Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 3

“Findley,” he called out again.

“Findley is not here,” a voice said.

“Whoever you are, untie me,” Hunter bellowed. “Now.”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Alden,” the voice said.

“Show your goddamn face.”

A tall figure wearing scrubs and a surgical mask stepped up and leaned over the table just enough so Hunter could look straight up at him. The man lowered his mask.

“You’re Peter’s brother,” Hunter said.

“Patrice Chevalier. Doctor Patrice Chevalier.”

“I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know how I got here, but get me the hell out of here.”

“You’re in a hospital in Brooklyn.”

“A hospital?” Hunter said, jerking his eyes upward to the glitter ball.

“A makeshift hospital,” Chevalier said. “Most of the time it is Klib Zanmi Ayisyen, a Haitian friendship club.”

“Well, it’s not coming off very freaking friendly. Cut me loose, you son of a bitch. I don’t know what you want from me, but tying me down is not the smartest way to negotiate.”

“My brother spent so many joyful nights here,” Patrice said. “It’s one of the few places in the city where people of the Haitian diaspora can come together and connect with their roots, their traditions, their culture.”

“I was good to your brother,” Hunter said. “I put a roof over his head, food in his belly, money in his pocket, and every time he had his hand out because there was a flood, an earthquake, or a goddamn cholera epidemic, I wrote him a check.”

“Did you love him?” Patrice asked softly.

“What kind of a dumbass question is that?” Hunter said, pressing his body hard against the rubber bonds. “He was an employee. I treated him fair, paid him well — did he ever complain about me?”

“Tripp loved him.”

“Is that why you’re doing this? Madison is dead, so now Tripp recruited you to bleed money out of me?”

“I don’t want your money.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Limyè!” Patrice called out.

The room flooded with bright light, and two more people in full operating room attire entered. One man, one woman, both black.

“Oh Jesus, what are you doing?” Hunter said.

“I’m doing what I’m trained to do. Did you know that Peter paid for my medical school education?”

“Listen to me. I didn’t have anything to do with his death. I swear.”

“Of course you did. A single butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world might ultimately cause a hurricane in another part of the world. It’s called the butterfly effect. But you are not a butterfly, Mr. Alden. You are a bull. And the evil you do wreaks havoc and destroys lives around the globe.”

“You’re a goddamn doctor,” Hunter screamed. “You’re supposed to save lives, not kill people out of revenge.”

“I abhor revenge, Mr. Alden. I believe as Gandhi said, ‘An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.’ But you are right about one thing. I am a doctor. My mission is to save lives.”

“Now you’re talking,” Hunter said. “That’s where I can help you. I can give you enough money to build a hundred clinics, save a million lives. I’ll do whatever it takes to help.”

“No you won’t,” Patrice said, his jaw tightening, his lips taut. “The world is filled with humanitarians. You are not one of them. You’re a profiteer, Mr. Alden. Every disaster unleashed on humanity, natural or man-made, is just another opportunity for you to amass more money. You profited from New Orleans, Iraq, Indonesia, Fukushima, and, yes, Haiti. Project Gutenberg is not the only time you’ve capitalized on other people’s misery. It’s just the most horrific.”

“Tell me what you want. Just name your price.”

“I’m a physician, Mr. Alden, and when I see a cancer about to metastasize into vital, healthy organs, my job is to eradicate it.” He pulled the surgical mask back over his face.

The nurse stood ready with three syringes: sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride.

“As for your offer to subsidize our efforts in Haiti,” Chevalier said as he administered the first of the three injections, “thank you, but we already have a benefactor.”

Hunter’s eyes drooped as the barbiturate slowed his heart and shut down his central nervous system.

“His name is Hunter Hutchinson Alden III. His friends call him Tripp,” Patrice said, reaching for the second syringe, “but my brother was the only one who had any right to call him son.”

I was jolted from my sleep by the nerve-jangling sound of my cell phone and the life-affirming smell of fresh-brewed coffee. I looked at the clock: 5:27. I’m used to predawn phone calls, so another one didn’t faze me, but the smell of coffee coming from my kitchen scared the crap out of me.

I answered the phone.

It was Cates. It took her less than fifteen seconds to tell me what I’d missed since I went to bed. I hung up and followed the aroma of dark roast. I desperately needed caffeine, but even more important, I needed to know who was in my kitchen.

“Good morning,” Kylie said, standing at the counter, cracking eggs into a bowl. “Coffee’s up.”

“Thanks. Not to sound ungrateful,” I said, pouring a cup, “but what are you doing here?”

“I spent the night here.”

My brain was stuck somewhere between REM sleep and the rude-awakening phone call from Cates, and it struggled to put together the pieces of the puzzle that equaled last night. At 2:00 a.m., after twenty straight hours of chasing bad guys, dodging bullets, and getting smashed in the face by an air bag, I had crashed from exhaustion. That’s all I remembered.

“I thought we had wrapped it up last night, and you were going home,” I said.

“I didn’t. I decided to spend the night here.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but...” I held back. My head wasn’t clear enough to ask the question or deal with the answer.

“But what?” Kylie demanded. “Spit it out.”

“Just wondering,” I said. “Where did you sleep?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Zach, get over yourself. I’m still married, and even if I weren’t, I’m not in the habit of crawling into bed with guys who smell of vomit. But if your girlfriend asks, you can tell her I slept on the couch for a couple of hours. The rest of the time I was on the Web, trying to figure out how we can hang Hunter Alden for what he did.”

“I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but we can’t hang him.”

“I know we can’t. We have to bring in the Feds. What I was trying to scope out is which agency would be the best one to talk to: the SEC, FBI, Homeland. But I’m starting to lean toward the NYPD JTTF.”

“Kylie, nobody can hang Hunter Alden. He’s dead.”

That stopped her in her tracks.

“Cates just called,” I said. “He was murdered. They found his body covered with snow under the statue of the charging bull near Wall Street.”

“ Wall Street? Holy symbolism, Batman.”

“I need a quick shower,” I said. “Then we should head downtown.”

“Do we have time for breakfast?” she said. “I was just about to scramble some eggs.”

“I wouldn’t eat anything if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“Like I said, Alden’s body was dumped under the statue. But his head is nowhere to be seen.”

Kylie stared at me, wide-eyed. “Decapitated?”

“Cut off clean.”

“Wow,” she said. “Now we really can’t hang him.”

On any given summer day, the bronze sculpture of the charging bull is a magnet for thousands of tourists, most of whom commemorate their visit by posing next to it for a photo to show the folks back home.