I, Michael Bennett Read online

  We chitchatted for a while about the weather and the latest Yankees loss before I realized something. I looked around on the floor beside her bar stool.

  “Tara?”

  “Yes, Detective?” she said, batting her eyes at me. “May I call you Detective, Detective?”

  “Tara, where’s your briefcase? You know, your work? All the paper you wanted me to see?”

  She smiled mischievously.

  “Upstairs in my room. I was just taking a drink. I mean, a break.”

  “How many breaks-I mean, drinks-have you had?”

  “Just the one, Detective, I swear. Please don’t arrest me,” she said, smiling, as she raised her palms.

  “I have an idea. How about we call it a night, and we go over it tomorrow?” I said, grabbing her clutch purse from the bar and gently taking her elbow.

  Outside the bar, in the lobby, the grim, middle-aged woman behind the hotel’s desk gave me a frosty glare as I escorted Tara unsteadily into a brass elevator.

  No fair. I’m the good guy, I felt like saying to the clerk. Can’t you see my shining armor?

  When the door binged closed, Tara turned and touched my face.

  “Mike, ever since the wake, I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” she said quickly. “Did you know that I practically killed about six people to get put on this case? I thought it was for Hughie, but it wasn’t. It was so I could spend time with you.”

  “That’s… that’s… ” I said, flabbergasted. “I’m flattered.”

  Tara put her head on my shoulder.

  “My husband died in a plane crash, you know. He was a weekend pilot, and he screwed up somehow over Long Island Sound and crashed. We were best friends. We did everything together. When he died, I felt like dying, too.”

  She pulled away from me and shook her head as she stared up into my eyes.

  “I read how your wife died, too, Mike. I know what it’s like to lose someone that close. You understand. You’re the first man I’ve met in five years with whom I felt that click. I’ve just been so lonely. I went on an Internet date a few months ago. Have you ever gone on an Internet date, Mike? My God, the horror.”

  The elevator stopped on the eleventh floor, and we stepped out into a white, furniture-lined hallway.

  “You think I’m a stalker now, don’t you?” she said, pouting, when we arrived at her door. “I’m not a stalker, Mike. No, wait-that’s what a stalker would say.”

  I got her room door open with her passkey. Inside, she immediately ran down a short hallway and then through another doorway. Then she ran back out.

  “Don’t leave, Michael Bennett,” she said. “If you leave, I’ll come looking for you. You wouldn’t want a drunk woman running around the streets of New York on your conscience, would you?”

  I stepped in and closed the door.

  “Not me. I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

  She went back into what I assumed was the bedroom. The room was a suite, with a living room window that looked north up Fifth Avenue, toward Central Park. How much money did she have, exactly? I thought. And exactly how drunk was she?

  After a minute, I heard water running in the next room. When she came back out a minute or so later, my jaw dropped. Uh-oh. She was wearing a fluffy white bathrobe-quite a short fluffy white bathrobe.

  She stopped at the love seat, sat, and tucked her long legs up underneath her.

  “There. Okay. Much better. My head isn’t spinning so much,” she said. “Hey, c’mon. Sit down. Do you want a drink?”

  I started laughing at that.

  “I think the bar’s closed, Tara.”

  “I like how you laugh, Mike,” she said, sounding a little more sober. “I’m so glad you came. Down at the bar, some Eurotrash creep tried to pick me up. When I blew him off, he said some nasty things to me before he left. I got afraid. That’s when I called you. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re in trouble, right? Call a cop?”

  I laughed again.

  “And here I am.”

  “Exactly. Here you are,” she said, and stood and undid the spill of her hair.

  As I watched it fall, I thought of a fragment of an Irish song from my childhood for some reason.

  Her eyes, they shone like diamonds

  I thought her the queen of the land

  And her hair, it hung over her shoulder

  Tied up with a black velvet band.

  It was actually her robe that slipped down over her shoulders a moment later, revealing pale tan lines at the nape of her neck. I swallowed. It was a really nice nape.

