James Patterson - Kill Me If You Can

“If it’s his real name, it’ll make our job easier,” Rice said.

“And if it’s a phony, what happens to me?”

“Meter-maid patrol,” Benzetti said.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Rice said. “He goes by the book, but we all make mistakes.”

“Is he going to write me up?”

“I’m not going to let him,” Rice said. “Nick, listen to me. We’re not turning this kid in. You made plenty of mistakes when you were a rookie.”

Benzetti shrugged. “Fine. But I don’t want to get nailed for not turning him in. So this conversation never happened. You never even met us. You got that, kid?”

“Yes, sir. It never happened. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“Get out of here.”

Kendall turned fast and headed back to the precinct house.

“Dumb bastard,” Benzetti said. “Call St. Vincent’s.”

“Why bother? Fifty bucks says they never heard of Dr. Jason Wood.”

“I wouldn’t bet fifty cents on it,” Benzetti said. “But you might as well go through the motions.”

They got back in the car, and Rice called the hospital. Two minutes later he hung up. “Never heard of him,” he said. “Now what do we do?”

Benzetti didn’t answer. He was too busy mind-humping a tall, leggy blonde who was walking down Third Avenue. “Take a look at that,” he said.

“Dream on, Beans. If that woman ever saw you with your shoes off, she’d laugh herself into a coma.”

They watched as the woman walked toward the car.

Benzetti rolled down his window.

“What are you doing?” Rice said.

“She’s great from the front. I want to get a good look at her ass as she walks past.”

But the woman didn’t walk past. She stopped, reached inside the window, grabbed Benzetti’s tie, and yanked hard, smacking his head against the car door.

“You’re Chukov’s Boys in Blue, right?” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

BENZETTI YOWLED IN pain. He fumbled for his gun, but before he could get it, there was a muzzle of a Glock pistol in his mouth.

Rice went for his gun.

“Unless his head is made of Kevlar, the bullet will go right through him,” the blonde said. “Then right through you. One shot. Two dead cops.”

Rice froze. “Is Chukov giving you a bonus if you kill us both with one bullet?”

“Kill you? The thought never crossed my mind.” She smiled, beautiful and evil at the same time. “Chukov hired me to work with you. I’m Marta, your new best friend.”

“If I were you, I’d work on my first-impression skills. If we’re friends, why is that gun in my partner’s mouth?”

“Because he was drooling over me like a dog in a meat market. I wasn’t hired to give your greaseball partner a hard-on.” She jiggled the gun in Benzetti’s mouth. “You got that, Romeo?”

He grunted a yes.

Marta slid the gun from his lips, but kept it pointed at him. “Nice to meet you,” she said.

“Yeah, a real joy,” Benzetti said, rubbing his head where it had smashed into the top of the car door.

“What have you got on this guy who walked off with Chukov’s diamonds?”

“Nobody we talked to at Grand Central recognized him,” Rice said. “A rookie beat cop saw him bending over Zelvas’s body, but the kid conned him into thinking he was a doctor. As soon as the cop got distracted, Bagboy split for the exit and hopped a cab. The last person to see him was the cabbie who dropped him at St. Vincent’s Hospital.”

“But he’s not a doctor, so how does that help us find him?” Marta said.

“The guy just stumbled on a fortune in diamonds,” Benzetti said. “Where’s the first place he’d want to go? Home. He wouldn’t give the cabbie his real address, so he plays out the doctor ruse and asks to be taken to a hospital in his neighborhood. St. Vincent’s is on West Twelfth Street, which means it’s a good bet he lives within a five-to-ten-block radius.”

“That’s a big territory,” Marta said.

“Give me a break,” Benzetti said. “I just eliminated four boroughs and most of Manhattan.”

“What if he got to St. Vincent’s and caught another cab?” Marta said. “What if he jumped on the subway to Brooklyn?”

“Look, I’m a cop. I can’t handle all the what-ifs. I follow the leads I got, and if I run into a dead end, I try something else. It’s called leg work.”

“Leg work takes time, which is something you two useless losers don’t have. So you better come up with something smarter than standing on the corner of West Twelfth Street with your hands in your pockets, waiting for some guy to walk by with a bag full of diamonds.”

She wagged the gun in his face. “Do I have to add or else? ”

“We get the point,” Benzetti said. “We’ll find the diamonds.”

“I doubt it,” Marta said. “But if you do…every last one of them goes back to Chukov. Got it?”

“Got it,” Benzetti said.

“I’ll have my eye on you two, so be careful, boys. This is your last warning.”

She put the gun in her shoulder bag and headed down the street without a care in the world, window-shopping of all things.

“SHE’S RIGHT,” RICE SAID. “We don’t have a lot of time left to find those diamonds. First Chukov warns us, now she does.”

“So, what are you suggesting? Give me a plan.”

“We go public. Get the surveillance shot of Bagboy out to the press.”

“Are you crazy?” Benzetti said. “This isn’t even our case. The bombing at Grand Central belongs to Homeland Security. We’re trying to find a bag of blood diamonds stolen from ruthless killers, and we’re trying to do it on the down low. If we go public, we’ll have Feds all over us.”

“I understand that. So we go to the press and we don’t say anything about Grand Central. We’re just two cops looking for a suspect. We can say he’s wanted in connection with whatever we want. We can say he’s a person of interest in an ongoing murder or robbery investigation. Doesn’t matter. But we don’t give the TIPS phone number. We just give out our direct lines and we handle the incoming. What do you say?”

Benzetti nodded. “Let me think about it.”

Rice exploded. “How about putting a gun in your mouth while you’re thinking? Damn it, Nick, that blond bitch was even crazier than Chukov. She said she’s keeping an eye on us, and from the way she got the jump on us, I believe her. I don’t care about walking away with a fistful of diamonds. I got two kids. I want to walk away with my life.”

“Okay,” Benzetti said. “We’ll go public. I know a guy who works over at New York One. It’s not CNN, but they do twenty-four-hour, ’round-the-clock news — and it’s all local. We’ll tell them they have an exclusive for a day. They’ll flash this poor bastard’s picture and our phone numbers every six minutes until we find him and kill him.”

“IS KATHERINE ONE IN a couple hundred million or what?” I asked. “Can you even begin to think of another woman who would meet me for lunch and then a few hours later drop everything and jump on a plane to Paris?”

No answer.

“Okay, okay, maybe a lot of women would drop everything to go to Paris. But name one besides Katherine who would go with me.”

No answer.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Cat got your tongue?”

At that point, my somewhat bored audience finally responded with a loud meow.

We were in the apartment. Just me and Hopper. He was licking himself and I was packing. I was so hyped that I needed to talk, and I must have been interesting, because he seemed willing to lick, listen, and watch me pack.