“Do you remember what you said before you hung up on me? It was rather humorous. You said that instead of working with your organization, my Mexican friends and I ought to, and I quote, ‘go back and do what you’re good at: washing dishes and cutting grass.’ ”
He brushed an imaginary speck from the shoulder of his pristine silk shirt.
“Mr. Licata, as you see now, my people aren’t the type that do dishes, and instead of grass, the only things we cut are heads.”
“You’re right,” Licata said, blood from his wrecked mouth flecking the cement floor. “I was wrong, Manuel. Way, way off base to disrespect you like that. I see how serious a player you are. We can help each other. I can help you. We can work it out.”
Perrine laughed as he slipped his shades on and leaned back.
“ ‘We can work it out’?” he said as he put his hands behind his head. “You mean like the famous Beatles song, Mr. Licata? That’s precisely the problem. There’s no time, my friend.”
“But — ” Licata said as the downward-flowing gas finally touched the candle flame.
Then Licata, his basement, and most of his obnoxious Connecticut McMansion were instantly vaporized as five thousand cubic feet of natural gas went up all at once in a ripping, reverberating, ground-shuddering blast.
PART ONE
DON’T FENCE ME IN
CHAPTER 1
Awake at five o’clock in the morning and unable to sleep with all the incessant peace and quiet, I pushed out through the creaky screen door onto the darkened porch, clutching my morning’s first coffee.
Dr. Seuss was right on the money, I thought with a frown as I sat myself beside a rusting tractor hay rake.
“Oh, the places you’ll go,” I mumbled to the tumbleweeds.
The porch rail I put my feet up on was connected to a ramshackle Victorian farmhouse a few miles south of Susanville, California. Susanville, as absolutely no one knows, is the county seat of Northern California’s Lassen County. The county itself is named after Peter Lassen, a famous frontiersman and Indian fighter, who, I’d learned from my daughter Jane, was murdered under mysterious circumstances in 1859.
As a New York cop forced into exile out here in the exact middle of nowhere for the past eight months, I was seriously thinking about asking someone if I could take a crack at solving Lassen’s cold case. That should give you some indication of how bored I was.
But what are you going to do?
Bored is better than dead, all things considered.
I was sitting on an old wooden chair that we called an Adirondack chair when I was a kid, but that I guess out here was called a Sierra chair, since I could actually see the northern, snow-tipped rim of the Sierra Nevada from my porch. It was cold, and I was sporting, of all things, a Carhartt work coat, worn jeans, and a pair of Wellington boots.
The wellies, knee-high green rubber boots, were perfectly ridiculous-looking but quite necessary. We were living on a cattle ranch now, and no matter how hard you tried not to, you often stepped in things that needed hosing off.
Yeah, I’d stepped in it, all right.
Mere months ago, I’d been your typical happy-go-lucky Irish American NYPD detective with ten adopted kids. Then I arrested Manuel Perrine, a Mexican drug-cartel head. Which would have been fine. Putting drug-dealing murderers into cages, where they belonged, happened to be an avid hobby of mine.
The problem was, the billionaire scumbag escaped custody and put a multimillion-dollar hit out on me and my family.
So there you have it. The feds put us in witness protection, and I’d gone from NYPD Blue to Little House on the Prairie in no time flat. I’d always suspected that “luck of the Irish” was a sarcastic phrase.
If I said I was settling in, I’d be lying. If anything, I was more amazed now at our bizarre new surroundings than on the day we arrived.
When people think of California, they think of surfboards, the Beach Boys, Valley girls. That’s certainly what I and the rest of the Bennett clan all thought we were in for when the feds told us that was where we were headed.
But what we actually ended up getting from the witness protection folks was the other California, the one no one ever talks about. The northern, high-desert boondocks California, with log cabins left behind by settlers turned cannibals, and cow pies left behind by our new, bovine neighbors.
