Outside, 52nd Street had become dark. Worn out though I was, I couldn’t believe the miserable day had flown by so fast. Time can also fly when you’re not having fun, apparently.
I couldn’t believe, either, that the 21 Club intended to stay open for business tonight. A line of well-heeled, beautiful people filled the sidewalk, impatiently waiting to get in. Maybe the murder was an extra attraction.
The manager waved at me anxiously from the doorway, awaiting my signal that he could remove the crime scene tape. His slain employee’s moment of silence had lasted a New York minute. So much for any dignity about being dead, I thought. A fat cop in a Tyvek suit hauled your carcass out of the way, and, with depressingly little trouble, the world moved on.
I watched the manager balling the yellow tape in his hands as he hurried back under the awning. Maybe they’d string it up above the bar with the other toys, was my merry parting thought—the NYPD’s contribution to lifestyles of the rich and famous.
I started walking, trying to remember where I’d parked my van.
Chapter 21
EVER SINCE Commissioner Daly’s phone call earlier today, the fact that he’d handpicked me for this assignment had been in the back of my mind. As I drove home, it surfaced for the thousandth time. I was as nervous as hell about this case—I admitted it. In all likelihood, we would catch this guy, especially if he kept on going.
But that was precisely the problem. How many more people might he kill before we did catch him?
It was a tough spot for me to be in. So far, I had very little to work with. But I couldn’t let the commissioner, or the city, down.
When I opened my apartment door, I was greeted by the strong waft of Lysol. With it came the memory of all the problems that awaited me in this world, too.
“Daddy, Daddy, look!” Fiona cried out. Her pigtails whipped around as she ran toward me, waving the dollar bill I’d left under her pillow. Her hug-tackle almost knocked me down. “The Tooth Fairy didn’t forget! She came after all!”
I’d read somewhere that eight-year-old girls couldn’t care less about toys or other childish things anymore—just makeup, clothes, and electronics. But I was blessed with one who still believed in magic. I returned her hug, with all my anxiousness shedding off me like old skin. At least I was doing something right.
As Fiona tugged me into the living room, I spotted a mop and plastic pail, and I started thinking about how Mary Catherine must have spent her day. Who was I to complain? As bad as mine had been, hers had to have been worse.
A moment later, she came hurrying in for the mop. I grabbed it at the same instant she did, and with my other hand I pointed to the stairs to the third floor, Mary Cather-ine’s apartment.
“Out you go, Mary,” I said. “Whatever needs doing here, I’m all over it. You go have fun with somebody who’s old enough to vote. That’s an order.”
“Mike, you just got in, you need to relax a bit,” she said. “I can stay for a few more minutes.”
She pulled at the mop, but I held on to it. In the tug of war that followed, the water-filled pail went over with a splash, flooding across the hardwood.
I don’t know which of us started giggling first, but after a second, we were both full-out belly laughing.
“The floor needed a mop anyway,” I finally said. “Now for the last time, I’m giving you a police order to remove yourself from these premises. I have handcuffs, and I’ll use them on you.”
Mary Catherine stopped laughing abruptly. She let go of the mop and turned away hastily, like she’d done when we’d brushed against each other in the kitchen. This time, there was no doubt that she was blushing.
“I didn’t mean . . . that,” I said warily. “I . . .”
“It’s been a long day, Mike. There’ll be another tomorrow, so let’s both get some rest.” With her face still averted, she started to leave, pausing to tap a sheaf of paper on the coffee table. “This’ll be useful to you. Good night.”
I was setting a personal-best record for the number of times I’d put my foot in my mouth with women in one day, I thought. I decided to blame it on exhaustion. Or maybe I was coming down with the flu, too.
I looked at the papers she’d left me—a detailed computer printout, a medical chart of my quarantined family. Who needed which medicine, how much of it, and when. I shook my head in disbelief. This woman could do the impossible.
I should have asked her where the psycho killer was.
