I, Michael Bennett Read online

  “How am I doing? Do I make a convincing doc?” I said.

  “Just perfect, Mike,” the young cop said with another eye roll. “Like the pre-Darfur George Clooney.”

  “He’s Clooney!?” Hughie said in outrage as he opened the window of the office to get some much-needed fresh air. “No way. I’m Clooney. He’s the other one-Clooney’s bald, caring, nerdy friend.”

  With Detective Martinez’s back to the medical office’s glass front door, we were hoping that someone passing on the interior concourse might mistake her for Perrine’s daughter. Our bait was set. Now all we needed was for Perrine to bite. If Perrine had gone to all this trouble to sneak into the States to see his daughter graduate, there was no way he would hear about a medical emergency and leave without trying to find out if she was okay.

  Above the examination table on the wall hung a poster of the Heimlich maneuver. I glanced at the first panel, in which there was an illustration of a man holding both hands at his throat to indicate that he was choking.

  With our trap set and the biggest arrest in New York City in a decade on the line, the question now was, would I choke?

  CHAPTER 11

  I GLANCED OUT into the hallway of the arena and spotted giant posters of Knicks basketballs and Rangers hockey pucks and boxers squaring off. I couldn’t believe all this was going down here at the Garden, of all places, but I guess it was appropriate to have this boxing mecca be the site of the heavyweight fight between the cartels and U.S. law enforcement.

  “Hey, Hughie,” I said to my partner. “You were in Golden Gloves, right? You ever fight here?”

  “Nope,” Hughie said. “They only had the finals here. I never made it that far, but my oldest brother Fergus did.”

  “What happened?”

  Hughie squinted at the floor.

  “Some monster from Queens knocked him out in the second round,” he said. “The beast pounded his ear against the side of his head so hard, I swear to God it looked like a veal cutlet. He couldn’t hear for a month.”

  I shook my head.

  “Forget I asked,” I said as the tactical radio in my ear squawked.

  “Okay, Mike. Heads up. I think I see something,” the DEA SWAT team head, Patrick Zaretski, told me in my earpiece.

  Zaretski was upstairs in the Garden security office, working the cameras. The other arrest teams were next door in an empty office, waiting to take down Perrine at the first sight of him.

  “What’s up, Patrick? Talk to me,” I said.

  “It looks like you’re being watched. I can just make out a person on the concourse pointing a video camera at the medical office door.”

  “Is it Perrine?” I said excitedly.

  “I can’t tell. It’s a big old-style camera. Hold it. The subject just put the camera down and is heading directly for your location. Be advised, the subject is heading right for you.”

  This was it, I thought as I heard the front door of the office open.

  Now or never.

  Do or die.

  “You just need to breathe, Miss Candelerio,” I said in a loud voice as I stood blocking Detective Martinez’s face from view of the front door. “Stay with me, okay? The ambulance is coming. It’s on its way.”

  “Excuse me. I’m sorry. You can’t come in here now. We’re having an emergency,” I heard the female cop posing as the receptionist say through the open door behind me.

  “I’m here to see Miss Daisy Candelerio. Is she all right? What’s happened to her?” said a Spanish-accented voice.

  What the hell? Something was wrong. It wasn’t Perrine.

  It was a female voice.

  When I turned, I spotted a young dark-haired woman in a flowered dress. She was trying to peek around the receptionist to look at Detective Martinez.

  An alarm went off inside my head as I stepped into the front room and saw how tall and striking the young woman was. The dress looked cheap, but the woman wearing it was extremely poised, her lustrous hair expensively maintained. She looked like an actress or a model.

  Billionaire bait, I thought. Something told me this tall drink of water was with Perrine. He must have sent his girlfriend in first to scout things out.

  We’d bag her and her phone and then bag Perrine. My trap was working. Perrine was even closer now, so close I could almost smell his French aftershave.

  “Did you say you’re Daisy’s family?” I said breathlessly as I rushed toward the woman and took her by the elbow. “Thank God. The poor young woman is having a seizure. We need to stabilize her until the ambulance arrives. You need to come back here. Please, she needs someone she knows to talk to her in order to keep her conscious.”

