James Patterson - I, Michael Bennett

Perrine lifted the iPhone off the table and brought up an app. He showed the screen to the guard.

“Actually, before you go, could I show you something? Won’t take a moment,” Perrine said.

On the screen was a video of a reddish-haired woman, the back of her head visible over the top of a couch as she sat watching TV. It seemed like the camera was filming from a partially open closet door.

“This little video, Doug, is a real-time feed,” Perrine said. “I believe that chubby little morsel on the couch there is your wife, Sharon, correct? No wonder she’s taking a breather-watching those twin boys the stork brought you two last year would tire anyone out. And she breast-feeds them, too; I saw that a couple of minutes ago. Talk about double duty. Quite impressive.

“Did you know that with one snap of my finger, instead of watching her watch Real Housewives of Who-Gives-a-Fuck, you and I, Doug, could instead watch that impressive little lady of yours be forced to perform the most startling of things? Things truly beyond your wildest imaginings. It would be an amateur video, to be sure, but sometimes those are the ones that really get the blood pumping the most, don’t you agree?”

The guard’s face was no longer so tan. He swallowed hard as he stared at the iPhone.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Doug said, his command voice not so commanding anymore. “Whatever. My God. Sharon. Please don’t hurt her.”

“Please what?” Perrine said putting a hand to his ear.

“Please, sir?” Doug said, his lips trembling.

“Fuck SIR!” Perrine barked, his smile suddenly gone, his eyes like blue steel. “PLEASE WHAT!?”

“Please… ” the bald guard said, shrugging his massive shoulders. He closed his eyes as he realized it.

“Please, King,” he finally said in a near whisper.

Perrine’s smile returned as he lowered the phone and started to unfold the package of coke.

“You’re a fast learner, Doug. I appreciate that. Lovely Sharon and your two thirsty little boys appreciate that. Keep up the good work and we’re going to get on like gangbusters.”

Perrine expertly laid out a fat line of top-shelf cocaine and even more expertly hoovered it off the scarred metal prison table before he thumbed at the door.

“Now, leave us for thirty-and I repeat, thirty-minutes, Doug. And whatever you do, my large, helpful friend, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

ONE YEAR LATER

It was around five thirty in the morning and still dark when I passed the ghostly Asian guy doing tai chi. In a misty clearing to one side of the northern Central Park jogging trail, birds were tweeting like mad as an elderly Asian man wearing a kung fu getup straight out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon went through the slow, graceful motions.

I always saw him on my predawn Saturday morning Central Park suicide run and, as always, I wondered what his story was. Was he actually a ghost? Were the Shaolin monks opening a Harlem branch? What did he do when he wasn’t being ancient and mystical?

Sweat dripped from my perplexed head as I kept running. A lot of questions and no answers, which was about par for the course lately.

I’d been running a lot in the year since Hughie’s murder. I mean, a lot. Twenty-five miles a week. Sometimes thirty. Was I punishing myself? I didn’t know. I certainly was pushing the envelope on my knees, though.

It just felt right, I guess. When I was moving, huffing and puffing and slapping my size-eleven Nikes on asphalt, I felt safe, human, okay. It was when I stopped and let the world catch up to me that the problems seemed to start.

The sun was just coming up behind my kids’ school-Holy Name, on Ninety-Seventh Street-twenty minutes later as I dropped to its front steps, my tank completely empty. As my face dripped sweat onto the concrete, I watched a guy in a newspaper truck load the corner box. When he left, I saw Manuel Perrine’s face on the cover beneath the headline: S UN K ING’S N EW Y ORK T RIAL IT’S ON!

It actually wasn’t news to me. Hughie’s cousin Tara McLellan had been assigned to the trial, as she had wanted to be, and was keeping me up to speed. There had been a lot of back-and-forth to move the trial to Arizona, but in the end, the feds decided to try him first for the murder of the waiter in the department store, maximizing the trial’s impact by holding it in the largest, most visible venue possible. The whole thing was very political. National elected officials and even the president had weighed in, everyone wanting to show how serious they were about the Mexican cartel problem and border security.

Even with the politics, I didn’t care. I was glad he was being tried here. The son of a bitch had killed my friend, and even after I testified, I was going to go to the trial every chance I got, so that I could see justice done. I was going to do my best to have Perrine put where he belonged, namely, strapped to a lethal-injection table.

It was a harsh way of looking at things, but it suited my recent mood just fine. I stood up from the school steps and wiped my sweaty face. It was a harsh old world we lived in, after all.

I tried to be as quiet as possible as I came back into the apartment with breakfast, but of course Mary Catherine was already up and at ’em in the kitchen, sewing something in her lap while a pot came to a boil. As I came in and dropped the bagels onto the kitchen’s center island, she gave me a look. An extremely Irish, skeptical look.

“Good… eh, morning?” I tried.

“I knew it. That’s where you were. Running. Again,” she said.

“Um… I thought exercise was good.”

“Usually it is, Mike, but that’s all you do these days. Work and run and work some more. You have to stop pushing yourself. You’re going to run yourself into an early grave if you’re not careful. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? You’re getting too thin.”

“Too thin?” I said, handing her a latte. “C’mon, that’s impossible. Besides, let’s face it, with these kids, I’ll never be too rich, so what the heck.”

She shook her head.

“It’s your life, Mr. Bennett. I just work here,” she mumbled, going back to her sewing.

Wow, I thought, carefully retreating back into the hallway. “Mr. Bennett?” I must have done something really atrocious for my nanny to be busting out a stone-cold “Mr. Bennett” on me. If only I could figure out what it was.

The front door almost hit me in the back as Brian and Ricky came in, arms filled with dusty suitcases and bags.

“Hey, boys. You’re up early. What’s the occasion?”

“Just grabbing all the luggage from storage, Dad, for the really wonderful summer vacay we’re about to embark on next week,” Brian said.

“Yeah,” Ricky said. “I can’t wait to get up to the old cabin in the woods. And for the rest of the summer instead of last year’s two weeks. People think the woods are boring, but c’mon. You have trees and branches and leaves and bark and stuff.”

“Animals, too. Birdies and even squirrels,” Brian continued. “I mean, who needs PlayStation high-definition gaming when you have the chance to see a squirrel looking for a nut? It’s riveting.”

I stared at my kids, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. They’d acted the same way the summer before and then ended up having the time of their lives.

“Honestly, Dad. We don’t have to go to Hicksville again this year, do we?” Ricky said. “There’s nothing to do.”

“He means except getting bitten by mosquitoes and getting poison ivy,” Brian added helpfully.