Bullseye (Michael Bennett 9)

“We have reason to believe that’s not just it. Maybe you didn’t set it up, but I know you know something. I need the shooter. He killed a cop. We’re not gonna stop looking for him. You choose to stand between us and him, you’re going to find your little grimy empire coming down around your ears. You need to give me something. If not the shooter, then a name that gets me off your ass and on theirs. Think hard. I’m actually trying to help you.”

“You’re crazy, Detective. I voted for Buckland. I don’t know who put my name in this, but you need to arrest them because they’re pulling your chain.”

“Okay, Levkov. Let’s do it the stupid way. Get up and put your hands behind your back.”

“What? Why?”

I took out the subpoena that I had been handed by Chief Fabretti for the over three thousand dollars in unpaid parking tickets the Russian had racked up.

“Well, Pavel, sometimes the American dream includes paying your parking tickets.”

Chapter 27

“So how do you like the madhouse so far?” Brian Bennett said as he huffed and puffed next to Marvin Peters; they were jogging in Riverside Park after school. “You don’t have to answer that. It’s only for a few weeks, right?”

“Madhouse?” Marvin said as they ran. “You don’t know how lucky you are, man. Your dad, and Father Seamus, and Miss Mary Catherine, and all your brothers and sisters. Not to mention this neighborhood. Heck, you livin’ the good life, believe me.”

“Yeah? Tell me that again after one of the peewees gets into your stuff or the first time you slip on a Barbie roller skate in the middle of the night.”

Marvin just smiled.

They were coming out of the icy trail by the Riverside Drive sidewalk at 86th when Marvin spotted him. Hardly believing his eyes, Marvin slowed to a stop. It really was him, Big Flicka himself, just standing there by his big double-parked silver Mercedes, smiling.

“Hey, what gives, Marv? Getting soft on me?” said Brian.

Marvin didn’t answer. All he could do was stare out at the street beyond the snow-filled park at the big, lanky, fifty-year-old black man in the black thousand-dollar Canada Goose down jacket.

As Flicka gave him a wave, Marvin remembered a snatch from some old stupid eighties song, “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car.” Only here in real life, it was like Flicka had just come out of Marvin’s nightmare, and Marvin only wanted him to go back.

“Marvin, Marvin, you were a friend of mine,” Flicka sang soulfully. He had a nice voice. Ghetto legend had it that he actually did some backups on a couple of tracks in the nineties before he g

ot caught for a body. “Marvin, it is you, isn’t it?” Flicka said. “I thought it was, and I was right. Look at you, son. It’s been too long.”

How had the bastard found him here in Manhattan? Marvin thought. He must have spotted him at school and followed him here.

“Come here, boy,” Flicka said, tilting his head to one side playfully. “What, you’re not even going to say hi?”

Marvin didn’t want to go but did as he was told. Because Flicka was effing crazy. Full-bore, hockey mask, chain saw crazy. You didn’t know what Flicka would do until he was doing it.

“Tell your white boy to keep going his merry ol’ way or I’ll clip you right here,” said Flicka, still smiling like he was posing for a selfie. “I’ll do you just like I did yo’ cousin, and the white boy, too. You know I will.”

“Hey, Brian. You keep on going,” Marvin said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Maybe we should just head home, Marvin,” Brian said.

“I won’t be long,” Marvin said.

“Okay,” Brian said. “You’re sure?”

Marvin nodded.

“Yeah, keep going, white boy,” his cousin’s killer said as he opened the passenger door of the Merc. “You don’t want any piece of this punk ass’s sorry problems. Not any piece at all.”

Chapter 28

Saturday morning, Matthew went into the famous Strand Bookstore on Broadway, down from Union Square Park, while Sophie got her hair done nearby.

He was deep in the stacks, flipping through a coffee-table book about depictions of pain in Renaissance art, when a big guy in a hooded wool toggle coat and Clark Kent glasses jostled him in the narrow aisle.