Burn: (Michael Bennett 7) Read online

  CHAPTER 62

  TWO AND A HALF surreal hours later, in a glamorous fog, we finished dessert.

  “I finally found it,” Mary Catherine said, gently placing her fork on her plate, now empty of Grand Marnier soufflé.

  “What’s that, mon amie?” I said, feeling very little pain after the multiple courses paired with wine.

  “The best thing I ever ate,” she said, sounding a little tipsy herself.

  “But you said that was the lobster-and-tarragon ravioli,” I reminded her.

  “That was then,” she said with a wink. “This is now. How about you? What would you want if you could have anything in the world right now?”

  Cocking my head, I lifted my dessert wine and began to swirl it as I gave it some thought.

  “For you to call me Michael again,” I suddenly said truthfully before draining my glass.

  She glared at me.

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Michael,” she said, suddenly standing.

  “Hey, where are you headed?” I said.

  “I am going to the powder room,” she announced with a giggle. “What are you going to do?”

  “I am going to sit here and watch you go to the powder room,” I said.

  As I, and every other man there, watched Mary Catherine cross the room, I was interrupted by the waiter, who discreetly brought the bill. The bill itself was not discreet. With wine and the tips, in fact, it was pretty staggering.

  But I smiled as I dropped my Amex card on top of it. You get what you pay for, and what I’d just paid for was truly a New York, New York, once-in-a-lifetime sort of night.

  Now for the good part, I thought as I caught up with Mary Catherine by the door.

  After we got Mary Catherine’s coat and said au revoir to La Grenouille, we saw that it was raining cats and dogs outside and that more than half the restaurant’s hoity-toity patrons were huddled under the narrow awning waiting for taxis and town cars and limos.

  Breathing in Chanel No. 5 and shoe polish as we waited with the movers and shakers, I looked across the street at the diamond-filled windows of Cartier. Then I quickly looked away. Because I was off tonight.

  I’d even gone and done the unthinkable in this modern and insane 24/7 wired-up world we lived in. I’d turned off my cell phone. The city, both uptown and downtown, would have to take care of itself. At least for one measly night.

  “Your cab, Monsieur et Madame,” suddenly called the house manager as he scored us a taxi.

  I hooked elbows with Mary Catherine, and we jogged into the rain for our cab.

  CHAPTER 63

  MARY CATHERINE AND I both laughed as we fell into the back of the taxi.

  “Excuse me, nice young people, but where to?” said the middle-aged little cabbie with an Indian accent.

  “The Plaza Hotel. On the double!” Mary Catherine yelled out before I could open my mouth.

  I stared at her, my mouth gaping as the cab pulled out.

  “Oh, that’s how we’re going to play it, are we?” I said as I began to tickle her. “What happened to all that ‘things better left unsaid’ stuff?”

  “That was then,” she said, laughing, and then she did it.

  Mary Catherine leaned in and gave me what I’d wanted more than anything since the night started.

  A nice long taste of her red lips.

  “This is now, Michael,” she said, pulling me closer.

  We kissed slowly as the lights of the city swept through the windows and the rain pounded hard on the cab’s roof. We came up for air as we stopped before a dripping red traffic light.

  “Sorry,” Mary Catherine said to the cabbie.

  “No, please. Perfectly fine, in fact,” the cabbie said, looking at us in the rearview. “I like to see people in love. And I know the real thing when I see it.”

  I watched Mary Catherine reapply her lipstick as there was a hum. But it wasn’t my phone, for a change—it was Mary Catherine’s.

  “Hello?” she said.

  I watched her listen. After a second, her expression changed as she sat up straight.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “It’s Brian,” Mary Catherine said. “Something’s wrong. It’s Seamus.”

  I grabbed the phone.

  “Brian, what is it?”

  “He’s not talking, Dad,” Brian managed to say through his bawling. “I just came out to say good night, and Gramps is on the couch and all he does is just stare at me.”

  “Is he breathing?”

  “Yes, a little, I think.”

  “We’re on our way, Bri. Hang in there. I’ll call the paramedics and call you back.”

