Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

It was out of sheer exhaustion and frustration that I hollered to the work crew: “NYPD! Stop that guy! Stop that guy!”

So I was a little surprised when that was exactly what they did. A burly black hard hat in blue Con Ed coveralls bobbed out from under the orange traffic tape like a boxer into a ring and clotheslined the runner as he was trying to get past.

The guy went off his feet, knocking the corner trash can over like a bowling pin before landing flat on his back in the gutter on Lafayette. He was still moaning when I landed on him and flipped him over and slapped on the cuffs.

As I knelt on his head, I zipped open his backpack, expecting gems. But it wasn’t gems. Not even close. I couldn’t believe it as about three pounds of rancid-smelling marijuana in little plastic bags spilled out onto the sidewalk.

“Where are they?” I yelled.

“Where’s who?” the red-faced suspect said.

“Not who. The diamonds! Where’d you put the diamonds?”

“What diamonds, man?” the suspect said, opening his eyes wide. “I just got weed. Just weed. When I saw the cop running, I got scared. I’m really sorry. It isn’t even my weed. I’ll tell you whose it is, OK? I’m just a college kid. I go to NYU, man. Please, I don’t want to go to jail.”

“This ain’t him,” I said as a precinct car screeched to the curb. “Just a spooked dealer. Did you see anybody else?”

“No,” the sarge said, punching the steering wheel. “It doesn’t make sense. The clerk inside said they’d been gone less than thirty seconds when we rolled up. When we came out of the store, we saw this fool on the corner of Greene just take off. I thought it had to be him.”

Thirty seconds, I thought, staring out at the newly arriving cruisers and gathering crowd on the sidewalk.

I kicked at the pile of weed bags that had spilled out of the backpack. I didn’t stop until I’d knocked every one down into the corner sewer. I was so frustrated I would have tried to kick the dealer himself down there, too, if I’d thought he would fit.

How could we have missed them by thirty seconds?

CHAPTER 69

I WAS EXPECTING TO see shattered glass everywhere when I arrived at Wooster Fine Diamonds, so I was shocked to find all the jewelry cases still intact.

I quickly figured out why. This latest hit had been a takeover robbery instead of a mad-dash smash-and-grab.

Their plan had been quite elaborate. A woman and a man had come in acting like a rich couple a moment before two more males entered acting like federal agents there to arrest them. After they’d gotten the drop on the guards and buttoned down the staff, they took their time, almost ten minutes, as they unlocked cases and selected the best diamonds. They’d also been cool-headed enough to take the surveillance video this time.

The three males matched the descriptions of the three from downtown. And now there was a woman, apparently. I couldn’t have been more pissed.

I had to admit these crooks were good. They had flair and must have been well dressed to blend in with the ritzy area.

Takeover robberies could go south in a breath and become a bloodbath, I knew. I really wanted to catch these people.

If there was any silver lining, the fact that they had struck again so quickly impressed me as amateurish. They seemed too eager. I knew that some thieves get off on the adrenaline high, and like any junkie, they start to make mistakes to get it.

I was still puzzling over how they’d gotten away so quickly when who should come in the door but my boss’s boss, Chief of Department Peter Vonroden.

“Thanks for showing up, Bennett,” the short, fifty-something former competitive body builder said as he scowled at the crime scene. “Think you might stick around a bit this time? You being the new lead detective and all.”

If I had to guess, I would have said that Vonroden probably wasn’t very pleased that I had been hand-selected by the commissioner to come back to Major Crimes. Vonroden was known to be a tough political infighter, not to mention very good friends with my old nemesis, Chief Starkie.

What really sucked, though, was that I was nowhere on this case. Which had been on the front page of the Post and the Daily News this morning.

So instead of banging heads, I wisely ignored his taunts. Or at least tried to.

“These guys are switching their script now, Chief,” I said. “Instead of a smash-and-grab, this was a takeover. Got the drop on the guards, locked the front door. They took their time.”

“I hear they were Russians,” Vonroden said. “Or Serbians?”

Vonroden was referring to a theory that was being batted about that the infamous Serbian Pink Panther gang that had targeted over a hundred fifty stores throughout the world, including dramatic heists in Tokyo, Dubai, Paris, and London, had come to town.

“They had some kind of accent,” I said. “One of the clerks lives in Brighton Beach. Swears they sounded Russian, but who knows? We can’t really verify. This crew has a flair for the dramatic. It might be possible they were just putting on another show.”