Tick Tock

by Patterson, James

  “Sorry?” I said to myself as I rubbed my hot and sore head by the water. “That’s the best thing to happen to me all day. Maybe even all year.”

  Chapter 8

  AFTER THAT CASANOVA MOMENT, instead of heading straight home, I decided to stop in at the Sugar Bowl to apply something cold to my wounded—What? Heart? Ego? I couldn’t decide. I sipped a crisp Heineken as I watched the Mets lose to the Cubs at Citi Field. It seemed like there was an epidemic of striking out all over Queens tonight.

  As I drowned my sorrows, I thought about what had just happened between me and Mary C. Or to be more precise, I lamented what hadn’t happened.

  Because I had to admit, it had been a nice kiss. Tender and sweet and surprisingly sensual. I definitely would have liked to stay down there along the water line with her, perhaps reconstructing an outer-borough version of that famous beach make-out scene in From Here to Eternity. Instead, she’d run like it was a scene from Jaws.

  “Hey, you’re cute,” said a young dark-haired woman next to the pool table as I was coming out of the men’s room five minutes later.

  I stopped in my tracks and took in the attractive thirty-something’s barely-there tank and tight shorts, her slightly drunk-looking cute face, the Tinker Bell tattoo on her left ankle. I couldn’t remember the last time a tipsy young woman with a Disney tattoo had hit on me. Probably because it had never happened before. My summer hookup radar was going like gangbusters. Maybe the night wasn’t such a bust after all.

  But before I could come up with a snappy, charming response, the text jingle sounded from my cell.

  I glanced at it. It was from Mary Catherine. Of course it was. Now she wants to connect? I thought, thumbing the message open.

  Sorry I freaked on you, Mike. Putting the kids to bed. Left the back door open.

  “The kids?” Tinker Bell said, reading my BlackBerry smartphone over my shoulder. “Where’s your wedding ring? In your back pocket? Get a life, creep.”

  I opened my mouth to explain myself but then closed it as I realized Tinker Bell actually was right. What was I doing? I wasn’t some barhopping kid anymore. I definitely wasn’t Peter Pan. I was more like the old lady who lived in a shoe. Someone had to be the grown-up, and unfortunately that someone was me.

  I dropped a five on the bar on my way out.

  I came in through the cottage’s back door ten minutes later. I tiptoed through what we called “the dorm,” the big, rambling family room where all the boys slept on pull-out couches and air mattresses. They were all asleep, sunburned, exhausted, and dreaming happy midsummer-night dreams after another day of all the beachside heaven the tri-state area would allow.

  My baby, Chrissy, giggled in her sleep as I kissed her good night in the girls’ tiny, crowded bedroom next door. I looked at the massive pile of seashells on the table. At least someone was still having a good time.

  As I was heading to my own bunk, I saw Mary Catherine through the crack of an open door. With her eyes closed, she looked ethereal, otherworldly, serene as a cemetery angel.

  I tore my eyes away and forced myself to continue down the hallway before I succumbed to the urge to go in and kiss her good night, too.

  Chapter 9

  IT SEEMED LIKE I’D JUST FALLEN ASLEEP when my eyes shot open in the dark, my heart racing. Confused, I lifted my cell phone off the bedside table to see if its ringing was what woke me up. That’s when I heard glass breaking.

  “Dad!” one of the kids called from down the hall.

  It was coming from the dorm. I jumped out of bed and began turning on lights as I ran.

  Beside Ricky’s bed by the bay window, there was broken glass and a chunk of concrete. I ran to the window, then ducked as a beer bottle ricocheted off the glassless frame and whizzed past my ear.

  I could see a small car parked in front of the house with its lights off. Two or three people were in it.

  “You suck, Bennett!” called a voice. “Get out of the Point while you still can!”

  On the wings of hate, I flew out of the room toward the front door. I was past pissed, more like enraged. Those bastards could have hurt or killed one of my kids. In bare feet, wearing just my boxer shorts, I ran out the front door, picking up an aluminum baseball bat from the porch as I ran.