  CHAPTER 32

  BUT AT THE last second, as Tara rose up to kiss me, for some unknown reason I suddenly gave her my cheek and turned her embrace into a quick hug.

  She stiffened in my arms. Then her head sank.

  “Too much?” she said.

  She turned, stomping away, and collapsed back onto the love seat.

  “I always push it. Always,” she mumbled into the arm of it. After a minute or two, she started to sob as if I’d just broken her heart.

  I stood there, speechless, in the middle of the luxury suite. What was I doing here? First hugs and kisses, and now tears?

  Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Michael Bennett, I could hear Seamus say.

  But as I scrambled for a clue, I finally caught a break. I thanked my lucky stars as the muffled sobbing turned into soft snoring.

  After another minute, I lifted Tara up and carried her back into her bedroom, where I laid her under the seven-hundred-thread-count ivory sheets, carefully keeping her robe properly placed at all times.

  I stood for a moment and smiled down at her as she slept. I didn’t think goofballs came this attractive. Would she even remember all this tomorrow? I wondered. I thought about deleting her text messages to me, but then decided not to. It was what it was. She’d gotten a little drunk and gone a little crazy. I knew how that felt. I was the last one to judge.

  “See you at the trial, Tara,” I said as I closed the door behind me.

  The same stern desk clerk frowned at me downstairs as I stepped back into the lobby. I suddenly remembered who she reminded me of-my fierce seventh grade teacher, Sister Dominick.

  “Do you have the time, ma’am?” I said, winking as I passed her.

  “Actually, no,” the reincarnated Sister D. said, as if she were aching to put a ruler to my knuckles one last time. “Fresh out.”

  The cop cruiser on the corner hit me with his brights as I got out of the taxi in front of my building back on West End Avenue. Great. It was bad enough that my doorman knew all my dirty rotten nocturnal activities; now my coworkers did as well. There goes the department’s Father of the Year award.

  When I got upstairs, the house was dark, everyone snug as a bug in a rug. Even Mary Catherine wasn’t waiting up for me, which was probably a good thing, considering I smelled like Tara’s perfume.

  Though when I finally completed the last steps into my bedroom, I did see something. On my bed were lumps. Highly suspicious lumps.

  “We miss you, Daddy,” one of the lumps mumbled as I took off my shoes.

  “Miss you so much,” the other cute lump said as I searched for a hanger, gave up, and just tossed my jacket in the corner.

  “It’s okay. I’m here now, girls. You can go to your own beds,” I said to Chrissy and Shawna as I lay down. I felt a whole bunch of smaller lumps flatten underneath me. Oh, criminy, I thought, pulling an itchy fur ball out from under the back of my neck. It looked like the girls had invited their entire Beanie Baby collection to the Daddy’s-room sleepover.

  “Nugglance?” Chrissy said, pulling on the sheet beside me.

  I shook my head. Nugglance in Chrissyese, if I remembered correctly, was a cross between nestling and snuggling.

  “Yes, Daddy. We need nugglance,” Shawna said, pulling on the sheet from the other side.

  “Fine, fine. Have your nugglance,” I said scooting over as I let the
m burrow in behind me. Giggles started as one of them started to pet the back of my head. With her foot.

  I closed my eyes, too tired to protest. More women. I was completely surrounded. Resistance was futile. There was no escape.

  CHAPTER 33

  THE HISTORY BOOKS say that when the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, entered one of the seven hundred glittering rooms at his Palace at Versailles, his courtiers would fall to their knees and shade their eyes from his royal face as if from the sun itself.

  Times change, I guess, because when U.S. marshals led Manuel “the Sun King” Perrine into the federal courtroom in his prison jumpsuit that Monday morning, falling to my knees completely slipped my mind. And instead of looking away, I stared nothing but daggers at the murdering son of a bitch.

  I wasn’t the only one in a lather at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse that morning. One of the dozen off-duty cops and federal agents who had come out in support of Hughie and the other murdered officers stood and began loudly letting Perrine know exactly what he thought of him. The newly appointed federal judge, Susan Baym, banged her gavel, but instead of shying away from the four-letter barrage, the cartel head turned toward the heckler, his double-cuffed hands to his ear, as though he were a TV wrestler playing to the crowd.

