Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett 2)

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Savage,” he said. “I left instructions not to be interrupted.” He rolled his eyes, one wealthy, important man to another, bemoaning the quality of help these days. “If you’ll excuse me for just a second.”

He opened the phone and scanned the message.

NYPD called. Your client could be the Killer! Get out of there!

He heard a strange coughing bark, and the BlackBerry suddenly leaped out of his hand.

Wiping particles of plastic and glass out of his eyes, Gary tried to focus on the client. Mr. Savage was standing now. He tucked a long pistol into his belt, then turned and lifted the travertine coffee table behind him. It must have weighed well over a hundred pounds, but Savage reared back and threw it effortlessly through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. A deafening explosion of shards of flying glass sent Gary to his knees, scrambling to hide behind his desk.

“C’mon, Gary. Don’t tell me you didn’t think it would all come back to haunt you?” the man yelled over the wind that suddenly roared through the office. Paralyzed, Gary watched legal papers fly off his desk in an eddy over Park Avenue.

“Noooo!” he suddenly yelled, making a desperate try to run. He got as far as the edge of his desk before the Teacher shot out both his kneecaps with the silenced .22.

The pain was more incredible than Gary had ever believed possible. He tottered to the edge of the glassless window and almost fell through, just managing to wrap an arm around the metal frame. He clung there for dear life, staring four hundred feet down to the concrete and crowds on Park Avenue.

“Here, let me give you a hand,” the Teacher said, stepping over. “No, hold that thought. Make it a foot.” Viciously, he stomped the heel of his Prada wi

ngtip into the trembling lawyer’s chin.

“Noooooo!” Gary screamed, as his grip tore loose and he plunged downward.

“You said that already, fucker,” the Teacher said with a laugh, watching the body twist and tumble through the last few seconds of its life.

When Cargill finally smacked into the plaza out in front of the building, the impact sounded more like a TV set than a person exploding.

The Teacher strode to the office door and swung it open. In the corridor outside, some people were running in panic, while others sat frozen, shivering like trapped rabbits behind their desks.

He trotted to the rear stairs with the gun held by the side of his leg, wondering if there was anyone stupid enough to get in his way.

Chapter 60

EVEN AFTER A NINETY-MILE-AN-HOUR RIDE back into the city, I still couldn’t believe it. Gladstone had actually been in Cargill’s office when I’d called! I’d missed stopping him by seconds.

I screeched up in front of the Park Avenue office building. Behind the crime scene tape lay a lot of glass and one very, very dead lawyer.

“Shot him in the kneecaps first, then must have thrown him,” Terry Lavery said as I walked up. “I’m not the biggest fan of lawyers either, but sheesh.” I followed his gaze up the sheer glass face of the building to the gaping empty rectangle near the top.

“Any idea how he got away?” I said.

“Came down the service stairs. We found some clothes in the stairwell. He had his choice of exits. There’s seven from the basement and four from the lobby. Must have changed and got out before the first radio cars got here. How long can this guy stay so lucky?”

Beth Peters came over to join us. “You hear the latest?” she said. “Dozens of sightings of Gladstone in the last hour. From Queens to Staten Island. Some woman even claimed he was in front of her on line at the Statue of Liberty.”

“I heard on 1010 WINS that a bunch of those clubs over on Twenty-seventh in Chelsea were closed last night because everyone’s too afraid to go out,” Lavery said. “Not to mention the Union Square Cafe waiter who actually stabbed a suspicious customer at lunch because he thought he was the killer.”

Beth Peters shook her head. “This town hasn’t been this jumpy since the Dinkins administration.”

My phone rang again. The readout told me it was McGinnis. I took a deep breath as I flipped it open, guessing I wasn’t going to like what he told me.

I was right.

Chapter 61

RUSH HOUR WAS IN FULL SWING by the time the Teacher got to Hell’s Kitchen. A kind of pity had overtaken him as he’d gazed sympathetically at the clogged, screaming traffic before the Lincoln Tunnel.

The sight was almost too painful to behold. The bovine faces behind the windshields. The glossy billboards that dangled above the congestion like carrots beckoning trapped, witless donkeys. The Honda and Volkswagen horns feebly bleating in the polluted air like sheep being led to slaughter.

Something out of Dante, he thought sadly. Or worse, a Cormac McCarthy novel.