Tick Tock (8 page)

The guy was big. He was also shirtless and in damn good shape, I could see: huge bowling-ball shoulders, six-pack abs, prison-yard pumped. There was another man, just as big and mean-looking and covered in tattoos, standing behind him.

I should have been cautious then. I knew a violent criminal mobster asshole when I saw one. But I guess I was through giving a shit for the day.

“You Flaherty?” I said.

“Yeah. Who the fuck are you?”

“My name’s Bennett. You have a kid?”

“I got five of ’em. At least. Which one we talkin’ about here?”

“Fat, freckles, about fourteen. Did I say
fat?
”

“You talking about my Seany? What’s up?”

“Yeah, well, your Seany split my eleven-year-old’s chin open today is what’s up,” I said, staring into Flaherty’s soulless doll’s eyes. “He had to go to the hospital.”

“That can’t be right,” the man said, stone-faced. He smiled coldly. “We went fishing today. All day. It was sweet. Got some blues. Hey, Billy, remember when Sean caught that blowfish today?”

“Oh, yeah,” the thug behind him said with a guffaw. “Blowfish. That was the puffy balloon thing, right? That shit was funny.”

“See. Guess you made a mistake,” Flaherty senior said. “Wait a second. Bennett. I know you. You got all those rainbow-coalition crumb crunchers, right? You’re a cop, too. Look, Billy. It’s the Octo-cop in the flesh.”

“I do have a gun,” I said with a grin. “You want me to show it to you?”

I really did feel like showing it to him. In fact, I actually felt like giving him a taste of my Glock.

“I know what they look like, but thanks, anyway,” Flaherty said, cold as ice. “If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to get back to the ballgame. Mets might even win one for a change. Have a nice night, Officer.”

That’s when he slammed the door in my face. I felt like kicking it in. The pit was in a frenzy. So was I. But even in my stress-induced hysteria, I knew that wasn’t a good idea. I chose to retreat.

An empty Miller High Life can landed beside me as I was coming down the steps.

Young Flaherty himself waved to me from the rattletrap’s second-story window.

“Gee, Officer, I apologize. Must have slipped out of my hand.”

Even over the dog’s apoplexy, I heard raucous laughter from inside.

Death all day and ridicule for dessert. What a day. I crushed the can and hit the stairs before I could take my gun out.

RETURNING TO THE HOUSE with a full head of steam, I decided I needed some alone time. Wanting to make it both relaxing and constructive, I opted for doing what any angry, overworked cop in my situation would do. Inside the garage, I tossed down some old newspaper on a workbench and began field-stripping my Glock 21.

For half an hour, I went to town, cleaning the barrel and slide until everything was ship shape and shining like a brand-new penny. I’m not proud to admit that as I went through the motions meticulously, some un-Christian thoughts went through my mind concerning certain Breezy Point residents. As I reloaded the semiauto’s magazine and slapped it home with a well-oiled snick, I made a mental note to set up a confession the next time I saw Seamus.

I discovered a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label on a shelf behind a bolt-filled coffee can as I was cleaning up. One of my cousins must have left it there after his own
Clark W. Griswold family vacation fiasco, no doubt. I drummed my fingers on the workbench as I eyed the half-full bottle.

Why not just get drunk and let the world go straight to hell? I certainly had a good excuse. Several, in fact.

As I stood there weakly and wearily pondering the Scotch bottle, beyond the front door of the garage I heard steps on the porch and the doorbell ring.

“Hey, is Juliana around?” a voice called out.

The voice belonged to Joe Somebody-or-other, some tall, friendly nonpsychotic high-school kid from up the block who kept coming around because he had a crush on Juliana.

“Hey, Joe,” I overheard Juliana say a second later.

“Do you and Brian and the guys want to play roundup again?” the sly Breezy Point Romeo wanted to know.

“Can’t tonight, Joe, but I’ll text you tomorrow, okay?” Juliana said curtly before letting the door close in his face with a bang.

That was odd, I thought, heading outside and up the porch steps after Joe left. I knew my daughter had a bit of a crush on the lad as well. What was up?