  I turned toward the cabbie. “Change of plans,” I yelled as I dialed 911. “Ninety-Fifth and West End Avenue. Please hurry.”

  CHAPTER 64

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, BRIAN called and told us the EMTs were taking Seamus to the emergency room, so instead of going home, we redirected the cabbie to St. Luke’s Hospital on Amsterdam Avenue.

  Another day, another hospital, I thought as we pulled up outside. My stomach churned as I considered the worst. That the inevitable had finally happened to my grandfather. That Seamus was already dead.

  Please, God, let me be wrong, I prayed as we came through the revolving doors into the waiting room. We still need him more than you do.

  They let us upstairs to six, where Seamus had just been admitted.

  But surprisingly, when we entered his room, instead of being laid out on a gurney, he was sitting up in bed with his arms crossed and one of his patented scowls on his face.

  “Seamus!” I said, beating Mary Catherine to him by a half step to hug him. “You’re OK! Jeez, you scared the heck out of us! What happened?”

  “He had a stroke,” said a short, handsome young doctor as he stepped into the room.

  “See, here on the MRI where it’s gray?” Dr. Jacob Freeman said as he held a readout up to the light. “Regions in both the parietal lobe and the gustatory area have damage from blood loss.”

  “Oh my goodness, Seamus! You’ve had a stroke?” Mary Catherine said.

  “Of course I had a stroke,” Seamus said. “So what? Don’t go measurin’ me for a pine box just yet. I feel fine. Whaddya think? This many years on this old rock, the plumbin’s not goin’ to get the occasional clog? Where’s me clothes? What is it that Eddie always says? Time to blow this clambake!”

  “A stroke is very serious, Mr. Bennett,” the doctor said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, but you can’t leave now. You need to stay overnight for observation, and we still have more tests to run.”

  “Tests,” Seamus said, rolling his eyes. “You seem like a nice little fella, but I’m in no mood to hear any more of your medical school mumbo jumbo. I made a call and my personal physician is on his way. If he says I’m good to go, I’m good to go, agreed?”

  “Is he always this way?” the doctor whispered to me. “Your grandfather seems quite disoriented.”

  “Actually,” I said, smiling sheepishly at Dr. Freeman, “this is normal, believe it or not.”

  CHAPTER 65

  “PARDON ME! COMING THROUGH!” said a bellowing Irish voice from the hall a moment later.

  It was time to roll my eyes when I saw the skinny old man who walked in. It was no doctor, but Jimmy “Dowdy” Dowd, one of Seamus’s drinking and poker buddies. Actually, I think he had been a doctor, but, like, in the 1970s. He was well into his eighties now. How the heck was he still practicing medicine?

  “If you would all step back and give us a little room. Thank you, thank you,” Dowdy said as he rummaged in the big old-fashioned black leather doctor bag he’d brought and put on a huge ’60s-era black stethoscope.

  Dowd started out the examination by getting Seamus to stand. The second Seamus was upright, Dowd started snapping the bony fingers of both hands loudly and rapidly in Seamus’s face.

  “What in the world are you doing?” said Dr. Freeman as Seamus jumped back.

  “Testing his
reflexes. Getting him to look alive,” Dowd said.

  “Easier said than done with you for a physician, James Dowd,” Seamus said, clutching his chest. “Where’d ya learn your bedside manner? The enhanced interrogation team at the CIA?”

  “Enough of your squawking,” Dowd said, giving Seamus the peace sign. “How many fingers would I be holding up?”

  “That’d be two last time I checked,” Seamus said. “Though I’m surprised it isn’t one, considering how badly I took you at the end of our last poker game. All in on pocket threes? What were you thinking?”

  “Ah, he’s obviously fine,” Dowd said to me. “Strong as a stubborn donkey and still about as charming, which I don’t have to tell you fine long-suffering people about. I’m sure I don’t see any brain damage. Well, any more than usual, that is.”

  “This is highly unusual,” Dr. Freeman said almost to himself.

  Dowd turned to him.

  “Enough of that now, Doctor, please. His physical coordination is fine, right? He’s thinking fairly straight. His tongue’s as sharp as ever. Therefore, I hereby deem this man fit to go home, and that’s where he’s goin’ to go. Now, be a good lad and fetch a wheelchair, would you? And bring back the paperwork while you’re at it.”

