Step on a Crack

by James Patterson

  “You made another mistake, Mike,” he said. “Only this one’s kind of fatal. Coming into a man’s house uninvited. You thought I wouldn’t anticipate you might find us? Shit, even a broken clock is right twice a day. You think that fat bastard Clark is in charge here? This is my prison. My turf, my people.”

  “It’s over, Jack,” I said.

  “I really don’t think so, Mike,” Jack said. “Think about it. We got out of one fortress. We can get out of another. Especially now that we have hostages. Hell, Mike, maybe I’ll even let you negotiate your own release. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds great,” I said, taking a half step back. My heel struck the flat, hard steel of the door. There was nowhere to run.

  The heavy radio I’d been given by the warden was the only thing remotely resembling a weapon. I hefted it as Little John pulled his baton out with a sickening smile. The bastard had a face as repellent as a stinkbug’s.

  “Why don’t we just talk about this for a second?” I said as I reared back, then hurled the radio. Roger Clemens would have been proud. The radio and Little John’s nose exploded simultaneously. He screamed; then he and Jack lit into me and I was lifted right off the floor.

  “Upsy-daisy, Mike!” Jack yelled in my face. Then they both threw me down on my face.

  Chapter 112

  I THOUGHT THE PRISONERS had been loud before, but it turned out they were only warming up. As I attempted to wrestle on the cement with Jack and Little John, the communal screams off the concrete shell of the cell block sounded like a jumbo jet taking off inside a hangar.

  Then stuff started to rain down from the top tiers: various liquids, wet sheets, magazines, a wad of burning toilet paper. Had I just been gassed?

  When Jack got in a lick with the riot baton on the back of my head, I went down on one knee. My consciousness was coming in and out like bad radio reception. I was pinned and blacking out as Little John rolled onto my chest.

  I screamed and pushed off the floor with all my might.

  I thought about my kids. I couldn’t leave them now. I couldn’t allow them to have no one. I wouldn’t let it happen. I was almost on my knees when Little John rolled off me and started booting me in the ribs.

  I dropped back down, my breath gone; then his steel toe kissed my solar plexus. I wondered idly if Jack, pulling back the baton above me, might be the last sight I’d ever see on the earth.

  That’s when something completely unexpected happened-an arm snaked through the bars behind Jack.

  It was so huge, it barely squeezed through, and so covered in tattoos, it looked like its owner wore a paisley sleeve. A massive hand wrapped itself around the back of Jack’s uniform shirt collar. It sounded like a gong when Jack’s head was slammed back into the bars again and again.

  “How you like it, CO?” the convict inquired as he slammed and reslammed Jack’s skull into the bars of his cell. “How you like it, you vicious prick? How you like that one?”

  When Little John got off me to help out Jack, I managed, wheezing, to gain my feet. The riot baton Jack had dropped was on the concrete. I stooped, lifted it, brought it to my shoulder.

  It had been a while since I’d had a nightstick in my hand, walking my first beat in the Hunt’s Point section of the South Bronx. On those cold, long nights I’d kept myself awake practicing with it, swinging it over and over until it whistled in cold air.

  The nightstick whistled now, and I guess it was like riding a bike, because Little John’s left knee shattered like balsa wood with my first two-handed swing.

  I had to backpedal immediately as the big man howled and hopped around surprisingly fast on one foot and came toward me. There was rage in his wide, bulging eyes, spit spraying out of his twisted, screaming mouth.

  I swung from my toes at his jaw. He ducked, but too little, too late. I broke the baton across his temple. He hit the concrete a half second before the splintered wood.

  The inmates were cheering something wicked as I stumbled around the big guard’s bleeding, unconscious hulk. Their rage-filled voices met in a violent mantra as I stepped toward the inmate who was choking Jack with both monstrous hands. Jack’s face was turning blue.

  I picked up the other dropped baton. Got myself ready for this.

  “Kill, kill, kill, kill!” the inmates screamed in unison.

  I have to admit, the suggestion was tempting. I swung the baton hard.

  But I didn’t hit Jack.

