Текст книги "I, Michael Bennett"

Автор книги: James Patterson

Соавторы: James Patterson
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

CHAPTER 85

PERRINE AND HIS scrum of jailers were turning the corner of the outer corridor to my right, toward the elevators, when I pushed out the doors into the hallway. Not knowing exactly what I was doing, going solely on gut instinct, I hurried after them.

I was next to an ancient pay-phone recess ten feet from the hall corner when I heard it. It was a sudden, heavy wumpff sound, followed immediately by the trailing crinkle of breaking glass. It sounded as if, nearby, a giant baseball had just punched a home run into a giant windshield. I felt the floor shake a little under my wingtips as well.

What the hell now?

I barreled around the corner. Perrine and the police were in front of the elevators. The cops must have heard the weird sound, too, because they were all looking around, some with their guns out. Most of them were staring at a doorway opposite the elevators.

“We have a situation here,” one said into his radio. “Some sort of situation.”

There was the impatient click of the elevator call button being pressed over and over, and then the doorway opposite the elevator bank exploded outward with a concussive roar.

I fell to my knees and drew my gun, my ears ringing. When I looked up, thick yellow smoke was already billowing from the blown-open doorway and filling the hallway. When a waft of it passed over my face, I knew it was tear gas.

Eyes burning, snot pouring from my nose as from a faucet, I plastered myself into a recessed doorway on my right and covered my face with my tie. A moment later, a crisp gunshot went off so close it sounded like a pencil being snapped in my ear. Crouching, I found a doorknob and opened the door beside me, ducking into an empty courtroom.

Then I saw what was in the courtroom’s large south-facing window, and I wondered if I was hallucinating.

On the outside of the building, pressed against the window of the room just to the east of me, was a large yellow metal cage. It was a heavy machinery basket being suspended by the tower crane of the construction site nearby. In it, plain as day, maybe ten feet away from me, stood two men in tan construction coveralls, wearing gas masks and holding automatic weapons.

It looked like a SWAT team. But not our SWAT team.

They were trying to break out Perrine, I realized. Literally trying to break him out of the building from the fourteenth floor!

Without thinking about it, without saying “Freeze,” I lifted my gun and started shooting at the two men through the window. My Glock’s 9mm rounds sprayed holes through the heavy window glass, but the bullets were either deflected by the glass or the metal grate of the basket, because neither of the two armed-to-the-teeth men went down.

All I did was get their attention. A moment later, I backpedaled as they raised their weapons over the metal rim of the basket. I dove back into the hallway as the window and half of the empty courtroom’s wooden pews were ripped to shreds by automatic gunfire.

I peeked through the doorway a moment later when I heard a high-rpm hum. Through the shattered window, I saw the yellow basket on the move. The tower crane arm above it swung as it pivoted the metal rig away from the courthouse. I also saw, sitting in the basket between the armed men, a light-skinned black man in a prison jumpsuit.

The audacity of it was stunning, literally amazing. This couldn’t be happening, and yet it was.

They were really doing it, I thought, staring up at the basket as it started to ascend. As hard as it was to believe, it was happening before my very eyes.

Manuel Perrine was actually getting away.

CHAPTER 86

THE TEAR-GAS SMOKE was clearing as I ran down the hallway among the fallen cops. Half of them were shot up pretty bad.

“Gun!” I yelled to a burly black federal cop who was holding his hand over a bleeding thigh. I caught his SIG Sauer as I turned the corner, hit the stairwell door, and went up.

There were another ten floors to the roof, but I didn’t feel them. With my adrenaline pumping the way it was, I could probably have ascended the stairs on my hands. The next thing I remember, I was out on the roof and running across to the south side of the building.

I arrived at the edge just in time to see the crane dropping the yellow cage onto the roof of the building across from the courthouse. A moment later, as I was trying to get a bead on the men with my handgun, I heard the close sound of a helicopter. Turning, I thought it would be the overhead NYPD chopper, but incredibly, it was an NBC News chopper!

“Get lost, you idiots!” I screamed at it. “Get your damn scoop somewhere else!”

But I was wrong again.

The chopper swooped down and descended right onto the roof! It was part of the escape plan!

I started firing as Perrine and his gunmen clambered aboard the chopper. I emptied the SIG Sauer at the pilot’s-side door. I must have missed, because a moment later, the nose of the chopper lifted, and it swung in a lazy circle westward, over the courthouse, and disappeared behind the FBI headquarters on Federal Plaza.

I couldn’t believe it. Perrine had done the impossible.

The Sun King had gotten away!