  The young woman glanced in my eyes, trying to read my face as I brought her into the room. Her eyes were a light amber, I noticed, almost gold, an eye color I’d never seen before. Her flawless skin glowed like fresh cream and even in flats, she was at eye level with my six-two. Definitely an exotic piece of arm candy.

  She bristled when we stepped into the exam room and Detective Martinez turned around. Hughie stood up from the stool on the other side of the table, dangling a set of handcuffs on his finger.

  “Yes, Virginia,” Hughie said with a smile. “There is a Santa Claus after all.”

  She did something weird next. The lovely brunette’s gold eyes swiveled to Hughie and then back to Detective Martinez then back to Hughie again and then she burst out laughing.

  She must have really thought something was funny because after a moment, she was shaking and cackling, wiping tears of hilarity out of her eyes.

  Hughie and I shook our heads at her fevered, high-pitched gigglefest. Was she nuts? I thought. High on her boyfriend’s drugs?

  Still laughing, she broke my grip on her elbow. She actually doubled over as she leaned against the right-hand wall. That’s when I noticed, through her lustrous dark hair, that she had something in her ear. A curious piece of flesh-colored plastic.

  A piece that looked just like my tactical microphone.

  A stark and paralyzing horror gripped hold of me right then as the woman’s laughter cut off in midcackle.

  Two things happened next, almost simultaneously.

  “Get out!” the doubled-over woman screamed into her purse.

  Then her purse exploded.

  CHAPTER 12

  IT WAS A flashbang grenade, I learned later.

  When it went off in the woman’s purse a foot away from my face, I didn’t know what had happened. Or where I was or even who I was for a few seconds. I didn’t know anything except the burning smell of cordite in my nose, the blinding, vibrating stars of light in my eyes, and an excruciatingly painful ringing in my ears.

  As I struggled to keep my balance, I heard a rhythmic, low-pitched thudding through the ringing sound. At first I thought it might have been some construction outside. Then I saw bright licks of light blossoming in my shaky vision and Detective Martinez, her face spurting blood, sliding off the exam table and falling with a crash at my feet.

  Still struggling with what I was seeing, I looked up to find the dark young woman holding a gun, a little black polymer machine pistol with a ribbon of smoke curling from its suppressor. As she swung the gun at me from the other side of the table, I yelled incoherently as I tried to draw my own gun. Time seemed to slow, the air itself to change, as if I were suddenly swimming in Jell-O. My eyes focused on one thing as my palm finally grazed the checkered grip of my holstered service weapon-the black bore of the woman’s gun as it stopped dead level with my face.

  The next thing I knew, I felt a weight slam into me. I thought it was a bullet, but I was wrong. It was Hughie tackling me, taking me down like a linebacker sacking a quarterback. He knocked out my breath as he hit me up top, pushing me sideways, away from the front of the gun.

  Gasping for breath, I looked up from the floor to see Hughie rising and turning. He sent the exam-table mat flying as he launched himself upward, reaching out empty-handed for the gun and the girl.


  “Ten thirteen! Ten thirteen! Ten thirteen!” I started yelling. Or thought I was yelling, because I still couldn’t hear anything, not even myself. Then the violent thudding ripped the air again, and Hughie stopped in his tracks. There was a nauseating, wet, splattering sound as his head snapped back, as if he’d been punched.

  I’d finally cleared my gun and was getting to my feet when Hughie’s lifeless body toppled back on top of me. As we went down in a heap again, I felt the slugs hit the back of Hughie’s vest. I also felt Hughie’s blood, warm and gushing, on the back of my neck and down the back of my shirt. I finally stuck out the Glock from underneath Hughie’s arm and pulled the trigger-and pulled the trigger and pulled the trigger.

  When the slide slapped all the way back after the last round, I poked my head up and saw that the woman was, amazingly, gone. Had she run back out? I thought as I quickly reloaded my Glock.

  In the hallway, I could see one of the female detectives screaming into her radio as the gold-eyed woman leaped up from the other side of the exam table, where she’d been crouching.

  But before I could move, before I could even breathe, she was past me.

