I, Michael Bennett mb-5

by James Patterson

  I was convinced that I’d see Mary Catherine there on the porch, her I’m-running-away ploy finished now, ready to give me more of the grief I definitely deserved. But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t even in the driveway anymore. I jogged out to the road and stood peering left and right into the darkness.

  You’ve gotta be kidding me, I thought. There was no sign of her. She was really gone.

  I went back up the driveway and hopped into the minibus. Driving after having had a few drinks was irresponsible, I knew, but I didn’t care. Panic was building inside of me at that point, the kind of pure panic reserved for a shitheel who realizes that he might have just taken advantage of the special woman in his life one too many times.

  I almost took out the mailbox as I reversed it out onto the country lane. Trees wheeled by in the sweep of the headlights as I screeched the stupid clunky bus out onto the road. Then I put it in drive and floored it.

  At every curve on that twisty rural road, I was sure that I was about to see her. I’d pull over, there’d be some yelling, some tears, but we’d fix it. I’d fix it somehow. The problem was, I didn’t see her. She wasn’t on the road five miles in each direction. I raced to the parking lot of the pizza parlor and then the bowling alley. I went in and asked the turbaned clerk at the 24-7 gas station if Mary Catherine had come in, but he just shook his head and went back to the cricket match he was watching on his laptop.

  I even drove out to I-84 and went up and down it for over an hour, but it was fruitless.

  I’d lost her, I thought, near tears as I stared into the roadside darkness. I’d finally done it. I’d finally gone and completely ruined everything.

  CHAPTER 80

  I WOKE UP the next morning on the porch just before dawn. I sat up, my back and neck stiff as plywood from falling asleep on the ancient wicker love seat. Head ringing from my hangover, I lifted my itchy arms to see that I’d been eaten alive by mosquitoes.

  Then I remembered the night before, and I really felt bad.

  I lurched back into the house. I was hoping that perhaps Mary Catherine had come home while I was asleep and that I’d find her fast asleep in her room. I crossed my fingers as I came through the living room. I even said a little prayer by her closed door, one of those childish if-you-give-me-this-one-God-I-promise-to-be-a-better-person specials. Then I cracked the door and dropped my head in despair.

  God must have been off duty this morning, because Mary Catherine’s bed was completely empty. “What’s going on?” Seamus whispered, suddenly appearing in the hallway beside me in his robe and slippers.

  Great, a priest, I thought. Just what I needed. I was going to need last rites when everyone found out I had driven Mary Catherine away.

  I stared at Mary Catherine’s empty, made bed and then back at him, speechless.

  “I heard the yelling last night, Mike. Something happened with you and MC? What is it?”

  “Mary Catherine,” I said. “She’s, um, left.”

  “What?” Seamus said in shock.

  I shook my head.

  Rather than wait for an explanation, Seamus put on the coffee and waited patiently.

  It actually took two cups of joe and a couple of eggs over easy to give my full confession to the old priest.

  “Well, you can’t blame the lass, can you?” he said, slathering butter across a piece of multigrain toast. “Running loose with wild women tends to irk the little lady at home.”

  “The funny thing is, I wasn’t running loose with a wild woman,” I argued. “I was tempted, don’t get me wrong, Father. Sorely tempted, but I resisted. I could never do that to Mary Catherine.”

  “You’re an idiot, Michael Sean Aloysius Bennett,” Seamus said. “How many Mary Catherines do you think are out there? Exactly how many good-looking, caring, strong females dumb enough to fall head over heels for the likes of you do you think presently exist? You string people along long enough, the string withers, then it breaks.”

  “Don’t say that. Please don’t say that, Seamus,” I said, groaning. “I need to get her back. How can I get her back?”

  Seamus just shook his head and pointed at the toast stack in front of me.

  “Eat some carbs, son,” he said. “You’re going to need them for all the creative thinking you have to do.”

  I was in the bathroom rubbing calamine lotion on my skeeter bites after my shower when my cell phone started ringing. I raced into my bedroom, thinking it was Mary Catherine, but of course it wasn’t. It was a number I didn’t know. Manhattan; 212. I answered it anyway.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Patricia Reese, Tara McLellan’s assistant. Is this Detective Michael Bennett?”

