I, Michael Bennett Read online

  Wow, I thought, carefully retreating back into the hallway. “Mr. Bennett?” I must have done something really atrocious for my nanny to be busting out a stone-cold “Mr. Bennett” on me. If only I could figure out what it was.

  The front door almost hit me in the back as Brian and Ricky came in, arms filled with dusty suitcases and bags.

  “Hey, boys. You’re up early. What’s the occasion?”

  “Just grabbing all the luggage from storage, Dad, for the really wonderful summer vacay we’re about to embark on next week,” Brian said.

  “Yeah,” Ricky said. “I can’t wait to get up to the old cabin in the woods. And for the rest of the summer instead of last year’s two weeks. People think the woods are boring, but c’mon. You have trees and branches and leaves and bark and stuff.”

  “Animals, too. Birdies and even squirrels,” Brian continued. “I mean, who needs PlayStation high-definition gaming when you have the chance to see a squirrel looking for a nut? It’s riveting.”

  I stared at my kids, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. They’d acted the same way the summer before and then ended up having the time of their lives.

  “Honestly, Dad. We don’t have to go to Hicksville again this year, do we?” Ricky said. “There’s nothing to do.”

  “He means except getting bitten by mosquitoes and getting poison ivy,” Brian added helpfully.

  I peered at them and scratched my chin for a bit.

  “Well, sons. I didn’t know you had such huge objections to the trip. Besides, you guys are a year older. Maybe we can arrange something else for you two-like we’ll head upstate, and you guys can man the fort down here.”

  Ricky and Brian looked at each other ecstatically.

  “That would be awesome!” Brian said. “The whole apartment to ourselves. You know you can trust us. We’re down, Dad!”

  They began to step past me. I let them get five feet. Maybe four.

  “Oh, wait. I just thought of something. What was it, now? Oh, yeah. I was only kidding. Start packing, knuckleheads, and don’t forget the OFF! Next stop for you two happy campers is Hicksville, USA.”

  CHAPTER 28

  WISPS OF BLUE smoke stung my eyes as I lifted the roasted chickens from their foil packets. I listened to the satisfying sizzle as I slipped them one by one onto the grill to finish smoking. The mahogany-colored birds looked awesome and smelled even better-of sweet mesquite smoke and lemon.

  “Bobby Flay, eat your heart out,” I mumbled as I closed the lid of my trusty Weber grill.

  It was my grandfather Seamus’s birthday, and I was most definitely doing some grillin’ and chillin’ for his surprise party this evening. On the table behind me, the Philly cheesesteak sliders were waiting with the rest of the appetizers, the chips, the fruit platter, the beer, and Cokes on ice in galvanized buckets.

  Since everything was ready to go, I decided to crack open one of the Coronas to ease my smoky throat.

  The whole setting looked as awesome as the food. Colored plastic Japanese lanterns were strung above white paper tablecloths. In the distance, over the buildings and Riverside Park treetops, the Hudson River was sparkling. My West End Avenue building really didn’t have a designated rooftop space, but I helped the super out with his traffic tickets, so he looked the other way a couple of times a year when I wanted to have a tar-beach barbecue. I couldn’t think of a better venue for tonight’s event.

  I put down my beer as my phone jangled.

  “This is Falcon One. The target is in the box. I repeat, Dumbledore is in the building.”

  Dumbledore, I thought, shaking my head. Leave it to my nutty kids to turn a surprise birthday party into a covert operation with code words.

  “Roger, Falcon One. Keep me posted.”

  I sipped my beer as I waited for the next transmission.

  “Falcon One here again. Dumbledore fell for it,” Trent reported five minutes later. “Grandpa actually thinks he needs to help Mary Catherine take clothes up to the roof to dry. He must think its 1912 instead of 2012. Anyway, we have him hook, line, and sinker. They’re taking the elevator. We’re coming up the back stairs. ETA two minutes.”

  The other kids and I were huddled together, my youngest, Chrissy, beside me, literally shaking with excitement as the roof door opened.

  “Surprise!” we all yelled.

  “What?” Seamus said, wide-eyed, dropping the laundry basket he was holding. “Oh, my goodness!”

