Burn: (Michael Bennett 7) Read online

  When I finally opened my apartment door, I would have loved to tuck in the little guys, but it was almost ten o’clock, and they were all fast asleep. I stood for a moment in the hallway outside the darkened girls’ room anyway, staring at Chrissy sleeping in her bottom bunk, which was plastered with stickers of rainbows and hearts and bunnies. Chrissy and her bunnies. There was a poster on the wall above her with a baby bunny on its back sticking out of a teacup.

  I hadn’t heard anything further from the guy claiming to be her father or from his fussy lawyer. I wondered if that was a good thing. Maybe I’d catch a much-needed break and they would just go away. Fat chance, but who knew? I was about due for a miracle after the last couple of crazy hectic days.

  As I softly closed the girls’ door, I could see Mary Catherine down the hall, filling the dishwasher, then bending to the Herculean task of charging our family’s impressive array of electronic devices and phones. The Energizer Bunny had nothing on MC, the way she was always busy keeping everything together—the apartment, the kids, not to mention yours truly.

  I remembered it then. A promise that I needed to keep. As Mary Catherine opened a cabinet and started lining up lunch bags on the counter, I stood in the hall and took out my wallet and my cell phone.

  “La Grenouille,” said a butter-smooth French-laced voice in my ear a moment later.

  I’m about as far from a gourmet as most cops get, but even I knew that La Grenouille was one of the last great classic French restaurants in NYC. Kissinger ate there. The megafinancier Henry Kravis. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have dreamt of attempting to get a reservation on short notice.

  But being an NYPD detective is a weird job that sometimes comes in pretty handy.

  “Hello, may I please speak to Claude Pétain?” I said, reading the name off the tattered business card I’d pulled from the back of my wallet.

  “Speaking. May I help you?”

  “I don’t know if you remember me, Claude, but I’m Detective Mike Bennett. I worked a case at your restaurant about a year ago when one of your elderly waiters passed away.”

  “Oh, yes. Old Paul Tristan. I remember,” he said. “When we suggested that he might think about retiring, the old Basque said that the restaurant was his life and that we would have to carry him out. And wouldn’t you know, he got his wish in the middle of lunch service.

  “I do remember you, Detective, as well as your extreme discretion at removing the body so as not to alarm our patrons. It was well appreciated. It still is. What can I do for you? Is there some kind of problem?”

  “No, not exactly. I’m in a bind with a lady friend to whom I promised a very special night out, and I was wondering if I might appeal to you for some assistance. There wouldn’t be any way for me to score a reservation there, say, this Friday? I know it’s very short notice.”

  “I see,” Claude said neutrally. “Let me check. One moment, please.”

  I sweated it out as I waited a full minute, then two. La Grenouille on short notice? It was a stupid idea. Who did I think I was? Donald Trump?

  Finally, Claude got back on the line.

  “How does nine-thirty work, Detective?”

  Magnifique, I thought as I looked down the hall, imagining Mary Catherine in a little black dress.

  “That would be terrific, Claude,” I said quickly. “I really can’t thank you enough.”

  CHAPTER 53

  THE BRAKES ON THE massive, dusty twenty-six-ton Mack dump truck whined like a starving mutt as it swung off West Street onto Battery Place.

  It was fifteen minutes past noon and down here at the southern tip of Manhattan, office workers in search of lunch were spilling out of the megalithic glass-and-limestone financial buildings onto the narrow, slotlike streets like a body bleeding out.

  Looking out at the crowds through his dark shades, the dump truck driver thought how nice it would be to park and while away the lunch hour trying to pick up one of the tight-skirted money honeys clopping past at the light. Even dressed like Bob the Builder, with a quick flash of his dimples and his born pickup artist’s silver tongue, he knew it wouldn’t take an hour before he would have some stupid, starry-eyed young working gal giving up her name, her phone number, her heart.

  A horn blast behind him redirected his attention to the now-green light. He shifted his mean machine into first and let off the clutch and made another rumbling left onto Greenwich Street.