I figured it out when I saw Juliana through the new front window. She was sitting on the couch, laughing, painting Bridget’s toenails as Fiona and Shawna and Chrissy waited their turns. I spotted Jane sitting in the recliner with cucumber slices over her eyes.

I stood there shaking my head, amazed. Juliana knew
how upset this whole Flaherty thing had made her little sisters, so she had scratched her plans in order to comfort them with some sister spa time. While I was itching to crack the seal on a bottle of booze, Juliana was stepping in, stepping up.

“Let’s have a hand for father of the year, Mike Bennett,” I mumbled as I plopped myself down on the front porch swing. I was still there when Mary Catherine came out. She frowned at my sad, self-pitying ass as she sat down beside me.

“And how are the Flahertys?” she asked.

I looked at her, about to deny my visit to the neighbors. Then I cracked a tiny smile.

“Bad news, Mary,” I said, looking off down the sandy lane. “Which is about par for the course lately, isn’t it? For this vacation. This city. This planet.”

She wisely went back inside and left me alone with my black mood. When my work phone rang a half hour later with my boss’s cell number on the display, I seriously thought about throwing it as hard as I could off the porch. Maybe taking a couple of potshots at it before it landed, my own personal Breezy Point clay shoot.

Then I remembered what my son Trent had said two days before. Who was I kidding? Vacations were for real people. I was a cop.

“This is Bennett,” I said into the phone with a grim smile. “Gimme a crime scene.”

“Coming right up,” Miriam said.

AS I DROVE THROUGH Queens twenty minutes later, I thought about a documentary I once saw on cable about the annual NYPD Finest versus the FDNY Bravest football game.

At halftime with the score tied, the firemen’s locker room was about what you’d expect: upbeat, healthy-looking players and coaches encouraging one another. The NYPD locker room, on the other hand, was about as cheerful as the visitor’s room at Rikers. In place of a traditional pep talk, red-faced, raging cops opted for screaming horrendous obscenities at one another and punching the lockers like violent mental patients.

No doubt about it, we’re a funny bunch. Not funny ha-ha, either, I thought as I arrived at the latest atrocity, a murder scene along an industrial service road in Flushing.

I was a little fuzzy as to why I, of all people, needed to come to this godforsaken place in the middle of the night
when I was already up to my eyeballs in the bombing case. But I was pretty sure I was about to find out.

Beside an electrical pylon at the top of the access road, half a dozen detectives and uniforms were taking pictures and kicking through the weeds, accompained by police-band radio chatter. In the far distance behind them, cars continued zipping by on the lit-up Whitestone and Throgs Neck Bridges. With the red-and-blue police strobes skipping through the trees, there was something bucolic, almost peaceful, about the whole scene.

Too bad peace wasn’t my business. Definitely not tonight.

A short, immaculately dressed Filipino detective from the 109th Precinct pulled off a surgical glove and introduced himself to me as Andy Hunt while I was signing the homicide scene log. The death scene Hunt guided me to was a new Volvo Crossover with a nice tan-leather interior.

Formerly nice, I corrected myself as I stepped up to the driver’s-side open door and saw the ruined bodies.

A middle-aged man and a younger woman leaned shoulder-to-shoulder in the center of the car, both shot twice in the head with a large-caliber gun. Green beads of shattered auto glass covered both bodies. I waved away a fly, staring at the horrible constellation of dried blood spray stuck to the dash.

“The male victim is one Eugene Keating. He was a professor at Hofstra, taught International Energy Policy, whatever the hell that is,” Detective Hunt said, tossing his
Tiffany Blue silk tie over his shoulder to protect it as he leaned in over the victims.

“The redhead is Karen Lang, one of his graduate students. Maybe they were testing the carbon output on this electrical cutout, but I have my doubts, considering her panties on the floor there. What really sucks is that Keating has two kids and his pregnant professor wife is due for a C-section in two days. Guess she’ll have to call a cab to the hospital now, huh?”

“I don’t understand, though,” I said, resisting the urge to pull down the poor female victim’s bunched-up T-shirt. “Why does anyone think this twofer has something to do with today’s bombing?”

