I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

With our trap set and the biggest arrest in New York City in a decade on the line, the question now was, would I choke?

CHAPTER 11

I GLANCED OUT into the

hallway of the arena and spotted giant posters of Knicks basketballs and Rangers hockey pucks and boxers squaring off. I couldn’t believe all this was going down here at the Garden, of all places, but I guess it was appropriate to have this boxing mecca be the site of the heavyweight fight between the cartels and U.S. law enforcement.

“Hey, Hughie,” I said to my partner. “You were in Golden Gloves, right? You ever fight here?”

“Nope,” Hughie said. “They only had the finals here. I never made it that far, but my oldest brother Fergus did.”

“What happened?”

Hughie squinted at the floor.

“Some monster from Queens knocked him out in the second round,” he said. “The beast pounded his ear against the side of his head so hard, I swear to God it looked like a veal cutlet. He couldn’t hear for a month.”

I shook my head.

“Forget I asked,” I said as the tactical radio in my ear squawked.

“Okay, Mike. Heads up. I think I see something,” the DEA SWAT team head, Patrick Zaretski, told me in my earpiece.

Zaretski was upstairs in the Garden security office, working the cameras. The other arrest teams were next door in an empty office, waiting to take down Perrine at the first sight of him.

“What’s up, Patrick? Talk to me,” I said.

“It looks like you’re being watched. I can just make out a person on the concourse pointing a video camera at the medical office door.”

“Is it Perrine?” I said excitedly.

“I can’t tell. It’s a big old-style camera. Hold it. The subject just put the camera down and is heading directly for your location. Be advised, the subject is heading right for you.”

This was it, I thought as I heard the front door of the office open.

Now or never.

Do or die.

“You just need to breathe, Miss Candelerio,” I said in a loud voice as I stood blocking Detective Martinez’s face from view of the front door. “Stay with me, okay? The ambulance is coming. It’s on its way.”

“Excuse me. I’m sorry. You can’t come in here now. We’re having an emergency,” I heard the female cop posing as the receptionist say through the open door behind me.

“I’m here to see Miss Daisy Candelerio. Is she all right? What’s happened to her?” said a Spanish-accented voice.

What the hell? Something was wrong. It wasn’t Perrine.

It was a female voice.

When I turned, I spotted a young dark-haired woman in a flowered dress. She was trying to peek around the receptionist to look at Detective Martinez.

An alarm went off inside my head as I stepped into the front room and saw how tall and striking the young woman was. The dress looked cheap, but the woman wearing it was extremely poised, her lustrous hair expensively maintained. She looked like an actress or a model.

Billionaire bait, I thought. Something told me this tall drink of water was with Perrine. He must have sent his girlfriend in first to scout things out.

We’d bag her and her phone and then bag Perrine. My trap was working. Perrine was even closer now, so close I could almost smell his French aftershave.

“Did you say you’re Daisy’s family?” I said breathlessly as I rushed toward the woman and took her by the elbow. “Thank God. The poor young woman is having a seizure. We need to stabilize her until the ambulance arrives. You need to come back here. Please, she needs someone she knows to talk to her in order to keep her conscious.”