I, Michael Bennett

by James Patterson

  I shook my head. I had enough on my plate, I decided. Too much, probably.

  “The Newburgh police department,” I told her, plopping down into the backseat.

  CHAPTER 58

  WE ROLLED OVER the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge back into the run-down town that had almost taken the lives of two of my kids.

  I still couldn’t get over the dichotomy between the town’s Gilded Age history-not to mention its pleasant layout and architecture-and its current decrepit state. Every other house seemed to be a Carpenter Gothic or a Greek Revival or a Queen Anne. These “painted ladies” had definitely seen better days, though, since many of their windows were either missing or boarded up and their gingerbread molding was blistered and rotting.

  I continued to shake my head as we pulled onto the four-lane thoroughfare called Broadway. With its forty-five-degree parking and three-story brick buildings, it looked quintessentially American, like a street scene in an Edward Hopper painting. I was almost expecting a trolley car to turn one of the corners or a soda jerk to walk out of one of the corner stores in a bow tie and white paper hat. But like so many Rust Belt towns in the northeast, Newburgh reminded me of the scene from It’s a Wonderful Life in which George Bailey gets to see his hometown as it would have been had he never been born.

  Talk about wasted potential, I thought. What the heck had happened to this once beautiful place? Staring out at Newburgh’s blighted streets, I wondered if George Bailey had maybe caught a bullet in a drive-by.

  “I knew I should’ve taken Water Street,” the cabbie said before letting out a loud, slow, scared breath.

  We stopped at a red light near Lutheran Street. I leaned forward and watched as a group of teenage black kids crossed in front of the cab. Every one of them was wearing a red do-rag, whether tied to their wrists or peeking out from under their hoods and ball caps. Staring back at their swaggering and arrogant malevolence, I was reminded of Perrine’s demeanor in the courtroom. Like Perrine, these kids seemed quite used to driving fear into people’s hearts. In fact, they seemed to enjoy it.

  I instantly felt myself getting worked up, really starting to seethe. The Newburgh detectives had already told me that the town’s drug trade was run by the Bloods and the Latin Kings, and that it looked like it was a member of the rag-wearing Bloods who had shot my sons.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off them as the group made the opposite corner. I was seeing red, all right. All I kept thinking was that my outgoing son Eddie wasn’t so outgoing anymore. That these bastards might have screwed him up for the rest of his life.

  By the time the light turned green, I was done. I literally couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Wait. Stop. Let me out here,” I said to the driver.

  “What the heck? What are you doing?” my young blue-haired cabbie said. “You don’t want to get out on this block. This is like the ’hood, you know what I’m sayin’? The police department is only a couple of blocks down.”

  Instead of answering her, I dropped a twenty into the front seat.

  I opened the door with the hand that wasn’t holding my quickly drawn and cocked Glock.

  Now it was time for some answers.

  CHAPTER 59

  “HEY, WHAT HAVE we here?” one of the gangbangers said as the cab sped away. “That Men’s Wearhouse two-for-one you wearing says you definitely ain’t no pimp. You one of Newburgh’s Finest? Or maybe you Bill O’Reilly from the TV?”

  The rest of his crew broke up laughing as I approached the north side of Broadway. Every ground-floor business up and down the beat-up block was closed, I noticed. Nothing but steel gates in both directions as far as the eye could see. Everyone had gotten out of Dodge, which was only smart because drug gangs like these Bloods protected their turf with beatings and stabbings and shootings.

  The head jokester was a thin, six-foot-three kid of about nineteen. He was relaxed, smiling, enjoying himself. A broad-shouldered youth sitting on the corner mailbox beside him took a toke of the blunt he was smoking and blew the rancid smoke in my direction.

  As I approached them, I felt a flicker of fear for the first time as the sane part of my mind began to realize what kind of situation I was putting myself in. There were six of them. Two of them were skinny high school kids, but the others were hardened-looking street punks, tattooed and prison-jacked under spotless XXXL white tees. I could tell at least one of them had a gun in his waistband by the way he was standing a little hunched to one side.