  “He’s speechless!” Mary Catherine cried, coming up behind him. “Someone mark the date and time. I think we actually made him speechless!”

  We sat down and commenced eating. It was a delicious meal. In addition to the perfectly smoked chicken, we had smoked sausages and German potato salad and slaw. As we joked and bantered, we watched the sun go down and the lights go bright in the city to the south.

  As I sat there smiling, one of those perfect New York moods hit me. Sad and happy and serene all at the same time. I had trouble remembering the last time I felt this good. Definitely before Hughie lost his life. Thinking about him, I lifted my plastic cup to the dark silver sky.

  After we dispensed with the paper plates, I popped a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Champagne as Mary Catherine brought over the cake she’d baked.

  “How many is it, Father?” I said, filling his glass with bubbly. “How many cases of candles are we going need to light this puppy up? Should I call LaGuardia to warn the air traffic controllers?”

  “Please, no candles-and especially no numbers. Not today,” Seamus said. “That can be my present from you, Michael. No mention of any numbers.”

  Jane cleared her throat.

  “Before we sing happy birthday, Gramps, we wanted to share with you the top ten reasons why having a priest for a grandfather is great.”

  “Oh, no. I should have known,” Seamus said, shaking his head in mock despair. “First roast chicken, now roast grandpa.”

  He wasn’t fooling anyone. The old man couldn’t stop smiling from ear to ear as the kids stood with their index cards.

  “Number ten: extra-special ‘God bless yous’ when you sneeze,” Jane said.

  “Number nine: front-row pews on holidays,” said Shawna.

  “Number eight: last rites before the more treacherous amusement park rides,” Eddie chimed in.

  “Number seven: Roman collar provides excellent grip on horsie rides,” said Chrissy.

  “Number six: top-notch pet burials,” said Trent.

  “Number five: reminding Gramps that you’re an innocent child of God easily gets you out of trouble,” Fiona and Bridget said in unison.

  “Number four,” said Ricky. “Fear of excommunication is a really great incentive to floss teeth.”

  “Number three,” said Brian. “Sanctity of confessional box keeps Dad in the dark forever.”

  “Number two,” said Juliana. “Lots of chances to wear nifty YOUR GRANDPA LIVES IN FLORIDA BUT MINE CAN EXORCISE DEMONS T-shirt.”

  “And number one,” I said, standing.

  The last zinger was mine, of course. Seamus winced.

  “Nonstop sermons,” I said. “Every darn day of the week.”

  CHAPTER 29

  AFTER THE BIRTHDAY dinner, the kids took Seamus to the most recent summer blockbuster while Mary Catherine and I cleaned up. We’d wrapped up the leftovers and were breaking down the tables and chairs when I spotted something.

  “Hey, what’s this?” I said as I saw something gold at the bottom of an ice bucket. I put my hand into the freezing water and pulled out a second bottle of Veuve Clicquot, which I’d forgotten about.

  “Look, a straggler,” I said as the ice-water droplets tickled the tops of my flip-flopped feet.

  “We can’t let this go to waste,” I said, putting the music back on. My iPod was jam-packed with fifties and sixties music these days, all the doo-wop crooning and violins and melodies and sweet, soulful love songs I could download off iTunes. I had been playing the songs during the party, to Seamus’
s delight.

  We took the bottle over to the southwest corner of the roof, where we could look out over the West Side and the Hudson River. As we arrived, “Up on the Roof” by the Drifters soon started floating through the warm summer night air.

  Millions of tiny lights sparkled in the dark water as the Drifters sang about being up above the bustling crowd and having all your cares sail away. I peeled away the foil on the Veuve Clicquot and untwisted the wire. When the cork popped, it ricocheted off the terra-cotta rim of the building and went spinning out into the night.

  “That’s a long way down. You think we hit anyone?” Mary Catherine said, looking over the railing.

  I stared at her blue eyes and fine-lined face, uplit in the soft glow of the city lights.

  “No chance,” I said, smiling, as I looked down. “But even so, I’d certainly take a Champagne cork over your usual New York City ‘airmail’-the kind delivered by pigeons, high-rise construction sites, and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons.”

