Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

“No problem,” he said, his eyes tearing with the pain. She was going to pay for that, Carl thought.

His limp became more pronounced as they left the bar and headed for the opulent lobby’s elevator.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Old war injury,” Carl said. “Don’t worry. Everything else works fine.”

“Glad to hear it. What should I call you?”

“My employees call me Mr. Rifkin,” Apt said. “But you can call me Joel.”

Chapter 87

MONDAY MORNING, I sat at my desk at One Police Plaza still as a Zen master, breathing slowly, eyes closed, mentally prepping myself for my upcoming reaming at the task force meeting.

After reading the morning papers, I needed the meditation. Berger’s lawyer, some fool named Allen Duques, was crying false arrest and police negligence and was insisting on a thorough investigation into his client’s death. Only the Post piece happened to remind everyone that his client was a child- and cop-killing wacko.

I was thinking about getting into the lotus position to counteract all the bad karma when there was a knock on my cubicle wall. I reluctantly opened my eyes. Then I smiled. It was Emily Parker.

“Mike, are you… okay?” she said.

“Fine,” I said.

“Good, because my friend’s cousin is downstairs waiting for us.”

“Oh, right. The spook,” I said, standing.

“Shh,” Emily said. “The walls have ears.”

Outside on the street half a block east, a massive silver Lincoln Navigator sat idling. A bony, attractive brown-haired woman sat behind the wheel. Even more unexpected was the six-month-old in the car seat behind her.

“Mike, Karen. Karen, Mike,” Emily said as we climbed in.

Emily grabbed shotgun while I was relegated to the backseat next to the baby on board. I flicked some cheerios off the leather before I sat.

“Please tell Mike what you were telling me, Karen. You worked with Carl Apt in Intelligence, right?”

“I did,” the thin woman said, checking her mirror.

“How about the baby?” I said, smiling at the cute little girl.

“She’s a civilian,” Karen assured me with a smile. “I worked for the Company until a year ago. Now I’m a Larchmont soccer-mom-in-training. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Love makes you do some damn strange things.”

“I know what that’s like,” I said.

Emily shot me a look from the front seat.

“I thought it was Carl when I saw the security shot in the Post,” Karen began, “but I didn’t come forward because of national secrecy, yada, yada, yada. But after the recent death of that woman, I couldn’t stay silent anymore. What I’m about to tell you is classified information. You didn’t hear this from me. Agreed? In 2002 I worked in Yemen with the CIA SAD.”

“Is that the stay-at-home-dad department?” I said.

“Special Activities Division,” she said as we hooked a quick left down an alley-wide Chinatown street. “We were responsible for covert military raids on Al Qaeda targets. Carl was on one of our strike teams. He was the bomb tech. All the other Delta guys deferred to him for all things explosive. He actually won the Intelligence Star commendation in our operation when he used a predator drone to knock out a pickup truck loaded with bad guys who were coming in on our position.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

“I made some phone calls,” Karen said. “Carl, while great at war, wasn’t too hot on the domestic front. He was working at Fort Bragg as a Delta Force trainer up until 2003, when he got into a beef with his new supervisor. He was about to be transferred out of the group, when the CO found some C-four wired to his car battery. When they came to ask Apt about it, he was gone. He’d bugged out.”

“He went AWOL,” Emily said.