Hunt gave me an extra-grim look. Then he moved the light onto something white that was sitting in the dead man’s lap. It was an envelope with something typed across the front of it.

I squatted down to get a better look. You’re not supposed to let the job get inside you, but I have to admit that when I read my name on the envelope, I absolutely panicked. I froze from head to toe as if someone had just pressed an invisible gun to my head.

After a few minutes, I shrugged off my heebie-jeebies and decided to go ahead and open it. With thoughts of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, dancing in my head, I retrieved the envelope with the pliers of Hunt’s multi-tool. I borrowed a folding knife from one of the uniforms and slit the envelope open on the hood of the nearest cruiser.

If I thought opening the letter was a hair-raising experience, it couldn’t hold a candle to what it said on the plain sheet of white paper inside.

WEARING A PINK BANANA REPUBLIC button-down shirt, pillow-soft J. Crew khakis, and Bass penny loafers, Berger whistled as he carried a brimming tray of Starbucks coffees south down Fifth Avenue with the rest of the early-morning commuters. Shaved and gelled to a high-gloss metrosexual sheen, he even had a corporate ID badge with the improbable name
CORY GONSALVES
emblazoned across it like a Hello sticker. In this elitist venue of publishing houses and television company offices that was the Rockefeller Center business district, his just-so-casual creative-type office-worker look was better camouflage than a sniper’s ghillie suit.

Pounding hammers and clicking socket wrenches and muffled shouts rang off the granite walls as he turned right down Rockefeller Center’s east concourse. Berger almost tripped over a gray-haired, potbellied roadie on his knees who was taping down some cables.

Berger knew that the stage was being erected for the
Today
show’s outdoor summer concert series, to be broadcast at 8:15 this morning. The musical artist, a young man by the ponderous name of The Show, was going to perform his hit song, “Anywhere Real Slow.”

Already people had arrived for the event. Faces painted, holding signs, they were anticipating a fun morning of dancing and singing along with the ex–drug-dealing rapper as he performed his soulful ode to the joys of public sexual activity.

Berger had a catchphrase for today’s young that he was waiting for the ad firms to pick up on. First, you had Generation X, then Generation Y, now welcome, ye one and sundry, I introduce De-generation 1.

Because “Anywhere Real Slow” wasn’t a mockery of just music but of civilization, too. It didn’t glorify raunch and stupidity and low urges. It worshipped them. Anyone who didn’t see the cheerful acceptance of this gutter dirt by the general public, and especially by the young, as a sign of the coming new Dark Ages lacked a working mind or was madder than Alice’s hatter.

Once upon a time Rome fell. Now it was our turn. The Show was here to provide the background music.

Berger passed a group of giggling high-school girls. Enjoy the bottom-feeding, he thought as he carefully left one of his coffees on the ledge of a planter that he passed. Without looking back, he stepped out onto Sixth Avenue and hailed a taxi.

IT WAS ALMOST EIGHT A.M. by the time Berger got back to his apartment.

Inside the high, dim alcove, he actually genuflected before Salvador Dali’s first painting, praying to the great Spaniard for help and strength.

He remembered a quote from the Master. “At the age of six, I wanted to be a cook. At seven, I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”

Berger stood, smiling. Each moment, each breath, came that much sweeter the closer he approached his death. In the beginning, he had been afraid when he thought about how things would turn out. Now he saw that it all made perfect sense. He was glad.

In the apartment’s imposing library, Berger slowly removed all of his clothing. He lifted the remote control and stood before the massive screen of the $50,000 103-inch
Panasonic plasma TV. He glanced at the butter-soft leather recliner where he’d sat to watch all his favorite movies, but he didn’t sit down. For this, he preferred to stand.

He clicked on the set. There was a commercial for a feminine product and then Matt Lauer filled the wall of the room.

“Without further ado,” Lauer said, “let’s cut to the Plaza and The Show.”

A young black man in a full-out orange prison jumpsuit covered in gold chains winked from the screen.

“Ya’ll ready to make some noise?” The Show wanted to know. Behind him, a retinue of other prison-suited young male and female backup singers and dancers of every race were standing, still as Buckingham Palace guards, waiting for the first drop of bass to start kicking it freestyle.