  She took three running steps, dove out the medical office’s window headfirst, and was gone.

  CHAPTER 13

  I ROLLED OUT from underneath Hughie. Through the stench of blood and gun smoke, I knelt over my friend on the floor. I reached a hand out above his blood-soaked hair as if to somehow mend the gaping red-black holes there. But I couldn’t because he was dead. Detective Martinez was dead. Everyone was dead.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was one of the DEA SWAT guys, mouthing something into his crackling radio. Without thinking about it, I holstered my Glock and found myself ripping away the M4 assault rifle he held in his hand. Then I went to the open window and threw myself out of it.

  The hard plastic butt of the gun almost knocked me out as I went ass over teakettle and landed hard on my back on the asphalt. As I got up, I saw a woman’s shoe in front of me. Then I looked up and saw the tall pale woman it belonged to running hard in her bare feet fifty feet north of me, down the alley outside the medical office window.

  As I started running after the woman, a black Lincoln Town Car screeched off the street and came to a jarring halt at the alley’s mouth. A thin Spanish driver got out, calling and waving like a maniac at the woman. I brought the rifle to my shoulder just as the tinted rear passenger-side window of the Lincoln zipped down and the baffled holes of a gigantic gun barrel appeared.

  I dropped as if someone had yanked my ankles from behind and rolled behind a fire hydrant as the huge gun opened up. In that narrow alley, the report of it was unreal. Concrete dust stung my eyes as a fluttering deluge of lead chewed up the pavement and ripped at the hydrant like an invisible jackhammer.

  As the heavy, deafening rounds pounded and tore apart everything around me, I had what I guess you would call a near-death experience. In the awesomely violent rumble of the gun and the way it shook the air, I detected a God-like message. To keep perfectly still was life. To move even the tiniest part of my body was instant death.

  I was thinking how wise the message was and how the post office could forward my mail to Behind the Fire Hydrant, Alleyway, Madison Square Garden, New York City, when I remembered Hughie. In my mind, I saw him get shot again, saw the Heimlich poster on the wall behind him get splattered with his blood.

  Lying on my back, I flicked the switch on the M4 to full auto. Then, when there was a pause in the firing, I swung up on my knee in a firing position.

  The thin driver was getting into the front seat, right next to the woman who’d killed Hughie, when I shot him three times in the side of his head. Then I put the rear passenger-side window behind the red dot of my rifle’s holographic sight and opened up. I poured about a dozen shots into the window, then stood up in the awesome silence and began to run.

  Running toward the Lincoln, I noticed for the first time that there were other people in the alley, construction workers crouched alongside a wall beside a UPS guy.

  “Ground! On the ground!” I kept yelling.

  I slowed as I circled the Lincoln behind the barrel of the assault rifle. The driver I’d killed had his bloody head leaning out the window as though he were checking the front tire. Under the 30-caliber machine gun in the backseat, I saw the shooter, a pudgy, middle-aged Spanish man in a silk-screened T-shirt. He was on his back, moaning, coughing, and spitting up blood. More blood gurgled out the side of his right hand, where he clutched at the hole in his throat.

  It was only then that I noticed that the doors on the other side of the car were wide open.

  No!

  The woman who’d killed Hughie was gone.

  Someone cried out as I backpedaled into the street and swung the rifle east, down Thirty-Third Street. On the north side of the street, between a couple of work vans, I could see a stocky, light-skinned black guy in a dress shirt and green slacks running hard, arms pumping, like a sprinter.

  I raised the gun, but the sprinting bastard turned the corner before I could shoot him. Though I’d only caught a glimpse of his profile, I’d studied his picture hard enough to instantly know who it was.

  I’d finally laid eyes on Manuel Perrine.

  CHAPTER 14

  I COULD HEAR backup approaching hard behind me when I tossed my rifle into the window of the Lincoln over the dead driver. I opened the door of the still-chugging vehicle, pulled out the dead criminal, and let him drop into the gutter. I did the same thing to the dying shooter in the backseat, too. Pulled him out and let him fall facedown onto the street. Not standard NYPD practice for wounded suspects, but I was in a hurry, not to mention in a daze of adrenaline-fueled mental and emotional shock.

