Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

If I thought opening the letter was a hair-raising experience, it couldn’t hold a candle to what it said on the plain sheet of white paper inside.

Dear Detective Michael Bennett:

I am deeply hurt by your calling me a woman hater. I am not. But I am a monster.

I am the Son of Sam.

Book Two

DOUBLE DOWN

Chapter 27

WEARING A PINK BANANA REPUBLIC button-down shirt, pillow-soft J. Crew khakis, and Bass penny loafers, Berger whistled as he carried a brimming tray of Starbucks coffees south down Fifth Avenue with the rest of the early-morning commuters. Shaved and gelled to a high-gloss metrosexual sheen, he even had a corporate ID badge with the improbable name CORY GONSALVES emblazoned across it like a Hello sticker. In this elitist venue of publishing houses and television company offices that was the Rockefeller Center business district, his just-so-casual creative-type office-worker look was better camouflage than a sniper’s ghillie suit.

Pounding hammers and clicking socket wrenches and muffled shouts rang off the granite walls as he turned right down Rockefeller Center’s east concourse. Berger almost tripped over a gray-haired, potbellied roadie on his knees who was taping down some cables.

Berger knew that the stage was being erected for the Today show’s outdoor summer concert series, to be broadcast at 8:15 this morning. The musical artist, a young man by the ponderous name of The Show, was going to perform his hit song, “Anywhere Real Slow.”

Already people had arrived for the event. Faces painted, holding signs, they were anticipating a fun morning of dancing and singing along with the ex–drug-dealing rapper as he performed his soulful ode to the joys of public sexual activity.

Berger had a catchphrase for today’s young that he was waiting for the ad firms to pick up on. First, you had Generation X, then Generation Y, now welcome, ye one and sundry, I introduce De-generation 1.

Because “Anywhere Real Slow” wasn’t a mockery of just music but of civilization, too. It didn’t glorify raunch and stupidity and low urges. It worshipped them. Anyone who didn’t see the cheerful acceptance of this gutter dirt by the general public, and especially by the young, as a sign of the coming new Dark Ages lacked a working mind or was madder than Alice’s hatter.

Once upon a time Rome fell. Now it was our turn. The Show was here to provide the background music.

Berger passed a group of giggling high-school girls. Enjoy the bottom-feeding, he thought as he carefully left one of his coffees on the ledge of a planter that he passed. Without looking back, he stepped out onto Sixth Avenue and hailed a taxi.

Chapter 28

IT WAS ALMOST EIGHT A.M. by the time Berger got back to his apartment.

Inside the high, dim alcove, he actually genuflected before Salvador Dali’s first painting, praying to the great Spaniard for help and strength.

He remembered a quote from the Master. “At the age of six, I wanted to be a cook. At seven, I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”

Berger stood, smiling. Each moment, each breath, came that much sweeter the closer he approached his death. In the beginning, he had been afraid when he thought about how things would turn out. Now he saw that it all made perfect sense. He was glad.

In the apartment’s imposing library, Berger slowly removed all of his clothing. He lifted the remote control and stood before the massive screen of the $50,000 103-inch Panasonic plasma TV. He glanced at the butter-soft leather recliner where he’d sat to watch all his favorite movies, but he didn’t sit down. For this, he preferred to stand.

He clicked on the set. There was a commercial for a feminine product and then Matt Lauer filled the wall of the room.

“Without further ado,” Lauer said, “let’s cut to the Plaza and The Show.”

A young black man in a full-out orange prison jumpsuit covered in gold chains winked from the screen.

“Ya’ll ready to make some noise?” The Show wanted to know. Behind him, a retinue of other prison-suited young male and female backup singers and dancers of every race were standing, still as Buckingham Palace guards, waiting for the first drop of bass to start kicking it freestyle.

Many of the young people in the crowd had cell phones in their hands and were recording the momentous occasion. Berger lifted his own phone, but it wasn’t to take a picture.

It was to paint his own.

He pressed the speed dial.

“And one, two,” The Show said.

“Show’s over,” Berger said.