James Patterson: Run For Your Life

Within five minutes, he was able to swing the grate open. He hopped down inside and silently closed it back over his head. This was a filthy, squalid way of doing things, but if you wanted to get into one of Manhattan ’s Fort Knox-like, prewar buildings, you had to make some sacrifices.

The beam of his penlight, held in his mouth, played over the concrete where he squatted. The filth came up to the ankles of his three-hundred-dollar socks – mounds of cigarette butts and gum wrappers; sodden, unrecognizable garbage; an empty crack vial.

He shrugged off his jacket, wadded it up, and held it against the dust-caked basement window beneath the grate. He hit the window with a single sharp punch, breaking out the glass. He stilled, listening for an alarm or outcry. There was nothing. He reached in, found the window latch, and squirmed his way into the darkened basement.

He walked quickly down a corridor lined with dusty storage bins piled with beat-up luggage, old wooden skis, stationary bikes, eight-track tapes. High society kept the same crapola as most other idiots, he thought. He slowed as he approached a doorway with the sound of Spanish music behind it – no doubt the super’s apartment. But the door stayed closed as he silently moved along.

Past it, on the right, he came to an old-fashioned manual elevator. Inside that, he let the outer door slide quietly closed before easing shut the brass lattice of its inner gate.

That was when he noticed that his hand was bleeding. Crimson drops were rolling off his thumb, splashing on the worn linoleum.

Wincing, he pulled up his sleeve. Christ, he’d sliced the back of his arm wide open when he’d punched the window. How did you like that? He was so jacked up, he hadn’t even noticed.

Well, what was a little blood? he thought, clicking off the safeties of the Tec-9s. He pulled back the elevator switch and started to ascend.

There’d be a lot more of that soon.

When the Teacher let go of the freight elevator lever, the car did a funny little bounce. He held his breath, listening, as its humming motor silenced with a clack and it stopped dead in the shaft. Still nothing.

The floating feeling of elation in the pit of his stomach was insane now, like he’d swallowed a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. How many years of his life had he wasted running away from it, denying it? He loved being at war with anyone and everyone. The thrill of it was better than sex, drugs, and rock and roll put together.

Quick now, he thought, sliding the brass inner gate back silently.

It opened onto a narrow back landing, a service entrance with two doors and some garbage cans. He put his ear to the closer of the doors. Inside, he heard water running, the bang of a pot being put on a stove, loud voices that sounded like children’s.

He pressed the thumb of his injured hand to the doorbell. Footsteps approached. He was prepared with a ruse about delivering a package to the Bennett residence. Or, if the door opened a few inches on a chain, to just ram it with his shoulder.

But the lock tumblers clicked and it started swinging freely inward.

You’ve got to be kidding me, he thought. Not even a “Who’s there?” Hadn’t they heard about the crime wave?

His heart double-dribbled against his chest as the door opened all the way.

When I ducked my head out of the kitchen about ten minutes later, I could see that the Blanchettes’ party had kicked into full tilt. The mayor was dancing to techno with somebody’s trophy wife, and she was laughing her head off like a hyena. All around them, others were behaving more like raucous teenagers than the dignified adults they no doubt were during their day jobs.

I exchanged perplexed looks with one of the Midtown North undercovers who was posing as a waiter.

“I guess it just ain’t a party until the guy in the bird costume is deejaying in front of your Pollock,” he said.

Then a voice spoke through my earpiece.

“Mike? Uh, Mike? Um, could you get in here?” It sounded like Jacobs, one of the Midtown North detectives.

“Where’s ‘here’?”

“The kitchen.”

“What’s up?”

“You, uh, just need to come, okay? I’ll show you when you get here. Over.”

What now? I thought, heading back to the Blanchettes’ kitchen. Jacobs had sounded weird, even upset. Well, things had been going so smoothly, maybe something had to give.

I hurried into the kitchen.

And stopped still.

Jacobs was beside the back door, standing over a young guy who was lying on the kitchen floor. I recognized him as another detective, Genelli, from the Nineteenth Precinct.

“Oh, my God,” I said, striding toward them. “What the hell happened to him?” Had somebody bashed him? Was our shooter here after all?

Genelli briefly tried to lift his lolling head, but it thunked back to the floor.

“He’s okay,” Jacobs said. “Dumbass rookie, he got bored out by the pool, started drinking beer and playing quarters with a couple of the college girl guests. Next thing, one of them comes to tell me he passed out. Sorry to be coy, Mike, but I didn’t know what else to do. We don’t get him out of here before the mayor sees him, he’s going to get fired.”

“Him and me both,” I said, grabbing Genelli’s arm. “Open that back door and ring the freight elevator before anybody sees us.”

Mary Catherine was drying her hands with a dish towel when the back doorbell rang. She assumed it was a delivery that the doorman downstairs had okayed, which happened fairly often. Nobody could get up here without going past him.

But her towel fluttered to the floor as she stared at the man standing there. Her gaze went first to his bloody hand, then flicked to the two evil-looking guns he was holding, then to the wide grin on his face.

“Bennett residence, I presume,” he said, pressing the snub-nosed black barrel of one of the machine pistols to the tip of her nose. Blood streamed down his wrist, within inches of her staring eyes.

Oh, my good Lord, she thought, struggling to stay calm. What to do? Scream? But it might enrage him, and who would hear her, anyway? Sweet Jesus – this man here, and the worst of it was that all the kids were home!

Still smiling, he tucked the threatening gun into his jacket.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he said. She stepped back reluctantly. There was nothing else she could do.

“Thank you,” he said with mocking politeness.

When he spotted Shawna and Chrissy at the kitchen island, he lowered the other gun and hid it behind his leg. Thank God for that, at least. They watched him with mild curiosity. At their age, the sudden appearance of a stranger was just one of thousands of other mysterious things. The flu that had kept so many of the Bennett kids home from school had also wreaked havoc with their bedtimes.

“Hey, who are you?” Chrissy said, sliding off her stool and starting toward him to make friends.

Mary Catherine swallowed, fighting the urge to dive across the kitchen and scoop the child up. Instead, she stepped forward to intercept Chrissy and caught her hand.

“I’m one of your daddy’s friends,” the man said.

“I’m Chrissy. Are you a police officer, too? Why is your hand bleeding? And what’s that behind your leg?”

“Put a sock in the brat,” the Teacher said quietly to Mary Catherine. “This ‘why is the sky blue’ crap is really pissing me off.”

“Go watch the movie now, girls,” she said.

“But I thought you said Harry Potter was too scary,” Shawna said, giving her a distressed look.

“It’ll be okay this once, Shawna. Just do it. Now.”