  I hit the tattooed hand that was very close to throttling the life out of him. The inmate yowled and he let go of Jack, who slumped unconscious to the floor.

  “Hey, like, you’re welcome, bro,” said the muscular convict behind the bars in a hurt voice. He was nursing his injured hand.

  “Sorry, Charlie,” I said as I started dragging Jack around the barrage of projectiles toward the sealed gym door. “I can’t arrest him if he’s dead.”

  But I can give him one good kick in the teeth. For old times’ sake, Jacko. Because we’re such buddies.

  And that’s what I did-one kick-and the inmates went wild.

  Chapter 113

  OF COURSE IT couldn’t be quite that easy.

  They found the two actual shift foremen, Rhodes and Williams, handcuffed in one of the cells on A-Block.

  It turned out that “Jack” and “Little John,” whose real names were Rocco Milton and Kenny Robard, being close to the warden as shift supervisors, had heard we were coming. They’d convinced the warden that they’d had nothing to do with the siege of St. Pat’s, even though they’d taken part in the sick-out. Then they’d ambushed the two innocent foremen-who’d been in on the sick-out but not the hijacking-and hidden them inside the cell block to shift suspicion and to get us to go into the population so they could make a play. Milton and Robard had many contacts in the inmate population, the warden told us, so who knew what their next move would have been. A riot, more hostages, a mass prison break.

  I Mirandaed Rocco “Jack” Milton in the parking lot of Sing Sing. For both business and pleasure, I made sure to do it right in front of Steve Reno and his men before opening the rear door of my cruiser and shoving him in.

  Reno left in a paddy wagon filled with the rest of the suspected hijackers. Kenny “Little John” Robard was on the way to the hospital with a fractured skull. I couldn’t help hoping the EMTs took the long way.

  I stood outside for a moment, figuring out how to play things. Then I retrieved something in the trunk of my cruiser before I climbed behind the wheel to drive Jack to New York City.

  Funny as it sounds, a lot of suspects are dying to tell you what they’ve done. And the more full of themselves, the more they want to give you the dirty details. I had a feeling Jack was pretty fond of himself.

  I stayed silent for the first part of our trip back to Manhattan and let his annoyance build. “Comfy back there?” was about all I asked. “Temperature okay?”

  “Did you know,” Jack finally said, “that in the summer of ’ninety-five four guards were taken hostage out on Rikers? Did you know that, Bennett?”

  I glanced at him through the mesh behind me.

  “Is that right?” I said.

  “Only two of us made it out.”

  “You and Little John?” I said.

  “On the money as usual, Mike,” Jack said. “You ever think about trying out for Jeopardy!? Suffice it to say that nobody gave a crap about a few corrections officers, especially the mayor.”

  “So that’s why you killed him? Why you stabbed him? Burned him with cigarettes?”

  Jack scratched his chin ponderously. “Between you and me?” he said.

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said, smiling back at him.

  “You better believe it,” he said. “The animals who’d gotten their hands on us blinded one of my buddies with a butter knife and put out cigarettes on our arms. Wouldn’t you know it, Hizzoner decided he was above negotiating with the inmates on that one. Guess some men are created a little more
equal than others. You know, it’s funny. I didn’t see the mayor by my dead buddy’s widow at the funeral either. Guess you have to be a smoke eater or a flatfoot like you to get that kind of special treatment.”

  I nodded neutrally. I wanted Jack to keep talking, something he liked to do anyway.

  “When my posttraumatic stress disability claim was denied by the city for the third time, I decided, to hell with it, I’m done. I was going to pull off something large, or die trying. The St. Pat’s idea came to me when I moonlighted as security at the state funeral for the previous cardinal. I thought it was going to be so impenetrable, with the legendary Secret Service and all, but I found out what a joke it was. Like the rest of the security assholes, those guys were soft, all show.”

  “What about the other jackers? Your coworkers?” I said. “How’d you convince them to go along?”

  “Convince them?” Jack said. “I don’t know about you New York’s Finest, but being a guard chews you up. We’re inside the belly of the beast, too, and we didn’t do nothing to get there. Put shit pay on top of that, divorce and suicide rates in the stratosphere, and hassle from the bosses, you got a gourmet recipe for disaster. Ever get feces thrown in your face? Not good for a man’s general well-being.”

