Alert

by James Patterson

  “No,” said the old man bitterly. “Turned out the Manhattan DA knew the female victim and pulled strings to have Mikhail booked, put immediately into the system. Without learning the details about Mikhail’s condition. Without thinking about any of the consequences. Do you know the name of the man who was the DA at the time?”

  “Mayor Carl Doucette,” I said.

  He nodded, smiled.

  “The late mayor Carl Doucette,” he said.

  “So Mikhail is booked, and there’s no room in Central Booking to hold him, so they send him over to Rikers,” the son said. “My son cannot cope with this. He’s mentally sick, like I say, so he starts freaking. A corrections officer puts him in a room they have in the basement for people not cooperating. This room was over a hundred degrees. They said it was some boiler problem.

  “It sure was a problem for Mikhail. They left him there for two days—my son. They forgot about him. My poor Mikhail. New York City boiled my mentally ill son alive.”

  Chapter 106

  “Why did you EMP Yorkville?” I said.

  “Mayor Doucette had his mother at Sloan Kettering hospital,” said the old man, smiling again. “The precious old girl didn’t make it during the evac. Shame.”

  “And Twenty-Six Federal Plaza?”

  “The corrections officer who locked up Mikhail got a new job on the maintenance crew there,” said the old man. “I would have taken down an airliner if he was one of the passengers. To hell with him for slaughtering my grandson and to hell with this city and America. Oh, how you crowed when the Cold War was over; how much greater your country was than ours with your freedoms—or so you thought.

  “And now look at yourselves. You have the freedom to land planes at the wrong airports, the freedom to shunt downtown trains onto uptown tracks, the freedom to kill prisoners by accident. Why? I don’t know. All I know is that you’re a pack of fools, and a fool and his civilization are soon parted.

  “Because this isn’t over,” he said. “If it takes us twenty years, we’re going to make you bastards pay. I ran the Russian mob in Miami. I have millions of dollars and contacts and access to many interesting things. If you think Krasnyy Navodneniye is the only recipe in the old Soviet book of dirty tricks, think again. You should have thought twice before you fucked with my family!”

  “I hear you,” I said, trying to buy some time. “I’m a father myself, and I can’t imagine how horrible it’s been for you. How angry you must be. What happened to Mikhail was a disgusting travesty that deserves justice. But think about all the other Mikhails out there who are going to die over this. You’re right about this decadent Sodom-and-Gomorrah direction we’ve taken of late. But there are still some good people out there.”

  “What’s this? A Bible-thumping cop?” said the old man. “Spare the city for the sake of a few good people? Where are they? Who’s good? Wait. Let me guess. You?”

  “Sure. I’m not so bad,” I said with a shrug. “Spare it for me. Why not?”

  The old man dropped the flail and took out a Glock and pressed it to my forehead.

  “If I were God, I might be tempted,” he said as he cocked the hammer. “Too bad for you: I’m the other guy.”

  Chapter 107

  That’s when we heard the noise. A heavy crunching sound followed by glass shattering.

  It was coming from upstairs.

  The old man still had the gun to my head as the two Russians stared at each other. The old man looked down at me with hate in his eyes, pressing the barrel hard against my head, but then there was another creak of wood. It was a footstep in the room directly above, and the younger man put a finger to his lips and the cold metal lifted away.

  He cut a piece of duct tape and wrapped it around my mouth before the two of them went out the door. The massive shoot-out erupted thirty seconds later. Automatic gunfire in the next room starting and stopping and starting again. I hit the deck just before a round ripped a hole in the cheap wooden door.

  Twenty seconds after that, I heard it. The three words I’d been praying for.

  “He’s in here!” Emily said.

  “How’d you find me? My phone?” was the first thing I said.

  She nodded.

  “That find-your-friend app comes in damn handy!” she said, smiling, as she unlocked my cuffed ankle.

  “I’m glad we’re friends,” I said, finally standing. “There was an old guy and a younger one. Russians, like we thought. Did you get them?”