  Armed cop or not, I was all alone and didn’t even know where the hell I was. What the hell was I doing? You needed backup in an area like this. SWAT, maybe.

  But then I did a smart thing. I told the rational Dr. Jekyll part of me to put a sock in it, and let the unhinged Mr. Hyde part of me begin to roll.

  “No, no. I’m not Bill O’Reilly,” I said with a laugh as I finally showed them what was in my hand.

  They reared back, whoa-ing and raising their hands in unison as I leveled my chunky black polymer Glock in their faces. The gangbangers stood in complete shock, absolutely frozen, as though I’d just conjured up an elephant or a cruise ship out of thin air.

  “But I am looking for news,” I said. “You guys hear about some little kids that got shot over on Lander Street last week? Speak up, fellas. I can’t hear you. I heard the shooter was wearing a red Yankees cap. You guys look like red’s your favorite color, like maybe you shop at the same store. I’ll ask nice one more time. Who shot those kids?”

  They kept staring at me in mute wonder.

  The funny thing was, at that moment, I was willing to shoot them, and they knew it. They could see it in my eyes that I was about as far from messing around as one can get.

  As a cop, you draw your gun for one reason: to kill someone. You don’t wing people, you don’t let off warning shots. When you take out your gun, it’s for putting bullets into someone’s head or chest before they can do the same to you. If you’re not willing to go that far, then you leave it in the holster.

  “Hey, chill, Officer,” the pot-smoking tough finally said. “We didn’t do nothing. This ain’t Lander Street. This be the east end. Just chill. We got no beef with you.”

  “Oh, yes, you do, homey,” I growled, my knuckles whitening around the grip of my gun. “See, those kids who got shot, they were my kids. I’m not a cop here. I’m a father. Now you tell me right now which one of you red-rag-wearing jackasses shot my kids or by tomorrow morning, your girlfriends and mommas are going to be laying out so many damn memorial candles on this corner it’s going to be lit up like Times Square.”

  That’s when I heard it. It was the high squeal of tires behind me. For a second, I panicked, thinking my Irish temper had finally gone and gotten my dumb ass killed. For a moment, I was seriously convinced that I was about to get run over or hosed in a drive-by.

  Then over the engine roar of the rapidly approaching car, I heard a glorious sound. It was the metallic double woop of a squad-car growler. The flickering blue and red lights made the darkened north side of Broadway look like a carnival as the car screeched to a stop at my back.

  The gang kids scattered as I turned around, holstering my weapon.

  Two cops got out of the unmarked car and stood behind its flung-open doors.

  “Hi, Mike. Um, out for an evening stroll?” Detective Bill Moss said, rolling his eyes.

  His partner, Ed Boyanoski, shook his head at me with an expression somewhere between disappointment and awe.

  “Well, what do you know? The cavalry, right on time,” I said.

  “Let me guess. Long day at the office, Mike?” Bill said as I climbed into the backseat.

  I smiled.

  “It was, but that little meet and greet has rejuvenated me all of a sudden,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “I think I just got my second wind.”

  CHAPTER 60

  INSTEAD OF HEADING to the police department, the detectives took me to an all-night diner a little north of the city, near the interstate, to meet t
heir colleagues.

  At a semicircular red vinyl booth toward the rear of the chrome-and-mirrored space, I was introduced to Sergeant Grant Walrond and Officer Timothy Groover. Walrond was Mike-Tyson stocky, a young friendly black cop with a dry sense of humor. Groover, on the other hand, was white and tall, with a mullet hairdo that made him look more like a farmer than a cop. Both of them were extremely dedicated veteran cops and were the major players in the Newburgh PD gang unit.

  Bill Moss said, “Sergeant Walrond here received some information this afternoon that the shooter was a Blood, but not from Lander Street.”

  “The kid we got word about is pretty well known,” Walrond said. “His name’s James Glaser, but they call him Jay D. He’s a Blood from the east end, a low-level punk who jumps from crew to crew because he’s a loose-cannon troublemaker. He’s eighteen years old, and he was shot on two different occasions last year.”

  “Got more holes in him than a colander,” Groover mumbled over the rim of his coffee cup.

