I, Michael Bennett

by James Patterson

  “As an added benefit, in federal lockdown, they’re away from their homies, so they can’t coordinate anything from behind bars,” said Agent Brown. “We break the camel’s back with one snap.”

  “You do know the Newburgh PD has only ninety cops, right?” Bill Moss said. “What you’re talking about requires massive manpower.”

  “That’s where we step in,” said Brown. “We’ll get you man-power, overtime, money, vehicles, and equipment. The whole shebang.”

  “Federal disaster relief. Finally,” Groover said.

  “But there are roughly two hundred gang members here,” Ed Boyanoski said.

  “Not a problem,” Agent Macaulay said. “We’ll get you all the guys you need.”

  “This all sounds great, but won’t all the wannabes just step in? The second-tier people?” Detective Walrond said. “Newburgh is the most thriving drug market in Orange County. Won’t the demand still be there?”

  “That’s when we go to phase three,” Tara said. “After we clear out the worst offenders, we get social workers, gang members, and community members-along with all the cops-and we do a sit-down. One group at a time, we give the gangbangers a presentation, a little class on what they’re looking at if the violence starts back up.

  “We educate them fully on the law, the sentencing guidelines, what that’s going to do to their lives. We tell them straight up that if someone gets shot, we are coming down with the full weight of the federal government. That’s usually enough.”

  “That’s it?” Bill Moss said. “That actually works?”

  “Not perfectly, but yes,” Tara said. “Violent homicides go down, way down, in every place it’s tried. You have to do it one gang at a time and concentrate on one aspect of what they do-in this case, shootings. And you have to back it up. Someone gets shot, you drop the hammer. The gangs aren’t stupid. They’ll know the jig is up, especially since they know what just happened to the previous leadership. They might not stop dealing, but it’ll go further underground. What’s most important is that they’ll put their guns down and dial it back.”

  Ed Boyanoski slapped me on the shoulder painfully hard as the townspeople began filling up the hall. He didn’t look so depressed anymore. In fact, he looked ecstatic. Finally, you could see it in his eyes and in the eyes of the other Newburgh detectives.

  It was hope. Just a glimmer, but undoubtedly there.

  “Gee, Mike. Why didn’t you just tell us that you had friends in such high places?” Ed said, smiling.

  “I’m a humble man, Ed,” I said, smiling back. “Unlike you hicks up here, we NYPD detectives don’t like to brag.”

  CHAPTER 77

  SPIRITS WERE STILL high as we headed out of Saint Pat’s to the parking lot just before ten.

  The attendance at the meeting had been even larger than the night before. Even though the FBI and ATF agents had only spoken briefly and vaguely about their plans to tackle the gang problem, just the sight of federal officials was enough to ease the minds of the people in the seats. Even the most skeptical in the crowd seemed glad that the grave nature of the problem was finally being given some serious due.

  Saying my good-byes to my colleagues, I spotted Tara by her Jeep, talking on her cell phone. As I approached, she turned it off, grinning from ear to ear.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Reservations,” she said. “I just scored us one.”

  “Reservations? To where? What do you know about this neck of the woods?”

  “That’s my little secret,” she said. “Just tell me you’re hungry, Mike.”

  “Okay. I’m Hungry Mike,” I said, smiling back.

  “Yay,” she said, grabbing my hand and opening the door of her Jeep. “I think you’re in for a happy surprise.”

  She wasn’t kidding. She took me fifteen minutes west on I-84 to a place called the Back Yard Bistro, in the town of Montgomery.

  But as it turned out, I had a surprise for her.

  Before we got out of her Jeep, I started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Tara said.

  “I cannot tell a lie, Tara. I’ve been here before. And you do have excellent taste. I should know. My cousin owns the place.”

  “So much for my surprise,” Tara said, deflated.

  “Not to worry,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll be disappointed.”

  The Back Yard Bistro was a tiny, intimate restaurant. So cozy that Tara and I were almost touching knees under the small table. The waitress couldn’t have been more pleasant, and the food was mind-blowing.

  The kitchen kept sending out course after course. Tidbits of tuna tartare, foie gras, some rye-crusted pork loin, a truly amazing duck breast. All of it matched with wines. My head and taste buds were spinning.

  As we ate, Tara regaled me with family stories of her cousin and my dearly departed pal, Hughie. My favorite was when Hughie and the rest of his ADD-afflicted Irish clan visited a cousin’s farm in Ireland. Finding a tiny, deserted-looking house back in the woods, the Yank punks commenced firing rocks through the windows until the tam-o’-shanter-wearing pensioner living there came out with a double-barreled shotgun.

  “Wow,” I said after our waitress, Marlena, dropped a humongous slice of maple mascarpone cheesecake in front of me and a crème brûlée in front of Tara. “This was fantastic, Tara. I hope you forgive me for ruining your surprise,” I said.

  “If anyone needs to be forgiven, it’s me,” Tara said. “After all, I made such an ass out of myself at the St. Regis. Pretty much bare-assed, too, if memory serves me right.”

  “Were you?” I said. “When was this?”

  “Very funny, Mike. I haven’t forgotten that night. I probably never will. At least the parts I can remember. You tucked me in. That was so sweet, so genteel. Cary Grant couldn’t have been more… Cary Grant. But even now, part of me wishes that you hadn’t, Mike. Is that wrong to say? Part of me wishes that you had stayed.”

