A horn blast behind him redirected his attention to the now-green light. He shifted his mean machine into first and let off the clutch and made another rumbling left onto Greenwich Street.

Rolling off Greenwich at Trinity Place along the left-hand side of the congested street, he began to see construction vehicles, flatbeds packed with rebar and big dump trucks like the one he was driving. The construction vehicles were for the One World Trade Center site, the so-called Freedom Tower, which was being built to replace the Twin Towers knocked down on 9/11.

The area was chock-full of American history, the driver knew. Of course 9/11, duh. But there was Trinity Church on the right, where George Washington went to church after his inauguration, and Zuccotti Park a couple of blocks ahead, where those Occupy Wall Street zeros gathered to defecate on a cop car.

The do-or-die part came as he was crossing Rector Street. Come hell or high holy water, he needed to park this monster somewhere between Rector and Thames in the next five minutes. He was running out of block and was thinking, schedule or not, he had no option but to go all the way around again, when a mail truck suddenly pulled out.

Immediately, he hit the screeching brakes and swung left, almost smushing a moped messenger against a Lincoln Town Car. But at the last possible second, he made it. He drove the bad-boy oversize Tonka toy into the parking spot and up over the curb and down and stopped with a mighty clanking thump.

He leaned out the driver’s window and glanced forward at a navy-blue awning with gold lettering on the sidewalk fifteen feet ahead.

It couldn’t have been a more perfect setup. He’d nailed it. In another minute, it would all be going down.

CHAPTER 54

HE TURNED TO THE man in the passenger seat beside him. Like him, the man was wearing a traffic vest over faded green coveralls and had on dark wraparound sunglasses under a bright-yellow hard hat.

“Not bad, huh, Slick? I love it when a goddamn plan comes together,” the driver said.

“Amen,” Slick said without looking up from his phone.

Honcho didn’t have to look at its screen to know that Slick was playing the vintage computer game Minesweeper. It had been an unquenchable obsession of his math-loving nutball of a friend ever since college. Slick played it faster and better than anyone Honcho’d ever seen, adding numbers and planting flags and uncovering tiles faster than a teenage girl texting her BFF, turning calculated guessing into some kind of fricking art form.

Glancing at him now, Honcho felt like reaching out and palming his buddy’s forehead to see if it was heating up like the back of an overworked computer server. But what was really funny was the brainiac didn’t look or act like a nerd. In fact, the six-foot-one, dark, handsome stud got almost as much tail as Honcho himself when he was in the mood. Almost.

Honcho scanned the sidewalk. Suits, some hard hats, a fat guy in chef’s whites curbing a stack of greasy cardboard boxes out in front of an Irish pub. Geeks, geeks, and more geeks. Excellent. All quiet on the southern Manhattan front. At least so far.

Honcho lifted his radio.

“Beast? You around? Come in, Beast. Where are you, baby?”

Before he could even lower the Motorola, the passenger door popped open and an XXL son of a bitch dressed exactly like Honcho and Slick shoved his bulky mass inside.

“You rang?” Beast said with a goofy gap-toothed grin as he clapped Honcho a nuclear-bomb high five that stung his palm even through the thick canvas of his work glove.

Honcho smiled, as he always did upon meeting his perpetually fired-up, massive friend. And why wouldn’t he? He had once seen his steroid-addicted buddy lift a thirty-pound sledgehammer off the ground by the end of its handle like it was a Wiffle ball bat. To sum up: Beast w

as good to have around.

Beast was as retardedly strong as Slick was nerdily smart and as Honcho himself was, well, Honcho. Even after all this time, they were still the goddamn dream team. They had been working their way up to this, circling and closing like sharks around a particularly fat and juicy seal. Now they were here—Manhattan. New York, New York, aka the promised land. The boys were most definitely back in town.

“Everything’s ready?” Honcho said to Beast as Slick retreated into the cab’s rear and slid on the backpack.

“We’re good to go, man. What are we waiting for?” Beast said, bouncing in his seat like the muscled-up three-hundred-pound four-year-old that he was.

“No problems, you’re positive?” Honcho said again.

“I look unsure to you?” Beast said, glaring at him now over the top of his Wayfarers. “I mean, I could screw something up on purpose just to make you feel better if you want, Honcho.”

“Hit it!” Slick said. “What are we waiting for? It’s time.”

Honcho closed his eyes, drinking in the anticipation until he was about to pass out.

Then he hit the bulky plastic switch duct-taped to the Mack truck’s dashboard and threw open the door.

CHAPTER 55

BILLOWING BLACK SMOKE WAS already pouring out from underneath the hood of the dump truck by the time the three men hit the sidewalk. In a dozen quick steps, they were under the navy-blue awning, knocking on the thick glass of the door.

Tags: James Patterson Michael Bennett Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net