DECIDED TO MAKE MY WAY over to Bellevue to see if there was any chance of talking to the wounded transit cop.

  As I drove there, I was struck by something I’d never realized before. After 9/11, apparently it didn’t take too much to make Gotham residents jumpy about their personal safety. Talk about once bitten, twice shy, I thought.

  Tourists were grouped beneath the awnings of the Central Park South hotels, looking warily up and down the street. A near-frenzied mob was trying to get the latest news feed from the giant TV at the CBS studios across from the Plaza. The sidewalks along Lex were clustered with office workers standing out in front of the modern glass towers. Urgently jabbering into cell phones and thumbing BlackBerrys, they seemed to be waiting for evacuation instructions. There even seemed to be an early-rush-hour exodus of people pouring into Grand Central Station.

  Maybe that had something to do with this, I suddenly thought. Maybe the killer wanted to create as much fear as possible.

  If so, he had to be pretty pleased right now, because his plan was coming along just fine.

  I didn’t want to add my department Chevy to the clot of police vehicles already blocking Bellevue’s ER entrance, so I parked near a rear loading dock and went in through the back.

  Ed Korzenik, the veteran cop who’d been shot, was still in surgery. Miraculously, the bullet to his head had just grazed his skull. It was the .45 hollow point in his bladder that they were trying to deal with.

  Ed had a large family, and many of them were there in the waiting room—wife, mother, brothers, and sisters. Seeing them, with their grief and devastation, gave me a sudden urgent need to call home.

  My eldest son, Brian, answered. Of course he didn’t have a clue about what I was doing, or even what w
as happening on the streets, and I was glad of it. We talked sports, the Yankees, what was going on at Jets camp. He’d be turning thirteen soon, I realized with near disbelief. My God, I’d have a house full of teenagers soon, wouldn’t I?

  I hung up with a smile on my face. That conversation was by far the best twenty minutes of my day.

  Chapter 40

  NEXT, I DECIDED TO DO something I’d been planning on since this morning—take a spin by the New York Times to talk with Cathy Calvin. It was time for us to have a little sit-down. Or, I guess, smack-down would be more precise. I wanted to know a couple of things. Mainly, where the hell did she get off making up theories and implying that I was her source?

  After fighting my way through the crosstown traffic to 42nd Street, I remembered that the Times wasn’t there anymore. I had to think about it before I could place them in their brand-new corporate headquarters on 40th.

  I informed the security guy in the shiny new lobby that I was there to see Calvin. He looked up her name and told me she was on the twenty-first floor.

  “Wait a second,” he said, as I headed for the elevators. “I need to give you your pass.”

  I flashed him my gold shield, clipped to my tie.

  “Brought my own,” I said.

  The twenty-first floor was deeper than I’d ever been in enemy territory. Along its halls, my shield earned me looks that were divided among shocked, nervous, and dirty. I found Calvin at a cubicle, typing furiously on a keyboard.

  “More lies for the late city final?” I said.

  She swiveled around toward me, flustered. “-Mike—hey, great to see you.” She put on a friendly smile, but I shut her down cold.