I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

eral dozen Mexican law enforcement ambushes and assassinations.”

“That’s why when we make contact, we need to take him down as soon as possible and use wrist and ankle cuffs,” I said to the people who would actually take part in the arrest. “This guy might dress like Clinton from What Not to Wear, but he’s a stone-cold special forces–trained psychopathic killer. You give him a chance, he’ll embed a chunk of lead in your brain like he’s picking out a silk tie.”

“Why is he in New York, again?” said another tourist, a short, pasty FBI lifer who was sitting like an overgrown cave troll on the edge of a desk. “He run out of people to kill in Mexico?”

“Because of this man,” I said over the chuckles.

I pointed to a photo of a smiling, heavyset Angel Candelerio on the whiteboard beside the photo of Perrine.

“Candelerio is the head of the Dominicans Forever drug gang, which runs most of the drugs, sex trafficking, and gambling north of Ninety-Sixth Street. Not that you could tell by the image he likes to front. He lives up in Bedford next to Mariah Carey and Martha Stewart and has a chauffeur-driven Lincoln limo and a daughter in NYU law school.

“The FBI Special Surveillance Group is on Candelerio’s house as we speak. They’re going to follow him to the arrest site here,” I said, pointing to a third photograph, which showed Margaritas, Candelerio’s Washington Heights restaurant, where the reunion with Perrine was to take place.

“I didn’t ask where,” the old FBI troll said as he twiddled his thumbs. “I asked why.”

“NYPD received info that Candelerio and Perrine are old friends from the same village in French Guiana,” Hughie said, taking my back. “Candelerio has connections in the Caribbean and Europe in addition to the city, so we think that with Perrine taking so much heat down in Mexico, he’s going to make another move with the help of his old friend.”

“But isn’t the guy a billionaire?” said the little agent as he lifted a rubber band off the desk and started playing with it. “I mean, Perrine’s—what? Late forties? He’s financially set. Why not retire? Also, why risk your ass coming into the U.S. at all? Crafty bastards, even evil ones like Perrine here, don’t usually act stupid, as a general rule.”

“Who knows?” I said to the annoying devil’s advocate with a shrug. “He hates America? He thinks he’s bulletproof? He’s rubbing our noses in it?”

I pointed to the photo of the restaurant again.

“Whatever the reason is,” I said, “at noon today, two blocks from where we’re sitting, Perrine is due to meet Candelerio. We’re going to let Perrine sit down and get comfy, and then we’re going to crash the party. We all know our jobs. It’s time to do them.”

“Sounds good. How’s the legal situation?” asked a young, bored-looking FBI SAC as he checked his BlackBerry.

“We already have the paperwork,” I said, lifting up the yellow envelope containing Perrine’s sealed indictment and the warrant for his arrest, which had been signed by the U.S. District Court.

“All we need now is to deliver it,” Hughie said.

CHAPTER 6

SWEATING UNDER HEAVY Kevlar in a Saint Nicholas Avenue tenement stairwell, I panned my binoculars over a C-Town supermarket and a cell phone store onto Candelerio’s restaurant, Margaritas.

It was cold and windy outside, the sky over the jagged skyline of five-story walk-ups the color of a lead pipe. As in all stakeouts, the minutes were going by in geologic time, as if everything in the world had hit slo-mo.

I checked my phone for the hundredth time. The screen said 10:40. Another hour or so to go until noon. A depressing thought came as I remembered the photos of the armed-to-the-teeth Mexican drug dealers and the shot-to-pieces mini-van: High Noon.

I certainly didn’t want the arrest to turn into a showdown, but considering the person we were arresting, I was ready if it did. Like the rest of the task force, I was packing heavy firepower—an M4 assault rifle with a holographic sight, along with my Glock. New York cops aren’t necessarily Boy Scouts, but we do like to always be prepared.

The DEA SWAT team, bristling with ballistic shields and MP5 submachine guns, was hidden in a bakery van around the corner, and there were another half dozen backup cops and FBI agents in the building across the street, watching the alley at the restaurant’s rear.

We were settled in our blind with the trap set. Now all we needed was for Perrine to walk into it.

“Hey, what’s that?” Hughie said, suddenly sitting up at the windowsill beside me.

“What? Where?” I said, frantically swiveling my binoculars left and right, down toward the sidewalk.

“Not the street,” McDonough said. “The sound. Listen.”

I dropped the Nikon binocs and cocked an ear out the open stairwell window to catch the heavy driving thump of a dance song coming from somewhere in the wilderness of tenements around us.

“Someone’s having a morning disco party. So what?”

“Don’t you remember?” McDonough said, bopping his head up and down to the beat. “‘Rhythm Is a Dancer.’ That’s the same song they played that summer we worked together in the nineties. I used to vogue to this jammie.”

“Growing up just flat-out isn’t going to happen for you, is it, Hughie?” I said, passing my shirtsleeve over my sweat-soaked face.