I, Michael Bennett

by James Patterson

  Not living people, anyway.

  So throughout all the summer fun, I had my guns attached to me at all times. I’d even illegally sawed off the barrels of the lake house shotgun so I could keep it handy under the seat of the bus. I kept it there with the mirror I used every morning to see if there was a bomb attached to the underside of the bus’s chassis. Paranoid, I know, but sometimes it’s the little things in life that count most. This kind of crap never happened to the Partridge family, I bet.

  After the cattle show, we went into one of the Big E tents and listened to some country music. I was getting into it, too, had almost forgotten all my troubles, when the cowboy-hatted singer started a sad tune about losing his girl.

  Talk about bringing things down. I didn’t need this. My life had become a country music song. If I hadn’t been the designated bus driver, I would have ordered a beer to cry into.

  Because just like Perrine, Mary Catherine was still MIA. No calls. No contact. I wasn’t the only one missing her, either. Despite all the fun vacation activities, I could see the kids were quite confused and upset.

  So even with the sad-sack serenade wailing from the stage, I didn’t leave the music tent. Even after the kids went off with Seamus to go to the hay maze, I sat there and listened to every word as the cowboy sang about broken hearts and empty beds and watching the red taillights on his girl’s car driving away.

  CHAPTER 90

  THAT NIGHT AFTER the fair, we arrived back home after midnight. I checked the house as I always did, namely, from stem to stern with my 9mm cocked. After placing all my sunburned, carb-stuffed guys into the loving arms of Morpheus, and after enjoying a nightcap with Seamus, I played messages on the house phone.

  My boss, Miriam, had called and said that the Times wanted to speak to me, as did someone from ABC News. Even though I’d been pretty much unplugged, I knew Perrine’s escape was front-page news not just across the country but throughout the world. Some British politician said it was just another example of the decline of U.S. dominance in world affairs.

  Gee, thanks, old boy. I always knew I’d make history one day. What was worse was that some of our own talking heads were agreeing with him.

  Another message popped up.

  “Mike, hi. Bill Bedford here. I need to reinterview you concerning a few things on the Perrine escape. Specifically about an incident at the federal lockup. Some sort of scuffle between you two? I can be reached at… ”

  I promptly hit the erase button. Screw this guy. He wanted to talk to me as though I were a suspect in the Perrine escape. I wasn’t about to make it easy for him. The handsome Duke-educated prick could drive up here to the sticks in his shiny G car.

  A moment later, I was actually about to unplug the phone when it rang. I stared at it for a bit and, against my better judgment, finally answered it.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Mike?” said a woman’s voice.

  For a split second, I thought it was Mary Catherine. My heart kicked against my chest. She was okay. She was coming back.

  But it was just wishful thinking.

  “Mike? Hello? It’s me, Tara. Are you there?”

  “Hi, Tara,” I said wearily. “How’s it going?”

  “Mike, listen. I’m sorry about the silent treatment at the trial. I’ve been a complete jackass, and I apologize. I’ve made a resolution to stop being nuts, okay? Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

  “Okay,” I said, startled.

  “Still friends?” she said.

  “Always, Tara. Always.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now, did you hear the news?”

  “No, what? They bagged Perrine?” I yelled, sitting up.

  “No, no. I wish,” Tara said. “I’m talking about the progress in your neck of the woods. This afternoon, the U.S. attorney just signed two RICO-statute federal indictments aimed at taking down the Bloods and Latin Kings in Newburgh. We’ve already reviewed the open gang cases and are red-balling more than eighty arrest warrants. We’re amassing a huge multi-agency strike force. A couple of days from now, we’re going to take down both gangs at once. You interested in helping us out?”

  “I’d love to, Tara, but I guess you didn’t get the memo. I’m persona non grata with you Federales these days.”

  “Bullshit, Mike. I already spoke to my boss and told him how you lit the fuse on this thing. He’s agreed. It’s only fair that you be front row center when the fireworks go off. What do you say, Mike?”

  This was good news. Not for me. For Newburgh.