Chapter 22
THE TEACHER SCRUBBED his wet hair with a towel as he came out of the bathroom in his apartment. He stopped when he heard a strange sound outside the bedroom window. He hooked a finger to the drawn shade and peeked out.
Down on West 38th, a buggy driver was walking a beaten-down-looking gray horse into the tenement-turned-stable next door. His other neighbors included a greasy taxi garage and a check-cashing place with a steel grille over the windows and a perpetual litter of broken glass on the sidewalk out front.
He chuckled to himself. The corner of 38th and Eleventh Avenue was exceedingly crappy and run-down, even for Hell’s Kitchen. Maybe he was crazy, but he loved it anyway. At least it was authentic.
Still amped to the gills from the day’s adrenaline rush, he lay down on the weight bench beside his bed. The bar held two hundred-and-eighty pounders. He lifted it easily off its brackets, lowered it to touch his chest, and raised it back up until his elbows locked at full extension. He did this ten times with an exquisite slowness that burned through his throbbing muscles and brought tears to his eyes.
Much better, he thought, sitting up. What a day. What a freaking day.
He wetted a rag, put it on his forehead, and lay back on the bench. He had downtime now—time for everybody to catch up, like putting on the ol’ boob tube while waiting for mom and pop to get home from work.
The workout had helped to burn off some of his wired energy, and the cool damp cloth was soothing. He let his eyes shut. A little nap before dinner would be sweet. He’d wake up fresh and ready for the next phase.
But just as he was drifting off, a burst of loud laughter and the heavy, thumping bass of rap music made him sit up again. Angrily, he strode across the room and twitched the window shade aside. In the brightly lit, curtainless window of a loft across the street, a little Asian guy was taking pictures of two tall, anorexic white girls in long gowns. The girls started dancing like jackasses to the brainless noise of 50 Cent, bragging that he was a P-I-M-P.
What the hell? Last time he’d noticed, that building was a warehouse where some legless fat guy named Manny stored hot dog carts. Now it was some kind of fashion studio bullshit? There went the goddamn neighborhood.
In Iraq One, he’d been in a marine recon unit that had been given an experimental bazooka-like weapon called a SMAW. The SMAW had been outfitted with a new explosive thermobaric round. Leaking a fine mist of gas in the air microseconds before ignition, a thermobaric was capable not only of vaporizing masonry structures, but of actually igniting the oxygen within its blast zone.
He’d have given anything he had for one of those right now. His trigger finger actually tingled as he remembered the feeling of touching off one of those megarounds. His imagination kicked in, substituting the building across the street for the ones he’d destroyed back then, throwing a fireball and shock wave that would have torn off the top several floors.
He had plenty of other weapons on hand, though—half a dozen pistols, a Mac-9, a sawed-off tactical shotgun, a Colt AR-15 with an M203 grenade launcher, a selection of silencers. Behind them, appropriate cardboard ammunition boxes were stacked and arrayed in orderly little rows. A half-dozen each of fragmentation, smoke, and flashbang grenades sat in a Crate and Barrel carton beneath his worktable like an oversized container of lethal eggs.
But no. Trying to kill every annoying fool would be like pissing into a live volcano. He had to stick to the Plan and kill the ones who counted.
He stalked into the room he’d outfitted
as an office, sat in a Pottery Barn retro office chair, and clicked on a green-shaded banker’s desk lamp. Every inch of the wall above the desk was covered. There were subway and street maps, photos of building lobbies and subway stations, and a framed poster of Tom Cruise from Top Gun in the center. More portraits of Marcus Aurelius, Henry David Thoreau, and Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver were taped over the credits. The desk itself was covered with worn marble notebooks, a laptop, and a police scanner connected to a tape recorder. Alongside it was a heavy worktable that looked like one of those bust pictures cops took after a raid.
His telephone and answering machine sat on top of it. Lately, he’d hardly been bothering to check his messages. But when he glanced at the machine, he blinked in astonishment. Thirty-six messages? That couldn’t be right.
