Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 4

“I love you,” I said. “And I don’t want to lose you.”

“I love you too,” she said, resting her hand on my knee. “And I definitely don’t want to get lost.”

“I heard what you said Friday morning at the diner. I thought living together would bring us closer, but it turns out all it does is underscore how much time we spend not living together. You always seem so damn happy to see me when I walk through the door; I never thought about how you must feel when you walk through the door, and I’m not there.”

“It feels lonely,” she said. “I know I’m home, but it still feels like the apartment is empty.”

“Okay. Here goes. Manning up,” I said. “I realize that not living together works a lot better than living together. I’m willing to go back to the way it was.”

Her eyes closed for a second, then she opened them and smiled. “Good call. I think we’ll both be happier.”

I did my best to smile back. “Plus, now I get my dresser drawers back,” I said.

She wrapped her arms around me. “Not all of them. Just because I like waking up in my own bed doesn’t mean I want to do it every morning.”

Some cops can crack a major case and ride high on their success for the rest of their careers. Having cracked a politically sensitive crime spree, I’d have been happy to have the euphoria last for a few days, but five hours after I hit the pillow, my trip on the glory train went completely off the rails.

My cell rang. It was Kylie.

“What?” I grumped into the phone.

“Cates just called. She wants us in her office in twenty minutes.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t elaborate. All she said was, ‘Don’t be late. Howard Sykes doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’”

I jumped out of bed and started throwing on clothes.

“What’s going on?” Cheryl asked, still half asleep.

“I’m not sure. All I know is that Howard Sykes is meeting me and Kylie in Cates’s office.”

“He probably wants to give you the key to the city after what you did last night.”

I looked at my watch. I was pretty sure the city didn’t start handing out keys at 6:26 in the morning.

I grabbed a cab to the One Nine. Kylie was waiting for me outside. We bolted up the stairs and were in Cates’s office by 6:44. Sykes was already there.

Cates skipped the usual foreplay. “Did you interview Rick Hawk last night?” she asked.

“The man was in no condition to talk,” I said. “He was a couple of pints low on blood.”

“Did you run his name through the system?”

“Our priority was getting him on life support,” Kylie said. “The task force collared four other perps, so we turned the whole lot of them over to Central Booking to sort out. Why? Did Hawk have any priors?”

Cates nodded toward Howard Sykes. It was his show now.

“He had one big prior,” Sykes said. “Three years ago, Staff Sergeant Richard Hawk saved the lives of hundreds of soldiers, coalition partners, and civilians by holding off a half dozen Afghan suicide bombers who breached a NATO base. He was awarded the Silver Star.”

Sykes handed us a photo of a four-star general pinning the award on Hawk’s chest. “Hawk left the military two years ago,” he said. “Since then he’s been a champion for veterans’ rights. Bottom line: the man you arrested last night is a national hero.”

My stomach dropped. Kylie, however, tackled the news head-on.

“With all due respect, sir,” she said, “national heroes don’t steal millions of dollars’ worth of medical equipment.”

“Understood. But you’re thinking like a cop.”

“I thought that was my job, sir.”

“It is, but it’s my job to think about the public backlash that’s going to erupt when word gets out that my wife’s elite task force locked up America’s poster boy.”

“Sir, I am patriotic to the core,” Kylie snapped, “but a Silver Star isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. What are we supposed to do, unarrest him?”

“Rein it in, Detective,” Cates ordered. “Last night we had a police problem. You solved it. Now it’s about to become a political shit storm, and if you think that’s not your problem too, then you’re in the wrong unit. This team was founded to serve at the mayor’s pleasure. When she has a problem, we all have one.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kylie said. And then, in a rare moment for her, she apologized. “Howard, I’m sorry. What can we do to help?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m an ad guy. Muriel has only been mayor for three months. Before that, she was a U.S. attorney. We both swam with sharks, but they were toothless compared to the ones we’re up against now. Especially Woloch.”

I winced when I heard the name. “Dennis Woloch?” I said.

Sykes nodded.

Woloch is every ADA’s nightmare. He’s the most formidable defense attorney in the city — a cross between Clarence Darrow and Lord Voldemort. His remarkable ability to mesmerize twelve people in a jury box is so legendary that the press dubbed him the Warlock — a name that only enhances his mystique.

“He’s been retained by the Hudson Hospital Five,” Cates said. “He called the DA this morning. He wants the city to drop the case.”

Kylie exploded. “ Drop the case? Captain, we caught them stealing the equipment. They shot at us.”

“It turns out they used nonlethal weapons and rubber bullets,” Cates said.

“Nothing is 100 percent non lethal.”

“The Warlock will claim that these were trained marksmen. They only used the guns to deter the police.”

“What about the ten hospitals they robbed?”

“He informed the DA that he plans to use the Robin Hood defense.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Kylie said, her tone barely on the right side of snarky, “but didn’t Robin Hood steal from the rich and give to the poor?”

“Yes, MacDonald. I read the book, saw the movie,” Cates said. “But according to Woloch, Congress has turned a deaf ear on the sergeant’s campaign for better health-care benefits for veterans, so Hawk and his band of Merry Men have decided to fund it on their own. They’re not selling the stolen equipment on the black market. It’s all going into an underground health clinic they’re building for veterans. A jury will eat it up.”

“A jury?” Sykes said. “The whole purpose of bringing Red into this was to keep everything out of the press. If this goes public, it will be a front-page nightmare of global proportions and a political disaster for Muriel.”

“I have a possible solution,” I said.

Sykes exhaled. “Tell me. Please.”

“You’re not going to like it,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter if I like it,” Sykes said, “as long as my wife likes it.”

“She’ll probably hate it,” I said. “It’s got no political artistry to it. It’s pretty much straightforward, get-the-job-done cop logic.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about political artistry,” Sykes said. “All I want to do is keep Woloch the Warlock from positioning Sergeant Hawk as a modern-day Robin Hood. Because if he does, my wife will come off looking like the goddamn Sheriff of Nottingham.”

“The man is in over his head,” Cates said as soon as Howard Sykes left her office. “I don’t care what he did in advertising. He’s got a lot to learn about damage control.”

“At least he was smart enough to give us the green light on Zach’s idea,” Kylie said.

“Good luck making it work,” Cates said. “Ivy League smarts are no match for a street fighter like Woloch. He’s got the mayor up against the hot pipes, and he’s going to ask her for the moon. The son of a bitch is cunning.”