“Nice work, Mike” was the first thing he said, stunning me. The second was almost as surprising—that he was giving me office space at the Police Academy on 20th Street, along with ten detectives to work my leads.
I did some head scratching at the chief’s change of attitude as I drove to my new digs.
Chapter 38
WITH HIS ARMS FULL OF GROCERY BAGS, the Teacher had to use his foot to shut the battered door of the Hell’s Kitchen apartment behind him. He placed the bags on the kitchen counter, tossed his guns on top of the fridge, and, without pausing, tied on his apron with a snug bow. He was starving, same as he’d been after yesterday’s work.
Past noon, the pickings were pretty slim at the farmers’ market in the north end of Union Square Park, but he’d managed to find some fresh Belgian endive and porcini mushrooms. He was going to use the porcini as a crust for the finely marbled Kobe fillet he’d scored at Balducci’s on Eighth Avenue.
For a foodie like him, seeing what looked fresh at the market was the only way to decide what to make for dinner.
After crusting the steak, he couldn’t resist a quick peek at the news. He washed his hands, went into the living room, and turned on the television. The first image that appeared showed a hovering helicopter and a million cops. Reporters were running around, interviewing scared-looking people on the street.
He shook his head, inhaling deeply, as he relived the shoot-out with the cops. Even with his training and unerring instincts, he so easily could have died right there and then. It was another sign that what he was doing was the right thing, the only thing. His baptism by fire had actually made him feel even more committed and passionate.
Back in the kitchen, he banged a cast-iron pan onto the Viking range and set the power burner on high. When the pan began to smoke slightly, he added a swirl of olive oil and carefully laid down the crusted Kobe, which gave a loud, satisfying sizzle.
The smoky scent reminded him of the first time he’d met his stepfather, at Peter Luger Steak House out in Brooklyn. It was after his mom and dad had split up, when he was ten years old. He’d gone to live with his mom, and now she’d wanted him to meet her new boyfriend.
His beautiful mother had been a secretary at the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, and her boyfriend turned out to be her boss, Ronald Meyer, a ridiculously wealthy and ridiculously old LBO specialist. The short, frog-faced geriatric had tried very stiffly to be buddy-buddy with him. The Teacher remembered sitting there in Peter Luger’s, staring at the doddering financier who had caused his family to be ripped apart, and being stricken with the almost irresistible impulse to ram his steak knife into the man’s hairy right nostril.
Not long after that, his mother had become Ronald Meyer’s trophy wife, and the Teacher had moved with her into Meyer’s Fifth Avenue apartment. Overnight, like a kid in a fairy tale, he was suddenly setting foot in the strange new worlds of art and opera, country clubs, servants, Europe.
How quickly his initial anger had faded. With what disgusting ease and completeness he’d been lulled into a sheeplike stupor by the luxury of his newly upgraded lifestyle.
But now he realized that the anger had never gone anywhere. It had only grown, festering day after day through all the years since then, waiting to be unleashed.
He flipped the Kobe in the pan and opened a bottle of ’78 Daumas Gassac that he’d been saving for a special occasion. He poured himself a tall glass and swirled it toward the good light coming in through the west-facing window.
Thinking about his crotchety stepfather, Ronny, made him smile and cringe, both. There were all the things Meyer had bought for him—the clothes and cars, the vacations, the Ivy League education.
But then, the graduation at Princeton. The awkward embrace he’d had to endure. The wretched “I’m so proud of you, son” that had emanated from the ninety-year-old’s liver-colored lips. To this day, his skin crawled at the mere thought of being related to the horrifying, ginger-haired skeleton his mother had used for a meal ticket.
“Should have killed you when I had the chance, you old shit,” he said with a sigh. “I should have killed you at hello.”
Chapter 39
I DECIDED TO MAKE MY WAY over to Bellevue to see if there was any chance of talking to the wounded transit cop.
As I drove there, I was struck by something I’d never realized before. After 9/11, apparently it didn’t take too much to make Gotham residents jumpy about their personal safety. Talk about once bitten, twice shy, I thought.
Tourists were grouped beneath the awnings of the Central Park South hotels, looking warily up and down the street. A near-frenzied mob was trying to get the latest news feed from the giant TV at the CBS studios across from the Plaza. The sidewalks along Lex were clustered with office workers standing out in front of the modern glass towers. Urgently jabbering into cell phones and thumbing BlackBerrys, they seemed to be waiting for evacuation instructions. There even seemed to be an early-rush-hour exodus of people pouring into Grand Central Station.
Maybe that had something to do with this, I suddenly thought. Maybe the killer wanted to create as much fear as possible.
If so, he had to be pretty pleased right now, because his plan was coming along just fine.
I didn’t want to add my department Chevy to the clot of police vehicles already blocking Bellevue’s ER entrance, so I parked near a rear loading dock and went in through the back.
Ed Korzenik, the veteran cop who’d been shot, was still in surgery. Miraculously, the bullet to his head had just grazed his skull. It was the .45 hollow point in his bladder that they were trying to deal with.
Ed had a large family, and many of them were there in the waiting room—wife, mother, brothers, and sisters. Seeing them, with their grief and devastation, gave me a sudden urgent need to call home.
My eldest son, Brian, answered. Of course he didn’t have a clue about what I was doing, or even what w
as happening on the streets, and I was glad of it. We talked sports, the Yankees, what was going on at Jets camp. He’d be turning thirteen soon, I realized with near disbelief. My God, I’d have a house full of teenagers soon, wouldn’t I?
I hung up with a smile on my face. That conversation was by far the best twenty minutes of my day.