  “I do love fireworks,” I said.

  CHAPTER 91

  TWO MORNINGS LATER, around 4:00 a.m., Newburgh detectives Moss, Boyanoski, and I rolled up on an imposing old castle-like brick building on South William Street.

  As we parked and crossed the darkened lot of the old National Guard armory, I thought I was hearing things. Even before we got to the steps, you could hear voices coming from inside the thick stone walls. It was an amazingly loud rumble of voices, as if maybe a midnight session of the New York Stock Exchange were under way.

  When Ed opened the front door, I just stood there for a moment, as if nailed to the floor of the brightly lit, cavernous space. In the indoor drill shed of the old building, where the state National Guard had once trained their horses, stood the largest gathering of law enforcement personnel I’d ever seen. There had to be nearly five hundred federal, state, and local cops. Wearing raid jackets and faded, drab SWAT fatigues, they stood in clumps before whiteboards or in semicircles around warrant folders laid open on the hoods of black SUVs.

  I knew Tara had said that this was going to be a mass operation, but holy moly. There were folding tables everywhere, laptops, phones going off. It looked like some kind of strange college open house. But instead of young Republicans and glee club representatives, the tables were manned by people standing behind placards that said things like MUG SHOTS and FINGERPRINTING and EVIDENCE CONTROL.

  “Newburgh hasn’t seen anything this big since Washington’s Continental Army was here,” Ed said in amazement.

  “And wouldn’t you know it? The bad guys are still wearing red,” Bill Moss said.

  We came across Tara behind one of the folding tables. In her official blue Windbreaker, with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was busily collating one of the nearly eighty arrest packages that were being put together.

  “Bill, Ed, Mike,” she said with a nod. “Glad you could make it. You wanted some action from the feds, right? Well, how’m I doing so far?”

  “Well, if this is all the guys you could get,” I said with a shrug, “then I guess we’ll just have to make do.”

  Ed Boyanoski started laughing. It didn’t look like he was going to stop. No wonder he was so mirthful. He had worked so hard for so long to try to effect some change in his hometown, and it finally looked like it was going to happen. Both he and Bill were practically speechless, not to mention unbelievably pleased.

  “I’ve been waiting on this for a long time, Ms. McLellan,” Bill Moss said, looking out on the army of law enforcement. “Longer than you know.”

  “Let’s not count our chickens before they’re hatched, gentlemen. You still have a teeny-weeny bit of work to do,” Tara said, handing us each a folder. “You bag ’em, we tag ’em. You’ll find your fellow team members on the assignment sheet two tables down. Happy hunting.”

  CHAPTER 92

  HAPPY HUNTING IT was!

  Two hours later, just before dawn, I was kneeling in my hunting blind, which in this case was a gutter on Benkard Avenue in southeast Newburgh.

  I peeled away the shirt where it was clinging to the back of my sweaty neck and looked through the night-vision scope. Across Benkard, under a streetlight the color of a chain-smoker’s grin, was our target, the end unit in a decrepit row of dust-gray town houses.

  I panned my scope up the unstable stack of bricks that held up its stoop-an arrangement that looked like something out of a Dr
. Seuss book-and checked the door and windows. Nothing. No movement in the house. No movement in the street, which we had just blocked off with two unmarked black SUVs.

  If the task force had come up with a deck of cards showing the faces of the most-wanted criminals, Ed, Bill, and I would be holding the ace of spades. The town house we were about to raid belonged to Miguel Puentes, the city’s most ruthless dealer and chief Latin Kings enforcer, who ran the drug trade on the southeast end of town. His brother, Ramon, had already been picked up at the strip club they owned out by the airport.

  Talk about getting ready to rumble. I really couldn’t have been more psyched as I crouched, squeezing the gummy rubber grips of my drawn Glock. Things were just where I liked them. God was in his heaven, the happy, amphetamine-like buzz of caffeine and adrenaline was in my bloodstream, and a bad guy was snoozing behind a poorly locked door.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Alley and rear are clear. What do you think?” Bill Moss said in my ear.