  Perrine looked thinner now than when I arrested him. A goatee enhanced the angles of his face. Even in his jumpsuit, he carried himself well-head up, broad shoulders back, an almost military bearing. Probably the only thing off about his elegant visage was the sharp bend in his nose, which I’d put there when I’d broken it for him.

  Oh, well, I thought, smiling when I saw it. Even into charmed lives a little rain must fall.

  Already some in the press were gushing about the man’s money and European taste and manners. Vanity Fair had done a three-page spread that featured photos of Perrine in several different designer suits.

  Despite his obvious elegance, I didn’t for a split second forget who we were dealing with here. I’d seen some of the videotaped beheadings and castrations he had ordered, and heard witnesses testify about several of the horrific murders he had personally participated in. In one instance, he had captured a rival drug dealer at a Chihuahua nightclub and killed all the members of his family one by one in front of the detained crowd. I don’t know which suit he’d been wearing as he poured a bottle of grain alcohol over the man’s wife and lit her up, but I’m sure it was haute couture.

  Perrine was living proof that evil existed in the world. Excuse me for not giving a shit about his penchant for stylish cufflinks.

  Perrine continued his strut to the defendant’s table, where his team of lawyers was waiting for him. The head of his defense team was an affable, bony, middle-aged Washington lawyer named Arthur Boehme. Tara had told me that Boehme had just completed successfully defending a hedge fund manager in an insider trading case for a fee that ran into the tens of millions. I’d read a New York magazine article in which Boehme had said that the law was so important to him that he’d represent the devil himself.

  I shook my head as Perrine sat down beside him.

  The lawyer very well may have gotten his wish.

  Perrine leaned back and leisurely took in the courtroom, as though he were a VIP on a private architectural tour. He peered at the dark mahogany in the paneling, the milling in the high, coffered ceiling, the great seal of the United States District Court, set in heavy bronze above the judge’s bench. As he nodded with satisfaction at the august setting, another one of his lawyers, a tall, elegant ash-blond woman, sat down beside him. Perrine leaned in and spoke into her ear, a smile on his lips, his long finger wagging the air to emphasize some point he was making.

  After fifteen minutes, the courtroom doors opened and a large group of potential jurors came in for the voir dire. Each candidate stated his or her name and occupation, and the lawyers from both sides took turns asking questions. They asked the candidates if they had any family members who were currently incarcerated, if they knew anyone in law enforcement. At one point, Arthur Boehme asked a hairdresser if she’d ever heard about the “alleged” Mexican drug cartels.

  “Alleged” cartels, I thought, wanting to vomit. If only the thirty-five thousand people the cartels had killed in the decade-long Mexican drug war could be “allegedly” dead.

  As the process ground on, I noticed something that I’d never seen before. After each potential juror gave his or her name, the lawyers on both sides started typing into laptops. Sometimes they’d read something, then tug at the questioning lawyer’s sleeve, and that person would be dismissed. After a while, I realized the lawyers were probably scouring social networking sites to find out about the candidates and their opinions. As a cop, I’d often do it to get a read on suspects and witnesses. Note to self: stay off Facebook.

  After an hour or so, only three potential jurors had been selected-a female editor at a university press who lived in Flushing, Queens, a fortyish female occupational therapist from Staten Island, and a heavyset, smiley Hispanic guy who ran the food concessions at the Bronx Zoo.

  I checked the time on my phone. I’d love to spend all day watching the total ridiculousness of these expensive lawyers, but it was my day off and I had places to go and multiple children to attend to.

  As I stood, I exchanged eye contact with Tara where she sat with the other lawyers on the prosecution side. We’d already had a good laugh about her Saturday night antics. Apparently, she’d forgotten to read the “do not drink alcohol” fine print on some prescription meds she’d just taken and couldn’t apologize enough. I told her not to worry about it-with my ten kids, I was an expert at tucking people in.