  “The Filipovs. We heard. We got the younger one. He got hit and they found him a block away. They’d bugged out of a cellar door we missed.”

  “What about the old bastard? He said he was KGB. Evil as a snake.”

  “Not yet. But we have the whole neighborhood surrounded. He’s on foot.”

  Emily handed me my Glock and I stumbled up the basement stairs behind her. Golly tamale, did it feel good in my hand at that moment. I could have kissed both it and her. They must have found it at the crash scene.

  We went outside through the front door. I was shocked to see that the building was a small brick house at the dead end of a leafy residential street. To the right of it was a huge school or something—several dark buildings with a large empty parking lot beyond the guardrail at the end of the street.

  “Where are we?” I said.

  “Brooklyn. Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. That’s Kingsborough Community College right there. We think he ran in there. Don’t worry, we’re on it. A dozen agents are on his tail. We’re going door-to-door.”

  I immediately hopped the guardrail and started running across the parking lot.

  “Mike, stop! What are you doing?” Emily yelled at my back. “You need a doctor.”

  I didn’t have time to explain. I was probably still half in shock or something after the accident and beating, but wherever he was I had to find the crazy old evil prick. There was nothing this guy wouldn’t do to get away—no depths he wouldn’t stoop to. He had no qualms about killing another innocent person. I had to find him if it was the last thing I did.

  I passed a guard shack and came down some steps and was running past a building when I noticed one of its doors was slightly open. I creaked it open some more, then I heard feet pounding on the stairs inside.

  I ran in and up and got to the second floor just as the person left the stairwell onto the third floor. I was coming through the third floor’s swinging door into a dark hallway five seconds later when I felt something on my face, and a wire was tightening around my neck.

  I was just able to get my hands in as the old bastard tightened the garrote. It was a steel wire, incredibly fine, like titanium dental floss. Blood squirted as it slid deep into the edges of my palms above my wrists.

  I bulled back into him. We went through the swinging door into the stairwell and tumbled backwards, banging down the stairs. The garrote slackened as I fell on him on the landing, and I ripped the wire away from my neck with a hiss of breath.

  I crawled to my feet, blood freely pouring from the cut meat of my palms. I turned as the old Russian was taking something out of his pocket. It was a straight razor.

  Before he could cut me again, I kicked him in the right ear. I center-massed my size-11 Nunn Bush wingtip oxford right in his ear. Hard. I booted him like I never kicked anything in my life. His head slammed back at the crushing impact and bashed off the radiator with a low gong as the straight razor went flying.

  As he was sitting there, stunned, I lifted him by his lapels with my bloody aching hands, yanked him up and off his feet, and with every nanoparticle of panicked strength I had in me, threw the evil old prick as hard as I could backwards down the next flight of stairs.

  He was facedown when I got to him, his nose bleeding. I lifted him up again. I thought of all the people he had come a hairbreadth from wiping out, people like my kids. How he’d tried to kill me a split second before.

  I was about to send him flying down the stairs again when Emily and two other agents came
running up.

  “Mike, we got him! You got him!” she said. “It’s over!”

  Chapter 108

  It was around midnight when Emily and I arrived back at the Broad Street FBI building, across from the stock exchange. We were in the underground lot, and about half a dozen New York–office FBI guys were taking the old KGB bastard who’d just tried to kill me none too gently out of one of the other cars.

  “Mike, you want to help book and interview this guy? You’re the one who found him,” Emily said.

  “Nah, you guys take it,” I said, holding up my bandaged hands. “I’ve spent enough time with him. Believe me. Besides, I told Fabretti that I’d disappear before the reporters showed. He’s all yours. Tell the FBI they can’t say I never gave them anything.”

  “You want me to drive you back to your apartment?”

  “I’ll catch a cab. You need to debrief that snake.”

  “You sure? You’ve been through hell today, Mike. It’s okay to have some help. Or at least some company.”

