Bullseye (Michael Bennett 9)

An hour later, they’d put all the gear and the van back at the South Bronx safe house and were showered and changed and rolling back into Manhattan in their new Volvo crossover. They actually found a parking spot right in front of their Federal-style brick town house, in SoHo on Wooster Street between Broome and Spring.

They stood holding hands on the sidewalk for a moment. Nothing but the famous chic neighborhood’s incredible beaux arts nineteenth-century cast-iron buildings in every direction. The cobblestones, Corinthian columns, and delicate wrought-iron railings dusted in the still-falling snow were like what might appear on the cover of ’Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Not bad for an Indiana shit kicker, the man thought, drinking in the billion-dollar view down his block.

Not bad at all, he thought, looking at his exquisite wife, now in a candy-blue Benetton down coat, cream mini-sweaterdress, and black leather leggings.

He knocked the snow off his shoes on their doormat and keyed open their front door.

“Mommy! Daddy! You’re home!” their four-year-old daughter, Victoria, squealed, a blur of pink footie pajamas and strawberry-blond curls as she ran in from the family room, sliding on the gleaming hardwood in her Nana-made wool slippers.

“Yes! We! Are!” said the husband with equal excitement as he pretended to let his giggling daughter tackle him.

“That was a quick movie,” said Jenna, the babysitter, bringing up the rear, holding a sheet of still-raw cookies.

“We arrived late, with all the snow, so we just decided to get some dessert instead,” said the wife.

“Dessert? Wow. You guys just live on the razor’s edge, don’t you?” said their ever-sarcastic NYU film student sitter with an eye roll.

“Oh, that’s us. We’re real wild,” the husband said, laughing as he hung his car coat in the front hall closet and snitched a glob of raw oatmeal cookie dough.

“Yep, we’re complete psychos, all right,” agreed his wife as she lifted Victoria and blew a raspberry on her cheek.

Part One

Hail to the Chief

Chapter 1

Early Saturday morning, a lone figure stood center stage in the storied culinary arena of the Bennett family kitchen.

That figure was, of course, moi, your friendly neighborhood cop, Mike Bennett, but unlike an iron chef, I found myself where I often do when I make the mistake of going near pots and pans—namely, very, very deep in the weeds.

I was doing pancakes, Mike Bennett–style. Well, I guess technically you could call it Ina Garten–style, as I had her latest cookbook open on the kitchen island in front of me. Unfortunately, things weren’t going very well. Poor Ina was covered in flour, and she had a lot of company. There was flour all over the island, on the stools, on the floor next to the egg I’d dropped. There was even flour on Socky, the cat, who was licking at the broken egg.

As I stood there sweating and whisking and wondering if cats could get salmonella poisoning, I detected a distinctive aroma. I turned to the stove, where the sausages were burning in the too-hot cast-iron pan.

Dagnabbit! I thought as the next batch of toast popped. How was I supposed to put everything hot together at once? I wondered. And how come you never saw this crap happening on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives?

“Are you okay in there?” my kids’ nanny, Mary Catherine, called from the foyer, back from a walk with Jasper, our border collie. “Correction. Are you still alive in there? What’s going on?”

“The making of culinary history, Mary Catherine,” I said as I hopped over the cat and turned down the stove. “Sit tight. All is well.”

“It doesn’t sound all that well,” she said. “I’m coming in.”

“Don’t you dare. It’s your day off, remember?” I said. “Put your feet up, relax, and soak in the tranquility.”

That last remark was made with pointed irony, of course, this being the slow-motion not-so-quiet riot known as the Bennett household. As I burned down the kitchen, there was quite a din coming from the living room: the sound of buzz saws and laser beams, and the gloop-gloop-gloop of something dripping followed by a cacophony of what sounded like evil Tweety Birds laughing, all at 747-at-takeoff decibels.

The older of my ten kids were luckily still sleeping or plugged into headphones, but the younger ones, Eddie and Trent and Shawna and Fiona and Bridget and Chrissy, were sprawled out in front of the boob tube, watching some Saturday morning ’toons—mind-meltingly stupid, probably magic mushroom–inspired ones, by the sound of them, brought to my kids by the fools at the forbidden Cartoon Network.

Isn’t it hard enough trying to raise kids without edgy television execs trying to fit them for straitjackets? I thought as I made a mental note to change the parental block code again. That Eddie was worse than a safecracker when it came to unraveling the TV combo.

In between burning breakfast items, I was watching a little insanity-inspiring footage myself. I had the local CBS news site on the flour-covered iPad propped beside Queen Ina. On it, a report was scrolling that showed politicians. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. It was a story about the newly inaugurated president, Jeremy Buckland.

Surprisingly, I found myself liking Buckland. Maybe it was just a superb acting job, but he really did seem like a straight shooter. He’d been an Eagle Scout, a decorated war hero in Iraq one, a test pilot. The former governor of Pennsylvania also seemed smart and funny and deadly serious about making the country and world a safer, freer, happier place for everyone involved.

His wife was a nice, pretty, black-haired woman named Alicia, and they had four kids: three middle school–age daughters along with the true star of the show, their