But it wasn’t all bad. The eight-hundred-acre ranch we were now living on was surrounded by devastatingly majestic mountains. And our landlord, Aaron Cody, fifth-generation cattle rancher, couldn’t have been nicer to us. He raised grass-fed cattle and organic you-name-it: eggs, milk, veggies, which he constantly left on our doorstep like some rangy, seventy-five-year-old cowboy Santa Claus. We’d never eaten better.
From my kids’ perspective, there was a definite mix of emotions. The older guys were depressed, still missing their friends and former Facebook profiles. With the younger crowd, it was the opposite. They had fallen in love with farm life and all the animals. And, boy, were there a lot of them. Cody had a veritable zoo half a mile back off the road: horses, dogs, goats, llamas, pigs, chickens.
Our nanny, Mary Catherine, who had grown up on a cattle farm back in Ireland, had hit the ground running. She was in her element, always busy either with the children or helping out our landlord. Cody, a widower, who was obviously head over heels in love with Mary Catherine, said he’d never had a better or prettier hired hand.
And we were safe up here. One thing it’s hard to do to someone who lives half a mile off a main road in the middle of the wilderness is sneak up on them.
At times, I probably could have committed a felony for a real slice of pizza or a bagel, but I was trying to look on the bright side: though the nineteenth-century lifestyle certainly took some getting used to, at least when the dollar collapsed, we’d be good.
So here I was, up early, out on the porch drinking coffee like your classic western men of yore, looking around for my horse so I could ride the range. Actually, I didn’t have a horse or know what “the range” was, so I decided to just read the news on my iPhone.
Beavis and Butt-Head were coming back, I read on the Yahoo! news page. Wasn’t that nice? It was a real comfort to know that the world out beyond the confines of my eight-hundred-acre sanctuary was still going to hell in a gasoline-filled recyclable shopping bag.
It was what I spotted when I thumbed over to the Drudge Report that made me sit up and spill coffee all over my wellies.
MOB WAR!!? 20-Plus Dead! Manuel Perrine Suspected in Multiple Bloodbaths!
CHAPTER 2
It took me about half an hour of reading through the just-breaking news reports to wrap my blown mind around what was happening.
There had been seven attacks in all. Three in the New York area, and one each in Providence, Detroit, Philly, and Los Angeles. Reports were preliminary, but it was looking like the heads of all five Mafia families involved had been among those massacred in their homes last night by unknown assailants.
Wives were dead, it said. Children. A mobster’s house in Westport, Connecticut, had actually been blown to smithereens.
“ ‘Twenty-three bodies and counting,’ ” I read out loud off the Los Angeles Times website.
Twenty-three dead wasn’t a crime, I thought in utter disbelief. Twenty-three dead was the body count of a land war.
The scope and sophistication of the attacks were daunting. Alarms had been disabled, security tapes removed. It was still early, but there didn’t seem to be any witnesses. In the space of seven hours, several mobsters and their families had been quickly and quietly wiped off the face of the earth.
An unmentioned source tipped off law enforcement that it might be Perrine. The anonymous tipster said that Perrine had offered the American Mafia some sort of partnership a few months back, a deal that was turned down. Not only that, but the article was saying that today was actually Perrine’s forty-fifth birthday.
It definitely could have been Perrine, I knew. The at
tacks actually made sense when you realized how the cartels worked. The cartels’ brutally simple and efficient negotiating tactic was called plata o plomo on the street. Silver or lead. Take the money or a bullet. Do business with us or die.
It was one thing to strong-arm a bodega owner, I thought, shaking my head. But Perrine apparently had just done it to the entire Mob!
You would need how many men for something like that? I wondered. Fifty? Probably closer to a hundred. I thought about that, about Perrine, out there somewhere, free as a bird, coordinating a hundred highly trained hit men in five cities, like markers on a board. Then I stopped thinking about it. It was way too depressing.
Because it really was an unprecedented power play. The American Mafia had been running the underworld show since-when? Prohibition? Perrine, obviously, was out to change that. He was upping his cartel’s influence and operation, branching out from Mexico and into the good ol’ US of A.