  I went over and gave her a hug.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said in her ear. “You’ve done enough already, friend.”

  I came up out of the ramp of the garage onto shadowed Broad Street. I made a drunk guy walking past in a suit laugh as I saluted the flag on the stock exchange and then the statue of George Washington on the steps of Federal Hall. Then I proceeded to walk past Wall Street to Chinatown and then Little Italy until I found the Bowery.

  It was a gorgeous night. It had rained a little as we were coming back from Brooklyn, but it was clear now. The neon signs in the bar windows and brake lights up the avenues were vivid as high-def against the night.

  I walked through Nolita and smiled as I arrived at Astor Place, where I used to get New Wave haircuts with my buddies. Afterward we’d go to the pizza place on the corner, which had the greatest slices known to man. I remembered being a teenager, standing out on the plaza where the cube sculpture was, smoking cigarettes with my goofball friends, staring down the punk rockers as we tried to get girls’ phone numbers. The few numbers we’d scrape together we’d scrawl on scraps of paper and napkins and keep under our mattresses like precious medals.

  All those years ago, I thought, smiling. It really was a wonder, like Emily had said. This city. How many ghosts? I wondered. How many memories and dreams and aspirations packed in and out of how many walls? Who knew what would happen tomorrow? But I was glad I’d been part of keeping this old wonder rolling for at least another day.

  I went left on 14th Street to Union Square and walked through some skateboarders rolling around the empty farmers’ market and past the closed doors of the Barnes & Noble. I found Broadway and pushed north.

  It was coming on 2:00 a.m. by the time I got to my building on West End Avenue and stepped off the elevator onto my floor.

  I truly was bamboozled by all the noise coming from behind my closed apartment door. There was laughing and distinct whooping.

  A party? I thought. Who was old enough to party till 2:00 a.m.? Seamus was too old, I thought as I turned the lock and pushed open the door.

  “Michael! You’re home!” Mary Catherine said, standing there wide-eyed on the front-hall carpet, surrounded by the kids.

  I stood there, stunned frozen, with my fingers still on the key in the lock.

  How? I thought. Wasn’t she still in Ireland?

  Then I wisely dispensed with all that and did the only sensible thing.

  I let the door bang closed behind me as I slammed into Mary Catherine and hugged her for all I was worth.

  “I love you, too,” she finally whispered in my ear.

  This house will cost you…your life.

  For an excerpt, turn the page.

  THE FUNERAL FOR Melanie Phillips is heavily attended, filling the pews of the Presbyterian church and overflowing onto Main Street. She was all of twenty years old when she was murdered, every day of which she lived in Bridgehampton. Poor girl, never got to see the world, though for some people, the place you grew up is your world. Maybe that was Melanie. Maybe all she ever wanted was to be a waitress at Tasty’s Diner, serving steamers and lobster to tourists and townies and the occasional rich couple looking to drink in the “local environment.”

  But with her looks, at least from what I’ve seen in photos, she probably had bigger plans. A young woman like that, with luminous brown hair and sculpted features, could have been in magazines. That, no doubt, is why she caught the attention of Zach Stern, the head of a talent agency that included A-list celebrities, a man who owned his own jet and who liked to hang out in the Hamptons now and then.

  And that, no doubt, is also why she caught the attention of Noah Walker, who apparently had quite an affinity for young Melanie himself and must not have taken too kindly to her affair with Zach.

  It was only four nights ago that Zachary Stern and Melanie Phillips were found dead, victims of a brutal murder in a rental house near the beach that Zach had leased for the week. The carnage was brutal enough that Melanie’s service was closed-casket.

  So the crowd is owed in part to Melanie’s local popularity, and in part to the media interest, given Zach Stern’s notoriety in Hollywood.

  It is also due, I am told, to the fact that the murders occurred at 7 Ocean Drive, which among the locals has become known as the Murder House.