  I took a sip of the Champagne at my elbow. Low on the speakers, an opera diva was singing a beautiful aria.

  The woman in front of me was pretty much flawless. Dark and voluptuous, smart as a whip, tough, and yet caring and kind. There are women you meet in life that you know you could-and probably should-fall deeply in love with. Tara was exactly that. She was a keeper. One ripe for the keeping. All it would take would be for me to reach across the table through the candlelight and take her graceful hand.

  And yet, I didn’t do it. In the end, I couldn’t. My hand stayed on my glass, the aria ended.

  “Ah, Mike. Whoever she is, she’s lucky,” Tara said, putting her head down and digging into her dessert hard enough to make the plate clink. “Luckier than she’ll ever know.”

  CHAPTER 78

  TARA DROPPED ME off in front of the lake house half an hour later. It was pin-drop quiet on the way back. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t her. That it wasn’t about attraction. But even I knew how lame that would sound. I wisely kept it zipped, for once.

  “Thank you for dinner,” I said as we stopped in the gravel driveway.

  Somewhere between rage and tears, Tara sat motionless behind the wheel, staring dead ahead as her motor ticked. I took the half minute of her complete silence as my cue to get out. Gravel flew as she peeled back out onto the country road. A tiny piece of it nailed me in the corner of my right eye and became pretty much embedded. Then there was just me and all my friendly chittering cricket friends as I stood there in the dark.

  “Way to go, Mike,” I mumbled to myself as I climbed, half blind, up the creaky wooden steps to the front door. “Way to win friends and really influence people.”

  As I reached for the front door, something funny happened. It opened by itself as the porch light came on. I blinked in the light with my left eye as I rubbed furiously at the right one. My crazy day wasn’t over, apparently. Not even close.

  My kids’ loving nanny, Mary Catherine, appeared in the miraculously open doorway with arms crossed over her chest.
Even with only one peeper working, I could see that the expression on her face was more than vaguely familiar. It was the same one I’d just seen on Tara’s face before she gave me a face full of gravel.

  Will Shakespeare was wrong, I thought, rubbing at my eye as moths whacked into each other over my head.

  Hell hath no fury like two women scorned.

  Standing there, I suddenly thought of a dumb expression from my childhood. It arrived instantly, like a mental text message from Mike Bennett, circa 1978.

  Your ass is grass, it said.

  “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Michael Bennett, finally home, drunk, after his many adventures abroad,” Mary Catherine said, clapping her hands together sarcastically.

  “That is who just dropped you off, correct?” she said, cocking her head. “A broad?”

  She had me dead to rights. Even under the direst of circumstances, I always made every effort to contact her about my status and inquire about what was going on at the house, about the kids. And I hadn’t. I’d gone off to work pretty much yesterday, and I hadn’t lifted the phone once. Not only that, but I knew full well what Mary Catherine thought of my new friend and colleague, Tara McLellan.

  With nothing in the holster, I tried drunken charm.

  “Mary Catherine, hello,” I said with a courtly bow. “Long time no see. How is everything?”

  “Bad, Mr. Bennett,” she said, tears welling in her blue eyes. “Bad and about to get worse.”

  “Mary Catherine, come on. I can explain,” I said.

  She stood there, glaring furiously at me through her soft, wet eyes.

  “Actually, I can’t,” I said after a moment. “Only that I screwed up. I should have called you.”

  “And told me what? That you were going to be late tonight because you were out on a date?”

  I stood there, wincing, as I remembered what Mary Catherine had said on our walk. The date I was supposed to plan but never did.

  “It’s not what you think. That was Tara McLellan, the prosecutor on the Perrine case,” I said. “It was work, Mary Catherine. She came up to the Newburgh meeting to discuss the feds helping out with the gang problem.”

  Mary just stood and stared at me, the sadness in her blue eyes really killing me inside.

  “You mean the Newburgh town meeting that ended at ten?” she finally said.

  CHAPTER 79

  “YES,” I SAID. “We had dinner after.”

  “Dinner,” Mary nodded. “How special. Three hours of it, too. I guess I can toss the plate of ziti the kids and I saved for you. And the slice of cake from Jane’s birthday.”

  “Shit,” I said, closing my good eye. “Mary Catherine, I completely forgot. I’m sorry. Let me come in and we’ll talk about it.”

  “Oh, by all means come in,” Mary Catherine said, opening the screen door, which gave out a deafening squeak.

  I saw then that she was dressed-jeans, a T-shirt, and a backpack on her back. No! Wait. What?

  “The house is all yours, because I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m leaving, Michael Bennett. And I’m not coming back.”

  “Mary Catherine, come on. I know you’re angry, but that’s crazy. It’s… it’s one in the morning.”

  “No,” Mary Catherine said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s actually two in the morning, and I won’t come on. Not anymore.”

  She stepped forward suddenly. For a second, I thought she was going to belt me one. It was almost worse when she stopped herself and didn’t.

  She brushed past me and hit the stairs.

  I tried to say something, tried to come up with words that would make her stop in her tracks, but there was nothing to say. She walked past me where I stood rooted to the porch and right out into the summer night.

  I would have gone after her immediately, but my eye was on fire, so I ran inside to splash water on my stinging face. After I finally worked loose the gravel grit from my burning eye, I rushed back to the front door.

  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 sai
d, 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.”