  The car’s engine raced as I hit the street. Its tires barked as the car peeled out. I could hear teenage kids inside laughing and yelling. Instead of trying to get the plate, like the trained law enforcement professional I was, I went another route. I hauled back and threw the bat as hard as I could at the car’s taillights. It clinked across the empty asphalt as they rounded the corner.

  I ran to the corner, but there was no sign of them. They’d gotten away. I was absolutely wide awake as I stood there in the dark. My adrenaline was definitely pumping. I didn’t care how old Flaherty was. No one messes with my kids. I really felt like killing someone.

  Brian came up behind me as I was retrieving the bat.

  “Was that the Flaherty kid, Dad?” he said. “Had to be, right?”

  “I didn’t see any faces, but it’s a pretty safe assumption,” I said.

  “I asked around about him, Dad. They say he’s bad news. Actually, his whole family is crazy. He has five brothers, each one badder than the next. They even have a pit bull. Someone said they’re Westies, Dad.”

  I thought about that. The Westies were what was left of the Irish mafia, latent thugs and gangsters who still ran some rackets on the West Side of Manhattan. One of their signature moves was dismembering bodies. And we’d apparently just gotten into a feud with them?

  Brian looked at me, worried.

  I put an arm around his shoulders.

  “Look at me, Brian,” I said, indicating my lack of attire. “Do I look sane to you? In the meantime, try to stay away from them. I’ll take care of it.”

  I wasn’t sure how, but I kept that to myself.

  Everyone, and I mean everyone, was awake and on the porch as we came back.

  Some joker from the cottage across the street gave a cat-calling whistle out the window at my shirtless bod as I stepped up the stairs.

  “Daddy, get in here!” Chrissy commanded. “You can’t walk around in just your underpants.”

  “You’re right, Chrissy,” I said, actually managing a smile. “Daddy forgot.”

  Chapter 10

  I LEFT FOR WORK early the next morning. Which, if you’re vacationing in the ass end of Queens and want to avoid the traffic back into the city, means being in the car by a bleary-eyed five thirty.

  I hadn’t gotten much sleep thanks to the late-night cinder-block delivery from the Breezy Point welcoming committee. My guys were pretty shaken up, and though I didn’t want to admit it, so was I. The kid Flaherty really did seem kind of crazy, and I, more than most, knew what crazy people were capable of.

  After the incident, I had called the local One Hundredth Precinct, or the 1-0-0 in cop parlance, who’d sent over a radio car about half an hour later. We’d filled out a report, but from the shift commander’s ho-hum expression, I didn’t get the impression that finding the culprits was too high on his night’s priority list. So much for professional courtesy. The best we could do was have a guy come fix the window later today and hope that was the end of it.

  I checked my BlackBerry in the driveway before leaving and learned that the morning’s case meeting locale had been changed from NYPD’s One Police Plaza headquarters to the fancy new NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau on the Brooklyn/Queens border. Though I was glad I didn’t have to drive as far, I didn’t like how quickly the case was escalating. My dwindling hopes of salvaging the remainder of my vacation seemed to be diminishing at an increasingly rapid clip.

  As I was coming in, Miriam suggested we meet for breakfast at a diner near the Counterterrorism HQ beforehand to get on the same page. I arrived first and scored us a window booth overlooking an expansive junkyard vista.

  A muted Channel Two news story about the bomb threat was playing on th
e TV behind the counter. An overhead shot of the cop-covered public library was followed by another one of a pretty female reporter standing by a police barricade.

  A truck driver in the adjacent booth glared at me as I loudly groaned into my white porcelain cup. I knew this was coming. Media heat meant heat on the mayor, which I knew through bitter experience would roll quickly in one direction—downhill, straight at me.

  About ten minutes later, I watched from the window as my boss, Miriam, got out of her Honda. Stylish and athletic and irritatingly serene, Miriam looked more like a hot upscale soccer mom than a razor-sharp city cop.

  Despite the fact that she had ordered me back from my vacay, I still liked my feisty new boss. Running the Major Case Squad, the Delta Force of the NYPD, was a near-impossible job. Not only was Miriam’s head constantly on the chopping block with high-profile cases, but she had the added challenge of having to garner the respect and loyalty of the department’s most elite detectives, who were often prima donnas.