  Now we’ve moved to the burial, which is just next door to the church. It allows the throng that couldn’t get inside the church to mill around the south end of the cemetery, where Melanie Phillips will be laid to rest. There must be three hundred people here, if you count the media, which for the most part are keeping a respectful distance even while they snap their photographs.

  The overhead sun at midday is strong enough for squinting and sunglasses, both of which make it harder for me to do what I came here to do, which is to check out the people attending the funeral to see if anyone pings my radar. Some of these creeps like to come and watch the sorrow they caused, so it’s standard operating procedure to scan the crowd at crime scenes and funerals.

  “Remind me why we’re here, Detective Murphy,” says my partner, Isaac Marks.

  “I’m paying my respects.”

  “You didn’t know Melanie,” he says.

  True enough. I don’t know anyone around here. Once upon a time, my family came here every summer, a good three-week stretch straddling June and July, to stay with Uncle Langdon and Aunt Chloe. My memories of those summers—beaches and boat rides and fishing off the docks—end at age seven.

  For some reason I never knew, my family stopped coming after that. Until nine months ago when I joined the force, I hadn’t set foot in the Hamptons for eighteen years.

  “I’m working on my suntan,” I say.

  “Not to mention,” says Isaac, ignoring my remark, “that we already have our bad guy in custody.”

  Also true. We arrested Noah Walker yesterday. He’ll get a bond hearing tomorrow, but there’s no way the judge is going to bond him out on a double murder.

  “And might I further add,” says Isaac, “that this isn’t even your case.”

  Right again. I volunteered to lead the team arresting Noah, but I wasn’t given the case. In fact, the chief—my aforementioned uncle Langdon—is handling the matter personally. The town, especially the hoity-toity millionaires along the beach, just about busted a collective gut when the celebrity agent Zach Stern was brutally murdered in their scenic little hamlet. It’s the kind of case that could cost the chief his job, if he isn’t careful. I’m told the town supervisor has been calling him on the hour for updates.

  So why am I here, at a funeral for someone I don’t know, on a case that isn’t mine? Because I’m bored. Because since I left the NYPD, I haven’t seen any action. And because I’ve handled more homicides in eight years on the force than all of these cops in Bridgehampton put together. Translation: I wanted the case, and I was a little displeased when I didn’t get it.

  “Who’s that
?” I ask, gesturing across the way to an odd-looking man in a green cap, with long stringy hair and ratty clothes. Deep-set, creepy eyes that seem to wander. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, unable to stay still.

  Isaac pushes down his sunglasses to get a better look. “Oh, that’s Aiden Willis,” he says. “He works for the church. Probably dug Melanie’s grave.”

  “Looks like he slept in it first.”

  Isaac likes that. “Seriously, Murphy. You’re looking for suspects? With all you know about this case, which is diddly-squat, you don’t like Noah Walker for the murders?”

  “I’m not saying that,” I answer.

  “You’re not denying it, either.”

  I consider that. He’s right, of course. What the hell do I know about Noah Walker or the evidence against him? He may not have jumped out at me as someone who’d just committed a brutal double murder, but when do public faces ever match private misdeeds? I once busted a second-grade schoolteacher who was selling heroin to the high school kids. And a candy striper who was boning the corpses in the basement of the hospital. You never know people. And I’d known Noah Walker for all of thirty minutes.

  “Go home,” says Isaac. “Go work out—”

  Already did this morning.

  “—or see the ocean—”

  I’ve seen it already. It’s a really big body of water.

  “—or have a drink.”

  Yeah, a glass of wine might be in my future. But first, I’m going to take a quick detour. A detour that could probably get me in a lot of trouble.

  AS THE FUNERAL for Melanie Phillips ends, I say good-bye to my partner, Detective Isaac Marks, without telling him where I’m going. He doesn’t need to know, and I don’t know if he’d keep the information to himself. I’m not yet sure where his loyalties lie, and I’m not going to make the same mistake I made with the NYPD.