Kill Me if You Can Read online

  “And you don’t think Mr. Bannon has shaped this piece?” Katherine said.

  “No,” Karns said. “But I think he should take a hammer to it.”

  If he was hoping for a laugh from the rest of the class, he didn’t get it. Most of my fellow students sat in silence and winced. It was the last day of the semester, and by now Karns had managed to systematically piss off every one of them with his condescending elitist bullshit.

  He would have pontificated longer, but Katherine cut him off. When class ended, she gave us back our term papers. The assignment had been to write a five-thousand-word critique of public art in New York City. It counted as a third of our grade, so I’d spent a lot of time on it. I’d hoped for an A.

  But I didn’t get it. There was a yellow sticky on the front page. It said, C+. Matthew, see me after class.

  I sat in a depressed funk while everyone else filed out of the room. Katherine Sanborne finally came around her desk and walked toward me.

  “C-plus?” I said. “I thought the paper was a little better than that.”

  “If you’re willing to put in the time, I can give you a chance to improve your grade,” she said.

  “What do I have to do? I’m not afraid of hard work.”

  And then Katherine’s mischievous gray eyes lit up, and she clicked the lock on the classroom door.

  “Take off your pants,” she said.

  I’d been had.

  She stepped out of her skirt. Very graceful. Nice to watch. “If those pants don’t come off in five seconds, Mr. Bannon, I’m going to have to give you an incomplete,” she said. “By the way, that paper of yours was damn good, but I’ve come to expect even more from you.”

  The classroom had a chaise longue that was used for the figure-painting courses, and within seconds Katherine pulled me to it and began caressing, kissing, exploring. Then I was inside her. This was some kind of teacher-student counseling session.

  Finally, Katherine put her lips to my ear, taunting me with kisses and little flicks of her tongue.

  “Matthew,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “A-plus-plus.”

  Chapter 4

  OKAY, LET ME get back to my story about the unexpected treasure trove that I found in locker #925. It was a night I’ll never forget, of course. And for the other people in Grand Central Terminal, it was probably their worst nightmare.

  I wasn’t in New York City on September 11, 2001, but I’ve lived here long enough to understand the citywide paranoia. It could happen again.

  New York is, was, and always will be Ground Zero. Code orange is as lax as we get here. I’ve seen tanks parked on Wall Street, bomb-sniffing dogs in public buildings, and convoys of cop cars barreling into neighborhoods as part of the NYPD’s daily anti-terrorism drills.

  So, when the post — rush hour lull at Grand Central is shattered by gunshots and followed by two loud explosions, only one thing comes to mind.

  Terrorist attack.

  In an instant, the collective paranoia was justified. Mass panic ensued.

  The screams echoed off the walls of the marble cavern. The first thing I saw was that nobody ducked for cover. Everybody ran — with visions of the crumbling towers replaying in their heads, I’m sure.

  And then I couldn’t see a thing. Red smoke filled the building.

  I’ve spent a lot of time in war zones, but this was not my responsibility. I wasn’t a first responder.

  I ran like the rest of them.

  And then I saw it in the smoky haze.

  A trail of blood.

  Instinctively I followed it. And then I saw him.

  He was a big bear of a man, slumped against a bank of lockers in a pool of his own blood — from a gaping wound in his neck.

  In all the madness, nobody was paying any attention to him. I knelt at his side.

  My knee hit something hard. A gun.

  “Get doctor. Stop blood.” He gurgled out the words in a thick Russian accent.

  But there was no time for a doctor. No time for anything.

  Before I could say a word, his eyes rolled back in his head and he exhaled a strained breath. He was dead.

  His dark blue suit and the floor around him glistened with blood. It coated the door of the bottom locker closest to him. As I looked up, I saw a wide swath of red where he had leaned against the upper locker and slid to the ground.

  Locker #925 was covered in bloody handprints.

  And it was open.

  Wide open.

  Chapter 5

  I COULD THINK of only one reason that a reasonably sane man who was hemorrhaging blood would open a train station locker instead of wildly seeking help. Whatever was inside that locker had to be too valuable to leave behind.