  “Speaking,” I said with mock cheeriness.

  “Detective, Ms. McLellan wanted me to let you know that it looks like your testimony is going to happen today, and we need you in court.”

  I took the phone off my ear and just looked at it. Of course I had to go to work today. What was I thinking? That I could actually have a day off to repair my wrecked family life? How silly.

  “Ten o’clock, Foley Square. Will you be there?” Tara’s personal assistant wanted to know.

  “Sweetheart,” I said, “where else would I be?”

  After I found a suit, I went to the powder room, where Seamus was shaving.

  “This just in. I’m going to work.”

  “Work? What about Mary Catherine?”

  “I’m testifying today in the city on the Perrine case. You’ll have to be in charge of the brood for now.”

  “Me?” Seamus said, putting down the razor. “Who’ll take care of me? I’m elderly.”

  “Please, I’m dying here. Juliana and Jane know where everything is. Refer to them. That’s what I do when Mary Catherine isn’t around. Also, you need to be on the lookout for Mary Catherine. Please text me the second she comes back. If she comes back.”

  “Ah, don’t be too worried,” Seamus said, dipping his razor into the sink before passing it down his pale cheek. “I’m sure she’s around here somewhere. I have a funny feeling she hasn’t just flat-out left the kids. You, maybe, but them? No way. We’ll find her, but you have to stop losing her.”

  CHAPTER 81

  IT WAS HURRY-UP-AND-WAIT time when I arrived in the witness room at Foley Square that morning. I was growing more and more anxious until I got a chance to speak to the parents of the murdered Macy’s waiter, Scott Melekian, in the courthouse cafeteria during the lunch break.

  The Melekians were retired restaurant owners from Bethesda, Maryland, and told me that their only child, Scott, had attended the U.S. Naval Academy before coming up to New York to fulfill his lifelong dream of playing sax for a living.

  “He’d worked on cruise ships and sold some stuff on iTunes, but once he subbed for someone at The Phantom of the Opera, that was it,” the beefy dad, Albert, said. “Down in the pit with the stage lights and all the excitement, he’d found his destiny, he told us. He’d also finally gotten the call from the Local 802 of the musicians’ union to work on an upcoming musical. Can you imagine? He’d just given Macy’s his two-week notice. Then this bastard kills him.”

  The round-faced mom, Allie Melekian, started crying.

  “He used to play for the whole family every Christmas Eve. ‘O Holy Night’ and ‘Silent Night.’ We’d all be sitting around, smiling and crying our eyes out, it was so beautiful,” she said. “And whenever he’d come home, he’d always come down into the kitchen and play ‘You Are So Beautiful.’ I always thought it was a corny joke, but I know now that it wasn’t.”

  The red-faced woman looked up at me, trying to gather her tears with her fingertips and failing.

  “Did you ever think, Detective Bennett, that there would come a day in your life when you wanted to die? When you actually longed for it?”

  I squeezed the woman’s hand.

  “I know one thing, ma’am,” I said. “I know your son is watching us right now, and he couldn’t be more proud of you gu
ys for coming here today to see that his killer never gets a chance to hurt anyone ever again.”

  When we went back up after lunch, Ivan Vogel, the chief prosecutor of the narcotics unit in the U.S. attorney’s office, stood at the front of the small, windowless gray courtroom.

  “The prosecution would like to call its first witness,” the short, stocky, former collegiate wrestling champ said. “We call Detective Michael Bennett to the stand.”

  Mrs. Melekian’s words still rang in my ears as the court clerk asked me to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Then I lifted my hand off the Bible and turned and stared Manuel Perrine right in his pale blue killer’s eyes.

  “Would you please state your name and occupation?” Vogel said.

  “My name is Michael Bennett, and I am a detective with the New York City Police Department. I have been with the department for the last twenty years.”

  “Could you please tell us in what law enforcement capacity you were working on the morning of June third of last year?”