  Rolling off Greenwich at Trinity Place along the left-hand side of the congested street, he began to see construction vehicles, flatbeds packed with rebar and big dump trucks like the one he was driving. The construction vehicles were for the One World Trade Center site, the so-called Freedom Tower, which was being built to replace the Twin Towers knocked down on 9/11.

  The area was chock-full of American history, the driver knew. Of course 9/11, duh. But there was Trinity Church on the right, where George Washington went to church after his inauguration, and Zuccotti Park a couple of blocks ahead, where those Occupy Wall Street zeros gathered to defecate on a cop car.

  The do-or-die part came as he was crossing Rector Street. Come hell or high holy water, he needed to park this monster somewhere between Rector and Thames in the next five minutes. He was running out of block and was thinking, schedule or not, he had no option but to go all the way around again, when a mail truck suddenly pulled out.

  Immediately, he hit the screeching brakes and swung left, almost smushing a moped messenger against a Lincoln Town Car. But at the last possible second, he made it. He drove the bad-boy oversize Tonka toy into the parking spot and up over the curb and down and stopped with a mighty clanking thump.

  He leaned out the driver’s window and glanced forward at a navy-blue awning with gold lettering on the sidewalk fifteen feet ahead.

  It couldn’t have been a more perfect setup. He’d nailed it. In another minute, it would all be going down.

  CHAPTER 54

  HE TURNED TO THE man in the passenger seat beside him. Like him, the man was wearing a traffic vest over faded green coveralls and had on dark wraparound sunglasses under a bright-yellow hard hat.

  “Not bad, huh, Slick? I love it when a goddamn plan comes together,” the driver said.

  “Amen,” Slick said without looking up from his phone.

  Honcho didn’t have to look at its screen to know that Slick was playing the vintage computer game Minesweeper. It had been an unquenchable obsession of his math-loving nutball of a friend ever since college. Slick played it faster and better than anyone Honcho’d ever seen, adding numbers and planting flags and uncovering tiles faster than a teenage girl texting her BFF, turning calculated guessing into some kind of fricking art form.

  Glancing at him now, Honcho felt like reaching out and palming his buddy’s forehead to see if it was heating up like the back of an overworked computer server. But what was really funny was the brainiac didn’t look or act like a nerd. In fact, the six-foot-one, dark, handsome stud got almost as much tail as Honcho himself when he was in the mood. Almost.

  Honcho scanned the sidewalk. Suits, some hard hats, a fat guy in chef’s whites curbing a stack of greasy cardboard boxes out in front of an Irish pub. Geeks, geeks, and more geeks. Excellent. All quiet on the southern Manhattan front. At least so far.

  Honcho lifted his radio.

  “Beast? You around? Come in, Beast. Where are you, baby?”

  Before he could even lower the Motorola, the passenger door popped open and an XXL son of a bitch dressed exactly like Honcho and Slick shoved his bulky mass inside.

  “You rang?” Beast said with a goofy gap-toothed grin as he clapped Honcho a nuclear-bomb high five that stung his palm even through the thick canvas of his work glove.

  Honcho smiled, as he always did upon meeting his perpetually fired-up, massive friend. And why wouldn’t he? He had once seen his steroid-addicted buddy lift a thirty-pound sledgehammer off the ground by the end of its handle like it was a Wiffle ball bat. To sum up: Beast w
as good to have around.

  Beast was as retardedly strong as Slick was nerdily smart and as Honcho himself was, well, Honcho. Even after all this time, they were still the goddamn dream team. They had been working their way up to this, circling and closing like sharks around a particularly fat and juicy seal. Now they were here—Manhattan. New York, New York, aka the promised land. The boys were most definitely back in town.

  “Everything’s ready?” Honcho said to Beast as Slick retreated into the cab’s rear and slid on the backpack.

  “We’re good to go, man. What are we waiting for?” Beast said, bouncing in his seat like the muscled-up three-hundred-pound four-year-old that he was.

  “No problems, you’re positive?” Honcho said again.

  “I look unsure to you?” Beast said, glaring at him now over the top of his Wayfarers. “I mean, I could screw something up on purpose just to make you feel better if you want, Honcho.”