Then he remembered where he was supposed to have been earlier that morning. Ah, yes, it made sense now. That appointment had seemed so infinitely important when he’d first made it. But since he’d had his Epiphany, he couldn’t have cared less about it.
That thought improved his mood. Smiling, he deleted the messages without listening to them and stepped back into his bedroom. He popped a relaxation CD into the player beside the weight bench and hit Play.
The sound of waves washing gently against the shore and the soft caw of seagulls drowned out the rap from across the street. He stretched out on the bench again, jerked up the crushing weight, and lowered it toward his chest.
Chapter 23
THE TEACHER AWOKE, completely starved, a little after ten p.m. He went into the kitchen, turned on the oven, and took a brown paper–wrapped package out of the fridge.
Twenty minutes later, baby lamb chops were sizzling in a port-rosemary demi-glace. He touched the hot meat with a fingertip to test it and smiled at the just-so give. Almost there, he thought. He drained the pommes frites and drizzled them with truffle oil.
After plating, he brought the steaming dish to the linen-covered table in the apartment’s small dining room. He opened the $450 bottle of ’95 Château Mouton-Rothschild with a pop, chucked the cork over his shoulder, and poured himself a healthy glass.
The lamb practically melted in his mouth as he slowly chewed the first bite, then chased it with a sip of the exquisite Cabernet. Tight tannins, floral nose, tastes of cassis and licorice in the finish. It probably could have used another six months to mellow to absolute perfection, but he couldn’t wait another six months.
He closed his eyes as he ate, savoring the truffle oil and Parmesan fries, the succulent meat, the kick-ass Cab. He’d eaten at pretty much every fine restaurant in New York and Paris, and this was as good a meal as he’d ever had. Or was it because of all the work he’d accomplished today? Did it matter? This was gastronomic nirvana. He’d truly nailed it.
He stretched the meal out as long as he could, but at last, regrettably, it was done. He drained the wine bottle into his balloon glass and took that into the darkened living room. There, he dropped onto the couch, found the remote, and flipped on the sixty-inch Sony plasma on the wall.
The crystal-clear image of a CNN anchor, Roz Abrams, appeared with her mouth going at full speed. There was a flu going around the city, she informed her audience. No shit. As if he cared.
He put up with a couple more minutes of inanities and commercials before she came back to the day’s main story.
There was also a killer on the loose.
Really, Rozzy baby? You don’t fucking say. How’s that for some real news?
He leaned forward as she spoke and listened intently to the coverage. There was still confusion about the two shootings. The police weren’t sure if they were related, either to each other or to a bizarre incident where a young woman had been pushed in front of a subway. They didn’t know if they were looking for a single suspect or more than one. They were fearful that terrorists might be to blame.
The Teacher sat back and relaxed, smiling. The police and the media were still scratching their heads—exactly how he wanted it.
There was no mention of the mission statement that he’d sent to the Times. He wondered if that was a cop trick—withholding information from the public for some reason—or if there was some other explanation. Maybe the newspapers simply hadn’t made the connection yet. No matter. They would, soon enough.
When the report about the killings was over, and Roz Abrams went back to more banal bullshit that would interest only the herds of human cattle out on the streets, the Teacher turned off the TV set and stood. Carrying the glass with the last of the Cabernet, he stepped into the apartment’s spare room and clicked on the wall switch, bathing the room in bright incandescent light.
There was a human shape on the guest bed, like someone sleeping. Except it was entirely covered by a sheet.
The Teacher gently lifted the sheet off the shape’s face.
“It’s starting, buddy,” he said.
A dead man stared back, his features masked by caked blood. A small bullet hole was visible in his right temple, and a much larger exit wound in his left.
“To getting their attention,” the Teacher said, winking and raising the glass of ruby wine over the body. “And to tomorrow, when we turn it up to eleven.”
Chapter 24
AT SIX THIRTY IN THE MORNING, the pews of Holy Name Church on the Upper West Side were silent and empty. With its still-dark stained-glass windows, it might have been the most solemn spot in all of Manhattan.
