I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

“Wait a second. You actually worship death?” I said, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“In a way, yes,” Perrine said. “Death wins eventually, always, and every time.”

“But I don’t get it,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“Get what?” he said.

“If death is so great, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and kill yourself? I mean, go for it. Please.”

He shook his head.

“You do not understand,” he said.

“I understand perfectly,” I said raising a finger and pointing it at him. “It’s you who doesn’t get it. You don’t worship death, Perrine. You worship murder. You worship power and evil and hurting people.”

Perrine sat up with a loud snap of his chair.

“What I believe and what my men believe is … ”

He suddenly stopped and caught hold of himself. He smiled as he smoothed his jumpsuit.

“My apologies, Detective. I promised myself that I would not lose my composure, but here I am letting my temper get the best of me.”

He dropped his voice into a whisper as he leaned forward, staring into my eyes.

“Now, let us stop fucking around, yes? I have a one-time offer for you, and it is quite a deal, so consider it closely. I give you two hundred fifty million dollars. Let me repeat, that is two hundred fifty million dollars, and you get me out of here. Offshore account. My girl’s number is already on your phone. You’ll have access within two hours.”

“What?” I said, stifling a laugh.

“You do not think I am serious?” he said, light flashing in his weird, faded-blue eyes. “I am a man of very considerable means, but what can money do for me here in this place? We need to get rolling immediately. What’s the American expression? ‘Window of opportunity’? Our window of opportunity here is closing very rapidly.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Or, more precisely, I couldn’t believe how open and confident Perrine was as he offered his bribe. He truly seemed to believe that I would take his blood money.

Since time was of the essence, I decided to give him my answer right away. My right hand suddenly reached under the table, grabbed one of the legs of his chair, and pulled it. Perrine yelled as he slammed down backward onto the concrete floor.

I heard the guard, watching through the one-way mirror, come running. Perrine cursed a blue streak at me as he tried to scramble to his feet.

“When are you going to get it into that thick skull of yours, Perrine?” I said as the locks on the door clicked open. “You’re in the big city now, and no matter how much money or how many freakish drug soldiers you have, I’m going to make you pay for all the evil you’ve done.

“Do you know why? It’s simple. I’m going to do it because it’s my job. I’m the garbageman and you’re the garbage, so into the back of the truck and on to the dump we go. Comprenez-vous?”

As the guards took him away, Perrine tried to spit on me but ended up just spitting on himself. As he began to curse at me again, I smiled. I knew all along that talking to Perrine would be useless. The only reason I’d come up here was to piss him off as much as I could. Knocking his ass onto the floor had been icing on the cake.

Finally, my day was taking a turn for the better, I thought as I headed back toward the room where they were holding my gun.

This was even better than squirrel therapy.

CHAPTER 38

BRIGHT AND EARLY Wednesday morning, I was finally doing it. Finally and happily hitting the road on the long-awaited Bennett family vacation. It was smooth sailing, too. Well, at least for the first five blocks it was. As I pulled onto the West Side Highway, the air conditioner of the beat-up rented bus I was driving began hosing my knees with ice water.

I wouldn’t have minded so much except that the bus had a stick shift, and we were in the middle of bumper-to-bumper traffic. For the better part of an hour, it was clutch and soak and brake and soak and clutch. To make matters worse, all my wiseacre kids were scrunched down in their seats behind me so as not to be spotted by anyone they knew.

When I pulled up in front of our building in the Cheez-It-colored minibus, I guess Trent’s cry of, “Hey, look, everyone! Dad bought a dorkmobile!” summed up the general consensus on the transportation. We usually travel in our Ford Econoline van, but with all our luggage, even that was too small for my clan of cave bears.

And the kids were right. The bus was a beat-up yellow eyesore. Luckily for me, though, as a well-seasoned dad, I had long ago become immune to embarrassment on matters of style.

Yet even an incontinent bus and my ten mortified dependents couldn’t remove the smile from my face as I made my escape from New York. No price was too high for the privilege of not having to look at or think about Perrine or body bags or my bosses, at least for a little while.