  I looked down at the dead Russian. Was it worth it, Comrade?

  But then, who was I to judge this poor man for choosing locker #925 over calling 911? If I had half a brain, I’d be running out of Grand Central with all my fellow bomb-scared travelers.

  But I wanted to know what was inside that locker. No — I had to know.

  I stood up. By now the red smoke was starting to dissipate and I could take in the pandemonium.

  People were stampeding toward the exits, fighting and clawing their way out of the station. Some cops were trying to keep them from getting trampled in the doorways.

  Other cops were trying to evacuate the people who refused to leave.

  A woman with three suitcases was holding her ground in the middle of the station, insisting that she wasn’t going anywhere without her bags.

  “Damn it, lady,” a ruddy-faced cop screamed, “you can’t get a redcap during a terrorist attack.”

  He grabbed all three bags, and she followed him as he struggled toward an exit.

  And then a body came flying through the air and hit the marble floor.

  It was a young man, Asian, wearing a busboy’s uniform.

  Michael Jordan’s Steak House is a popular restaurant on the balconies overlooking the main concourse. People were pouring out, shoving their way toward the wide marble staircase at the west side of the station. The busboy must have been caught at the far end of the restaurant and opted for the quick way out. It was about a twenty-foot drop. He stood up on his right leg and started hopping toward the exit.

  I thought I’d just experienced the most insane day of my life. What I didn’t know then was that after I reached inside that locker, the insanity would only get worse.

  I put my hand on the open door and peered in. There was a bag inside. But not just any bag. It was one of those old-timey medical bags that you see in black-and-white movies from back in the days when doctors made house calls.

  Maybe the Russian wasn’t so dumb after all. Doctor bags are usually crammed with gauze and tape and about twelve hundred cotton balls.

  I opened it carefully and looked inside.

  My first thought was Holy shit.

  My second thought was This is a bag worth dying for.

  Chapter 6

  I’D SEEN DIAMONDS before. My mother had one in her engagement ring. My aunt had two in her ears. But my recently shot-up acquaintance, now cooling on the floor of Grand Central, had them all beat. Did you ever enter one of those contests where you have to guess how many jelly beans are in the jar, and there are so many of them, you know you won’t even come close? That’s how many diamonds were in the Russian’s medical bag.

  Correction—my medical bag. At least for the time being.

  When I was growing up, my mom used to tell my sister and me about a leprechaun with a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. But she never mentioned a Russian Neanderthal with a bag of diamonds at the end of a bloody trail in a train station. Mom also said something about never taking what doesn’t belong to you. But to whom did the diamonds actually belong? The dead guy with the gun? I definitely suspected he had taken them from somebody else. My mom meant well, but at a time like this, I had to seriously consider my dad’s worldview. Find
ers keepers.

  I could almost hear my dad listing my options. What are you going to do, Matthew? Leave the diamonds with the dead body and walk away? Or maybe you want to get on the PA system and say, “If anyone at Grand Central lost a bag of diamonds, please meet me on the main concourse”?

  I made a decision, a temporary one, anyway. The diamonds were up for grabs and I was the one who would grab them.

  I closed the black bag and snapped the brass latch. My mind started racing. These diamonds could completely change my life.

  Little did I know how soon, and how much.

  The voice behind me was deep, resonant, and authoritative. “Police. Turn around real slow. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  I turned. The voice belonged to a young, very large African-American cop. And just in case his size didn’t intimidate me, he was pointing his service revolver at my chest.

  Hmm, I thought. Looks like my life is changing already.

  Chapter 7

  THERE WAS A dead guy at my feet, a fortune in diamonds in my hands, and an NYPD uniform pointing his gun at me. Now what happens?

  “Officer Kendall,” I said, reading his name tag. “I’m really glad you showed up. Thank God. Can you give me a hand here?”

  “Who are you? Who is he?” the cop asked.

  “I’m Dr. Jason Wood,” I said, dredging up a name. “And I have no idea who he is, but I can tell you he’s dead.”