  “Sounds heartbreaking,” I said. “But executing the First Lady, the mayor, a priest, and John Rooney because you were stressed out? That might be a hard sell to a judge.”

  Jack didn’t seem to have heard me. He was staring off at the side of the road. The setting sun through the leafless trees made a bar code of shadow and light on the curving asphalt.

  “We did it for each other,” he said quietly. “Go ahead and put us back in jail. Won’t matter. I’ve already been there for the last fifteen years. Guards do life just like prisoners, only we do it in eight-hour shifts.”

  “If doing life is what you’re worried about, then I got good news,” I told the cop killer as I clicked off the tape recorder I had running in the pocket of my Windbreaker.

  “I’ll do everything in my power to see you get the death penalty, Jack.”

  Chapter 114

  IT WAS EIGHT O’CLOCK and dark when I pulled to the curb down the block from a small house on Delafield Avenue in the posh Riverdale section of the Bronx, just a few blocks from Manhattan College, where I’d learned to reason, analyze, and be a better person.

  Five minutes before, we had finalized our plan at a rally point in the parking lot of a Food Emporium two blocks away. Steve Reno and his guys were already set up in the neighborhood. We had the house surrounded and wired for video and sound.

  It was time to pick up the final and most putrid bag of garbage.

  The inside man. The one Jack called “the Neat Man.”

  According to one of our snipers perched on the backyard wall, our suspect was inside on the ground floor right now, finishing up dinner with his family. Prime rib of beef with the works-brown gravy, mashed potatoes, white asparagus, reported the sniper.

  “Car coming from the south,” I said into the radio as a blue Lincoln passed my position. I saw the airport taxi placard in its side window as it slowed before our target’s house.

  “Looks like our boy’s ride is here,” I said. “Where is he now in the house?”

  “Just went upstairs,” said the sniper.

  “What’s he doing up there?” I said.

  “Washing his hands,” the sniper said after a pause. “Okay. He’s finished. Coming downstairs.”

  “Heads up, Steve,” I said into my Motorola. “On me. I’m going in.” I climbed out of my car. This was going to be good. I hoped.

  “Get another fare,” I told the taxi hack with a flash of my badge as I stopped in front of the neat, narrow brick steps to the house. “His flight just got canceled.”

  I rang the doorbell and crouched to the side behind a meticulously clipped hedge. There was a small glazed window beside the door, and down the hall I could see a woman and three kids cleaning up the dining room table with practiced efficiency.

  I guess they hadn’t been invited to Costa Rica with dear old Dad.

  A form passed the window and I drew my Glock. Then the front door opened slowly.

  Struggling with a bulky carry-on and a black Tumi suitcase, Paul Martelli had a puzzled expression as he watched the airport limo pull away down the block without him. That’s when I stepped out from my spot beside the hedges.

  “Paul, how are ya?” I said. “Funny seeing you here like this. I was just talking to a friend of yours. Jack. He sends his regards.”

  I watched a terrible flicker in the FBI negotiator’s eyes. A tremor seemed to suddenly affect his right hand holding the suitcase, the one nearest to a still-holstered nine millimeter.

  I showed him the Glock I was already holding beside my leg-as three sniper laser dots suddenly danced on his chest like a squadron of angry red bees.

  “That would be some very poor decision making there, Paul,” I told him, “going for that nine. But I’d like to see you try. Give it a shot, Neat Man.”

  Chapter 115

  “I WA-WA-WANT a lawyer,” Paul Martelli said when he was handcuffed to the leg of my squad room desk about half an hour later in Manhattan.

  The cool, calm demeanor I remembered from outside St. Pat’s seemed to have taken a long bathroom break. The man’s hands were shaking, and circles of sweat had formed beneath the sleeves of his crisp blue dress shirt. There was an army of Feds out in the hall, waiting to get their crack at him, but not until I was done.

  There was one thing I needed him to clear up for me.

