Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

I was opening my mouth to return a pithy comment when Miriam appeared at my back and ushered me out.

Chapter 12

WITH THAT BUREAUCRATIC HURDLE painfully tripped over, we headed back to Manhattan. Sunday or no Sunday, we needed to go to our squad room on the eleventh floor of One Police Plaza in order to put together a Major Case Squad task force on the Lawrence Bomber Case, as we were now calling it.

I followed Miriam’s Honda through Queens and over the 59th Street Bridge. Beyond the windshield, Manhattan’s countless windows seemed to stare at me through the bridge’s rusty girders. The thought that somebody behind one of them might be right now meticulously plotting to blow up his fellow human beings was not a comforting one. Especially as I hurried across the rattletrap bridge.

I received a text on my smartphone as we arrived downtown and snuck in through the back door of HQ.

It was from Emily Parker, an FBI agent I’d worked with on my last case. We’d stayed close since the investigation, so I knew Emily worked a desk at the Bureau’s VICAP, Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which dealt with cheerful things like homicides, sexual assaults, and unidentified human remains.

Just heard about ur performance at NYCT Blue. Don’t u love working weekends? U the primary on the Library Bomb thing?

Talk about a security leak, I thought. How the hell had she found out about our secret meeting this fast on a Sunday? One of her fellow FBI agents at the meeting must have told her, I surmised. She wouldn’t actually go out with one of those organic-food-eating geeks, would she?

The fact was, Emily was an attractive lady to whom I’d become quite attached. Not quite firmly enough for my liking, but I did get to sample her lipstick in the back of a taxi after the case’s conclusion. I remembered its taste fondly. Very fondly, in fact.

Thinking about it, I suddenly remembered the kiss I’d shared with Mary Catherine on the moonlit beach the night before. That was pretty good, too, come to think of it. Being single was fun, though confusing at times.

Affirmative, I thumbed.Mike Bennett, Chief of the Library Cops.

LOL, she hit me back as I was getting into the elevator. I heard ur leaning toward a single actor. U need something to bounce, don’t forget ur cousins down here at Quantico.

Kissing cousins, I thought.

“You coming or what, text boy?” my boss, Miriam, said as the elevator door opened on eleven. “You’re worse than my twelve-year-old.”

“Coming, Mother,” I said, tucking away my phone before it got confiscated.

Chapter 13

BERGER’S HAIR WAS STILL wet from his shower as he drove his blue Mercedes eastbound out of Manhattan on the Cross Bronx Expressway. Spotting a seagull on the top rail of an exhaust-blackened overpass, he consulted the satellite navigation system screen on the convertible’s polished wood dash. Not yet noon and he was almost there. He was running just the way he liked to, ahead of schedule.

He sipped at a container of black coffee and then slid it back into the cup holder before putting on his turn indicator and easing onto the exit ramp for I-95 North. Minutes later, he pulled off at exit eleven in the northbound lane toward the Pelham section of the Bronx. He drove around for ten minutes before he stopped on a deserted strip of Baychester Avenue.

He sat and stared out at the vista of urban blight. Massive weeds known as ghetto palm trees commanded the cracks in the stained cement sidewalk beside him. In the distance beyond them were buildings, block upon block of massive, ugly brick apartment buildings.

The cluster of decrepit high-rises was called Co-op City. From what he’d read, it was the largest single residential development in the United States. Built on a swampy landfill in the 1960s, it was supposed to be the progressive answer to New York City’s middle-class housing problem. Instead, like most unfortunate progressive solutions, it had quickly become the problem.

Berger wondered what the urban wasteland had looked like in December of 1975. Worse, he decided with a shake of his head.

Enough nonsense, he thought as he drained his cup. He closed his eyes and cleared his mind of everything but the job at hand. He took several slow, deep breaths like an actor waiting backstage.

He was still sitting there doing his breathing exercises when the kitted-out pearl gray Denali SUV that he was waiting for passed and pulled over a couple of hundred feet ahead.

“What have we here?” Berger said to himself as a young Hispanic woman got out of the truck. Berger lifted a pair of binoculars off the seat beside him and quickly focused. She was about fifteen or sixteen. She was wearing oversize Nicole Richie glasses, a lot of makeup, a scandalously slight yellow bikini top, and denim shorts that were definitely not mother-approved.

Berger flipped open the manila folder that the binocs had been sitting on. He glanced at the photograph of the girl whose name was Aida Morales. It was her, Berger decided. Target confirmed.

The Denali pulled away from the curb, and the girl started walking down the sidewalk toward where Berger sat in the parked car. Berger held back a smile. He couldn’t have set up his blind better in a dream.

He quickly checked himself in the rearview mirror. He was already wearing the clothes, baggy brown polyester slacks and an even baggier white shirt, butterfly collar buttoned to the neck. He’d padded the shirt with a wadded-up laundry bag to make himself look heavier.

When she arrived at the turn for her building’s back entrance, he took out the curly black wig from the paper bag beside him and put it on. He checked himself in the mirror, adjusting the shaggy wig until he was satisfied.

She was halfway down the back alley of her building with her all-but-naked back to him when he started running and yelling.

“Excuse me, miss. Excuse me. Excuse me!” he cried.