I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

The head jokester was a thin, six-foot-three kid of about nineteen. He was relaxed, smiling, enjoying himself. A broad-shouldered youth sitting on the corner mailbox beside him took a toke of the blunt he was smoking and blew the rancid smoke in my direction.

As I approached them, I felt a flicker of fear for the first time as the sane part of my mind began to realize what kind of situation I was putting myself in. There were six of them. Two of them were skinny high school kids, but the others were hardened-looking street punks, tattooed and prison-jacked under spotless XXXL white tees. I could tell at least one of them had a gun in his waistband by the way he was standing a little hunched to one side.

Armed cop or not, I was all alone and didn’t even know where the hell I was. What the hell was I doing? You needed backup in an area like this. SWAT, maybe.

But then I did a smart thing. I told the rational Dr. Jekyll part of me to put a sock in it, and let the unhinged Mr. Hyde part of me begin to roll.

“No, no. I’m not Bill O’Reilly,” I said with a laugh as I finally showed them what was in my hand.

They reared back, whoa-ing and raising their hands in unison as I leveled my chunky black polymer Glock in their faces. The gangbangers stood in complete shock, absolutely frozen, as though I’d just conjured up an elephant or a cruise ship out of thin air.

“But I am looking for news,” I said. “You guys hear about some little kids that got shot over on Lander Street last week? Speak up, fellas. I can’t hear you. I heard the shooter was wearing a red Yankees cap. You guys look like red’s your favorite color, like maybe you shop at the same store. I’ll ask nice one more time. Who shot those kids?”

They kept staring at me in mute wonder.

The funny thing was, at that moment, I was willing to shoot them, and they knew it. They could see it in my eyes that I was about as far from messing around as one can get.

As a cop, you draw your gun for one reason: to kill someone. You don’t wing people, you don’t let off warning shots. When you take out your gun, it’s for putting bullets into someone’s head or chest before they can do the same to you. If you’re not willing to go that far, then you leave it in the holster.

“Hey, chill, Officer,” the pot-smoking tough finally said. “We didn’t do nothing. This ain’t Lander Street. This be the east end. Just chill. We got no beef with you.”

“Oh, yes, you do, homey,” I growled, my knuckles whitening around the grip of my gun. “See, those kids who got shot, they were my kids. I’m not a cop here. I’m a father. Now you tell me right now which one of you red-rag-wearing jackasses shot my kids or by tomorrow morning, your girlfriends and mommas are going to be laying out so many damn memorial candles on this corner it’s going to be lit up like Times Square.”

That’s when I heard it. It was the high squeal of tires behind me. For a second, I panicked, thinking my Irish temper had finally gone and gotten my dumb ass killed. For a moment, I was seriously convinced that I was about to get run over or hosed in a drive-by.

Then over the engine roar of the rapidly approaching car, I heard a glorious sound. It was the metallic double woop of a squad-car growler. The flickering blue and red lights made the darkened north side of Broadway look like a carnival as the car screeched to a stop at my back.

The gang kids scattered as I turned around, holstering my weapon.

Two cops got out of the unmarked car and stood behind its flung-open doors.

“Hi, Mike. Um, out for an evening stroll?” Detective Bill Moss said, rolling his eyes.

His partner, Ed Boyanoski, shook his head at me with an expression somewhere between disappointment and awe.

“Well, what do you know? The cavalry, right on time,” I said.

“Let me guess. Long day at the office, Mike?” Bill said as I climbed into the backseat.

I smiled.

“It was, but that little meet and greet has rejuvenated me all of a sudden,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “I think I just got my second wind.”

CHAPTER 60

INSTEAD OF HEADING to the police department, the detectives took me to an all-night diner a little north of the city, near the interstate, to meet their colleagues.

At a semicircular red vinyl booth toward the rear of the chrome-and-mirrored space, I was introduced to Sergeant Grant Walrond and Officer Timothy Groover. Walrond was Mike-Tyson stocky, a young friendly black cop with a dry sense of humor. Groover, on the other hand, was white and tall, with a mullet hairdo that made him look more like a farmer than a cop. Both of them were extremely dedicated veteran cops and were the major players in the Newburgh PD gang unit.

Bill Moss said, “Sergeant Walrond here received some information this afternoon that the shooter was a Blood, but not from Lander Street.”

“The kid we got word about is pretty well known,” Walrond said. “His name’s James Glaser, but they call him Jay D. He’s a Blood from the east end, a low-level punk who jumps from crew to crew because he’s a loose-cannon troublemaker.

He’s eighteen years old, and he was shot on two different occasions last year.”

“Got more holes in him than a colander,” Groover mumbled over the rim of his coffee cup.

“Crew to crew?” I said. “How many Bloods are there?”