  Somehow Miriam, a former air force pilot, managed to pull it off with wily intelligence, humor, and tact. She also backed her people unconditionally and took absolutely no one’s shit. Including mine, unfortunately.

  “What’s the story, morning glory?” my boss said as she sat down.

  “Let’s see. Hmm. Today’s headline, I guess, is ‘Vacationing Cop Gets Screwed,’ ” I said.

  “Hey, I feel you, dawg. I was up in Cape Cod, sipping a fuzzy navel when they called me.”

  “Who’s was it? Anyone I know?” I said

  “A gentlewoman never tells,” she said with a sly wink. “Anyway, hope your shoes are shined. Sander Flaum from Intel is going to be at this powwow, as well as the counter-terrorism chief, Ciardi, and a gaggle of nervous Feds. You’re today’s featured speaker, so don’t let them trip you up.”

  “Wait a second. Back up,” I said. “I’m primary detective on the case? So now I’m on vacation when? Nights?”

  “Ah, Mike,” Miriam said as the waitress poured her a coffee. “You Irish have such a way with words. Yeats, Joyce, and now you.”

  “For a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, you’re not too bad at throwing the blarney around when you have to,” I said. “Seriously, two chiefs? Why all the heavies on a Sunday?”

  “The lab came back on the explosive. It’s T-four from Europe—from Italy apparently. You know how squirrelly the commissioner gets about anything remotely terrorist-related.”

  The new commissioner, Ken Rodin, was a pugnacious, old-school former beat cop who still wore a .38 in an ankle holster above his Italian wingtips. With crime down in the city, his primary directive—some said his obsession—was to prevent another terrorist act during his watch. Which wasn’t as paranoid as it might sound, considering NYC was still terrorist organizations’ Top of the Pops, so to speak.

  “Though it’s still far from conclusive that this is a terrorist thing, we have to go through the DEFCON One motions for the time being. There’s been smoke coming out of my BlackBerry all night.”

  “Is McGirth going to be there?”

  Tom McGinnis, or McGirth, as he was more casually known due to his not-so-girlish figure, was the department’s chief of detectives, Miriam’s boss and perhaps the most egregious power-hungry ballbuster in the NYPD.

  Miriam rolled her eyes in affirmation.

  “What’s up with bullshit internal politics?” I said. “What happened to the commissioner’s pep talk last month about how the mayor wanted a new role for Major Case? ‘Kick ass, no politics, just results?’ Ring a bell?”

  “Yeah, well, the mayor and the commish aren’t going to be at the meeting, unfortunately,” Miriam said. “It’s our sorry lot to deal with the department’s evil henchmen. Why am I saying we? It’s your job, Mike, since you’re the briefing DT.”

  “Well, lucky old me,” I said, sipping my coffee as the sun crested over the crushed cars outside the window.

  Chapter 11

  THE NYPD’S COUNTERTERRORISM BUREAU was extremely impressive. Outside, it looked like a faceless office building in the middle of a crappy industrial neighborhood. Inside, it looked like the set of 24.

  There were electronic maps, intense-looking cops at glass desks, and more flat-screen TVs than in the new Yankee Stadium. Walking through the center behind my boss, I felt disappointed that we hadn’t been able to enter through a trick manhole and down a slide, like James Bond or Perry the Platypus.

  I began to realize why there was so much heat on the library threat. The last thing the commissioner wanted was to have his big, new, expensive initiative to protect the city fail in some capacity.

  The meeting was held in a glass fishbowl conference room next to something called the Global Intelligence Room. I immediately spotted the assistant commissioner and the Counterterrorism chief. Though they wore similar golfing attire, their physical contrast was pretty comical. Flaum was tall and thin, while Ciardi was short and stocky. Rocky and Bullwinkle, I thought. Laurel and Hardy.

  Unfortunately, I also spotted Miriam’s boss, McGirth, who, with his puffy, pasty face, looked like a not-so-cute reincarnation of Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed. Beside him were Cell from the Bomb Squad and the two superfit Feds who had been at the library the day before. Intelligence briefings about the most recent terrorist bombings across the globe were stacked at the center of the long table. I took one as I found a seat.