  “I was working with a joint task force of city police and federal authorities to facilitate the arrest of the defendant, Manuel Perrine, for international drug trafficking and murder.”

  “I’m going to have to object there, Your Honor,” Perrine’s well-heeled lawyer, Arthur Boehme, said, standing with an affable grin. “The federal arrest warrant in question states that Mr. Perrine was wanted to stand trial for the murder of the two U.S. Border Patrol agents. It says nothing about drug trafficking. Also, my client has not as yet been convicted or even tried for those crimes.”

  “Sustained,” the judge said as the Waspy, Jimmy Stewart-looking son of a bitch parked his impeccably tailored ass back into his seat.

  I looked at Judge Mary Elizabeth Fleming. Her colleague had been murdered by the homicidal maniac slime at the table five feet away, and here she was, making sure all the hairsplitting bullshit Perrine’s mouthpiece was spouting got its due? What a load of ripe horseshit trials could be. Sustained, my ass. Perrine was a stain.

  Vogel frowned as he paced in front of me.

  “Detective Bennett, how was it that you had information that Manuel Perrine would be in New York City?” he said.

  “Credible information was provided to us by a confidential informant. We set up surveillance at the location where we were told he would be, but after he did not appear, we reevaluated our information and suspected that he was in town to attend the graduation of his daughter from NYU law school. As we attempted to arrest him, gunfire broke out from Perrine’s bodyguards, which then resulted in the death of DEA agent Hughie McDonough and NYPD officer Dennis Jaeger.”

  Perrine’s lawyer popped up again like a polished, boyishly handsome target in a game of whack-a-mole.

  “Again, Your Honor, I need to object. At this time, my client is on trial for the murder of one Scott Melekian, a waiter at Macy’s. There is nothing in the charges leveled against him here today for the murder of any law enforcement personnel.”

  “I knew we should have put the murders in sequential order, Mr. Boehme,” I said into the microphone. “Your client’s killed so many people, it gets quite confusing.”

  Nervous chuckles erupted from the crowd, which would have been fine except for the fact that what I said was actually true.

  “Your Honor!” Boehme said.

  “Strike the witness’s last statement. Please just answer the questions, Detective Bennett. This isn’t a stand-up routine.”

  You’re right, I felt like saying. It’s a frigging farce.

  The prosecutor approached the bench.

  “Please, Your Honor. My witness is testifying to his whereabouts and the circumstances surrounding the death of Scott Melekian. That is, he’s trying to, but defense counsel is making it impossible.”

  “The prosecution is right,” Judge Fleming said. “Do I have to remind our prestigious defense counsel that he will soon have his very own chance to cross-examine the witness? In the meantime, please do shut up and stop interrupting, Okay?”

  That’s when Perrine popped up.

  “Bullshit!” he screamed.

  The table before him heaved up and slammed down as he kneed it. Boehme squinted up at Perrine in abject puzzlement. He looked like he wanted to say something to calm his client, but then thought better of it. He quickly turned his head downward, as if suddenly fascinated by the pattern in the government-issue carpet.

  “Bullshit!” Perrine repeated. “These accusations are false, you lying maggot! This is harassment. This proceeding is illegal! I wish to speak to the Mexican consulate. I am not a citizen of this country. I am a Mexican national. Your laws have no authority over me!”

  In a moment, no less than a dozen burly court officers, corrections officers, and U.S. marshals rushed forward from their stations. Perrine seemed to calm a little, then he feinted and broke through them, screaming, as he ran directly at me. Immediately, I stood and lifted the metal chair I was sitting on, able, ready, and oh so willing to crush Perrine’s skull with it and finish this crap once and for all.

  But unfortunately, before I had the chance, the court officers were able to loudly tackle him to the carpeted ground. After a moment, you couldn’t even see Perrine beneath the crush of people on top of him. From the bottom of the pile, there were grunts and the click of metal as they cuffed his legs.

  “You will regret this, Bennett,” Perrine screamed where he writhed like a wild animal on the floor. “You will wish you had been stillborn by the time I am done with you and your family!”