CHAPTER 87

IF THERE WAS any consolation in the wake of the whole fiasco, it was that no one had been killed. In addition to the federal cop, three other corrections officers had been shot, but they were all in stable condition and would survive.

I was livid. I’m talking bed-bath-and-beyond pissed. Obviously, the drug boss was able to buy off people everywhere outside and inside the justice system, probably even inside the damn courthouse itself.

Back downstairs in the street, I went immediately over to the construction site near the courthouse. The leader of the NYPD Hercules team was already there talking to the workers and the site’s general contractor, a man named Rocco Sampiri.

“He claims the tower crane operator was on a break,” the ESU cop said. “No one on the site saw who got into the basket.”

I stared at Sampiri. He looked pretty well groomed for a construction worker—silk-screened T-shirt showing off his tan, muscular arms, spotless designer jeans and boots. With his gold Rolex and tidy manicure, it seemed like the only work this musclehead really did was at the gym, lifting dumbbells while gazing lovingly at himself in the mirror.

“Really?” I said to Sampiri. “A guy climbs up three hundred feet into that cab and swings up a bandito SWAT team into the courthouse and no one saw? What kind of break was this? A nap?”

“That’s funny, Officer, but really, we didn’t see nothing,” Sampiri said, his steroid-deepened voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a barrel.

“Come on, guys,” I said, turning toward the laborers standing around. I pointed at the sky. “You know who that guy was who just got away? He’s a mass murderer who’s declared war on this country, no different from a terrorist. Please, anyone. I need some help here. Didn’t anyone see anything?”

In my peripheral vision, I watched Sampiri glare at his workers. They all seemed to put their heads down at the same time.

“See? Like I said. No one on my crew saw shit,” Sampiri said with a shrug. “We don’t know what the hell happened. Maybe you should be looking for this guy instead of busting our crank. He sounds really dangerous.”

I stared at the general contractor. I didn’t need to type “Rocco Sampiri” into an FBI database to come to the conclusion that he might’ve been involved in organized crime. Or to make the jump that the Mafia would be more than willing to help out Perrine for the right price. This musclehead had probably given the person who had swung the cage over to the courthouse a cup of espresso before he busted out Perrine. And he was actually smirking a little. Even with all this heat, Rocco couldn’t help but enjoy telling bald-faced lies to us idiot cops.

That’s when I guess you could say I lost it. It was the smirk that did it. There aren’t too many things I truly hate, but the Mafia is one of them. People acted like the Mob was cool—The Sopranos, The Godfather. They only kill their own, everyone said. But that’s the problem. The secrecy of it, the conspiracy of it. As they were at this work site, normally decent people are induced through intimidation to “not see nothin’,” allowing evil animals like Perrine and Rocco here to just go to town.

“Okay, Rocco. You win. I guess I’m done here, then. Thanks for your help,” I said, turning.

“Actually, there is one more thing, Rocco,” I said, taking the collapsible baton off my belt and flicking it out by my leg as I turned around.

The next thing I knew, the metal baton and Rocco’s crotch had collided violently. I must have tapped something important, because he immediately went down on one knee like he was about to propose, tears springing onto his suddenly beet-red cheeks. I quickly slipped the baton into my pocket and put a hand to his gym-chiseled shoulder.

“Jeez, Rocco. You all right? You don’t look so good. Can I get you something? A glass of water?” I said.

“You son of a bitch,” he finally got out in a gasping voice, which was much higher than it was before. “You prick. Why did you do that?”

“I’m not sure, Rocco. Everything happened so fast, I didn’t see anything,” I said into his ear. “Weird, isn’t it? That I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-happened shit really seems to be catching around here.”

CHAPTER 88

OVER THE NEXT couple of frantic hours, I tried to position myself front and center on the Perrine escape investigation, but my, oh, my, how the attempt failed.

Almost immediately, a young FBI special agent in charge by the name of Bill Bedford had taken charge of the scene. I’d heard about Bedford. Tara had told me that Bedford was an up-and-comer in the Bureau, a former running back at Duke University who never hesitated to plant a cleat or two between the shoulder blades of his blockers on the way to his touchdown dance.

After I introduced myself, Bedford took me into an empty courtroom on the Foley Square courthouse’s ground floor for a few questions. It was more like a grilling than an interview. The fair-haired agent’s demeanor was reserved, but a few times, I caught something in his eyes. Something angry, the shining surface on a well of hostility.

After I was quite professionally interviewed about everything that had happened, I was told he’d be in touch.

“But wait, Bill,” I said as he started thumbing his BlackBerry at the speed of light. “I can help you on this. I know Perrine. I’ve been on this from day one.”

“I’ll call you,” Bedford said without looking up.