  “Why don’t you start with what you’ve got, Mike?” Miriam said the second my ass hit the cushion.

  “Uh, sure,” I said, giving her a dirty look as I stood back up. “Basically, sometime yesterday afternoon, a bomb was left in the main reading room at the main branch of the New York City Public Library. It looked like a Macintosh laptop wired to plastic explosives. It was a sophisticated device, capable of killing dozens of people. A cryptic electronic note left on the laptop stated that the device wasn’t intended to go off, but the next one would, sworn ‘on poor Lawrence’s eyes,’ whatever that means. There were no witnesses, as far as we can tell at this point.”

  “Jesus Christ. On whose eyes? Lawrence of Arabia’s?” said Chief McGinnis, making a spectacle of himself as usual.

  “Who found the device?” asked Flaum, the tall, professorial-looking Intel head.

  “An NYU student pointed out the unattended laptop to a security guard,” Cell said, jumping in. “The guard opened it, saw the message, ordered an evac, and called us.”

  “Don’t they have a security check there?” Ciardi said.

  “Yeah, some summer kid checks bags,” I said, looking at my notes. “But that’s just so people don’t steal books. Patrons can take laptops in. He said that white Apple laptops are all he sees every day.”

  “What about security cameras?” said the stocky Counterterrorism chief.

  “Deactivated due to a huge ongoing reno,” I said.

  “Any threats from your end that might be relevant to this, Ted?” Assistant Commissioner Sander Flaum asked the senior FBI rep.

  The taller of the two Feds shook his head.

  “Chatter hasn’t increased,” he said. “Though Hezbollah likes to use plastique.”

  Hezbollah? I thought. That was crazy. Or was it?

  “You always seem to be in the middle of this kind of crap, Bennett,” the chops-busting chief of detectives, McGinnis, said. “What’s your professional opinion?”

  “Actually, my gut says it’s a lone nut,” I said. “If it were Hezbollah, why not just set it off? An attention-seeking nut with some particularly dangerous mechanical skills seems to be a better fit.”

  There was a lot of grumbling. The idea that the bomb might not be terrorism wasn’t a particularly popular one. After all, if it was just a lone, sick freak, then why were we all here?

  “What about the explosive?” the Intel chief said. “It’s from overseas. Maybe the whole nutcase note thing is just window dressing in order to get us off balance. Are nuts usually this organized?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Mi
riam said.

  “If there aren’t any objections, I say we keep it in Major Case until further notice,” said the Counterterrorism head as he glanced impatiently around the table.

  I was thinking about voicing an objection of my own about how I was supposed to be on vacation, until Miriam gave me a look.

  “And try to keep your face from appearing on TV, huh, Bennett? This is a confidential case,” McGirth said as I was leaving. “I know how hard you find that at times.”

  I was opening my mouth to return a pithy comment when Miriam appeared at my back and ushered me out.

  Chapter 12

  WITH THAT BUREAUCRATIC HURDLE painfully tripped over, we headed back to Manhattan. Sunday or no Sunday, we needed to go to our squad room on the eleventh floor of One Police Plaza in order to put together a Major Case Squad task force on the Lawrence Bomber Case, as we were now calling it.

  I followed Miriam’s Honda through Queens and over the 59th Street Bridge. Beyond the windshield, Manhattan’s countless windows seemed to stare at me through the bridge’s rusty girders. The thought that somebody behind one of them might be right now meticulously plotting to blow up his fellow human beings was not a comforting one. Especially as I hurried across the rattletrap bridge.

  I received a text on my smartphone as we arrived downtown and snuck in through the back door of HQ.

  It was from Emily Parker, an FBI agent I’d worked with on my last case. We’d stayed close since the investigation, so I knew Emily worked a desk at the Bureau’s VICAP, Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which dealt with cheerful things like homicides, sexual assaults, and unidentified human remains.

  Just heard about ur performance at NYCT Blue. Don’t u love working weekends? U the primary on the Library Bomb thing?

  Talk about a security leak, I thought. How the hell had she found out about our secret meeting this fast on a Sunday? One of her fellow FBI agents at the meeting must have told her, I surmised. She wouldn’t actually go out with one of those organic-food-eating geeks, would she?