James Patterson - The Quickie

I dug with the shovel until it squished into something. My breath caught and my heart pumped with relief. It was a plastic Stop amp; Shop bag. I opened it and saw the.38 sitting on top of the bloody towels.

I put the gun in my purse and tied the shopping bag and put it in the trunk of my Impala, the cop car I usually drove to work in. Then I went back, filled the hole, and painstakingly put the bricks back the way I'd found them.

I was sweating, placing the last brick back down, when I heard something at the corner of the house.

I turned.

And my heart stopped.

It was my partner, Mike.

Mike? Here at my house? Now?

Behind him were Scott's DETF group members Jeff Trahan and Roy Khuong. All three were wearing full ballistic armor.

I could feel my sweat glands open like a drain. This was it – endgame!

They'd been surveilling me, I thought. They knew exactly what had happened. Probably from the get-go.

Now it was over.

My mouth opened wordlessly as I stared at them from where I was, on my knees.

"What's up, Lauren? Don't you answer your phone?" Mike said, pulling me up. "We just got word from a confidential informant that the Ordonez boys are at their club right now. We decided to just come by and pick you up. Marut and Price are waiting in the van."

He slapped the dirt from my hands as if I were a naughty child he'd caught playing in the mud.

"You can plant your perennials later, Martha Stewart," my fired-up partner said with a grin. "It's time for us to bag some cop killers."

RIDING IN THE BACK of a speeding van disguised as a plumbing company's, which the Bronx Narcotics Drug Enforcement Task Force used for surveillance, I studied the black-and-white photographs of the Ordonez brothers that Mike had brought with him. The pilot, Mark, was a year older than his brother, Victor, but the hard-eyed, pock-marked tough guys could have been twins.

I handed the pictures back to Mike, who was crouched next to me. He was sheathed in Kevlar, a tactical shotgun held port arms across his chest. I was wearing a full vest, too, and it felt incredibly heavy across my back and shoulders.

Or maybe it was just my head-about-to-explode guilt and anxiety dragging on me.

"Couple of real lookers," I managed to get out.

"Did you notice how light-skinned Victor is? Six foot. He matches Amelia Phelps's description almost to a T. He did it, Lauren. He's our guy. He just about killed a cop fifteen years ago, and he finally got his chance with Scott. The son of a bitch was Scott's shooter. I can feel it."

I stared at my partner. There was a far-off look in his eyes, a malevolent gaze. "These two are going to wish their mother strangled them at birth," he whispered.

I raked my hair back with my fingers. I remembered again that Mike's dad had been killed on The Job. Now we were going after cop killers. I wondered suddenly if this was such a good idea. Actually, I knew it wasn't.

"We're here," Trahan called from the wheel as the van slowed. "Lock and load, ladies."

There was a heady metallic smell in the van's enclosed space. Adrenaline probably. Or maybe testosterone. Things were happening way too fast. The click of weapons echoed off the stark, steel walls.

We were parked on East 141st Street somewhere off Willis Avenue. I guessed the Manhattan real-estate bubble had yet to blow in this direction, looking out at the weed-filled lots and crumbling buildings.

Anything to keep my mind off what was happening now.

Across the desolate street, a wind-blown page of El Diario caught against the skeletal bumper of a stripped-to-the-bones Escalade. The only structures that looked semi-sound around here were the housing projects across the gun-metal strip of the Harlem River behind us.

Trahan pointed at an ancient, listing, four-story walk-up midway down the block.

"There she blows," he said. "That's the club."

Club? I thought, confused. What club? What Trahan was pointing at were just two graffiti-covered steel shutters bookending the shadowed doorway of an anonymous-looking storefront. The crumbling tenement windows above it were empty. Not just of people. Of glass and aluminum frames, too.

Trahan caught my dumbfounded look.

"You have to see this place inside," he said with a rueful shake of his head. "It's another world."

Trahan took out his cell phone and made a call. He tssked after a few seconds, snapped it shut.

"Damn confidential informants," he said. "She's not picking up."

"It's a woman?" I said.

"Of course," Detective Marut said. "She was sleeping with Mark Ordonez until he left her for another lady. There's no better informant than a woman scorned."

"When did you last hear from her?" I asked.

"Right before we picked you up," Trahan said. He bit the antenna of his radio in frustration.

"I wanted to hit it fast, flash-bang through the front door, get everybody down. Now I'm not so sure. My CI there said that the place was packed. We can't risk somebody getting hurt, especially us, unless the Ordonez brothers are definitely in there. Then, fuck everything!"

"Hey, wait a second," I said. "Where's the Emergency Service Unit? They live for this kind of stuff. Why don't we let them handle it?"

"Scott was our brother," Khuong said gravely, his eyes hard and dark as coal. "This stays in the family."

Good lord. I didn't like the sound of that. I was getting a scary vibe off everyone, actually. These guys were too keyed up. Letting their emotions get the best of them. This thing felt more like a war party than an arrest procedure. Whatever happened to removing the emotionally involved from the case? Like I of all people should talk.

"Did somebody say that the place was packed?" I said, staring dubiously at the desolate establishment. "It's coming on nine a.m."

Thaddeus's gold tooth winked. At least I think that's what I saw. He racked his 10mm Smith amp; Wesson.

"Some people never want the party to end, girl," he said.

"Wait a second. How are we going to do a recon?" Detective Marut chimed in. "If these guys killed Scott, then they're going to be superparanoid about anybody who looks suspicious. We've all been on surveillance. Who knows if they made us."

"I have an idea," I said.

I stared at the club. It looked evil, like an inner-city entrance to Hell. But I was the one whose charade had put us here, and I could barely live with myself at that moment. If somebody else got hurt, I didn't know what I would do.

"Wire me up," I said.

Trahan shook his head. "No way."

"What are you, nuts?" Mike said. "No way are you going into that pit alone. I'll do it."

I stared into my partner's eyes. He meant what he'd just said. Like I said, he's the best .

"You listen to me," I said. "I'm going in. They don't know me from Eve. They won't expect a woman. Oh, and if that's not good enough for you, I'm the primary investigator. And to answer your first question, Yes, obviously I'm nuts."

IT TOOK ABOUT A MINUTE AND A HALF for DEA agent Thaddeus Price to attach a tiny wireless Typhoon mike under the button of my suit jacket. I kind of wanted to tell him I wasn't in that big a hurry, but I kept that particular news flash to myself.

"Okay, here's the set," he said. "This place is a shit hole, but believe it or not, on Friday mornings they get a slumming, hard-partying Manhattan crowd. Go up, knock on the door, and tell the bouncer you're looking for your boyfriend, DJ Lewis. Don't worry, he's not there. But the bouncer will probably let you in."

"Why's that?" I said.

Thaddeus's tooth glittered again as he smiled at me.

"Look in the mirror, Detective. Pretty white girls like you don't need to be on the list."