  He was still screaming as they took him out by his hands and feet. There was dead silence in the courtroom as everyone looked at each other, trying to recover and catch their breath.

  “On that note, I believe these proceedings are done for the day,” the judge finally said. “And defense counsel, tomorrow the defendant will be gagged as well as heavily shackled under my order. So I don’t want to hear the slightest peep out of you about it. And with the next outburst, I promise you, he’ll be tried in a cage.”

  She brought down her gavel like a blacksmith hitting an anvil.

  “This trial will proceed, so help me. This trial will proceed if it’s the last thing I do.”

  CHAPTER 82

  AT A LITTLE before 8:00 p.m., the Fifth Precinct evening patrol supervisor, Sergeant Wayne Lozada, and his driver, Officer Michael Morelli, parked in their favorite cooping spot, the southeast corner of Canal and the Bowery, facing the ramp for the Manhattan Bridge.

  After Morelli put it into park, he lifted a massive binder from the backseat. He flipped through the NYPD Patrol Guide to the section covering the use of the Taser on emotionally disturbed people. Morelli, who was actually quite proficient in the use of the electrical device due to the neighborhood’s proliferation of nuts, didn’t really need to go over it but was brushing up for a sergeant’s test he was scheduled to take at the end of the month.

  As Morelli studied, Sergeant Lozada idly listened to the fizz and pop of the radio as he stared at the monumental arch and colonnade at the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. He never got sick of looking at that thing. Above the Chinese billboards, crappy stores, and skells selling fake handbags on the piss-stained Bowery sidewalk, the intricate baroque stonework looked fantastical, like a Rembrandt peeking out over the rim of a Dumpster.

  Lozada, who briefly had been a high school history teacher before becoming a cop, was an architecture buff. After he retired at the end of the year, he was thinking about starting a walking tour.

  “You see that thing, Morelli?” Lozada said. “That thing was built by the same architects who designed the iconic New York Public Library. It’s called a triumphal arch, and this one was modeled in the tradition of both the Porte Saint-Denis in Paris and the first-century Arch of Titus in Rome. It was part of the City Beautiful movement, started by a bunch of rich folks at the turn of the last century who thought they could promote civic virtue and harmonious social order through beautiful public spaces and grandio
se buildings.”

  “Real nice, Sarge,” mumbled Morelli, who couldn’t wait for his long-winded boss’s retirement party. “Classy stuff, all right.”

  “A hundred years ago, they erected stunning works of classical art for the opening of a bridge, Morelli,” Lozada said with a sigh. “Today, a decade after the nine-eleven attacks, we can’t even rebuild two ugly skyscrapers.”

  “I know, right? Exactly, exactly,” Morelli said, flipping a page in the gargantuan binder.

  Lozada was still sighing when they heard the sound coming from somewhere off behind them.

  “No, it can’t be,” Lozada said as the lazy ka-click ka-click ka-click ka-click came closer.

  He glanced in the side-view mirror. A young Hispanic guy was walking up the sidewalk behind the cruiser, shaking a can of spray paint.

  The guy stopped ten feet behind the cruiser and commenced painting. They watched in silence as he went to town, bombing the stone wall of the building they were parked beside.

  Morelli and Lozada looked at each other for a moment, then broke into riotous laughter.

  “Your iPhone charged, Morelli?” Lozada said, grasping the door handle. “Because I believe we either have a vandal with a serious vision deficiency or a contender here for world’s dumbest criminal.”

  Lozada opened the passenger door and put his right foot out onto the sidewalk. He was just standing up when he heard a sudden engine roar and a long tire shriek.

  As he glanced forward, he watched as a beat-up white Dodge van veered off the Bowery and stopped directly in front of the cruiser. Its side door rattled open and three squat Hispanic men wearing bandannas over their faces and baseball caps and mechanic’s coveralls tucked into construction boots stood there staring at him.

  It took him a fraction of a second to register that they had guns in their hands. Long ones.

  They were M4 automatic rifles, Lozada knew. He had one just like them in the trunk of the cruiser.