  “I think,” I said, lowering the scope, “it’s time for a Puentes family reunion.”

  A moment later, it was showtime. The word “go” came crisply over the tactical mike, and we went.

  The next seconds were a delicious blur of sounds and sights. The sharp crack of a police battering ram against a lock, and then the sound of wood splintering. We poured inside, flashlights raking the doorways of the darkened house.

  I was actually the one who found Miguel in a back bedroom, off the kitchen. I saw him immediately as I came through the doorway, a muscular, bug-eyed tough with the word “magic” tattooed on his neck. He was in his skivvies, scrambling up off a sheetless king-size bed that barely fit the room.

  “Hands! Let me see your hands!” I screamed.

  “No hablo inglés!” he screamed back, leaping for the closet to the right of the huge bed.

  I jumped up on the bed, took a step on the mattress, and tackled him. We both whammed into the cheap closet door almost hard enough to crack it. Miguel continued to struggle a little, but then stopped as I stabbed the barrel of my gun as hard as I could against his tattoo.

  “No English, but he seems to understand German pretty well, don’t he, Mike?” Ed Boyanoski said as he came in the room and body-slammed Miguel back onto the bed.

  “Sprechen sie Glock, Miguel?” he said as he clicked a pair of handcuffs on him.

  “My arm! That hurts, you fuck! I want my lawyer. I want my goddamn lawyer!” Miguel said as Ed lifted him onto his bare feet.

  “And I want a goddamn Advil,” I said, rubbing my knee where it had slammed into the closet’s door frame.

  CHAPTER 93

  BY EIGHT IN the morning, we were done. In addition to our new buddy Miguel, we rounded up another two Latin Kings and two Bloods.

  “This catch is full,” Ed said, smiling, as he slammed the sliding door of our Ford Econoline paddy wagon near Lander Street. “Let’s bring ’em back in and get another list.”

  “I can’t tell who you look like more, Ed-my kids on Christmas morning or my kids on Halloween. This is supposed to be work, buddy. You’re having way too much fun.”

  “Love what you do, and every day is a vacation, Mike,” my big Polish-American friend said, knocking on the hood of the van.

  We headed back toward the armory. We honked and waved at another passing arrest squad and spotted several more up and down the side streets off Lander. Talk about kicking ass and taking names. Newburgh was under siege. And by the good guys, for once!

  No wonder Ed was so ecstatic. It was the first time I’d ever driven down Lander Street when I didn’t want to run all the red lights.

  As I looked into the rear of the paddy wagon while Ed drove, the thing that struck me most about the gang of fools we’d just bagged was how sad, cheap, and dumb they looked. With their bedheads and their cheap hoodies and baggy jeans, they didn’t look dangerous. They looked sloppy, like a not-so-merry band of young, tired losers.

  Staring at them, I thought what a shame it was. What an incredible mess they had made of their young lives. Miguel Puentes, who was going to be charged with three murders, was pure evil, but the rest of them were low-level, B-team knuckleheads, morons who had seen too many rap videos. They looked stunned and scared, mired in self-pity. The thing they always feared would happen was happening. I felt like asking them if staying in high school or getting a degree in AC repair or joining the army would really have been that bad.

  I guess the only thing going for them was that they were young, mostly in their early twenties. Some of them were looking at serious time, five or ten years, but maybe in the end, it would help them. Maybe they could get out at thirty, when they wised the hell up. Who knew? Like everyone said, hope springs eternal.

  Speaking of hope, by far the best part of the day happened when we were pulling back into the armory.

  A group of about thirty people was standing in the parking lot. I recognized a lot of faces from the meetings we’d attended. As I exchanged a wave with Dr. Mary Ann Walker from St. Luke’s hospital, I spotted a coffee urn in the back of a pickup beside a tray of pastries. All these moms and construction workers and business owners must have heard about the unprecedented police effort and had come out to support us.