It was truly very scary news that Perrine was on the scene again. Coming from a penniless ghetto in French Guiana, he’d somehow made his way to France, where he joined the army and worked his way into the French special forces. His fellow squad members in the French naval commandos described him as incredibly intelligent and competent, extremely competitive yet witty at times, a talented, natural leader.
What Perrine decided to do with his charismatic talent and elite commando military experience was to return to South America and hire himself out as a mercenary and military consultant to the highest-bidding criminal enterprises he could find. Two bloody decades later, he had risen to become the billionaire head of the largest and most violent cartel in Mexico.
You would have thought that his career was over when I bagged him in New York about a year ago. It wasn’t. He’d had the judge at his own trial murdered and actually managed to escape from the fourteenth floor of the Foley Square Federal Courthouse via helicopter. I should know, because I was there at the time and actually emptied my Glock into the chopper to no avail as it whirlybirded elegant, intelligent Manuel Perrine away.
So you can see why I was concerned as I sat there. Wanted international fugitives usually try to spend their time hiding, not expanding their criminal enterprises. Reports were saying that in the past few months, he had actually joined together his cartel with that of one of his rivals. Los Salvajes, they were calling this new supercartel. The Wild Ones.
And Perrine, at its head, was fast becoming a popular folk hero. Which was a head-scratcher for me, since this Robin Hood, instead of robbing the rich and giving to the poor, smuggled drugs in metric-ton loads and decapitated people.
I began to get extremely pissed off after a bit more reading. So much so that I turned off my phone and just sat there, fuming.
It wasn’t the loss of five Mafia kingpins that I cared so much about. Despite the sweeping, romantic Francis Ford Coppola and HBO portrayals, real mobsters were truly evil, bullying individuals who, when they weren’t ripping everybody off, loved nothing more than to demean and destroy people at every opportunity.
For example, I knew that one of the dearly departed godfathers, Michael Licata, had once pistol-whipped a Bronxville restaurant waiter into a coma for not bringing his mussels marinara fast enough. The fact that last night Licata had been blown up in his own house was something I could learn to live with.
What was really driving me nuts was that Perrine had done it. It was completely unacceptable that Perrine was still free, let alone operational. American law enforcement had never looked so pathetic. I mean, who was on this case?
Not me, that was for sure. After Perrine’s escape, I’d been blackballed. Then, to add insult to injury, after Perrine had left a truck bomb out in front of my West End Avenue building, the feds had put me into witness protection. I’d basically been mothballed.
I love my family, but I can’t describe how upset I was as I sat there, taking in the helpless, hopeless situation.
Perrine was the one who should have been hiding, I thought, wanting to punch something.
CHAPTER 3
I quickly tucked my smartphone away as I heard the screen door creak open behind me.
Mary Catherine, dressed in worn jeans, Columbia University hoodie, and her own pair of trusty wellies, came out with the coffeepot. Her blond hair was in a ponytail, and she looked great, which was pretty much par for the course for my kids’ nanny, even this early in the morning.
I hated this farm about as much as Mary Catherine loved it. I’d thought she was going to be devastated when she was forced into hiding along with the rest of us. It turned out the opposite was true. Even a cartel contract couldn’t keep my young Irish nanny down.
“Howdy, partner,” she said in her Irish accent as she gave me a refill.
“Hey, cowgirl,” I said.
“You’re up early,” she said.
“I thought I saw some rustlers out yonder,” I said with a gravelly voice.
I squinted to enhance my Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western impression.
“Turned out it was a couple of outlaw chickens. They started making trouble, so I had to wing one of them. Which actually worked out. I put a little hot sauce on it, and it was delicious.”
Mary Catherine laughed.
“Well, just don’t tell Chrissy. You know how much she loves our fine feathered friends.”
“How could I forget?” I said, laughing myself.