  When I passed her the bottle, she gave me a soft kiss on the cheek.

  “What’s that for?” I said.

  “For celebrating Seamus, Mike. It was really wonderful. The kids love you so much. They love seeing you happy. They’ve been worried about you. So have I. I know how hard it’s been for you since losing your buddy Hughie.”

  I looked down at the tar paper between my flip-flops.

  “I’ve been pretty pensive lately, haven’t I?”

  “‘Pensive’ is a word,” she said. “‘Silent’ is another one.”

  Unable to deal with where the conversation was headed, I cha-cha’d her around a rusty AC unit as “Up on the Roof” was replaced by Ben E. King’s “Spanish Harlem.”

  It seemed like music from a different world. It was as though the tune came from a different planet-a simple, happy one, where young people longed for adulthood and love.

  I knew that getting older meant being skeptical about the music of a new generation, but what I heard on the radio these days was truly new territory. How in fifty years had the human race gone from popular music in which young men sang about things like buying their girl a ring and getting married to popular music in which young women boastfully sang about how much they enjoyed hard-core, dirty sex?

  “Ding-dong,” Mary Catherine sang. “I’m right here. Penny for your thoughts.”

  “They’re not worth that much,” I said, twirling her around.

  It was maybe another thirty seconds before we heard footsteps behind us.

  “Hello? Anyone up here?” a voice said.

  We turned as Petey Armijo, the pudgy super of my building, stepped over, swinging a set of keys.

  “Hey, Mr. Bennett, if you guys are… eh… done here, I’d like to lock the roof door.”

  “We just finished, Petey,” Mary said, walking over and turning off Ben in mid-croon before hitting the stairs.

  “Exactly, Petey. All done,” I said, grabbing a couple of folding chairs. “Your timing is impeccable.”

  CHAPTER 30

  BY THE TIME I made it back downstairs into the apartment, I heard the dishwasher and the washing machine going. Mary Catherine was in full cleaning mode, which by now I knew meant that she was feeling anxious and emotional, and we’d probably shared our last dance of the evening.

  My relationship with Mary Catherine was obviously complicated. So complicated, in fact, that even I didn’t know what was going on half the time. There was something deep and special between us, but every time it seemed like we were about to make a solid connection, something-life, the world, one of New York City’s unending supply of murderous maniacs, or, most often, my big mouth-would get in the way.

  Thankfully, I noticed we’d run out of milk and eggs and bacon for Sunday breakfast, so I grabbed my keys and went out for a breath of what passes for fresh air in New York. Outside my building, I immediately walked over to the NYPD cruiser on the near corner.

  “Don’t shoot,” I said, with hands raised, to the stocky young black cop behind the wheel as he rolled down the window.

  The department had assigned nonstop protection to me and my family ever since I’d collared Perrine. And with good reason. In Mexico, during his reign of terror, Perrine had had dozens of cops, Federales, and prosecutors killed.

  “I’m hitting the deli, Officer Williams. You need anything?”

  “No, I’m fine, Detective,” the soft-spoken, affable Afghan war vet said as if he were coming to attention.

  “At ease, Private Williams,” I said, smiling. “Half-and-half, one sugar, right?”

  “Okay, Detective. But I thought I was the one who was supposed to be watching out for you,” the rookie said, finally smiling a little back.

  “Got it covered,” I said, showing him the 9mm Glock in my waistband as I walked away.

  I actually had another one on my right ankle, a subcompact Glock 30 filled to the brim with fat, shiny golden.45-caliber bullets. If Perrine’s guys came for me, they’d better bring their lunch, because if I thought my life or the life of my family was in jeopardy, I was going to throw down first and ask questions later. I’d already killed two of Perrine’s assassins at Madison Square Garden. If killing the rest of them was what this thing took, then, as Paul McCartney so eloquently put it, let it be.

  I went two blocks south down West End to the deli on the corner of Ninety-Sixth and was coming back up the hill, balancing a coffee with my bag of grocery loot, when my phone rang.