  “Crew to crew?” I said. “How many Bloods are there?”

  “About a hundred and fifty members altogether,” Walrond said.

  “In a town of thirty thousand?” I said in shock. “When the heck did all this start? I thought the Bloods were an L.A. thing.”

  “It’s true that most of the gangs, like the Bloods and the Latin Kings, originated in L.A. and Chicago,” Groover said. “But because selling drugs is so profitable, members started branching out to expand their markets. Most of the gang members in Newburgh are offshoots of the gangs in New York, primarily those on Rikers Island, which are predominantly run by the Bloods and the Latin Kings.”

  “Usually, the gang will make contacts among the locals and contract out the street sales,” Walrond added. “The locals are brought into the gang, taught its culture and rules, and pretty soon you have yourself a serious problem. The Newburgh kids are like kids anywhere else-just bored teenagers looking for direction and excitement. When the gang rep shows up, it’s like a match on gasoline.”

  “The gangs provide direction, all right,” Bill Moss piped in. “How to get to the graveyard before your twenty-first birthday. We had seven murders last year. Six of them were male gangbangers under the age of twenty-five. The seventh was a second grade girl caught in the crossfire.”

  I shook my head. And I thought New York was bad.

  Sergeant Walrond excused himself as he received a text message.

  “All right. Here we go,” he said. “That’s Pops. He’s one of my informants. Why don’t you come meet him with us, Mike? He’s sort of a street guy, but he actually feels for how bad Newburgh has gotten. He feels especially horrible about what happened to your kids.”

  Walrond didn’t have to ask me twice.

  We met Pops a block away, in the empty parking lot of a medical office building. He was a heavyset, kind of goofy, fast-talking black guy with a deep voice who reminded me of the clownish old-school rapper Biz Markie.

  “Like I was tellin’ you, Sarge,” Pops said. “It wasn’t the Bloods shot those kids. Shootin’ customers be bad for business, ’specially white ones ’fraid to come into the ’hood in the first place.”

  “But Jay D is a Blood,” Walrond argued.

  “Aw, he just a peewee. He got no rank,” Pops said dismissively. “Plus the kid’s just damn crazy. The way I heard it, he was working with the Kings, man. He was like hired out.”

  “Hired out?” I said, my blood beginning to boil for the second time this evening.

  Walrond put a hand on my shoulder.

  I shut my mouth. Which wasn’t easy, considering I just wanted answers. I bit my tongue and allowed the detective to do his job.

  “Why would they do that, Pops?” Walrond continued.

  “Beats me,” Pops said. “All I know is the Bloods ain’t happy because tensions already be runnin’ high lately between the nations. They say it’s that Mexican cartel dude they got on trial. What’s his name? Perrine? Yeah, Perrine’s been franchising out all that good pure Mexican dope for cheap to the Latin King Nation from South Beach up to Boston. The Kings keep dropping their price, and the Bloods are getting crushed, losin’ business like crazy.”

  Perrine? I thought. Perrine was connected to the Latin Kings who hired someone to shoot my kids? It couldn’t be. How could that be right?

  Walrond immediately sensed I was about to jump out of my skin.

  “Thanks, Pops,” Walrond said, sending him on his way. “Keep in touch.”

  CHAPTER 61

  I HAD A lot on my mind by the time Walrond and Groover finally dropped me back at the lake house. Fortunately, Mary had left me dinner, a homemade Italian sub with a side of German potato salad, which I found in the back of the old vintage fridge, deftly hidden from hungry teens. To complete my culinary trip around the world, I washed it down with a bottle of cold Pilsner Urquell beer from the Czech Republic.

  Who says the effects of globalization are all bad?

  After my late-night dinner, I went into the family room and turned on Leno. There was a box of movie candy on the coffee table called Lemonhead & Friends. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten candy, but for whatever reason, I started gobbling up the sweet-and-sour jelly-bean things like they were going out of style.

