I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

Bill pointed his pen at him.

“No, more like a moral,” Bill said. “Remember a minute ago you called me brother? Well, the moral of my tale is that I’m not your brother and never will be, you murdering sack of goat shit. My brother, like me, has a family, a life, kids, coworkers, people he loves who love him back. What do you have? Victims.

“Before I leave, I just wanted to let you know that if I had the misfortune of having a human disgrace like you for a brother, I’d look for the tallest building I could find and fling my ass off it.”

Bill Moss clicked his pen one last time as he stood.

“Now we’re done,” he said as he left.

CHAPTER 69

IT WAS A little past midnight when Newburgh police sergeant Dermot McDonald drove south in his cruiser down River Road in Newburgh. He rolled past the cruddy industrial heating-oil company that abutted the Hudson twice before he pulled into its driveway.

The company was closed, its parking lot deserted. There was just him, some oil trucks behind a tall fence, the railroad tracks, and the big old rolling Hudson River. It was an absolutely perfect secluded spot for a night-shift cop to grab forty winks.

Or anything else that served his fancy, McDonald thought as he looked inside the knapsack in the footwell of the passenger seat.

Inside were three fat, plastic-wrapped, whitish-yellowish bundles that almost looked like large bars of soap. It was cocaine—three kilos of pure uncut nose candy that he had stolen from a Latin Kings drug bust the week before and was looking to unload on his old friend and high school basketball teammate, Dave Crider, one of the current leaders of the Newburgh Bloods.

The fit, middle-aged cop with silver hair and rimless eyeglasses zipped the bag closed. He took out a piece of Nicorette gum from his uniform shirt pocket, popped it into his mouth, and smiled as he chewed. He could practically taste the seventy-five grand in beautiful, greasy, tax-free tens and twenties that his drug-dealing buddy was on his way with right now.

He’d already decided to take his new girlfriend, Amelia, to Ibiza on Labor Day weekend for her birthday to see one of those techno bands she was gaga about. Amelia was twenty-eight to his forty-six; she had dark hair and dark haunting eyes and lines of tattoos running down the fronts of both of her legs from her waist to her toes. Felt like he was doing it with a carnival freak sometimes—conjoined twins or the bearded lady—but damn, who cared if she scribbled on herself? She was young and freakin’ hot.

Funny where life took you, McDonald thought. Up until a year ago, he’d actually been the proverbial happily married man. He’d only gotten divorced after he found out his wife had been cheating on him with the neighbor at the end of their cul-de-sac.

Her lover was, of all things, a Turkish physics professor at Mount Saint Mary College, a diminutive, balding man in his fifties who sounded and even looked sort of like the Count from Sesame Street. Even now, McDonald sometimes closed his eyes to see the Muppet laughing at him. “I slept with your wife one, two, three, four times. Ah-ha-hah!”

But it had turned out okay. Divorce had changed him, transformed him, made him reevaluate his priorities. He got into truly excellent shape for the first time in his life, started eating healthy, ru

nning, lifting, mountain biking, meeting new people, young people. Amelia. The most important change of all was deciding to finally become a full-blown player in the Newburgh drug game and start raking in some real cheese instead of the pathetic sucker peanuts he was paid by the city.

Alimony? he thought, patting the drug-filled bag. Alimony this!

That’s why he’d decided to rekindle his old friendship with Dave. Now instead of setting picks at the top of the key, he supplied his buddy Dave with protection and tip-offs, and Dave supplied him with a tax-free two grand a week. He also used the tips Dave supplied him with to stage busts where he could steal drugs from the rival Latin Kings. One of your win-win situations if there ever was one.

Just yesterday he’d earned $5K from Dave. Pulling some strings with a friend in corrections, he’d helped to set up a turncoat in Dave’s operation, some punk-ass kid named Jay D, for a jailhouse murder. Amazing the amount of moneymaking opportunities out there once you had a mind to capitalize on them.

To hell with everyone, McDonald thought. His wife, the department, the people of Newburgh. He had finally wised up. He was on his own side now. He was only sorry he hadn’t thought of becoming a corrupt cop sooner.

He checked his phone for the second time. That was funny. Dave was late. That wasn’t like him.

Sergeant McDonald ruminated on that for a minute and then decided to turn the cruiser around to face the street, keeping his back safely to the Hudson.

Dave was a bud, but it was a dog-eat-dog world out here, and you could never be too careful.

He chewed his gum and pictured his new girlfriend’s haunting eyes, lit by strobe lights.

CHAPTER 70

A LITTLE MORE than half a mile northeast of Sergeant McDonald’s parked cruiser, a brand-new fifty-foot sport yacht stood at anchor in the middle of the pitch-dark Hudson River, rising and dipping.

So did the night-vision-enhanced crosshairs of the sniper rifle trained on Sergeant McDonald’s right temple.

The rifle that the scope was attached to was a CheyTac M200. The almost thirty-pound big bastard of a weapon had an effective range of nearly 1.2 miles and was made in the good ol’ USA. The big bastard of a sniper at its huge night-vision eyepiece happened to be an Englishman, a fifty-seven-year-old SAS-trained mercenary named Gabler.

Dressed in black fatigues, Gabler was sitting on a camp chair on the forward deck of the five-hundred-thousand-dollar pleasure craft. Beside him, the massive gun was propped on a shooting bench, as though Gabler were a contestant in a competition.

He’d already zoned in the distance-to-target at 826.23 yards, according to the range finder in his bag, and made his windage adjustments. He’d even checked the barometric pressure, 1011 millibars per hectopascal, which would have negligible effect at the range he was looking at. Except for the sway of the boat, it was simple enough.