Which was precisely the problem, Father Seamus Bennett thought as he sat hidden underneath the altar.
This was not some new form of devotional activity. Far from it—he was on a stakeout. For the past two weeks, a thief had been stealing from the poor boxes at the front of the church, and Seamus was determined to catch the culprit red-handed.
He parted the altar cloth and peered out, frowning, through his binoculars. In another couple of hours, the church would be filled with glorious light, pouring through the multicolored windows. But right now, it was so dim he could barely see the front doors. He’d been watching for almost an hour, with no sign of activity.
But this individual was clever. He, or she, always left some money in the boxes, probably thinking that the pilferage wouldn’t be noticed. Seamus knew damned well that it was going on—the usual daily take had dropped by more than half. Still, that suggested that the thief was also stealthy, and probably could sneak in and out of the dim building without Seamus even knowing it. He didn’t want to turn on the church’s electric lights, which ordinarily weren’t used in the mornings. Any change in routine like that might red-flag the stakeout.
He lowered his—what was the cop lingo for binoculars again? oh, yeah—“-eyes” and poured himself some coffee from the thermos he’d brought. There had to be a better way to handle this. He was going to bring a fan next time. It was stifling inside the tiny, covered space. And a cushion, maybe even a beach chair. His legs and butt were past numb from sitting cross-legged on the cold marble floor. A partner would help, too—someone to take turns with him. Maybe one of the deacons.
This was all the fault of his uncooperative grandson, Seamus thought grumpily. Mike had refused to arrange for an NYPD crime scene analysis, and an FBI profile. In fact, he’d seemed quite amused at the thought, adding insult to injury. Was that so much to ask for the glory of God?
“You’d think having a cop in the family might come in handy,” Seamus mumbled through a sip of the steaming coffee.
The ring of his cell phone startled him, and he banged his head on the underside of the altar as he groped for it in his pocket.
The caller was none other than Mike. How do you like that? Seamus thought. Speak of the . . .
“I need you, Monsignor,” Mike said. “Here. Now. Please and thank you.”
“Oh, I see,” Seamus began. “When I needed a bit of help from you, it was ‘Sorry, Father.’ But now that you need me?—”
But Mike had already hung up.
Seamus closed his phone with a sharp snap. ?
??You think you can get away with it by being polite,” he griped. “But the old priest sees through to your insidious heart.” He crawled out from underneath the altar, rubbing his aching lower back.
Then a voice said, “Monsignor, is that you?”
Seamus swiveled toward the figure, standing by the votives in front of the sacristy. It was Burt, the church’s caretaker, staring at him in wonder.
“Don’t be silly, Burt,” Seamus growled. “Isn’t it obvious that I’m Father Bennett’s evil twin?”
Chapter 25
YOU KNOW YOU’RE IN for a rough day when, the instant you wake up, you’re already overwhelmed. I stumbled out of bed and rushed deliriously through my apartment to take the body count. Moans and groans came from every corner. No doubt about it—my family had gone from bad to worse. Thinking of the place as a hospital ward no longer applied. Now it was a MASH unit under mortar fire.
Pretty soon, I had some chicken soup on the stove and a Jell-O chilling in the fridge. Meantime, I ran from child to child with cold cloths in one hand, a digital ear thermometer in the other, and a five-year-old on my back—taking temperatures, hydrating the hot and sweaty victims, and trying to warm those with the shivers. Somewhere in the bunch, there might have been one or two of them who were well enough to go to school, but I was too busy to care. The healthy were on their own this morning.
Especially after only a few hours of restless half sleep, I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. So, reluctantly, I’d called Seamus. I hated to bother him so early, but twenty minutes of dealing with my family’s epidemic had stripped me of all my manners. Besides, didn’t every battlefield need a priest?
“Dad?” Jane said, lifting a notebook from her night table as I came into her room. “Let me bounce this off you. ‘The plague continued. It was looking hopeless. What had Michael, the head of the Bennett family, done to bring such misfortune upon his innocent children?’?”