James Patterson - I, Michael Bennett

The armed and uniformed men were used to frequent breaks and delays in the cases they were assigned to and were seated at a table playing a game of hearts when the door opened behind them. As they glanced up from their cards, they noticed a Hispanic janitor smiling at them from the doorway. If there was anything distinguishing about him, it was that he was short and very stocky. Clutched in his wide fist was a coffee mug with the words I SEE DUMB PEOPLE emblazoned across it.

“Help you?” Officer Mays said, eyeing him.

“May… I… use?” the janitor said in halting English as he gestured the mug toward the microwave in the break room’s corner.

“Mi casa es su casa,” Tom Porte said as he picked up a card.

The janitor nodded and grinned as he quickly crossed the room and put the coffee mug into the bulky old microwave. There were loud beeps as he pressed buttons, followed by a loud hum.

“Hey, buddy. How’s ol’ Pedro in maintenance doing?” Officer Pinzano said from the table. “Is he back from his knee surgery?”

The janitor turned, smiling blankly, and stared at the officer.

“Thank you,” he said, nodding. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Thank you?” the pudgy Asian said, shaking his shaved head in disgust as he threw down a card. “These friggin’ illegals. This cat doesn’t speak word one of English, and here he is living high on the hog with a government union job. Hell, he probably makes more than us.”

“Speak for yourself, Ron,” Tom Porte said, raising a white eyebrow. “The way you sponge up the overtime, some of the judges around here make less than you.”

The janitor kept smiling as the microwave continued to hum. Two minutes passed. Three.

“Jeez, this guy is really frying that joe,” Mays commented as the bell finally dinged.

“You like that coffee muy caliente, huh, buddy?” Tom Porte said with a wink.

The janitor had his back to the men as he very carefully removed the cup from the oven. Next to the microwave, a radio played at low volume. The zany percussion of a xylophone, the familiar station ID of a local news channel, filled the small room as the janitor reached out with his free hand and turned it up.

“Si. Muy, muy caliente,” the janitor said, turning deftly with the cup and flinging the boiling baby oil he’d just superheated into the officers’ faces.

The scalding oil made a crisp, sizzling sound as it made contact with the men’s skin. As Tom Porte screamed, the janitor stepped forward and nimbly removed the. 38-caliber revolver from his holster and aimed the gun. Three shots and less than ten seconds later, all three men were down on the concrete floor, flailing in a mess of blood splatter and baby oil and fallen cards.

Officer Stacy Mays shook horribly as he bled out, his ruined head beating against the cement almost in time to the xylophone music. The janitor watched with a bored expression. He counted backward from twenty as he waited for the twitching to slow and then stop.

He turned down the radio and peeked out the door. Nothing. Not even a footstep. He needed to be quick now. He tucked the gun into his waistband and knelt down to remove the weapons from the bodies of the other two men. He would have much preferred something from his own vast collection, of course, but there was no way to get them through the metal detectors.

Getting the guns was the first part of the plan. The second part was to go to courtroom 203 upstairs and put them to use.

The killer’s name was Rodrigo Kahlo, and he had been flown to New York on a private jet from Grand Bahama Island the day before. In comfortable semiretirement from cartel work, he had at first declined the highly dangerous American contract offered to him by Perrine’s men. Then they had kidnapped his family.

As an assassin in good standing for the Perrine cartel, he never thought that the tables would turn like this. But there you had it. The squeeze was on now with the boss in jail, and the shit had rolled downhill, right onto him.

It wasn’t for the lives of his wife or even his children that he had agreed to do this. Living with them 24-7 over the last few comfortable years, he’d learned they were vain, selfish, stupid people, takers and connivers, especially the children. No, it was for his mother, who lived with them, that he’d finally said okay. His mother had lived her hard life like a saint, and he could not let her die as he’d seen so many die-in horror and pain and fear.

He let out a breath and checked the loads in the men’s guns. His mind was already thinking ahead to the floor plans he had memorized. Where the stairs were, the elevator, the layout of the hallway.

Finally, he looked down at the men he had just slain and knelt down and said the prayer that he always said before facing danger.

“Most Holy Death,” he said in Spanish. “Help me to overcome all obstacles, and may my house be filled with all the virtues of your protection.”

He stood and opened the door. Like all good assassins, he feared just one thing now.

Not death, but failure.

Half an hour after I left the voir dire session, I was on a bench in City Hall Park, three blocks south of the courthouse, becoming one with nature. Actually, I was feeding the last of my early lunch of an Au Bon Pain croissant to a depressed-looking squirrel, which, for lower Manhattan, is about as Walden Pond as it gets.

I definitely needed the time-out. Like most cops, I pride myself on being bulletproof, body and soul, but I couldn’t deny how troubling it was to see Perrine again. I couldn’t stop thinking about Hughie, about those last terrible moments in the cramped medical office where he’d given up his life for me. I wondered if I ever would.

So I took an early lunch break with a side of squirrel therapy. Not exactly textbook, I know, but don’t knock it till you try it. It works for bag ladies, right? What I truly couldn’t wait to do was embark on my long-awaited vacation to the old Bennett lake house up in Orange County. I love New York City from the Battery to the Bronx, but it grinds on you. You need to get it off of you from time to time or you’ll go nuts.

I was finishing my coffee when the first squad car screamed past. I didn’t think much of it, but then two more zipped by less than a minute later, sirens wailing. Knowing something was up, I stood and canned the remnants of my lunch and went to the park railing alongside Centre Street, where the squad cars had headed.

I let out a breath and bit my lip. In the distance, I could see that all three cop cars were halted, their roof lights bubbling, in front of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, where I’d been all morning. Their doors were flung open, and things most definitely did not look good.

I started walking north, back toward the courthouse. I took out my cell phone and speed-dialed my squad room to see if they had heard anything over the radio. After four rings, I gave up and called Tara. My stomach lurched as I got kicked into her voice mail. I stared at the flashing blue and red lights ahead of me.

Whatever was happening, it was bad. I picked up my pace. I could feel it, practically taste it, in the cloying, warm air.

More cop cars were screeching up to the front of the majestic courthouse steps as I dropped all pretense and sprinted across Foley Square. I grabbed a female cop who was hollering into her radio by the curb.

“What’s up?” I said as I showed her my shield. “Is it Perrine? The drug trial?”

“I don’t know. Our call was a ten ten in a courtroom on the second floor.”

Good God! Ten ten was the code for “shots fired,” and Perrine’s trial was on the second floor, I thought as I went up the massive stone stairs two by two.