How the hell could I keep them safe with this monster and his organization on my trail?
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.
“Where’d you learn all that?” I said, hiding my smile as she handed me back the gun.
“I grew up on a cattle farm, Mike. There wasn’t as much rustling going on in Tipperary as in the Wild West, but we had some. Not at our farm, though.”
“I’ll bet,” I said, and started to laugh. This attractive young woman never failed to shock.
She put her hands on her hips, Wonder Woman-style, which made sense.
“Now, if there’s any locking and loading to be done around here when Mike is at work, I’ll be the one to do it. Agreed, gentlemen?” she said.
“You win, Annie O’Oakley,” I said, making her smile.
Seamus folded his arms, frowning at the both of us.
“Fine. I’m going back to bed,” he said after another half a minute.
“I never get to have any fun at all,” he whined as he left.
A BRIEF HORN honk came from outside a moment later.
“And where are you headed this early?” Mary Catherine said as I clipped my holster to my belt by the front door.
I debated whether to tell her. I decided I didn’t want to say anything about bagging the son of a bitch who’d hurt Eddie and Brian until we had him.
“Ah, nowhere, really,” I said as I pulled down my shirt over my gun. “Just going to see a man about a dog.”
“Well, please don’t get bit, Michael,” Mary Catherine said. “We have all the Bennetts on the mend that we can handle at present.”
“Don’t worry, lass,” I said, showing her the handcuffs I had in the pocket of my Windbreaker. “I brought a strong leash.”
There were two patrol cars in the arrest team besides the unmarked one I rode in with Detectives Ed and Bill, who had brought me a coffee and had laid a Kevlar vest out for me in the backseat.
“Just my size, too,” I said, slipping it on. “You guys are the best.”
It took about twenty more minutes to roll up to the address in Newburgh. It was actually on a block of pretty well-kept houses on Bay View Terrace. Behind them, there was a pure, stunning view of the Hudson. How much would Newburgh real estate be worth if the city wasn’t riddled with crime? I wondered. It was only an hour and twenty minutes away from New York City. I stared out at the sky, just starting to lighten behind Beacon, as we pulled to a stop.
“This is where his aunt lives,” Bill said. “He’s been hiding out with her ever since he got word we were looking for him.”
A dog started barking nearby as we waited for one of the cruisers to get into position on the next block, in case Jay D went out the back. The Motorola in Ed’s hand suddenly crackled.
“Heads up,” said someone in the cruiser parked behind us. “We have a figure in the alleyway across the street with a long object in their hand.”
That tensed things up. There was word that the Bloods had automatic weapons, including AK-47s.
A moment later, an old thin black woman in a tracksuit appeared, mumbling to herself as she began haphazardly sweeping her porch with a broom.
“Stand down. It’s just Grandma doing her six a.m. tidy-up,” the radio said.
“Or the Wicked Witch of West Newburgh,” Detective Moss mumbled after a loud exhale.
CHAPTER 64
“OKAY. WE’RE SET. We’re in position at the back,” came word from the other cruiser.
“Roger Dodger,” Ed Boyanoski said as he grabbed the battering ram. “We’re going in.”
It turned out that we didn’t need the battering ram. As we came up the stairs, the door opened and a tall middle-aged black man wearing blue Dickies work clothes walked out. He waved his arms over his head.
“Now, now. Calm down. Calm down. You don’t need to be bustin’ my brand-new door down,” he said, eyeing us. “You here for James, I take it?”
“You take it right, sir,” Detective Moss said.
“Thank God,” the man said, turning and holding the door open for us. “Hallelujah.”
“Woman!” the man called back into the house. “Get that child out here now!”
A moment later, a petite black woman appeared with her arms around a hard-looking, stocky teenager. He was in flip-flops and wore white shorts, a white beater, and a blood-red Yankees cap.
“This is all wrong. All wrong,” said the aunt as Ed and Bill frisked and cuffed Jay D on the porch. “James is a good boy.”
“I’m sure he is, ma’am,” Detective Moss said. “We’d like to go and search his room now if that’s okay.”
“By all means,” Jay D’s uncle said. “This good boy’s room is just to the right at the top of the stairs. Try not to trip over all the Bibles and choir robes, now.”
“I didn’t do nothin’,” Jay D said after Bill read him his rights and got him into the back of the cruiser. Ed sat in