Yeah, right. I’d heard that before. I was being completely boxed out, I knew. It was obvious the feds didn’t want me anywhere near the investigation. Even when I tried to get some assistance from the higher-ups in the police department to bring me on board, I was told in no uncertain terms that the brass didn’t want me on the case, either.

For once, I could hardly blame anyone. Because I’d had Perrine. Had him and then lost him in the worst, most publicly embarrassing way imaginable. My boss, Miriam Schwartz, even let me in on a few nasty rumors she heard—a few whispers that maybe I was actually in on the escape, since I had spoken to Perrine in court and interviewed him alone in prison.

In my defense, I thought about bringing up Perrine’s quarter-billion-dollar bribe, which I’d rejected, but then I came to my senses and kept my lip thoroughly buttoned. It was obvious the brass was already sizing me up for a scapegoat suit. Why pour more fuel on my own bonfire?

There was no way around it. I was toxic now, a bad-luck charm. Standing around in Foley Square with no one to talk to, I felt like a little kid at the moment he realizes he hasn’t been picked for either side in a game of sandlot baseball.

And the tacit message coming in from my law enforcement colleagues was just as clear.

You suck, kid.

Go home.

CHAPTER 89

SO THAT’S EXACTLY what I did. I hightailed it out of Manhattan on the Beacon-bound 6:12, went back up to Orange Lake, and stayed away for the next two weeks.

I thought I’d be stressed out with Perrine in the wind and all the bad stuff hovering over me, but I surprised myself by having a really fun time hanging out with the kids. These were the last weeks of summer vacay, and we didn’t waste a second of them. We did something fun every day—go-kart racing, miniature golf. To the girls’ delight, one morning we got up at dawn and drove to a farm over in rural Sullivan County and rode horses.

The best time of all was driving up to Massachusetts for a day to check out a massive state fair called the Big E, at which all the New England states were represented. My city kids’ heads were spinning at all the Ferris wheels and tractors and petting zoos. After we gorged ourselves on massive stuffed baked potatoes on the midway, we even attended a blue-ribbon cattle show just for the hell of it. I stood at a rail, shaking my head, as bright-faced young country boys wearing bow ties came into the tent, walking cattle on a leash as though they were in a dog show.

“Now there’s something you don’t see on West End Avenue,” Seamus said, standing beside me. “Why are we here again?”

“Well, Gramps,” I said. “My career as a city cop seems to be coming to a close. I might have to look for another line of work, so why not farming?”

It goes without saying that being so close to my guys wasn’t just about fun and games. I knew my friend the Sun King wasn’t done with me. Even though he was free now, I’d seriously inconvenienced his arrogant ass. Not only had I caught His Highness, I’d actually broken his nose for him and laughed in his face. I knew there probably weren’t too many people in this world who had screwed with him as much as I had.

Not living people, anyway.

So throughout all the summer fun, I had my guns attached to me at all times. I’d even illegally sawed off the barrels of the lake house shotgun so I could keep it handy under the seat of the bus. I kept it there with the mirror I used every morning to see if there was a bomb attached to the underside of the bus’s chassis. Paranoid, I know, but sometimes it’s the little things in life that count most. This kind of crap never happened to the Partridge family, I bet.

After the cattle show, we went into one of the Big E tents and listened to some country music. I was getting into it, too, had almost forgotten all my troubles, when the cowboy-hatted singer started a sad tune about losing his girl.

Talk about bringing things down. I didn’t need this. My life had become a country music song. If I hadn’t been the designated bus driver, I would have ordered a beer to cry into.

Because just like Perrine, Mary Catherine was still MIA. No calls. No contact. I wasn’t the only one missing her, either. Despite all the fun vacation activities, I could see the kids were quite confused and upset.

So even with the sad-sack serenade wailing from the stage, I didn’t leave the music tent. Even after the kids went off with Seamus to go to the hay maze, I sat there and listened to every word as the cowboy sang about broken hearts and empty beds and watching the red taillights on his girl’s car driving away.

CHAPTER 90

THAT NIGHT AFTER the fair, we arrived back home after midnight. I checked the house as I always did, namely, from stem to stern with my 9mm cocked. After placing all my sunburned, carb-stuffed guys into the loving arms of Morpheus, and after enjoying a nightcap with Seamus, I played messages on the house phone.

My boss, Miriam, had called and said that the Times wanted to speak to me, as did someone from ABC News. Even though I’d been pretty much unplugged, I knew Perrine’s escape was front-page news not just across the country but throughout the world. Some British politician said it was just another example of the decline of U.S. dominance in world affairs.

Gee, thanks, old boy. I always knew I’d make history one day. What was worse was that some of our own talking heads were agreeing with him.

