Worst Case (Michael Bennett 3)

“Whoop, whoop,” came the warning cry as I turned the car onto the avenue, and my unmarked was immediately made. “Five-oh,” one teen spotter hollered down the block helpfully to his coworkers through cupped hands. “Yo, Five-oh!”

I scanned the gloomy block uncertainly. The narrow cutout of the avenue extended for at least another two blocks without a cross street.

Where the hell were Schultz and Ramirez? I thought, glancing into my rearview. I felt like a sheriff who’d made a wrong turn into the wrong mountain pass.

“Stop at two-five-oh Briggs,” the kidnapper said.

Emily tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at a building up the block. I didn’t have time to look for a parking spot. I spun the wheel and bumped the Impala up onto the sidewalk in front of it.

With swirling architectural embellishments around its entrance, 250 Briggs Avenue, like a lot of old Bronx buildings, had once been a stately residence. Since then, one of the entrance’s Doric columns had been shattered, and there were smoke stains on the brick above most of the boarded-up windows of the third story.

I got soaked to the bone while I retrieved flashlights from the trunk of the detective car. So did Emily as we walked across the cracked sidewalk and pulled open the building’s broken front door.

“I’m here. I’m in the lobby of two-fifty now,” I said into the phone. My words echoed eerily back at me as I played the beam over the dim lobby. The walls were marble, but the low ceiling was bloated, pregnant with water stains and mold. A feeling as desolate as my surroundings enveloped me. I had the sudden desperate feeling that time was running out.

Where are you, Jacob? I thought.

“Did you know that people actually live here?” the kidnapper said in my ear. “Rats run through the halls. Some of the tenants on the third floor don’t even have doors after a recent fire. Is it any wonder at all that this area has the highest incidence of childhood asthma in the country?

“The slumlord who bought it last year, along with eighty percent of this block, has let it get like this because he’s trying to force out the rent-controlled tenants. He bought it at a HUD auction, despite his company’s history of thirteen hundred housing-code violations. This is happening here in the richest country on earth, Mike. This is happening right here, right now in America.”

“Where is Jacob?” I yelled, ignoring his grating litany. “I’m here. I’ve done exactly what you said. Where do I go?”

“Out back through the courtyard, go through the laundry room door on your left.”

We found a door at the end of the lobby and went back out into the rain. A cracked toilet lid floated beside half a dozen faded phone books in the courtyard’s standing water. I scanned the surrounding windows for movement. I wasn’t convinced yet that this wasn’t a trap.

I handed Emily my flashlight as I drew my gun and pulled open the door in the left-hand wall. I found the lights. No Jacob. Just a rusted-through sink beside an ancient coin-op washing machine.

“Where is he?” I yelled again.

“The stairs on your left. Take them down.”

Beyond the washing machine, iron steps descended through a raw concrete stairwell. The beams from our flashlights flickered wildly as we flew down the steps two at a time.

Dank heat hit me like a wall through the door at the bottom. In the distance, a boiler screamed as if it were being tortured. The basement walls looked like hewn stone, and I felt like we were entering a cave. Or a dungeon, I thought.

“This is where I’ll have to end our little conversation for now, Mike. Down the hall to your right. Take Jacob away. He’s all yours,” the kidnapper said and hung up.

Chapter 12

I COVERED EMILY as she jogged ahead. Even in the dimness, I could see her eyes widen in shock as she stuck her light and gun through the right-hand doorway.

I arrived a split second behind her. Emily’s flashlight showed a figure slumped over a child’s desk. Something stung my cheek as I raced toward it. It was a pull chain. I wrapped my hand around it and yanked.

The hanging bulb clicked on and then swung back and forth, heaving shadows of Jacob’s motionless body up and down the raw cement walls.

No! Damn it! Not like this! I thought.

Jacob was in his underwear, and his hands were cuffed behind his back. I checked for a pulse. Nothing. I scanned frantically for a wound.

“His hair,” Emily said quickly behind me. There was a crusted pool of blood at the top of his head. His hair was matted with it.

A bullet wound gaped at the crown of his skull. I turned away. Wiping the sweat from my face, I glanced at the blackboard, the desk, the naked cement wall, and then back at the body.

I ripped my phone from my belt, ready to smash it against the wall. The sick son of a bitch had been leading us along, whispering not-so-sweet nothings in my ear, and the whole time the kid had been dead.

“He lied to us from the get-go,” I said, desperately trying to throttle the life out of my RAZR phone. “This kid was long dead when he called. God, I want to nail this son of a bitch.”