Текст книги "I, Michael Bennett"

Автор книги: James Patterson

Соавторы: James Patterson
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

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 them 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 white 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.

As an assassin in good standing for the Perrine cartel, he never thought that the tables would turn like this. But there you had it. The squeeze was on now with the boss in jail, and the shit had rolled downhill, right onto him.

It wasn’t for the lives of his wife or even his children that he had agreed to do this. Living with them 24-7 over the last few comfortable years, he’d learned they were vain, selfish, stupid people, takers and connivers, especially the children. No, it was for his mother, who lived with them, that he’d finally said okay. His mother had lived her hard life like a saint, and he could not let her die as he’d seen so many die—in horror and pain and fear.

He let out a breath and checked the loads in the men’s guns. His mind was already thinking ahead to the floor plans he had memorized. Where the stairs were, the elevator, the layout of the hallway.

Finally, he looked down at the men he had just slain and knelt down and said the prayer that he always said before facing danger.

“Most Holy Death,” he said in Spanish. “Help me to overcome all obstacles, and may my house be filled with all the virtues of your protection.”

He stood and opened the door. Like all good assassins, he feared just one thing now.

Not death, but failure.

CHAPTER 35

HALF AN HOUR after I left the voir dire session, I was on a bench in City Hall Park, three blocks south of the courthouse, becoming one with nature. Actually, I was feeding the last of my early lunch of an Au Bon Pain croissant to a depressed-looking squirrel, which, for lower Manhattan, is about as Walden Pond as it gets.

I definitely needed the time-out. Like most cops, I pride myself on being bulletproof, body and soul, but I couldn’t deny how troubling it was to see Perrine again. I couldn’t stop thinking about Hughie, about those last terrible moments in the cramped medical office where he’d given up his life for me. I wondered if I ever would.

So I took an early lunch break with a side of squirrel therapy. Not exactly textbook, I know, but don’t knock it till you try it. It works for bag ladies, right? What I truly couldn’t wait to do was embark on my long-awaited vacation to the old Bennett lake house up in Orange County. I love New York City from the Battery to the Bronx, but it grinds on you. You need to get it off of you from time to time or you’ll go nuts.

I was finishing my coffee when the first squad car screamed past. I didn’t think much of it, but then two more zipped by less than a minute later, sirens wailing. Knowing something was up, I stood and canned the remnants of my lunch and went to the park railing alongside Centre Street, where the squad cars had headed.

I let out a breath and bit my lip. In the distance, I could see that all three cop cars were halted, their roof lights bubbling, in front of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, where I’d been all morning. Their doors were flung open, and things most definitely did not look good.

I started walking north, back toward the courthouse. I took out my cell phone and speed-dialed my squad room to see if they had heard anything over the radio. After four rings, I gave up and called Tara. My stomach lurched as I got kicked into her voice mail. I stared at the flashing blue and red lights ahead of me.

Whatever was happening, it was bad. I picked up my pace. I could feel it, practically taste it, in the cloying, warm air.

More cop cars were screeching up to the front of the majestic courthouse steps as I dropped all pretense and sprinted across Foley Square. I grabbed a female cop who was hollering into her radio by the curb.

“What’s up?” I said as I showed her my shield. “Is it Perrine? The drug trial?”

“I don’t know. Our call was a ten ten in a courtroom on the second floor.”

Good God! Ten ten was the code for “shots fired,” and Perrine’s trial was on the second floor, I thought as I went up the massive stone stairs two by two.

I badged my way through the chaotic crowd in the lobby. People were pouring out of the elevators and stairwells, some talking on cell phones, some crying. It looked like they were in the midst of an evac. My drawn gun set off a buzzer as I hustled through the metal detector against the stream of people exiting the building.

As I was going up the steps, I was almost knocked down by U.S. marshals as they came running down.

With Perrine!

“What is it? What’s happening?” I yelled at them, but they just blew past me into a stairwell. That’s when I heard several shots above me, followed by screaming.

I topped the stairwell, flew down the hallway, and came through the wooden double doors of the courtroom, preceded by my Glock. Off to the right, by the jury box, cops were yelling and swinging, and piling on top of a man. I saw it was a Hispanic man dressed in Dickies work clothes.

I was almost run down as the potential jurors and journalists and spectators who had ducked down between the benches bolted in a stampede for the door. I looked toward the front of the courtroom and saw the holes in the paneling beside the district court seal, huge chunks blown out of the mahogany. Beneath it, the court stenographer was giving CPR to someone.

I spotted robes and realized it was the judge, Susan Baym.

I jumped to the side as a team of EMTs rushed past me toward the fallen woman. I ran up to the front of the room, frantically looking around for Tara. She jumped up and hugged me when I found her, wide-eyed, hiding behind the overturned prosecutor’s table with the rest of the lawyers on her team.

“Tara, it’s okay. It’s over. They got the guy. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Tara said, staring over to where the EMTs were slipping the judge onto a stretcher. “We were doing the voir dire, and then all of a sudden this janitor was here, firing. He shot the court officer, and then went straight for the judge. He shot her three or four times, Mike. Right in the side of her head. In front of everybody. When more court officers showed up, he barricaded himself behind the judge’s bench. Every time someone would run for the door, he’d pop up and start shooting again. We didn’t know what the hell to do.”

Tara followed the stretcher with her eyes as the EMTs left.

“Perrine assassinated the judge who was going to preside at his own trial, Mike,” Tara said, and started crying. “Don’t you understand? They do this kind of thing in Mexico, and now it’s here, too. Are we safe, Mike? Is my family safe? What the hell is this?”

I stood there, patting her hand like an idiot as my mind reeled.

“It’s okay. It’s over. They got the guy,” I repeated.