  “Hit it!” Slick said. “What are we waiting for? It’s time.”

  Honcho closed his eyes, drinking in the anticipation until he was about to pass out.

  Then he hit the bulky plastic switch duct-taped to the Mack truck’s dashboard and threw open the door.

  CHAPTER 55

  BILLOWING BLACK SMOKE WAS already pouring out from underneath the hood of the dump truck by the time the three men hit the sidewalk. In a dozen quick steps, they were under the navy-blue awning, knocking on the thick glass of the door.

  “Help, please! My rig’s burning and my buddy’s in there! Oh, man, help! Anyone, please! He’s dying!” Honcho yelled at the security guard on the other side of the glass-and-wrought-iron door.

  Honcho had his hands on the side of his head, his face a perfect mask of agonized concern. Sometimes when he was in the groove, even Slick and Beast, who damn well knew better, found themselves believing the bullshit Honcho was slinging.

  The guard was a big, mean-looking old white guy with a silver flattop, a crackerjack Clint Eastwood type. His name was Terence Francis Burns, Honcho knew from his research. The sixty-two-year-old hard-ass was an ex-marine and ex-NYPD cop who still ran five miles a day.

  “Dude, help, please! He’s dying in there! Oh, shit! It’s on fire now! Buddy, GET OUT!” Honcho yelled, hopping around and waving his arms frantically at the truck as the smoke billowed at his back.

  You had to hand it to the cynical old bad-ass, Honcho thought as he watched the guard trying to check out the situation using the security cameras on the outside of the building beside the awning.

  That was when Slick, waiting a little ways off in the street with Beast, initiated phase two. He hit the clacker that set off the half stick of dynamite in the back of the dump truck.

  Honcho knew it was going to be loud. But good golly, Miss Molly! he thought, biting his lip to keep from laughing. It sounded like freaking artillery!

  Finally, Terry F. Burns, who had been in Nam during Tet and at the base of the burning, swaying Twin Towers on 9/11 saving people, leaped to his feet and pulled open the door.

  “What for the love of Pete is going on out here?” the guard said, sticking his head out.

  When he turned wide-eyed toward the blazing truck, Beast hit him hard in the back of the neck with the electric stun gun.

  The geezer went down per the plan. What wasn’t part of the plan was the way he went straight down, tangling his power-forward-long arms and legs around the now-closing big, heavy door and blocking the threshold.

  The lanky old bastard couldn’t even fall without being a pain in the ass, could he? Honcho thought, kicking at the dope as he wrestled to keep the Fort Knox–style door open.

  Improvise! Honcho commanded himself.

  He took out his big SIG SAUER 9-millimeter as he hopped over the guard like a malevolent Jack Be Nimble and put three—blamblamblam!—into the high-end jewelry store’s coffered ceiling.

  “Down, down, down!” he yelled, pointing the gun in the faces of the three shock-struck clerks at the end of the plush mahogany-paneled retail space.

  Beast finally got the door unblocked, and quick as spit, Slick went from the front to the back of the golden-lit store, popping one after another of the floor cases.

  Instead of using a sledgehammer like on their last job, he used their latest toy, a compressed-air-powered captive-bolt pistol, the same cattle-killing device the security-glass industry used in its testing labs.

  It worked like a charm. In twenty seconds, the five display cases were shattered to bits, and he and Beast and Slick were scooping and bagging and scooping and bagging, not individual diamonds but whole huge black-velvet display boards dripping with them.

  Forty seconds from entering, they were out the door. They went north up Trinity, walking, not running, not turning around, taking it easy, trying not to draw attention to themselves. They completely ignored the flame-engulfed dump truck parked to the store’s south. It was stolen, after all.

  Up the block on both sides of the street, people were standing on the sidewalks, emptying out of the stores and buildings to see what was going on. The looky-loos looked even more perplexed when the jewelry store alarm finally went off.

  Honcho wasn’t worried about it. They would just think it was a fire alarm. Keeping calm, never breaking his easy stride, Honcho led his dream team to the alley at the near corner and turned west.

