Джеймс Паттерсон - Ambush

That was his mistake.

He never even noticed Alex as she came up behind him with her stiletto already extended.

Just as she stepped up next to the bodyguard, he turned, giving her the opening she needed. She shifted her weight and drove the stiletto straight up under the man’s jaw so that the sharpened steel crashed through his mouth and nasal cavity, then directly into his brain.

Alex would call his expression confused . He didn’t understand what had happened or why he couldn’t move. His eyes focused briefly on her, and he gurgled a question for a moment.

Then she moved her left arm behind him and eased him carefully to the ground. He was now just a sack of bones and skin. Against the wall, with the bushes near him, his body was barely visible.

Alex ran her hands over his waistline and found a Browning 9mm pistol in his waistband. She slipped it into her purse.

Just as Alex was about to leave the body, she reached down into his left front pants pocket and retrieved the tiny box that his boss, Alicia, had given him earlier.

She opened it and found a pair of beautiful pear-shaped diamond earrings. They were at least two carats. They were remarkable. For a moment, Alex wished she were a thief instead of a killer. She slipped the earrings back into the man’s pocket.

When Alex stood up and peeked over the wall, she could see Ms. Toussant still sitting in front of the fountain.

Maybe this wouldn’t be as hard as she thought.

Alex was polite and waited until her target completed her phone call. When the woman slipped the iPhone back into her purse, Alex calmly walked toward her and sat down on the same bench.

Alex said, “Hello, Ms. Toussant.”

That got the woman’s full attention. She turned her pretty face, framed by light brown hair, and focused on Alex.

She said, “Do I know you, dear?” She had a slight French accent.

Alex said, “No. I’m not someone you would normally do business with.”

“But you do work for someone. That means you’re not here for a friendly conversation.” The woman looked over Alex’s shoulder toward the wall where her bodyguard had been waiting.

Alex calmly pulled the man’s 9mm pistol from her purse and said, “If you’re waiting for the man who owns this to come to your rescue, you’ll be in for a surprise.”

The Canadian remained calm and said, “Are you just going to shoot me? No warnings or attempts to find out information?”

“I’m afraid not.” Before Alex could say anything else, the Canadian financier swung her left hand, knocking the pistol away, and came back with a right elbow that caught Alex low on the chin.

The blow knocked her off balance and almost completely off the bench. She twisted into a crouch as she slid off the bench to face the Canadian woman.

The Canadian threw a knee just as Alex looked up from her crouch. She was able to move, and the knee just grazed the side of her head. She had underestimated her target.

The Canadian didn’t waste any time throwing another kick, then pulling a straight razor from God knows where. She whipped it at Alex’s face.

Alex felt the blade just miss her nose as she jumped back. That thin blade would’ve sliced her nose in half. She desperately tried to regain her balance before the Canadian disfigured her. Or worse.

A police siren blasting in the distance distracted them both for a moment.

As soon as Alex realized it was a block away, she hopped back and raised the pistol. Just as her target advanced with the razor poised for another strike, she pulled the trigger. Without a silencer, the shot sounded like a cannon. But the echo would make it hard to tell exactly where the shot came from.

The bullet struck the woman just above the bridge of her nose. She crumpled straight to the ground right in front of Alex.

Instead of checking the body, which was perfectly still on the hard concrete next to the fountain, Alex looked up to make sure no one was rushing toward her.

Alex backed away from the body, then turned and walked quickly away. The few people on the edges of the park paid no attention to her.

Alex kept moving onto Broadway. She looked straight ahead as she passed the Flatiron Building and continued. She turned right on 21st. Looking around quickly, she pulled out the Browning pistol she had used to kill the Canadian financier and tossed it into the back of an idling garbage truck just before it rumbled away from the curb.

Thank God for lucky opportunities.

Alex worked to control her breathing and made sure her jaw wasn’t broken. It was sore but intact.

If nothing else, it would confuse the cops for a while that there were two bodies at the same scene killed by different methods. She started to smile thinking about the detectives who would have to figure that puzzle out.

I finally decided that if I wanted to understand murders associated with the drug trade, I needed to understand the drug trade a little better. My best contact in the NYPD narcotics unit was a sergeant stationed right in my building.

Sergeant Tim Marcia was a few years older than I was, and no one would mistake him for anything but a cop. At six one and beefy, he’d kept the same mustache since the mid-1990s. He was about as straight a shooter as anyone would ever meet, and he understood the drug world better than anyone else.

I sat in the passenger seat of his seized Range Rover. The narcotics unit often used cars it seized from drug dealers to conduct surveillance or undercover operations.

We drove up into the Bronx so Sergeant Marcia could talk to a couple of his informants. He treated them more like he was a big brother or mentor than a cop. I liked that.

Near Yankee Stadium, I sat in the Range Rover while he chatted with a young Puerto Rican man just outside the SUV.

Sergeant Marcia said, “You sure that’s it? You haven’t heard any other rumors?”

The thin young man shook his head and mumbled, “No. Nothing at all.”

Sergeant Marcia put a playful headlock on the young man, then said, “Don’t be late for class. And don’t make your mother worry about you tonight. Be home by ten.”

The young man smiled and waved as he walked off.

When Sergeant Marcia slipped back into the car, I said, “That’s not exactly how the movies portray your job.”

“Everyone has his own style. I never pretended to be Popeye Doyle from The French Connection . I would rather fix a few lives while making a case than run a big operation that disrupts an entire neighborhood.”

“I couldn’t agree more. What did your young friend have to say?”

“He says there’s been a disruption of the synthetic drug market. Everyone was making a fortune on ecstasy and meth, and now they’re back to selling pot and coke. My snitch says there’s been some Canadians trying to dump extra meth on the market, but the Mexican cartel has told people to steer clear.”

I said, “Sounds like my son Brian got the straight scoop.” I wouldn’t have chosen these circumstances, but I’d been grateful to see Brian in the Buffalo hospital at least twice a week.

Sergeant Marcia said, “I don’t want to admit that a Homicide puke came up with an explanation for what’s going on in the narcotics trade. This is embarrassing.”

“You help me find this killer, and I’ll never tell a soul.”

Sergeant Marcia laughed. “We go back too far. I have too much on you. You won’t tell a soul no matter what happens.”

“But you’ll help me just the same?”

“I’m insulted you even have to ask. We’ll figure this out, and I’ll write an official report saying that we got the original information from Brian. Maybe we can use that as a way of showing the court how much he’s cooperated. Who knows? Maybe we can cut that crazy sentence down a little bit.”