Chrissy, the baby of our massive brood, had taken a liking to one of our landlord’s chickens, whom she immediately named Homer, for some inexplicable reason. She’d even sworn off chicken nuggets after one of her ever-helpful older brothers informed her she was probably dipping a member of Homer’s family into the sweet-and-sour sauce.
“So, what’s on the agenda today?” she said.
“Well,” I said, “I say we grab the paper and some bagels down at Murray’s, then hop a Two train down to MoMA for the latest installation. Afterward, we could go to John’s on Bleecker for lunch. I’m thinking a large, with everything on it, and some gelato for dessert. No, wait-we could go to Carnegie for a Bible-thick pastrami sandwich. It’s like butta.”
Mary Catherine shook her head at me.
“MoMA?” she said. “Really?”
“Sure, why not? You’re not the only one interested in culture around here.”
“You never went to MoMA in your life. You told me yourself you hate modern art. And the Two train! Of course. I love taking the kids on the subway. It’s so much fun. Look, Mike, I love-and miss-the Big Apple as well, but don’t you think you’re laying it on a tad thick? Why do you continue to torture yourself?”
I gestured out at the endless space and sky all around us.
“Isn’t it obvious?” I said. “There’s nothing else to do.”
“That’s it,” my nanny said. “Less moping, more roping, as Mr. Cody likes to say. You’re coming with us this morning. No more excuses.”
“No, that’s OK,” I said when I realized where she wanted me to go. “I have plenty to do. I have to go over today’s lesson plan.”
Due to the truly insane circumstances, we had decided to homeschool the kids. I was handling the English and history, Mary Catherine the math and science, while my grandfather-priest, Seamus-big surprise-tackled religion. I had never taught before, and I was actually getting into it. I wasn’t smarter than a fifth-grader yet, but I was getting there.
“Nonsense, Mike. You don’t think I know you have your lessons planned at least two weeks ahead? You need to give in to it, Mike. I know you don’t like being here on a farm, but face facts. You are. Besides, you haven’t even given it a chance. When in Rome, you have to do as the Romans do.”
“I would if we were in Rome, Mary Catherine,” I said. “The Romans have pizza.”
“No excuses. Now, you can warm up the cars or wake the kids. Your choice.”
“The cars, I guess,” I mumbled as she turned to head back inside. “If I have to.”
“You have to,” my iron-willed
nanny said, pointing toward the shed at the side of the house as she creaked open the screen door.
CHAPTER 4
Twenty minutes later, we were rolling up the road toward our landlord’s farm.
Seamus, Brian, Eddie, and the twins took our new Jeep, while Mary Catherine and I piled the rest of the kids into the vintage station wagon that Cody insisted on loaning us. Cody’s awesome wagon was an old Pontiac Tempest muscle car that reminded me of my childhood in the seventies, when seat belts were optional, the cigarette lighter was for firing up Marlboro reds, and even station wagons could haul it off the line.
I was truly impressed with Mary Catherine when I saw all the teens up and about so early. The kids were even talking and joking with each other instead of fighting. Which was saying something, since no one had eaten breakfast yet.
“What’s up with everybody? They seem excited,” I said to Mary Catherine as we rolled up the half mile of dirt road for Cody’s farm. “Seamus hasn’t even insulted me once. What gives?”
“They don’t seem excited. They are excited,” Mary Catherine said. “They love this, Mike. So will you. Watch.”
Cody was already outside his huge modern barn. He was waiting for us by his old green Ford tractor. Behind the tractor was a hay-bale-littered trailer that the kids immediately started piling into after we parked.
“Howdy, Mike. I see you decided to join us this morning,” Cody said, smiling as he shook my hand.
I liked Cody. His son was the special agent in charge at the FBI’s Chicago office, so he knew and respected our whole situation with Perrine. He had actually offered his secluded ranch as a witness protection sanctuary a few times before. We really couldn’t have asked for someone better to hide us and watch our backs than the friendly former marine sergeant and decorated Vietnam vet.
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