  As I scarfed down the sugary garbage, I watched Leno interview a bullying British celebrity chef who really needed a punch in the mouth. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the informant, Pops, had said about Perrine’s involvement with the Latin Kings, and the Latin Kings’ involvement with my kids’ shooting. Was it just street bullshit? His own personal fantasy? The guy did kind of seem like a flake.

  It nagged me so much that I found my cell phone and made a call. It was to the DEA SWAT head, Patrick Zaretski, who had been my departed friend Hughie’s mentor in the agency. Ever since Hughie had been killed, Zaretski had been doing nothing but delving into the intricacies of Perrine’s cartel and trying to find all those responsible for his death. If Pops’s story had any truth to it, Patrick would be able to confirm it.

  Patrick answered on the fourth ring.

  “Hey, Patrick. Mike Bennett. Sorry to call you so late, but I need a favor. I got a guy in Newburgh, New York, who’s claiming that Perrine is supplying the Latin Kings with dope on the East Coast. Does that sound right to you? You think there’s a connection there?”

  “I don’t know, Mike,” Patrick said. “But give me an hour and I’ll find out.”

  It actually only took half an hour before my phone rang again.

  “Mike, you’re spot on. We do have intelligence that the two organizations are working in concert. It started up late last year. Apparently, half the Latin Kings’ heroin and almost all their coke is coming from Perrine’s people. Perrine is also supplying the gang MS-13 and pretty much all the Latin drug trafficking gangs in the entire country. That’s how deeply these Mexican cartels have penetrated into the U.S.

  “I hate to ask, Mike, but does this have something to do with your kids?”

  We’d mostly kept the boys’ shooting out of the paper, but I’d already told Patrick and a few other law enforcement friends what had happened.

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out, Patrick,” I said. “I thought it was just a terrible mistake-my kids being in the wrong place at the wrong time-but the informant up here is claiming that the kid who shot Eddie and Brian was hired by the Latin Kings. Could Perrine know that I’m up here on vacation? He targeted my children?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s more than possible, Mike,” Patrick said. “You’ve seen the pictures. You know Perrine’s tactics down in Mexico. You think you’d be the first cop he’s personally targeted? He’s a mass murderer, Mike. You put him in a cage. Of course, he’d love to get at you and your loved ones.”

  I sat there holding the phone. All around me, my family slept safely in their beds. But for how long? I thought. How the hell could I keep them safe with this monster and his organization on my trail?
r />   CHAPTER 62

  MY CELL PHONE rang early the next morning. Before dawn, in fact.

  It didn’t really matter, because I was already up with Seamus. I was teaching him how to load and unload the 12-gauge Remington shotgun I’d found behind some canoe oars in the cluttered garage a couple of days before. It killed me to have to teach the kind old man how to lethally defend himself and the rest of the kids. He was a priest, after all.

  But what else could I do after my conversation with Patrick Zaretski? It was looking more and more like my family had actually been targeted by Perrine. These were truly desperate times.

  It turned out to be Detective Ed Boyanoski on the phone.

  “Sorry to call so early, Mike, but we got a witness who just ID’d your boys’ shooter. The county DA gave the go-ahead. We’re about to go grab him, and I thought you’d want to be there.”

  “You thought right,” I said.

  “We’ll come to you,” Ed said. “Be there in ten.”

  That’s when Mary Catherine came into the kitchen. Her eyes just about detached from their sockets when she saw Seamus in his Manhattan College pajamas with the pump-action shotgun.

  “What in the name of sweet holy God is going on here?” she wanted to know.

  Seamus smiled devilishly.

  “Nothing, really,” he said. “Young Michael here was just teaching me the finer rudiments of how to lock and load.”

  “Give it here,” Mary Catherine told him.

  She took the shotgun from him deftly and quickly thumbed four shells into the underside loading port.

  “What model Remington is this? An eight seventy?” she said, blinking a curl of blond hair out of her eyes.

  I nodded, blinking back in shock.

  She clicked the safety on before pumping a round into the chamber. She swung the shotgun to her shoulder and aimed down the barrel at the wall, nodding to herself. Then she unloaded it, quickly pumping all the rounds out of the receiver onto the kitchen table, catching the last spinning red shell in her hand.