Джеймс Паттерсон - Ambush

“Who’s your cousin?”

“Willie. Willie Perez. But he was hired by someone else. I swear I don’t know who.”

“What did Willie say about who hired him? C’mon — I know he had to talk about it to get you to help.”

Julio stared at me like I was a witch who could read his mind.

He looked down at the stained upholstery of my police-car seat and mumbled, “It was a chick.”

“What?”

He spoke up. “A woman. It was a woman who hired Willie.”

“What did she look like?”

“I don’t know. He just said she was beautiful. That was all he said, I swear.”

“Where’s Willie now?”

“I don’t know. He lives in the same apartment as me, but I don’t see him that much. He’s got girlfriends. Lots of them.”

I said, “I’ll tell you the truth. I’m not sure how much of this is bullshit.”

“None. I swear. I’m just sorry I shot at you.”

“For once I’m going to say it doesn’t matter that you shot at me. The only thing that will help you now is to help me find whoever hired your cousin. I’m not making any specific deals. I’m not doing shit. Nothing until you help me.”

I let him digest that. Often someone’s imagination will do your work for you.

Julio looked at me and said, “Okay, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“And I’m going to need you to try to set up a meeting with whoever hired your cousin.”

“I can’t do that from a police car.”

“I’m going to go way out on a limb and give you a day to set that up. Don’t say anything to your cousin about me yet. I’ll tell you something: you don’t want to cross me. You believe me?”

“I swear to God I believe you.”

Alex Martinez spoke to Oscar, her contact from the Mexican cartel, on her throwaway phone to confirm that the contracts on the Canadians were complete. She threw in Alicia Toussant’s bodyguard for free. Now she was just tying up loose ends — like Detective Michael Bennett.

Oscar said, “This is all good. We don’t need to make statements with these Canadians in New York. They know someone is tracking them. If we need to, we’ll send you to Quebec in a few months. Then we’ll make a statement, like killing one of these pricks in front of his family or cutting off a few dicks. That will show them how far we’re willing to go.”

Alex said, “That’s another conversation. I was just calling to say things are almost wrapped up here in New York.”

The conversation was brief. All he said was, “Very good. That’s why we pay you so much.”

When she told him she was tying up loose ends, she didn’t go into details. The Dominican gang that had tried to kill her was the biggest loose end she’d ever had on a contract. She had an address for one of the men, and it would make a statement to kill him in his own apartment.

This was as close to a personal reason for killing as she’d ever had. She was angry. The young man she’d killed in the crappy old hotel in East Harlem had been vile. His attitude and comments made her shudder.

The fact that they thought they could eliminate her made her livid.

Finally she found the apartment, on 129th Street in East Harlem. It looked like most of the other run-down apartment buildings in this part of New York. The city had planted a few trees in the grassy swath around the sidewalks, and about every other apartment had an air conditioner hanging out of its window.

She stood on the corner for a few moments and took in the whole block. There was nothing out of place. Some children played in the green space in front of the building. Alex didn’t want to be seen entering through the front door.

She walked another block to look at the rear of the apartment complex and checked for video cameras. The surge in video surveillance and security had made her job more difficult. One of the reasons she was paid so well was that she knew how to adapt. In a neighborhood like this there wasn’t nearly as much video surveillance as there was in more affluent and commercial areas.

The rear door locked automatically as soon as it closed. She watched as a couple of people came and went, each using a key to get back inside.

An elderly woman carrying two heavy bags of groceries slowly moved alongside her.

Without thinking, Alex said in Spanish, “Let me help you with that.” She took one of the bags from the woman’s skinny arms.

The older woman smiled and said, “You have very nice manners. I don’t see that much around here anymore.”

“I’m not from around here.”

The woman reached up and touched Alex’s cheek. “Good for you, sweetheart.”

After they walked for a minute, Alex realized she was headed toward the back door of the apartment building. Perfect. Sometimes luck did favor those who were prepared.

It was natural to follow the woman in the door with a bag of groceries in her arms, and she even helped take it inside her first-floor apartment.

The woman tried to hand Alex a dollar bill as a tip.

Alex smiled and refused as she backed out of the apartment. She turned as if she was headed back out the door, then took the stairs to the second floor.

She found the apartment right next to the stairs and listened carefully for several minutes. There was no sound or movement from inside.

She quietly tried the handle. The door was locked but loose in its frame. The old story: a cheap landlord who never wanted to repair anything.

Alex retrieved her stiletto and popped it open. It only took one push in the right place by the lock to slip the door past the frame. She let it swing open silently.

She stepped inside the empty apartment.

Sometimes even I was amazed at the turns my days could take. An hour ago, I was talking to a guy who tried to kill me. I cut a deal no sane cop would make. I gave up an immediate arrest that would probably lead to two other arrests for the chance to land the big one. As long as I didn’t tell anyone about it, I probably wouldn’t get in trouble. Now I was downtown and meeting Mary Catherine for lunch.

I had gone from talking to a guy who tried to kill me to talking with the woman who had saved me.

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I called her and asked her to meet me on the seventh floor of the Bergdorf Goodman department store, in the little restaurant. She sounded shocked by the invitation, then blurted out, “I didn’t know you realized there was a restaurant up there.”

The BG Restaurant was fancy by my standards, with big, ornate windows and stiff, formal chairs. The menu prices made me flinch a little, but I rationalized the midday splurge. The croque monsieur made that rationalization easier.

We sat at a small table overlooking Central Park near 57th Street. The view was spectacular. And so was Mary Catherine. Her beautiful face, framed by that lovely auburn hair, and those clear green eyes that seemed to take in the whole world made the view pale by comparison. It’s too bad I could never put that kind of shit into words around her. Instead I said, “You look great.”

She blushed slightly and smiled. “You always say the right things.”

We chatted about subjects we normally don’t get to chat about. Current events. Where the kids might end up going to college. Where we might go on vacation this coming summer. It was great.

Then we ended up on the topic of Juliana.

Mary Catherine said, “I really think you need to give her more room. By the way, that was a sneaky trick, getting Carter to admit he was planning on moving to LA.”

I smiled. “Sneaky or brilliant?”

She shrugged and said, “I guess it’s a little bit of both.”

“When you get a little older, you have to get sneakier. It’s our only advantage.”