  I glanced at the screen. It was assistant U.S. attorney Tara McLellan, Hughie’s cousin, to whom I’d been practically glued at the hip for the last two weeks, prepping for Perrine’s trial. I thought it was a little weird to be hearing from her this late, but jury selection on the trial was supposed to start Monday. I stopped on the corner, leaning against a sidewalk construction shed to take the call.

  “Hey, Tara. What’s up?” I said.

  “Mike, sorry to bother you so late,” she said. “I’m wrapping up the trial strategy report that I’m going to present to my boss tomorrow, and I was wondering if you could come by and take a look at it and give me some last-minute feedback. Talk me off the ledge.”

  I could understand her anxiety. Not only was this the biggest case of Tara’s career, the whole Perrine thing was a major international news event. This was a very public opportunity for the U.S. to show the world that it was taking on the cartel problem, which had run amok for so long.

  “I’d be happy to,” I said. “Where are you? Downtown at the office?”

  “No. Midtown, actually. I’m at the St. Regis Hotel.”

  I blinked. The St. Regis on Fifth Avenue was probably the most exclusive luxury hotel in New York, a place where celebrities stayed and where the cheapest room went for eight hundred bucks a night.

  “Wow, that’s a pretty nice ledge you’re sitting on,” I said.

  “I was late at the office and didn’t want to head back to Bronxville, so I decided to splurge. They did say we should shake up our routine for security reasons, Mike.”

  “Good point,” I said. “The St. Regis is certainly the last place a cartel hit man would look for me. Give me thirty to get into my tux.”

  “Where are you going?” Mary Catherine said upstairs, when she spotted me putting on a suit jacket.

  “Work. Last-minute details on the Perrine trial,” I said.

  “It’s Saturday night,” she said skeptically.

  I tried to come up with one of my patented fast-talking quips as a reply, but drew a big fat zero.

  “Tell me, Mr. Bennett. Do all assistant U.S. attorneys look like Fox News babes, or just this one who keeps calling you?” Mary Catherine said as I made my escape into the hall.

  “My phone’s on. Be back soon,” I mumbled as I hit the door.

  CHAPTER 31

  IN NO SHAPE to drive after all that birthday bubbly, I, too, splurged. On a cab to the St. Regis instead of the subway.

  I stared up at the dramatically lit, turn-of-the-
century hotel as my cab turned off Central Park South onto Fifth Avenue. It was hard not to stare. The iconic French Second Empire-style building was one of the most beautiful in the city-twenty highly embellished stories of glowing limestone columns and cornices topped off by a copper mansard roof.

  A doorman ushered me through an elaborate brass revolving door into a lobby of squint-inducing brilliant white marble. Even the furniture was old and French, I noticed, spotting Louis XVI armchairs with fluted legs backed up against the massive stone columns. This hotel was as imposing, over-the-top, and as expensive as New York City could get, which was saying something.

  Tara had already sent me a text message when I was in the cab telling me to meet her in the landmark’s famous King Cole Bar. I stepped into the cavernous space, which had a mahogany bar and a massive mural behind it.

  Sitting at the bar, Tara looked pretty grand and imposing herself, in a black jacket, ivory blouse, and black pencil skirt. She was wearing her long shiny black hair up a way I’d never seen before. I liked it.

  A gaunt old bow-tied bartender, who looked as though he might have served some of the robber barons who built the joint, was waiting for me as I arrived beside Tara.

  “What are you drinking, Ms. McLellan?” I said.

  “Irish whiskey, what else?” she said with a wink. “No rocks this time.”

  “Jameson?” I said.

  “No, Bushmills sixteen-year.”

  “Sweet sixteen sounds good to me,” I said, giving the ancient barkeep a thumbs-up.

  After the relic brought my drink and took away two twenties I’d likely never see again, we clinked glasses and drank.

  “So you finished your report?” I said.

  Tara put a finger to her lips and giggled.

  “Shh. Drink first, work in a minute,” she said, slurring her words a little.

  She blinked at me, a wide, fixed smile on her face. By the glaze in her eyes, I could tell the drink in front of her wasn’t her first.