I, Michael Bennett

  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.

  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 f
air. 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 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 ex
actly 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.