  Tara gave me a quick wave and a smile, and as I turned to leave, I caught Perrine out of the corner of my eye. He was turned around in his seat, facing me. We looked at each other for a beat. I thought one of my molars might crack as I smiled hard at this monster who was in the process of being brought to the justice he so richly deserved.

  I yawned elaborately and waved bye-bye before I slowly headed for the courtroom door.

  CHAPTER 34

  THE COURT OFFICER break room was in the Marshall Courthouse’s hot, musty basement, just off the north stairwell. At four minutes past 10:00 a.m., there were three officers there on break-a white, mustached twenty-two-year veteran officer named Tom Porte and two recent hires, Ronald Pinzano, a short and stout Asian ex-marine, and Stacy Mays, a young black man who’d become a father for the first time three days before.

  The armed and uniformed men were used to frequent breaks and delays in the cases they were assigned to and were seated at a table playing a game of hearts when the door opened behind them. As they glanced up from their cards, they noticed a Hispanic janitor smiling at them from the doorway. If there was anything distinguishing about him, it was that he was short and very stocky. Clutched in his wide fist was a coffee mug with the words I SEE DUMB PEOPLE emblazoned across it.

  “Help you?” Officer Mays said, eyeing him.

  “May… I… use?” the janitor said in halting English as he gestured the mug toward the microwave in the break room’s corner.

  “Mi casa es su casa,” Tom Porte said as he picked up a card.

  The janitor nodded and grinned as he quickly crossed the room and put the coffee mug into the bulky old microwave. There were loud beeps as he pressed buttons, followed by a loud hum.

  “Hey, buddy. How’s ol’ Pedro in maintenance doing?” Officer Pinzano said from the table. “Is he back from his knee surgery?”

  The janitor turned, smiling blankly, and stared at the officer.

  “Thank you,” he said, nodding. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  “Thank you?” the pudgy Asian said, shaking his shaved head in disgust as he threw down a card. “These friggin’ illegals. This cat doesn’t speak word one of English, and here he is living high on the hog with a government union job. Hell, he probably makes more than us.”

  “Speak for yourself, Ron,” Tom Porte said, raising a whi
te eyebrow. “The way you sponge up the overtime, some of the judges around here make less than you.”

  The janitor kept smiling as the microwave continued to hum. Two minutes passed. Three.

  “Jeez, this guy is really frying that joe,” Mays commented as the bell finally dinged.

  “You like that coffee muy caliente, huh, buddy?” Tom Porte said with a wink.

  The janitor had his back to the men as he very carefully removed the cup from the oven. Next to the microwave, a radio played at low volume. The zany percussion of a xylophone, the familiar station ID of a local news channel, filled the small room as the janitor reached out with his free hand and turned it up.

  “Sí. Muy, muy caliente,” the janitor said, turning deftly with the cup and flinging the boiling baby oil he’d just superheated into the officers’ faces.

  The scalding oil made a crisp, sizzling sound as it made contact with the men’s skin. As Tom Porte screamed, the janitor stepped forward and nimbly removed the.38-caliber revolver from his holster and aimed the gun. Three shots and less than ten seconds later, all three men were down on the concrete floor, flailing in a mess of blood splatter and baby oil and fallen cards.

  Officer Stacy Mays shook horribly as he bled out, his ruined head beating against the cement almost in time to the xylophone music. The janitor watched with a bored expression. He counted backward from twenty as he waited for the twitching to slow and then stop.

  He turned down the radio and peeked out the door. Nothing. Not even a footstep. He needed to be quick now. He tucked the gun into his waistband and knelt down to remove the weapons from the bodies of the other two men. He would have much preferred something from his own vast collection, of course, but there was no way to get them through the metal detectors.

  Getting the guns was the first part of the plan. The second part was to go to courtroom 203 upstairs and put them to use.

  The killer’s name was Rodrigo Kahlo, and he had been flown to New York on a private jet from Grand Bahama Island the day before. In comfortable semiretirement from cartel work, he had at first declined the highly dangerous American contract offered to him by Perrine’s men. Then they had kidnapped his family.