  I hopped in and slammed the accelerator against the floor as I dropped the Lincoln into reverse.

  “Out of the way! Move! Move!” I screamed as I sped backward with my hand on the horn, knowing what a challenge it was to navigate the impenetrable gridlock of midtown Manhattan in the correct direction.

  I slalomed around a double-decker tourist bus and a Nissan Altima yellow taxi, then drove on the sidewalk until I finally arrived at the corner of Seventh Avenue, where Perrine had headed.

  Through the rear window, I saw Perrine about a block north. He had his head down and was still booking and dodging through the clogged crowd of pedestrians as though he were trying out for running back for the Dallas Cowboys. He moved fast for a big man, I thought as I floored the Lincoln-still in reverse-north up southbound Seventh Avenue.

  I was met with a sheer wall of horn blasts as I carved the vehicle through the onslaught of oncoming traffic. I missed three cars before I sideswiped a plumbing van and then an eighteen-wheeler mail truck. A bike messenger actually took a swing at me through the open window after I came within a foot of putting him under the Lincoln’s back wheels.

  Then Perrine was right there in back of me, running diagonally across the intersection of Thirty-Fourth and Seventh.

  I revved the engine and was almost on top of him as he dove and made the northeast corner. I was still seriously thinking about just jumping the curb and hitting him with the back end of the car, but then I noticed the hundreds of innocent people standing there on one of Manhattan’s busiest corners, and I hesitated before slamming on the brake.

  I pulled my Glock, cocking it as I jumped out onto the sidewalk. I watched as Perrine disappeared into the store on the corner, underneath a pair of enormous electronic billboards.

  “Shit,” I said when I saw a giant red star appear on the billboard screen and realized where Perrine had just headed.

  “Where are you, Mike? Where are you?” I heard one of the arrest team members yelling over my crackling radio.

  “Macy’s. Thirty-Fourth Street,” I yelled as I ran. “Send backup.”

  And another miracle while you’re at it, I thought as I flung open the door to the world’s largest department store.

  CHAPTER 1
5

  IT TOOK ME a couple of moments of blinking like mad to adjust to the store’s dim mood lighting. I sprinted up a short flight of stairs, cosmetics counters and jewelry cases blurring on both sides of me. Between the displays, shocked-looking shoppers and tourists stood staring, most of them women and kids.

  “NYPD! Get out of the store!” I yelled, waving my Glock as I ran.

  I was running past the Louis Vuitton bags into men’s sportswear when I heard a scream from the bottom of a wooden escalator to my left. I took its moving stairs down two by two into the Cellar-the food and kitchenware section of the store. The sickly sweet smell of gourmet coffee and candy assaulted my nostrils as I breathed hard, panning left and right with my gun.

  There was a clatter of metal behind me, and I turned around to see the glass entrance to the store’s basement restaurant. The sound must have come from the restaurant kitchen. I rushed inside the wood-paneled space.

  “Oh, my gawd! Oh, my gawd!” a massively overweight blond woman kept saying. She was kneeling beside a slim blond waiter who was laid out on the floor by the bar. The guy’s head seemed wrong. It was twisted too far around, almost looking over his own back.

  “Where?” I yelled, and saw a dozen shocked customers pointing toward the still-swinging door to the kitchen. I ran past a sizzling flattop grill toward an open door at the kitchen’s opposite end. There were dusty metal stairs on the other side of it, with heavy footsteps hammering up them. I followed up the stairs, and as I made the top, I finally saw Perrine again, the back of his dress shirt soaked through with sweat, as he bolted down a corridor piled with folded cardboard boxes.

  “Freeze!” I yelled.

  He didn’t listen. An alarm went off and daylight flashed as he slammed open a fire-exit door on the street level. I was coming through that same exit onto Thirty-Fifth Street a split second later when I got kicked in the face. My right cheekbone felt shattered as my Glock flew from my hand. I watched it ricochet off the base of a pay-phone kiosk before skidding across the sidewalk and coming to rest under a sanitation department Prius.