  The hair on his arms stood on end as he heard a fire truck’s cranking siren blat in the distance behind him. As always, the mayhem he had just caused made him feel suddenly high, suddenly holy. Like a tightrope walker over the Grand Canyon. Like a barefoot guru over a bed of hot coals.

  Now for the fun part, Honcho thought, hardly feeling the sidewalk under the soles of his boots as he walked shoulder to shoulder with his boys down the dusty old alley.

  Now for the part where they disappeared.

  CHAPTER 56

  BRUNO SANTANELLA FINE JEWELERS was on Trinity Place in the downtown Financial District a block west of Broadway.

  It was exactly five to one when I shrieked up to the crime scene tape and joined the squad cars sealing off the street half a block away.

  It had taken me less than ten minutes to fire over here from nearby One Police Plaza after I’d gotten the call. But one glance out the window at the slowly milling police personnel and gathered crowds was enough to tell that I was too late. I was looking at a cold trail.

  I showed my shield to a First Precinct sergeant by the tape and parked my Crown Vic alongside the brownstone wall of Trinity Church’s famous graveyard, where Alexander Hamilton was buried. As I tucked a fresh notebook into my jacket pocket and clipped my shield to my lapel, I did a double take at the completely scorched dump truck peeking out from between two fire trucks half a block north.

  So the garbled first reports were true, I thought with a groan. There had been a burning truck and maybe even some sort of explosion. When I turned, I saw a Channel 2 camera van pull up at the perimeter behind me. I shook my head. I’d wanted a Major Crime, and it sure as hell looked like I’d just gotten one.

  Not only that, but I knew that Santanella’s was an up-and-comer in the high-end New York City jewelry biz. It was run by Bruno Santanella, an Italian immigrant and onetime Hollywood hairdresser who now glittered up all the beautiful people at premieres and awards shows and Cannes with gems instead of gel.

  I’d been on the job long enough to know that glitzy big-money people could be a big pain in the ass. I had a feeling I’d be earning my pay today and then some.

  Across Trinity, past a trio of firemen smoking cigarettes, I found NYPD bomb tech Al Litvak, waist deep in the charred ruin of the dump truck’s still-smoking front end. When he emerged, his pale mustached face and Tyvek suit and arms to the elbow were smeared with black soot.

  “What do we got, Al?” I said.

  “It’s looking like some kind of accelerant in the engine compartment,” he said. “It was set off by a rinky-dink electric switch wired into the cab. From a model railroad, if I ha
d to guess. Pretty sloppy, actually.”

  “Wasn’t there a bomb?” I said.

  “Nah, not really,” Al said, bumming a cigarette off one of the firemen and blowing a smoke ring into the cab window of the ravaged truck. “I saw a little blackening in the back of the hop loader there, but it was some half-assed firework or something. Maybe a couple of M-80s. It was just a noisemaker.”

  “So the whole thing wasn’t meant to hurt anyone? Just a head fake?” I said.

  “Exactly,” Al said. “A lot of sound and fury signifying jack squat.”

  I left Al by the truck and stood on the sidewalk, scanning the street. There was a security camera on the building wall beside the jewelry store’s blue awning, so at least we had that. After a second, I walked up to a fit thirty-something First Precinct detective I didn’t know who was standing under the awning talking into a cell phone as he scratched on a clipboard.

  “Here’s what we got so far,” Detective Mike Williams told me after he pocketed his phone. “The truck parks. The truck starts smoking. Three white guys in green coveralls and hard hats and sunglasses get out of it and ask the jewelry store guard for help. There’s some kind of a bang, and when the guard opens the door, he’s hit with a stun gun. The three rush in, bust three shots into the ceiling, then smash a bunch of floor cases, scoop the ice, and are out in maybe a minute.”

  “You think it was that fast?” I said.

  Williams nodded vigorously.

  “Three cars and half a dozen foot patrol uniforms on Homeland Security duty two blocks over on Wall Street were here in three minutes from the time the alarm went off. They secured the perimeter in a heartbeat and scoured the area but didn’t see hide nor hair of anybody matching the description. We’re still on the hunt, but it ain’t looking too hot.”