  Jack had already told me most of it. How he and Martelli had become fast friends after the Rikers Island hostage situation. How they found that they shared an undying contempt for the system; how they felt their pathetic pay was beneath them.

  Martelli had been the inside man during the siege. He was the mastermind working behind the scenes, pushing our buttons. Literally having written the book on the subject, he knew what our reactions would be. Plus, he could influence what we did.

  “I don’t have to explain to you how the game works, do I, Paul? Cooperation is the only thing that can save any of you losers,” I said. “Right now, the music’s still playing, but I’ll give you a little tip. The seats are almost full.”

  Martelli sat there blinking and sweating. I could almost see the thoughts shifting through his head. His right knee began to jump suddenly.

  “I’ll tell you whatever you need to know on one condition,” he said.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “This place is filthy dirty,” the FBI agent said. “I need a moist towelette. I’m nervous, Mike.”

  “How was the First Lady killed?” I said after I tossed him a lemon-scented one from under the take-out menus inside my desk drawer. Martelli didn’t speak again until he was finished meticulously scrubbing his face and hands. He seemed to have calmed down considerably, too.

  “Alvarez did her,” he said.

  “Jose Alvarez?” I said. “The hijacker who was killed at the dealership during the escape?”

  “Actually, his cousin Julio,” said Martelli. “We had a pretty tall order,” he went on, staring at the back of my computer monitor. “In order to get a state funeral going, we needed to kill somebody high-profile and make it look like an accident. For months, I pored over potential targets. When I read about the First Lady’s allergy and her and the former president’s annual holiday meal at L’Arène, I figured we had it solved. We all put our heads together; then we made our pact. Julio quit his guard job and got a prep-cook job at L’Arène. When the president and First Lady came in, he put peanut oil in her foie gras in the kitchen.”

  “So it was all over money?” I asked the FBI agent.

  “We can’t all be Boy Scouts like you, Mr. Mom,” the negotiator said, looking me in the eyes for the first time. “Of course it was about money. Ring up those rich-and-famous assholes we kidnapped. They’ll tell you straight up. If they take your ca
ll, that is. Money’s what makes this dirty world go round, Mike.”

  I looked away from Martelli in disgust. A young FBI agent with a wife and two small kids had been killed during the standoff, and it was obvious Martelli couldn’t care less.

  But I could see panic start in Martelli’s eyes as I motioned at the door and the Feds walked in for him.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have another Wet-Nap for the road there, Mike?” he said quickly.

  I opened the desk drawer for a millisecond, then slammed it shut.

  “Wouldn’t you know it,” I said. “I’m fresh out.”

  Epilogue. SAINTS

  Chapter 116

  THOUGH IT WAS FREEZING cold and windy, the sun was shining as we Bennetts resolutely made our way through the stone-walled entrance to Riverside Park on Saturday morning a week later. Beyond the bare trees, the Hudson River, our river as Maeve used to call it, looked like an endless field of molten silver.

  It didn’t take very long for me to find the orange-taped stake. My darling wife and I had carefully placed it at the edge of a meadow overlooking the water just three months before.

  I put down the oak sapling I was carrying on one shoulder and lifted the stake. I glanced at my oldest son. Brian nodded and stabbed the spade he was holding into the earth.

  We all took turns. I had to help with Shawna and Chrissy, but Trent insisted on taking his turn by himself. I finally placed the sapling into the hole we’d made. Then I got down on my knees and started pushing the dirt back in with my hands. Pretty soon, I had a lot of help. All of us were down on the ground, hands buried in the fresh dirt.

  I stood up finally, staring at the baby tree silently, feeling the cold, moist wind on my mud-covered hands. A tugboat, chugging lazily north on the river, seemed to be making the only sound on the earth.

  I remembered watching the sun go down on a late picnic we’d had in summer the year before. Before the cancer, the last time things were really right. The kids catching fireflies as I rested my chin on Maeve’s shoulder, the sky turning aqua and gold. I could feel her now as I stood there without her, the weight of Maeve against me, the way an amputee feels a lost limb, a phantom pain in the heart.