Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

“Hell, no,” I said. “I’ll do both.”

“Both?” she said. “Aren’t you biting off a heck of a lot here? I don’t have to tell you how hot this diamond case is. You’re going to be busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger.”

I’ll be busy, all right, I thought. I didn’t even mention the personal stuff going on with my daughter Chrissy.

“I got this, Miriam. Trust me. I won’t let you down, I promise,” I said.

“Well, if that’s what you want, Mike,” Miriam finally said. “It’s your blood pressure.”

CHAPTER 52

THE REST OF THE afternoon we spent scouring southwest Harlem for Roger. We hit several parks, showed his picture around to a few soup kitchens and food banks. But we came up empty again. It was quickly becoming a bad theme.

When I finally opened my apartment door, I would have loved to tuck in the little guys, but it was almost ten o’clock, and they were all fast asleep. I stood for a moment in the hallway outside the darkened girls’ room anyway, staring at Chrissy sleeping in her bottom bunk, which was plastered with stickers of rainbows and hearts and bunnies. Chrissy and her bunnies. There was a poster on the wall above her with a baby bunny on its back sticking out of a teacup.

I hadn’t heard anything further from the guy claiming to be her father or from his fussy lawyer. I wondered if that was a good thing. Maybe I’d catch a much-needed break and they would just go away. Fat chance, but who knew? I was about due for a miracle after the last couple of crazy hectic days.

As I softly closed the girls’ door, I could see Mary Catherine down the hall, filling the dishwasher, then bending to the Herculean task of charging our family’s impressive array of electronic devices and phones. The Energizer Bunny had nothing on MC, the way she was always busy keeping everything together—the apartment, the kids, not to mention yours truly.

I remembered it then. A promise that I needed to keep. As Mary Catherine opened a cabinet and started lining up lunch bags on the counter, I stood in the hall and took out my wallet and my cell phone.

“La Grenouille,” said a butter-smooth French-laced voice in my ear a moment later.

I’m about as far from a gourmet as most cops get, but even I knew that La Grenouille was one of the last great classic French restaurants in NYC. Kissinger ate there. The megafinancier Henry Kravis. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have dreamt of attempting to get a reservation on short notice.

But being an NYPD detective is a weird job that sometimes comes in pretty handy.

“Hello, may I please speak to Claude Pétain?” I said, reading the name off the tattered business card I’d pulled from the back of my wallet.

“Speaking. May I help you?”

“I don’t know if you remember me, Claude, but I’m Detective Mike Bennett. I worked a case at your restaurant about a year ago when one of your elderly waiters passed away.”

“Oh, yes. Old Paul Tristan. I remember,” he said. “When we suggested that he might think about retiring, the old Basque said that the restaurant was his life and that we would have to carry him out. And wouldn’t you know, he got his wish in the middle of lunch service.

“I do remember you, Detective, as well as your extreme discretion at removing the body so as not to alarm our patrons. It was well appreciated. It still is. What can I do for you? Is there some kind of problem?”

“No, not exactly. I’m in a bind with a lady friend to whom I promised a very special night out, and I was wondering if I might appeal to you for some assistance. There wouldn’t be any way for me to score a reservation there, say, this Friday? I know it’s very short notice.”

“I see,” Claude said neutrally. “Let me check. One moment, please.”

I sweated it out as I waited a full minute, then two. La Grenouille on short notice? It was a stupid idea. Who did I think I was? Donald Trump?

Finally, Claude got back on the line.

“How does nine-thirty work, Detective?”

Magnifique, I thought as I looked down the hall, imagining Mary Catherine in a little black dress.

“That would be terrific, Claude,” I said quickly. “I really can’t thank you enough.”

CHAPTER 53

THE BRAKES ON THE massive, dusty twenty-six-ton Mack dump truck whined like a starving mutt as it swung off West Street onto Battery Place.

It was fifteen minutes past noon and down here at the southern tip of Manhattan, office workers in search of lunch were spilling out of the megalithic glass-and-limestone financial buildings onto the narrow, slotlike streets like a body bleeding out.

Looking out at the crowds through his dark shades, the dump truck driver thought how nice it would be to park and while away the lunch hour trying to pick up one of the tight-skirted money honeys clopping past at the light. Even dressed like Bob the Builder, with a quick flash of his dimples and his born pickup artist’s silver tongue, he knew it wouldn’t take an hour before he would have some stupid, starry-eyed young working gal giving up her name, her phone number, her heart.