Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

“It ain’t the dying that hurts so much as the dying for nothing.”

Jack sat in the man’s blood as he got behind him, cradling him.

“You have my word, dog,” Jack said in his ear. “She gets a full share. She’ll go to college, Fontaine. Just like you always wanted. Ivy, right?”

“For sure,” Fontaine said with a soft nod. “She got fifteen hundred on her boards. I ever tell you that?”

“Only about a thousand times,” Jack said, chuckling into his buddy’s ear.

“Knocking up her worthless mother was the only thing I ever did right,” Fontaine said, smiling. He seemed peaceful now, as if he were drifting off to sleep after a hard day’s work. Jack saw a final tension jolt through the dying man, followed by a palpable slackening. Fontaine was gone. They had lost a good man.

Jack was dry-eyed as he stood and handed his Ka-Bar to one of the hijackers who had watched it all.

“Cut his hands and his head, and bag ’em,” he said. “We take them with us. We can’t take the chance they’ll identify him.”

Chapter 67

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?BUT I WANT to be the car. I have to be the car!” five-year-old Trent Bennett whined across the Monopoly board. Nine-year-old Ricky, sensing trouble, immediately snatched the piece off the GO square and clutched it to his chest. Trent started to cry.

Brian Bennett rolled his eyes. Here he was, doing his job, keeping the squirts busy. He’d busted out an actual board game, and would they cooperate? No way, Jose.

Mary Catherine, their new nanny or whoever the heck she was, had told him she needed to run out and get something from the store. Grandfather was at church. So that left Brian pretty much in charge.

He got up from the dining room table when he heard the front door open. He could see a massive Christmas tree being pushed in through the door when he stepped into the hall. Mary Catherine took off her hat and wiped her hand across her red, sweating, though kind of pretty, face.

Brian gaped at her. She’d gone out and gotten them a tree for Christmas.

That was, like, nice.

“Brian, there you are,” she said in her funny Irish accent. “Do you know where your mom and dad keep the decorations? We’ve got work to do.”

Twenty minutes later, all of the kids were in the living room, assembly-lining ornaments up to Mary Catherine on the shaky painting ladder. It wasn’t the same as their mom, Brian thought. Mom did a tree nicer than the ones in the window at Macy’s. But he had to admit, Mary Catherine’s was a lot better than nothing at all.

Chrissy, still dressed as an angel, passed by in the kitchen doorway, struggling to hold up a sloshing Brita water pitcher.

“What are you doing?” Brian asked.

“Hel-lo, my job,” she said matter-of-factly. “Socky needs his water.”

Brian laughed. With the influence of her sisters, sometimes Chrissy acted more like she was thirteen instead of three. He watched the littlest angel come back into the living room and turn on the TV.

“Ahhhh! Look! Look!”

“What is it?” Brian said, rushing over to his sister.

On the screen, their father stepped onto an outdoor podium between a cluster of microphones. Just like Derek Jeter after a baseball game, Brian thought excitedly.

Concern replaced his pride when Brian looked closer. His father was smiling, but it was his bad smile. The one he made when he was pretending not to be sad or angry.

His dad looked like Jeter all right, Brian thought.

After a big loss.

Chapter 68

IT WASN’T JUST the biting cold of the day that made me feel numb as I stopped before the checkpoint media podium. Usually, making a routine statement before the local news outlets filled me with butterflies. But when Will Matthews said that the commissioner had ordered an immediate press conference, I actually volunteered.