Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

At the last second, Trent, who had been bent over, laughing, stood up straight, his head tilted slightly like a deer at a cracked twig.

“RIGHT BEHIND YOU!” I yelled as loudly as I could.

Eddie dropped the phone as Trent screamed. Before they could breathe again, I let them have it.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I getting you jokers wet?” I said, dousing them with the Super Soaker’s twin barrels.

Trent got the worst of it, by far. He looked like I’d poured a bucket of water over his head by the time he squirmed away, screaming.

“What in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph?” Mary Catherine said as she came running from upstairs.

“They started it this time, I swear,” I said as I hid the water gun behind my back.

Chapter 84

AFTER I SWAMPED OUT THE KITCHEN, I decided to put death on hold and give Mary a break, so I took the kids down to the beach.

There must have been a storm coming or one out at sea, because the water was particularly choppy. Some of the blue-gray Atlantic waves were as high as five feet. Tall enough for some pale surfers to be out there among the shore fishermen’s lines.

There were at least a dozen cops and firemen and phone guys hanging ten Queens-style. New York City was the last place most people would think of as a place to surf, but you could pull it off, once you figured out how to fit the board on the A train.

I sat on the shore, watching the little guys goof in the shallows, shoveling for sand crabs with their heels the way I’d shown them. I remembered being a kid doing the same thing with all my cousins.

One time, I remembered, a couch—a bright ’70s-orange couch—washed up with a breaker, like a floor model from an underwater Ethan Allen. I also remembered pausing to watch the Concorde head out of Kennedy for Europe. You didn’t watch it so much as stand in awe of it, trying not to wet yourself once you caught the high, terrifying, bone-rumbling scream of its supersonic engine.

When I turned to watch the swimming “bad teens,” as Chrissy and I called the older kids, I saw that Seamus was out with them. At one point, the septuagenarian actually stood on a boogie board. For about a millisecond. He somersaulted once and almost again in the air as a wave swatted his skinny butt into Davy Jones’s locker. The lifeguard went batty, blowing his whistle. A moment later, Seamus broke the surface with his hands in the air like a victorious prizefighter.

I couldn’t stop laughing. You can’t hurt a fool.

I signaled Seamus ashore to do the babysitting in order to show him how it was done. Which was odd, since I had absolutely no idea. I goofed on the boogie board for a while until the ocean stole it.

Instead of fretting, I decided to surf the way God intended with my just awesome bod NYC freestyle. That is, until an evil wave tried to make off with my Hawaiian jams. I managed to retrieve them with a last-ditch hook of my right foot.

“Mr. Pants, indeed,” I mumbled, tightly retying the string.

“Trouble?” someone said.

When I looked up, my jaw dropped almost as hard as my pants just had.

Mary Catherine had decided to join us, after all. In a bikini. A new red bikini, I noticed. I knew all of Mary’s swimwear, and the article she was almost not wearing was definitely new. As a detective, I was trained to pay attention to details.

I tried to be nonchalant, as if my nanny showing up dressed like a Maxim pinup girl was about as exciting as waiting for the crosstown bus.

“Trouble?” she repeated as she brushed past me, all blond and tan and thin scallops of red.

She disappeared into a wave a moment later. Heading back for Ireland, with my luck. She very well might have been a mermaid returning to sea.

“Just breathing,” I finally said.

Chapter 85

A COUPLE OF HOURS of saltwater frolic later, I was back at the grindstone in my outdoor office. I was still barefoot, of course, and my hair was

still wet, but I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt now and had replaced my beer with a massive mug of French vanilla coffee.

Even with the caffeine kick, it took me a while to ramp up. I had to work to get some indelible images out of my head first. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw water sluicing off Mary’s back, her beautiful face laughing as she lay on the towel beside me, her eyes closed, her tan cheek powdered with sand.

Magical visions every one, the hardest of all to shake.