Another message popped up.

“Mike, hi. Bill Bedford here. I need to reinterview you concerning a few things on the Perrine escape. Specifically about an incident at the federal lockup. Some sort of scuffle between you two? I can be reached at … ”

I promptly hit the erase button. Screw this guy. He wanted to talk to me as though I were a suspect in the Perrine escape. I wasn’t about to make it easy for him. The handsome Duke-educated prick could drive up here to the sticks in his shiny G car.

A moment later, I was actually about to unplug the phone when it rang. I stared at it for a bit and, against my better judgment, finally answered it.

“Hello?” I said.

“Mike?” said a woman’s voice.

For a split second, I thought it was Mary Catherine. My heart kicked against my chest. She was okay. She was coming back.

But it was just wishful thinking.

“Mike? Hello? It’s me, Tara. Are you there?”

“Hi, Tara,” I said wearily. “How’s it going?”

“Mike, listen. I’m sorry about the silent treatment at the trial. I’ve been a complete jackass, and I apologize. I’ve made a resolution to stop being nuts, okay? Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

“Okay,” I said, startled.

“Still friends?” she said.

“Always, Tara. Always.”

“Good,” she said. “Now, did you hear the news?”

“No, what? They bagged Perrine?” I yelled, sitting up.

“No, no. I wish,” Tara said. “I’m talking about the progress in your neck of the woods. This afternoon, the U.S. attorney just signed two RICO-statute federal indictments aimed at taking down the Bloods and Latin Kings in Newburgh. We’ve already reviewed the open gang cases and are red-balling more than eighty arrest warrants. We’re amassing a huge multi-agency strike force. A couple of days from now, we’re going to take down both gangs at once. You interested in helping us out?”

“I’d love to, Tara, but I guess you didn’t get the memo. I’m persona non grata with you Federales these days.”

“Bullshit, Mike. I already spoke to my boss and told him how you lit the fuse on this thing. He’s agreed. It’s only fair that you be front row center when the fireworks go off. What do you say, Mike?”

This was good news. Not for me. For Newburgh.

“I do love fireworks,” I said.

CHAPTER 91

TWO MORNINGS LATER, around 4:00 a.m., Newburgh detectives Moss, Boyanoski, and I rolled up on an imposing old castle-like brick building on South William Street.

As we parked and crossed the darkened lot of the old National Guard armory, I thought I was hearing things. Even before we got to the steps, you could hear voices coming from inside the thick stone walls. It was an amazingly loud rumble of voices, as if maybe a midnight session of the New York Stock Exchange were under way.

When Ed opened the front door, I just stood there for a moment, as if nailed to the floor of the brightly lit, cavernous space. In the indoor drill shed of the old building, where the state National Guard had once trained their horses, stood the largest gathering of law enforcement personnel I’d ever seen. There had to be nearly five hundred federal, state, and local cops. Wearing raid jackets and faded, drab SWAT fatigues, they stood in clumps before whiteboards or in semicircles around warrant folders laid open on the hoods of black SUVs.

I knew Tara had said that this was going to be a mass operation, but holy moly. There were folding tables everywhere, laptops, phones going off. It looked like some kind of strange college open house. But instead of young Republicans and glee club representatives, the tables were manned by people standing behind placards that said things like MUG SHOTS and FINGERPRINTING and EVIDENCE CONTROL.

“Newburgh hasn’t seen anything this big since Washington’s Continental Army was here,” Ed said in amazement.

“And wouldn’t you know it? The bad guys are still wearing red,” Bill Moss said.

We came across Tara behind one of the folding tables. In her official blue Windbreaker, with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was busily collating one of the nearly eighty arrest packages that were being put together.

“Bill, Ed, Mike,” she said with a nod. “Glad you could make it. You wanted some action from the feds, right? Well, how’m I doing so far?”

“Well, if this is all the guys you could get,” I said with a shrug, “then I guess we’ll just have to make do.”

Ed Boyanoski started laughing. It didn’t look like he was going to stop. No wonder he was so mirthful. He had worked so hard for so long to try to effect some change in his hometown, and it finally looked like it was going to happen. Both he and Bill were practically speechless, not to mention unbelievably pleased.

“I’ve been waiting on this for a long time, Ms. McLellan,” Bill Moss said, looking out on the army of law enforcement. “Longer than you know.”

“Let’s not count our chickens before they’re hatched, gentlemen. You still have a teeny-weeny bit of work to do,” Tara said, handing us each a folder. “You bag ’em, we tag ’em. You’ll find your fellow team members on the assignment sheet two tables down. Happy hunting.”