  Freeman opened his mouth, then quickly closed it before leaving.

  “OK, now that he’s gone, time for a little medicine,” Dowdy said, producing a pint of Jameson’s and a couple of little steel cups from his bag of tricks.

  I shook my head and then shared a laugh with Mary Catherine as the two tough, nutty old men shared a stiff belt of the good stuff. Obviously, I would have felt better if Seamus had stayed for some more tests, but I knew it would be fruitless to try to persuade him. He did look OK. Plus the fact that he was back to his old Emerald Isle vaudeville routine was definitely positive.

  When I turned on my phone to tell Brian the good news and that we were on our way home, I saw that I had several new texts. Three of them were from Starkie.

  The gist of his messages was that he’d recently been fielding complaints about me from the jewelry store owners, Bruno Santanella and his wife, Ellie. The Santanellas were claiming that I’d left the crime scene at their store even faster than the thieves. Which was completely unfair. I’d stayed at least five minutes. The thieves had been out in, like, two.

  Starkie concluded that he wasn’t real happy with the investigation so far. Or with me, for that matter.

  Fair enough, I thought, filing the aggravating criticism in the memory hole with a tiny flick of the Delete button.

  I’d been running the length of the city like a beheaded chicken since I’d gotten back to New York, and now the one special night I’d finally planned with Mary Catherine had gone belly-up.

  I honestly couldn’t say I was real happy these days with things myself.

  CHAPTER 66

  THE RESTAURANT HONCHO SAT in forty-five minutes past noon was on Prince Street in the very center of SoHo.

  The modern French bistro was called 82 Clichy, after the address of Le Moulin Rouge in Paris, and like that famous cabaret, it was over-the-top posh, with black satin wallpaper and pale-plum-colored leather banquettes and an antique mirror the size of a billboard over its massive gleaming zinc bar.

  Though decadent bordello was definitely Honcho’s style, especially in the tailored black seventeen-hundred-dollar Prada suit he was now decked out in, he wasn’t there to soak in the atmosphere. Sitting by a window open to the sidewalk, he kept glancing at the street through the zoom lens of his Nikon between bites of his scallop ceviche. As he pretended to snap pictures of the area’s charming Venice-like cast-iron loft buildings like some geeky tourist, he kept keen watch on an establishment two blocks west on the southwest corner of Wooster.

  Through the camera’s magnifying lens, he could easily read the gold-leaf sign on its door: WOOSTER FINE DIAMONDS.

  He turned from the window when he finally heard the loud clopping. The tall, curvy platinum blonde who stomped up to his table wore a seemingly painted-on black sleeveless turtleneck Givenchy dress with big black Dior shades and too-high Louboutins. With the not-so-demure diamonds at her ears and throat and the flashy Barbour and Kate Spade shopping bags clutched in her hands, she looked like a high-end stripper who’d bagged a billionaire.

  Which was precisely the look Honcho had been shooting for when he hired the mobbed-up Ukrainian looker for this latest job.

  “You’re late,” Honcho said, dropping a hundred on the table and quickly leading Iliana back out into the street by her elbow.

  “You told me to shop!” Iliana shrieked in her heavy accent, waving the bags as they crossed the Belgian-block street.

  “For over an hour!?” Honcho said as they headed west. “I told you we were on a schedule. Anyway, you know what to do, right? Want me to go over anything?”

  “Do I look like an amateur to you?” Iliana said, ripping her elbow out of his hand. “I was picking pockets before you had peach fuzz on your nuts, so you worry about your part. And you better have my money in cash right after, like you said, or I’ll have your nuts.”

  “What a sweet-talker you are, Iliana. Look lively now,” Honcho said as they made a beeline up Prince Street toward the jewelry store.

  CHAPTER 67

  THE TALLER OF THE two armed security guards opened the jewelry store door as Honcho and Iliana stopped in front of it.

