James Patterson: French Kiss

“Hold on a minute. I want to talk to the kid,” I say.

I walk over to the boy. He wears jeans cut off at midcalf, very clean white high-top sneakers, and an equally clean white T-shirt. It’s a look I could live without.

“Why’d you try to steal three sweaters? It’s the goddamn middle of summer, and you’re stealing sweaters. Are you stupid?”

I can tell that if he starts talking he’s going to cry.

No answer. He looks away. At the ceiling. At the floor. At the young cop and Callahan.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Sixteen,” he says. My instinct was right. He does start to cry. He squints hard, trying to stem the flow of tears.

“You’re a lousy liar and a lousy thief. You’re twelve. You’re in the system. Don’t you think the officers checked? You were picked up five months ago. You and a friend tried to hold up a liquor store on East Tremont. They got you then, too. You are stupid.”

The kid shouts at me. No tears now.

“I ain’t stupid. I kinda thought they’d have a buzzer or some shit in the liquor store. And I kinda felt that fat-ass guy here with the ugly-mother brown shoes was a security guy. But I don’t know. Both times I decided to try it. I decided…I’m not sure why.”

“Listen. Good advice number one. Kids who are assholes turn into grown-ups who are assholes.

“Good advice number two. If you’ve got smart instincts, follow them . You know what? Forget good advice. You’ve got a feeling? Go with it.”

He sort of nods in agreement. So I keep talking.

“Look, asshole. This advice is life advice. I’m not trying to teach you how to be a better thief. I’m just trying to…oh, shit…I don’t know what I’m trying to teach you.”

A pause. The kid looks down at the floor so intensely that I have to look down there myself. Nothing’s there but gray carpet squares.

Then the kid looks at me. He speaks.

“I get you, man,” he says.

“Good.” A pause. “Now go home. You’ve got a home?”

“I got a home. I got a grandma.”

“Then go.”

“What the fu-?”

“Just go.”

He runs to the door.

The young officer looks at me. Then he says, “That’s just great. They send a detective to the scene. And he lets the suspect go.”

I don’t smile. I don’t answer. I walk to a nearby table where beautiful silk ties and pocket squares are laid out in groups according to color. I focus on the yellow section-yellow with blue stripes, yellow with tiny red dots, yellow paisley, yellow…

My cell phone pings. The message on the screen is big and bold and simple. CD. Cop Down.

No details. Just an address: 655 Park Avenue. Right now.

Cops and lights and miles of yellow tape: POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.

Sirens and detectives crowd the blocks between 65th and 67th Streets. Even the mayor’s car (license NYC 1) is here.

People from the neighborhood, doormen on break, and students from Hunter College try to catch a glimpse of the scene. Hundreds of people stand on the blocked-off avenue. It’s a tragedy and a block party at the same time.

Detective Gabriel Ruggie approaches me. There will be no French-guy jokes, no late-guy jokes, no Pretty Boy jokes. This is serious shit. Ruggie talks.

“Elliott is up there now. The scene is at the seventh floor front. He said to send you up right away.”

I walk through the fancy lobby. It’s loaded with cops and reporters and detectives. I hear a brief litany of somber “hellos” and “hiyas,” most of them followed by various mispronunciations of my name.

Luke. Look. Luck.

Who the hell cares now? This is Cop Down.

Detective Christine Liang is running the elevator along with a plainclothes officer.

“Hey, Moncrief. Let me take you up,” Liang says. “The inspector’s been asking where you are.”

What the hell is the deal? Ten minutes ago I’m supervising New York’s dumbest little crime of the day. Now, all of a sudden, the most serious type of crime-officer homicide-requires my attention.

“Good-you’re here,” Elliott says as I step from the elevator. I feel as if he’s been waiting for me. It’s the typical chaos of a homicide, with fingerprinting people, computer people, the coroner’s people-all the people who are really smart, really thorough; but honestly, none of them ever seem to come up with information that helps solve the case.

I’m scared. I don’t mind saying it. Elliott hits his phone and says, “Moncrief is here now.”

“Who’s that?” I ask.

“Just headquarters. I let them know you were here. They were trying to track you down.”

“But you knew where I was. You sent me there,” I say, confused.

“Yeah, I know. I know.” Elliott seems confused, too.

“What’s the deal?” I ask.

“Come with me,” Elliott says. The crowd of NYPD people parts for us as if we’re celebrities. We walk down a wide hall with black and white marble squares on the floor, two real Warhols on the walls. Suddenly I have a flash of an apartment in Paris-the high ceilings, the carved cornices. But in a moment I’ve traveled back from boulevard Haussmann to Park Avenue.

At the end of the hallway, an officer stands in front of an open door. Bright lights-floodlights, examination lights-pour from the room into the hallway. The officer moves aside immediately as Elliott and I approach.

Three people are huddled in a group near a window. I catch sight of a body, a woman. Elliott and I walk toward the group. We are still a few feet away when I see her. When my heart leaps up.

Maria Martinez.

A black plastic sheet covers her torso. Her head, blood speckling and staining her hair, is exposed.

Elliott puts a hand on my shoulder. I don’t yell or cry or shake. A numbness shoots through me, and then the words tumble out.

“How? How?”

“I told you this morning, she was on loan to Vice. They had her playing the part of a high-class call girl. It seems that…well, whoever she was supposed to meet decided to…well, take a knife to her stomach.”

I say nothing. I keep staring at my dead partner. Elliott decides to fill the air with words. I know he means well.

“The owners of this place are at their house in Nantucket. No servants were home…no…”

I’ve stopped listening. Elliott stops talking. The police photographers keep clicking away. Phil Namanworth, the coroner, is typing furiously on his laptop. Cops and detectives come and go.

Maria is dead. She looks so peaceful. Isn’t that what people always say? But it’s true. At least in this case it’s true. In death there is peace, but there’s no peace for those of us left behind.

Elliott looks me straight in the eye.

“Ya know, Moncrief, I’d like to say that in time you’ll get over this.” He pauses. “But I’d be a liar.”

“And a good cop never lies,” I say softly.

“Come back to the precinct in my car,” Elliott says.

“No, thank you,” I answer. “There’s someplace I’ve got to be.”

It’s the southwest corner of 177th Street and Fort Washington Avenue. Maria and Joey Martinez’s building. I had never been there before, although Maria kept insisting that Dalia and I had to come by some night for “crazy chicken and rice,” her mother’s recipe.

“You’ll taste it, you’ll love it, and you won’t be able to guess the secret ingredient,” she would say.

But we never set a date, and now I am about to visit her apartment while two cops are standing guard outside the building and two detectives are inside questioning neighbors. I was her partner. I’ve got to see Maria’s family.

A short pudgy man opens the apartment door. The living room is noisy, packed. People are crying, yelling, speaking Spanish and English. The big window air conditioner is noisy.