“Okay, Detective. But I thought I was the one who was supposed to be watching out for you,” the rookie said, finally smiling a little back.
“Got it covered,” I said, showing him the 9mm Glock in my waistband as I walked away.
I actually had another one on my right ankle, a subcompact Glock 30 filled to the brim with fat, shiny golden.45 -caliber bullets. If Perrine’s guys came for me, they’d better bring their lunch, because if I thought my life or the life of my family was in jeopardy, I was going to throw down first and ask questions later. I’d already killed two of Perrine’s assassins at Madison Square Garden. If killing the rest of them was what this thing took, then, as Paul McCartney so eloquently put it, let it be.
I went two blocks south down West End to the deli on the corner of Ninety-Sixth and was coming back up the hill, balancing a coffee with my bag of grocery loot, when my phone rang.
I glanced at the screen. It was assistant U.S. attorney Tara McLellan, Hughie’s cousin, to whom I’d been practically glued at the hip for the last two weeks, prepping for Perrine’s trial. I thought it was a little weird to be hearing from her this late, but jury selection on the trial was supposed to start Monday. I stopped on the corner, leaning against a sidewalk construction shed to take the call.
“Hey, Tara. What’s up?” I said.
“Mike, sorry to bother you so late,” she said. “I’m wrapping up the trial strategy report that I’m going to present to my boss tomorrow, and I was wondering if you could come by and take a look at it and give me some last-minute feedback. Talk me off the ledge.”
I could understand her anxiety. Not only was this the biggest case of Tara’s career, the whole Perrine thing was a major international news event. This was a very public opportunity for the U.S. to show the world that it was taking on the cartel problem, which had run amok for so long.
“I’d be happy to,” I said. “Where are you? Downtown at the office?”
“No. Midtown, actually. I’m at the St. Regis Hotel.”
I blinked. The St. Regis on Fifth Avenue was probably the most exclusive luxury hotel in New York, a place where celebrities stayed and where the cheapest room went for eight hundred bucks a night.
“Wow, that’s a pretty nice ledge you’re sitting on,” I said.
“I was late at the office and didn’t want to head back to Bronxville, so I decided to splurge. They did say we should shake up our routine for security reasons, Mike.”
“Good point,” I said. “The St. Regis is certainly the last place a cartel hit man would look for me. Give me thirty to get into my tux.”
“Where are you going?” Mary Catherine said upstairs, when she spotted me putting on a suit jacket.
“Work. Last-minute details on the Perrine trial,” I said.
“It’s Saturday night,” she said skeptically.
I tried to come up with one of my patented fast-talking quips as a reply, but drew a big fat zero.
“Tell me, Mr. Bennett. Do all assistant U.S. attorneys look like Fox News babes, or just this one who keeps calling you?” Mary Catherine said as I made my escape into the hall.
“My phone’s on. Be back soon,” I mumbled as I hit the door.
IN NO SHAPE to drive after all that birthday bubbly, I, too, splurged. On a cab to the St. Regis instead of the subway.
I stared up at the dramatically lit, turn-of-the-century hotel as my cab turned off Central Park South onto Fifth Avenue. It was hard not to stare. The iconic French Second Empire-style building was one of the most beautiful in the city-twenty highly embellished stories of glowing limestone columns and cornices topped off by a copper mansard roof.
A doorman ushered me through an elaborate brass revolving door into a lobby of squint-inducing brilliant white marble. Even the furniture was old and French, I noticed, spotting Louis XVI armchairs with fluted legs backed up against the massive stone columns. This hotel was as imposing, over-the-top, and as expensive as New York City could get, which was saying something.
Tara had already sent me a text message when I was in the cab telling me to meet her in the landmark’s famous King Cole Bar. I stepped into the cavernous space, which had a mahogany bar and a massive mural behind it.
Sitting at the bar, Tara looked pretty grand and imposing herself, in a black jacket, ivory blouse, and black pencil skirt. She was wearing her long shiny black hair up a way I’d never seen before. I liked it.
A gaunt old bow-tied bartender, who looked as though he might have served some of the robber barons who built the joint, was waiting for me as I arrived beside Tara.
“What are you drinking, Ms. McLellan?” I said.
“Irish whiskey, what else?” she said with a wink. “No rocks this time.”
“Jameson?” I said.
“No, Bushmills sixteen-year.”
“Sweet sixteen sounds good to me,” I said, giving the ancient barkeep a thumbs-up.
After the relic brought my drink and took away two twenties I’d likely never see again, we clinked glasses and drank.
“So you finished your report?” I said.
Tara put a finger to her lips and giggled.
“Shh. Drink first, work in a minute,” she said, slurring her words a little.
She blinked at me, a wide, fixed smile on her face. By the glaze in her eyes, I could tell the drink in front of her wasn’t her first.
We chitchatted for a while about the weather and the latest Yankees loss before I realized something. I looked around on the floor beside her bar stool.
“Tara?”
“Yes, Detective?” she said, batting her eyes at me. “May I call you Detective, Detective?”
“Tara, where’s your briefcase? You know, your work? All the paper you wanted me to see?”
She smiled mischievously.
“Upstairs in my room. I was just taking a drink. I mean, a break.”
“How many breaks-I mean, drinks-have you had?”
“Just the one, Detective, I swear. Please don’t arrest me,” she said, smiling, as she raised her palms.
“I have an idea. How about we call it a night, and we go over it tomorrow?” I said, grabbing her clutch purse from the bar and gently taking her elbow.
Outside the bar, in the lobby, the grim, middle-aged woman behind the hotel’s desk gave me a frosty glare as I escorted Tara unsteadily into a brass elevator.
When the door binged closed, Tara turned and touched my face.
“Mike, ever since the wake, I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” she said quickly. “Did you know that I practically killed about six people to get put on this case? I thought it was for Hughie, but it wasn’t. It was so I could spend time with you.”
“That’s… that’s… ” I said, flabbergasted. “I’m flattered.”
Tara put her head on my shoulder.
“My husband died in a plane crash, you know. He was a weekend pilot, and he screwed up somehow over Long Island Sound and crashed. We were best friends. We did everything together. When he died, I felt like dying, too.”
She pulled away from me and shook her head as she stared up into my eyes.
“I read how your wife died, too, Mike. I know what it’s like to lose someone that close. You understand. You’re the first man I’ve met in five years with whom I felt that click. I’ve just been so lonely. I went on an Internet date a few months ago. Have you ever gone on an Internet date, Mike? My God, the horror.”