  From casing the joint over the last three months, Honcho knew that the dark-haired, heavyset white guard with the throwback macho-man mustache was named Gary Tenero and that he was easygoing and probably a pushover. It was Tenero’s intense Hispanic partner, Eric Galarza, who was shaved bald and chiseled like an MMA fighter and on the NYPD hiring list to become a cop, who had Honcho much more worried.

  Spotting Galarza through the window, stationed in the center of the store, Honcho was racked with a sudden and strong bad feeling. Before his eyes came a prophetic vision of himself down on his hands and knees leaking blood on the luxe retailer’s expensive carpet.

  Should I abort? Honcho thought.

  But then Iliana was clicking up the jewelry store’s cast-iron steps and everything was going down.

  “Are you effing kidding me?” Honcho said, starting the script.

  He put on a pretty convincing Russian accent for the benefit of the guard. Honcho was acting Russian and had chosen the Ukrainian Iliana because of the sudden influx of megarich Russians and Europeans into the super-wealthy SoHo shopping area.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” Honcho complained loudly at Iliana’s back. “I am not going into one more store. I am already late.”

  “It will just take a minute. Come on,” Iliana barked.

  “I don’t have a minute, you idiot,” Honcho said, going into his pocket and slapping a knot of hundreds into her hand as the wide-eyed white guard watched. “Pick out whatever, OK? I need to be in a cab. If I keep my boss waiting any longer, he’ll cut my dick off. I’ll call you later.”

  “No, you must come,” lliana said as she stamped a Louboutin. “How can I pick out my engagement ring by myself?”

  “But isn’t it bad luck?” Honcho said.

  “No, that’s just the dress, you moron. C’mon,” she said, pulling him inside.

  Honcho avoided the gaze of the intense guard as a vampire-pale redheaded female clerk stepped up to them. She reminded Honcho of the curvy carrottop from Mad Men, only instead of being plus-size, she had cheekbones you could chop lines of coke with.

  “Hello, I’m Rebecca. May I help you?” the clerk said.

  “We want to see some diamonds,” Iliana said.

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place,” the clerk was beginning to say, when suddenly all hell broke loose by the front door behind them.

  “FBI!” someone screamed. “FBI! You with the blonde! Hands up now if you don’t want to die!”

  Honcho stiffened and began turning around slowly. He caught a glimpse of two men wearing navy Windbr
eakers and bulletproof vests with badges around their necks. They were standing in the jewelry store’s open doorway, guns drawn.

  “Hands!” one of the FBI agents said. “Don’t move! Don’t you move!”

  Honcho ignored him and dropped down on his knees, digging into the Kate Spade bag for his Beretta. The gunshot that followed was deafening in the tight interior of the store. Honcho fell facedown on the carpet.

  Over the next thirty seconds, it was hard to tell who was screaming more loudly, Iliana or the redheaded clerk.

  “Oh, man. I think you got him,” Honcho heard as the intense guard, Galarza, was suddenly kneeling over him.

  “You wish!” Honcho said, rolling over and pressing the Beretta to the guy’s chin.

  As Honcho stood, the two “FBI agents,” Beast and Slick, already had the door closed and their guns trained on Tenero and the other male clerk.

  Iliana took her own piece out of the bag and placed it between the redheaded clerk’s wide green eyes.

  “Keys to the front, now!” Iliana screamed as Slick slipped the bolt closed on the door.

  CHAPTER 68

  I WAS HEADED TO the squad room when I heard it. I was stopped at a red light on Broadway and Great Jones Street in the Village when the cruiser’s radio suddenly blew up with about fifteen staccato calls.

  I listened intently. Someone had just pulled the silent alarm at Wooster Fine Diamonds on Prince and Wooster!

  “That’s five blocks away!” I yelled at myself as I hit the siren and peeled out through the intersection and then pinned it south down Broadway.

  “We are on foot pursuit. Caucasian male running east on Prince. No, scratch that. North on Mott! North on Mott!” said the radio as I ran another red light.

  I shrieked through the next red light at Houston, almost running over a muscular bike messenger in the intersection before flooring it east to Mott Street. Just as I arrived, a lean white guy with a bulging backpack shot gazellelike straight across all four lanes of Houston and continued north on Elizabeth.