  I knelt down beside the body and tried to appear oblivious of the policeman’s gun. “There was nothing I could do. He had expired by the time I got here.”

  Kendall was young, a beat cop, and this had to be the most action he’d seen since the Academy. One minute he was probably shooing unlicensed T-shirt vendors off Madison Avenue, and the next he’s involved in a bomb attack in the heart of Manhattan.

  “Please do me a favor,” I said, barely looking up at him. “Would you point that gun somewhere else?”

  “Sorry, Doc,” he said, holstering the weapon.

  I leaned over the dead body like I knew what I was doing. “He must have caught some shrapnel when the bombs went off,” I said, stalling. “You know who’s behind it?”

  “I don’t know shit,” the cop said. “I was on Forty-sixth Street. The call went out that bombs had gone off at Grand Central. I just got here.”

  “Just a minute. Hold on. I’ve got an incoming.” I grabbed my cell phone from my pocket and pressed it to my ear. Then I improvised. “Hello, this is Dr. Wood,” I said. “I know. I was actually in Grand Central when the bombs went off. I’m still there. I’ll get to the ER as soon as I possibly can.”

  I stood up. “Look, Officer,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do for this man. But there are people who need my help. I’ve got to get back down to St. Vincent’s. Are the subways running?”

  “Shut down,” he said.

  “All right. I’ll walk if I have to.”

  Kendall’s radio came to life then. “All units, Grand Central Terminal. I have a ten-thirteen. Repeat — ten-thirteen: Officer needs assistance. Multiple looters at Five Borough Jewelry in the Forty-second Street Passageway. Shots fired.”

  That’s when I found out that an officer in trouble trumps a dead civilian. Kendall didn’t hesitate. “I gotta go,” he said. “You wait here for the coroner.”

  He raced off toward the Forty-second Street Passageway. As soon as he was out of sight, I headed in the other direction. As fast as I could.

  I cut through the frenzied mass of people in Grand Central. It took maybe five or six minutes to get out to Lexington Avenue, where the insanity was even worse.

  With the trains shut down, the street was teeming with commuters who wanted to get as far from midtown Manhattan as possible. And who were fighting over the few yellow cabs that had stopped.

  Three men in suits had cornered one driver and were attempting to negotiate their way out of Dodge.

  “Scarsdale,” one said. “I’ll give you three hundred bucks.”

  “Ridgewood, New Jersey,” another guy said, and he actually held out a handful of hundreds. “A thousand dollars.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I could fly to Japan for less than that. Jersey won the bidding war. He was about to get in the cab when I grabbed his arm.

  “I’m a doctor. I have to get downtown to St. Vincent’s Hospital to deal with the victims,” I said. “If you’re taking the Holland Tunnel, you’ll go right past it.”

  He looked down at my medical bag. “Yeah, yeah, Doc,” he said. “Hop in. Let’s get out of here.”

  I got in. The driver locked the doors and began to weave his way through the human traffic jam on Lexington Avenue. St. Vincent’s is only a few blocks from my apartment. I was headed home. No charge.

  Even if I decide to turn in these diamonds, I thought, I’m definitely keeping this little black bag.

  Chapter 8

  THIRTY MINUTES AFTER Walter Zelvas bled out on the floor of Grand Central, two NYPD detectives pulled up to his apartment building on East 77th Street. Some cops go by the book, some bend the rules. But Detectives John Rice and Nick Benzetti were considerably dirtier than most of the crooks they busted.

  They had finished the day shift in Robbery for the Department, and now they were working for Chukov at a much better hourly rate. Their mission was simple. Find the diamonds.

  The doorman looked away as they entered the building. He knew exactly where they were headed. For fifty bucks he had supplied them with a key to the apartment of that nasty-ass Russian who had stiffed him at Christmas: Walter Zelvas.

  The two cops entered the elevator.

  Benzetti stood six feet tall, with slick black hair and an oversize hawk nose protruding from a small, pinched face. Tall, dark, and ugly. In reality, he was wearing six-inch cheater shoes, and his gray hair was slathered with Just For Men hair dye. The ugly came natural.

