James Patterson - Run For Your Life

Somebody had just thrown up on Socky, the cat.

Amid all the clamor, she could hardly hear the phone ringing. Her first thought was to let the machine pick it up. The last thing she needed was another hassle. But then she decided, The heck with it. Things couldn’t get worse. She stepped over to the wall phone and lifted it off the hook.

“Bennett residence,” she half screamed.

The caller was a woman who spoke in a clipped, no-nonsense tone. “This is Sister Sheilah from Holy Name.”

Oh, Lord, Mary Catherine thought – the kids’ principal. This was not going to be good news. Well, it served her right for taunting fate.

The din seemed, if anything, to be getting even louder. She glanced around, trying to think of a quick way to quiet it. Then inspiration hit.

“Yes, Sister. This is Mary Catherine, the children’s au pair. Could you hold on one second?”

She calmly set down the phone, got the stepladder out of the pantry, and climbed up to the electrical box on the wall beside the door. As she unscrewed each of the four fuses, the noise abruptly stopped – the TV, the computer game, the washing machine, and finally, the voices.

Mary Catherine picked up the phone again and said, “Sorry, Sister. I’ve a bit of a mutiny on my hands here. What can I do for you?”

She closed her eyes as the principal curtly informed her that Shawna and Brian, half of the Bennett faction that Mary Catherine had managed to get out the door this morning, had “become ill.” They were in the school nurse’s office and had to be picked up immediately.

Perfect, she thought. Mike was involved in something too serious to break away from, and she couldn’t leave the little ones here alone.

She assured Sister Sheilah that she’d have someone pick up the latest casualties as soon as humanly possible, and she called Mike’s grandfather, Seamus. This time, fate relented. He was available to go get them right away.

Mary Catherine had just finished talking to him when Ricky, Trent, Fiona, and Chrissy wandered into the kitchen with a chorus of complaints.

“The TV stopped!”

“So’d my computer!”

“Yeah, like – everything.”

“Must be a power blackout,” Mary Catherine said, shrugging. “Nothing to be done about it.” She rummaged in the utility drawer and took out a deck of cards. “Have you guys ever played blackjack?”

Ten minutes later, the kitchen island had become a card table with Trent as the dealer and the others squinting at their hands. The noise level was reduced to the little guys counting out loud and grappling with the rules. Mary Catherine smiled. She wasn’t one to encourage gambling, but she was pleased to see them having fun without batteries. She decided to make sure the entertainment devices were turned off, then screw the fuses back in so she could finish the laundry and make soup. They’d be too absorbed to notice.

But first, there was an important matter to take care of. Socky was still complaining piteously and trying to rub its vomit-stained coat against her ankles. She gingerly lifted the cat by the back of the neck.

“You’ll thank me in the long run,” she said, and carried it, clawing the air in furious protest, to the kitchen sink.

“You must be a cop, because you certainly don’t look like a customer,” a young woman called to me as I was exiting the Polo store.

Well, if it isn’t Cathy Calvin, intrepid Times police reporter and all-around pain in the ass, I thought.

She wasn’t somebody I wanted to talk to right now. On top of all the problems I was facing, I was still very annoyed at how distinctly unhelpful she’d been at the St. Pat’s Cathedral siege.

But I put a smile on my face and walked over to the barricade where she was standing. The enemies we cannot kill, we must caress, and deception is the art of war, I remembered. Thank God for the classical education I’d received from the Jesuits at Regis High. You needed to brush up on your Machiavelli and Sun Tzu to survive an encounter with this lady.

“Why is it every time we meet, it’s over police sawhorses and crime scene tape?” she said with a big bright grin of her own.

“Good fences make good neighbors, I guess, Cathy,” I said. “I’d love to chat, but I’m really busy.”

“Aw, come on, Mike. How about a quick statement, at least?” she said as she turned on her digital recorder. She was giving me some pretty intense eye contact. For the first time, I noticed that hers were green – striking, and actually kind of playful. She smelled good, too. What was it she’d just said? Oh yeah, she wanted a statement.

I kept it as by-the-book vague and as short as possible. A store clerk had been shot, I told her, and we were withholding his name pending notification of his family.

“Wow, you’re a font of information just like always, Detective Bennett. What about the shooting at Twenty-one? Is it related?”

“We can’t speculate at this time.”

“What’s that mean, really? Chief McGinnis isn’t letting you in on that one?”

“Off the record?” I asked.

“Of course,” Cathy said, clicking off her recorder as I leaned in.

“No comment,” I whispered.

Her emerald eyes didn’t look so frolicsome anymore as she clicked the recorder back on.

“Let’s talk about last night, up in Harlem,” she said, totally switching tracks. “Witnesses say police snipers shot an unarmed man. You were right next to the victim. What did you see?”

I was used to aggressive reporting, but I was starting to wonder where I’d left my pepper spray.

“Cathy, I’d just love to relive that experience, especially with you,” I said. “But as you can see, I’m in the middle of an investigation, so if you’ll excuse me.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it over lunch? You have to eat, right? My treat. And no tape recorder.”

I snapped my fingers in fake disappointment. “Wouldn’t you know it? I already have a reservation at Twenty-one.”

“Very funny,” she said with a wry look. Then she shrugged. “Oh, well. A girl has to try. I probably shouldn’t tell you this – it’ll go to your head – but I could think of worse lunch dates. If you ever put an ad in the personals, I’ll give you a couple of tips on what to say. Tall, nice build, thick brown hair, definitely cute.”

I was startled that she thought that about me. Maybe she was just flattering me to get more information, but she seemed like she meant it.

“I don’t have any plans to,” I said. “But thanks.”

“And that crack I made about you not looking like a Polo customer was below the belt. You’re actually a very sharp dresser.”

My hand rose automatically to smooth my tie. Christ, was she really hitting on me? Or was I a total fool to even imagine it? Cathy was damned nice-looking herself, and in the kind of outfit she was wearing right now – short, tight black skirt, tighter blouse, and patent leather pumps – she was flat-out hot. As long as you could ignore her being a bitch on Rollerblades.

But was she even such a bitch? I started wondering. Or just a hard-driving professional trying to do her job, with a brassy style of flirting, and I was a hopelessly grumpy old bastard who’d been taking it all wrong?

I backed away, as confused as a schoolboy. She was watching me with her hands on her hips and her head cocked a little to one side, like she’d challenged me to a duel and was waiting for my response.

“Don’t let it go to your head, Cathy,” I said, “but I could think of worse lunch dates, too.”

I spent the rest of that afternoon at the 21 Club, mostly interviewing witnesses who had been there when the maître d’, Joe Miller, was shot. When I finished, I sank into a red leather banquette in the back bar and yawned. There’d been a lot of them.