  They cheered as though we were rock stars when they saw the arrested gang members in the back of the van. They even offered us refreshments as we passed, just as they would hand them out to marathon runners. Everyone laughed as Ed opened his mouth to accept a jelly doughnut.

  “We’re so proud of you,” a smiling old black woman in a yellow tracksuit said to us as we frog-marched the punks up the steps of the armory. “My grandkids can play in the street this evening. At least for one night, my babies won’t die.”

  Proud of us? I thought, looking wide-eyed at the group. It really was a touching thing. It reminded me of right after 9/11, when so many regular people lined the West Side Highway and handed out water and food to cops and utility workers heading down to Ground Zero.

  I exchanged a stunned look with Ed, who seemed equally touched. We didn’t have to say it. This spontaneous and unprecedented outpouring of humanity from the good people of Newburgh was one of those brief moments in a cop’s career when it’s all worth it. All the pain and bullshit and nut-cracking and nonsense and slogging through the mess. I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

  CHAPTER 94

  THAT SAME NIGHT, around 7:00 p.m., Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” was pumping at deafening levels from the overhead speakers as neon disco lights alternately circled and strobed all around me.

  Over the pounding dance track, a DJ suddenly urged me to throw my hands in the air and shake it like I just don’t care. And I would have, except I didn’t want to drop the Hannah Montana sheet cake I was carrying through the middle of the Tarsio Lanes bowling alley.

  Nope, I wasn’t out clubbing. The disco sound track was for “cosmic night” at the bowling alley, and the party people in the house tonight were me, Seamus, and my ten kids, here to celebrate the twelfth birthday of my twins, Fiona and Bridget.

  The kids’ birthday wasn’t the only reason to party. We’d put away a grand total of seventy-two criminal gang members that afternoon. In eight hours, we’d cleared the town of just about every bad guy. And not one cop had been hurt. It was an insanely successful day.

  I spent the next few hours after we left the armory doling out pizza and tying bowling shoes. Which was a lot more fun than it sounded. The kids had never bowled before and were having a complete panic. Especially when Eddie and Trent stood on their plastic chairs beside the ball return and did a spirited square-dance routine to the song “Cotton-Eyed Joe.”

  “Hey, Dad! Dad! You have to see this. It’s Grandpa Seamus’s turn,” Ricky called as I was setting out the paper plates.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, behold Seamus Bennett, legendary master of the lane, as he bestrides the golden hardwood,” the old man said in a mock TV announcer’s voice as he lifted h
is ball.

  “What a perfect approach,” he said. “What perfect form.”

  “What a perfect load of malarkey,” I called out.

  Eyes locked on the pins in concentration, Seamus swung the ball back, stepped forward, and let her rip. His right foot swung dramatically behind his left during his release. He actually was pretty graceful.

  “Go, Twinkle Toes,” I said, clapping.

  “Come on, baby,” Seamus yelled as the ball hooked. “Cruise in the pocket! Cruise in the pocket!”

  Cruise in the what?

  Wouldn’t you know it? It was a devastating, pin-crushing strike. Seamus pumped his fist and high-fived everyone as the kids went crazy.

  What the…? Who knew the old codger was a good bowler?

  I was up next. My ball made a lot of noise, but instead of a strike, it was a four-ten split that I missed completely on my second roll. Worse than that, I received nothing but crickets from the kids.

  “I thought you said you played this game before,” Seamus said, licking the tip of the pencil he was using to keep score.

  “Granddad is better than Daddy. Granddad is better than Daddy,” Shawna called out to everyone.

  “That really was awesome, Granddad,” Brian said. “Who taught you how to bowl?”

  “A nice American fella I met when I first came to this country from Ireland,” Seamus said.

  “Wait, it was a tall guy, right?” I said. “White wig, wooden teeth? George Washington?”

  “‘O beware, my lord, of jealousy,’” Seamus said, holding up the pencil. “ ‘It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.’ ”

  I held my hands up in defeat.

  “Now he’s busting out Shakespeare? Okay, okay. You doth win, Father. I know when I’m beat. You’re firing on all pistons tonight.”