  Rice, six three and bald, didn’t need help from a shoe company or a hair dye. But the two cops had one thing in common. They were both terrified.

  They had met Zelvas once. And he didn’t like them. He didn’t care if they were on Chukov’s payroll. They were still cops.

  They’d sat across the table from him at Chukov’s apartment, a bottle of vodka, a loaf of black bread, and a large block of cheese between them.

  “Screw me over and I’ll kill you,” Zelvas had said. “And not with a bullet.”

  He picked up a stainless-steel slicer and dragged it slowly, menacingly across the top of the cheese. A ten-inch sliver peeled away.

  “Do you know how long it takes a man to die if you skin him alive?” Zelvas asked, popping the cheese curl into his mouth. “Six days. Four if you add salt.”

  Benzetti and Rice stood to the left and right of the door outside apartment 16E, guns drawn. They knew Chukov wanted to ice Zelvas. What they didn’t know was that he was already dead.

  “If Zelvas is there, we take him out quick,” Rice said. “I’ll aim for his head. You go for his heart.”

  Benzetti knelt down, slid the key into the lock, and turned it. With Rice standing over him aiming high left, and his own gun pointed low right, he opened the door. Clear. The two men slowly padded into the living room.

  The overstuffed sofa and two massive armchairs were covered in a shiny fabric with black and gold geometric shapes. Walter Zelvas was big and ugly, Benzetti thought, and he had furniture to match.

  They scanned the room. Clear.

  And then they heard it. A noise. Metallic. It was coming from the bedroom.

  The two cops froze.

  Whoever was on the other side of the door was too busy to know they were in the apartment. They moved silently, expertly, through the living room and flattened themselves against the wall outside the bedroom door.

  From his lead vantage point Rice could see the wall safe. It had just been opened. But not by Zelvas.

  He signaled his partner, and the two of them rushed in. “I’m guessing Walter isn’t at home,” Rice said, pointing hi
s gun at the safecracker.

  She looked up. She was drop-dead gorgeous. Midtwenties, dark hair, long legs, wearing ass-hugging jeans and a tight white blouse with the top three buttons undone.

  “Shoot her,” Benzetti said.

  “Back off,” the woman said in a voice that seemed to hold no fear. “Do you know who I am? Obviously you don’t.”

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” Benzetti said. “Shoot her.”

  “Maybe we should find out who she is first,” Rice said. “She obviously thinks she’s somebody.”

  “I don’t care who she thinks she is,” Benzetti said.

  “I see, I see,” she said. “Good cop, bad cop. You’re the two mudaks who work for Chukov, Benzetti and Rice. Zelvas warned me about you.”

  “And you’re the woman breaking and entering, then ransacking Walter Zelvas’s safe.”

  “I’m not ransacking. I have the combination. Zelvas gave it to me. As well as a key to his front door.”

  She was defiant but she was also breathing hard. She was scared.

  Benzetti loved watching this one squirm. The nice breasts were an added bonus for him. In a way, it would be a crime against nature to kill her.

  “And why would Zelvas give you his front door key plus the combination to his safe?”

  “I’m his girlfriend. I’m Natalia.”

  Rice looked at Benzetti. “Chukov never said anything about Zelvas having a girlfriend.”

  “So you do work for Chukov,” Natalia said. “What does he want here? You can tell me. After all, you plan to kill me.”

  “He sent us to pick up some diamonds,” Benzetti said.

  “I work for Nathaniel Prince,” Natalia said. “He sent me here for the diamonds, and he’s Chukov’s boss.”

  “I thought Chukov was the boss,” Benzetti said.

  “Chukov?” Natalia said, spitting out the name. “Do you think that boot-licking dalbaiyob is smart enough to run an operation like the Diamond Syndicate? Chukov works for Nathaniel Prince, and Nathaniel sent me, so put the guns down, gentlemen, and let me finish what I started. You couldn’t open the safe, anyway. I have the combination.”