James Patterson - I, Michael Bennett

“What’s that for?” I said.

“For celebrating Seamus, Mike. It was really wonderful. The kids love you so much. They love seeing you happy. They’ve been worried about you. So have I. I know how hard it’s been for you since losing your buddy Hughie.”

I looked down at the tar paper between my flip-flops.

“I’ve been pretty pensive lately, haven’t I?”

“‘Pensive’ is a word,” she said. “‘Silent’ is another one.”

Unable to deal with where the conversation was headed, I cha-cha’d her around a rusty AC unit as “Up on the Roof” was replaced by Ben E. King’s “Spanish Harlem.”

It seemed like music from a different world. It was as though the tune came from a different planet-a simple, happy one, where young people longed for adulthood and love.

I knew that getting older meant being skeptical about the music of a new generation, but what I heard on the radio these days was truly new territory. How in fifty years had the human race gone from popular music in which young men sang about things like buying their girl a ring and getting married to popular music in which young women boastfully sang about how much they enjoyed hard-core, dirty sex?

“Ding-dong,” Mary Catherine sang. “I’m right here. Penny for your thoughts.”

“They’re not worth that much,” I said, twirling her around.

It was maybe another thirty seconds before we heard footsteps behind us.

“Hello? Anyone up here?” a voice said.

We turned as Petey Armijo, the pudgy super of my building, stepped over, swinging a set of keys.

“Hey, Mr. Bennett, if you guys are… eh… done here, I’d like to lock the roof door.”

“We just finished, Petey,” Mary said, walking over and turning off Ben in mid-croon before hitting the stairs.

“Exactly, Petey. All done,” I said, grabbing a couple of folding chairs. “Your timing is impeccable.”

By the time I made it back downstairs into the apartment, I heard the dishwasher and the washing machine going. Mary Catherine was in full cleaning mode, which by now I knew meant that she was feeling anxious and emotional, and we’d probably shared our last dance of the evening.

My relationship with Mary Catherine was obviously complicated. So complicated, in fact, that even I didn’t know what was going on half the time. There was something deep and special between us, but every time it seemed like we were about to make a solid connection, something-life, the world, one of New York City’s unending supply of murderous maniacs, or, most often, my big mouth-would get in the way.

Thankfully, I noticed we’d run out of milk and eggs and bacon for Sunday breakfast, so I grabbed my keys and went out for a breath of what passes for fresh air in New York. Outside my building, I immediately walked over to the NYPD cruiser on the near corner.

“Don’t shoot,” I said, with hands raised, to the stocky young black cop behind the wheel as he rolled down the window.

The department had assigned nonstop protection to me and my family ever since I’d collared Perrine. And with good reason. In Mexico, during his reign of terror, Perrine had had dozens of cops, Federales, and prosecutors killed.

“I’m hitting the deli, Officer Williams. You need anything?”

“No, I’m fine, Detective,” the soft-spoken, affable Afghan war vet said as if he were coming to attention.

“At ease, Private Williams,” I said, smiling. “Half-and-half, one sugar, right?”

“Okay, Detective. But I thought I was the one who was supposed to be watching out for you,” the rookie said, finally smiling a little back.

“Got it covered,” I said, showing him the 9mm Glock in my waistband as I walked away.

I actually had another one on my right ankle, a subcompact Glock 30 filled to the brim with fat, shiny golden. 45-caliber bullets. If Perrine’s guys came for me, they’d better bring their lunch, because if I thought my life or the life of my family was in jeopardy, I was going to throw down first and ask questions later. I’d already killed two of Perrine’s assassins at Madison Square Garden. If killing the rest of them was what this thing took, then, as Paul McCartney so eloquently put it, let it be.

I went two blocks south down West End to the deli on the corner of Ninety-Sixth and was coming back up the hill, balancing a coffee with my bag of grocery loot, when my phone rang.

I glanced at the screen. It was assistant U.S. attorney Tara McLellan, Hughie’s cousin, to whom I’d been practically glued at the hip for the last two weeks, prepping for Perrine’s trial. I thought it was a little weird to be hearing from her this late, but jury selection on the trial was supposed to start Monday. I stopped on the corner, leaning against a sidewalk construction shed to take the call.

“Hey, Tara. What’s up?” I said.

“Mike, sorry to bother you so late,” she said. “I’m wrapping up the trial strategy report that I’m going to present to my boss tomorrow, and I was wondering if you could come by and take a look at it and give me some last-minute feedback. Talk me off the ledge.”

I could understand her anxiety. Not only was this the biggest case of Tara’s career, the whole Perrine thing was a major international news event. This was a very public opportunity for the U.S. to show the world that it was taking on the cartel problem, which had run amok for so long.

“I’d be happy to,” I said. “Where are you? Downtown at the office?”

“No. Midtown, actually. I’m at the St. Regis Hotel.”

I blinked. The St. Regis on Fifth Avenue was probably the most exclusive luxury hotel in New York, a place where celebrities stayed and where the cheapest room went for eight hundred bucks a night.

“Wow, that’s a pretty nice ledge you’re sitting on,” I said.

“I was late at the office and didn’t want to head back to Bronxville, so I decided to splurge. They did say we should shake up our routine for security reasons, Mike.”

“Good point,” I said. “The St. Regis is certainly the last place a cartel hit man would look for me. Give me thirty to get into my tux.”

“Where are you going?” Mary Catherine said upstairs, when she spotted me putting on a suit jacket.

“Work. Last-minute details on the Perrine trial,” I said.

“It’s Saturday night,” she said skeptically.

I tried to come up with one of my patented fast-talking quips as a reply, but drew a big fat zero.

“Tell me, Mr. Bennett. Do all assistant U.S. attorneys look like Fox News babes, or just this one who keeps calling you?” Mary Catherine said as I made my escape into the hall.

“My phone’s on. Be back soon,” I mumbled as I hit the door.

In no shape to drive after all that birthday bubbly, I, too, splurged. On a cab to the St. Regis instead of the subway.

I stared up at the dramatically lit, turn-of-the-century hotel as my cab turned off Central Park South onto Fifth Avenue. It was hard not to stare. The iconic French Second Empire-style building was one of the most beautiful in the city-twenty highly embellished stories of glowing limestone columns and cornices topped off by a copper mansard roof.

A doorman ushered me through an elaborate brass revolving door into a lobby of squint-inducing brilliant white marble. Even the furniture was old and French, I noticed, spotting Louis XVI armchairs with fluted legs backed up against the massive stone columns. This hotel was as imposing, over-the-top, and as expensive as New York City could get, which was saying something.

Tara had already sent me a text message when I was in the cab telling me to meet her in the landmark’s famous King Cole Bar. I stepped into the cavernous space, which had a mahogany bar and a massive mural behind it.