Perrine laughed.
“You think I ordered this hit of the judge, yes?” he said, rocking his chair back and forth. “But you are wrong. I had nothing to do with it. Some men get excited, and they do things. It is the same with a beautiful woman. People fight over her. Is she to blame if someone is hurt?”
“Interesting analogy,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Since you’re such an insightful guy, maybe you could shed a little light on that skull chick you guys keep drawing on yourselves. She’s what? A cartoon? Like SpongeBob SquarePants?”
He looked at me hard, with a funny smile on his face.
“I would not take La Santa Muerte, or, more properly La Santisima Muerte, so lightly, my friend. Some say the old gods of Mexico are still alive. Who is anyone to dispute it? La Santisima Muerte may seem repulsive to your stale, modern mind, but she and her message and her protections are sound. Death is the only truth in life. Even Catholics believe this.”
“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.
Thankfully, the traffic, along with my kids’ complaining groans, finally thinned out after we put the George Washington Bridge and its truly mind-blowing vehicular congestion in our rearview mirror. I really couldn’t wait to get up to the old family house on Orange Lake. This year, we had the place to ourselves for the last two months of summer. I couldn’t wait to force-feed a little peace and quiet and country living to my kids, who thought the New York City border was the very edge of the earth.
My mood lifted even more five minutes later, as we came over the span of the Henry Hudson Bridge and I saw the majestic river sparkling far below. Even the kids seemed duly impressed with the massive Hudson and the stark cliffs of the New Jersey Palisades.
“This is it, kids,” I said as we finally came through the toll-booth. “Full speed ahead for the SS Dorkmobile. Northward ho!”
I put the Bennett magic bus in the left-hand lane and gave her all she had, which turned out to be about fifty-five. About an hour later, I knew we were home free as we got off I-684 onto westbound I-84. I always loved that section of I-84 between Connecticut and the Hudson, where it’s nothing but trees and rugged hills.
I was taking in the distant Catskill Mountains vista near East Fishkill when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Hey, Dad,” Jane suddenly said in my ear. “A sign back there said Ludingtonville. Is that named after Sybil Ludington?”
“Actually, yes. I believe it is.”
“Sybil who?” said Bridget, pulling out her earbuds.
“Sybil Ludington. She was only like the coolest sixteen-year-old girl ever,” Jane said, turning to her little sister. “In the Revolutionary War, she got on a horse and warned everyone in the New York militia that the British were coming. She was like Paul Revere, only better because she had to ride farther and faster. This is awesome, Dad,” she said, patting me on the shoulder. “I didn’t know this was going to be a historical trip.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” I said.
“Tell me I didn’t just hear a history lesson,” Ricky yelled from a few rows back. “News flash, Lady Einstein. Just because Dad is making us ride this stupid school bus doesn’t mean we’re at school.”
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Eddie raised his hand.
“Ooh, ooh, Teacher Jane! Please finish your lesson about the Ride of Sybil Paddington, and when you’re done, may I have permission to open the window and hurl?”
“Enough, ye scalawags,” Father Seamus Bennett announced from the last row. “There’ll be no hurling on this bus except if it’s the sport that Irishmen play.”
I looked over at Mary Catherine, who was trying not to grin at me over the Anne Rivers Siddons paperback in her hand.
“Are we there yet?” I whined.
CHAPTER 39
THE LAST OF my thoughts and concerns about my job and the city flew away as we crossed the Newburgh–Beacon Bridge. This was always the best part of the trip when I was a kid: the final marker that said good-bye, concrete and crowds and sweating on the subway, and hello, swim trunks and blue sky and summer fun.
“Speaking of road markers,” I said out loud, suddenly remembering something and putting on the bus’s turn signal.
“Everything okay?” Mary Catherine said as I pulled off the first exit after the bridge into the city of Newburgh. “Don’t we need to head up a few more exits?”
“I have to make a quick stop first,” I said as I made a left onto North Robinson Avenue.
We drove through Newburgh. Like many northeastern towns on navigable waters, the small city had had its heyday back in the 1800s, when goods traveled by ship. You could still see that nineteenth-century history reflected in its old oak-lined streets, its red-brick factories, its rambling Victorian houses. I always thought it had a faint resemblance to San Francisco, with its quaint old structures and steep streets that sloped down toward the majestic river.
But as we continued deeper into town, I started noticing changes, and they weren’t for the better. The city, even when I was a kid, had never been exactly bustling, but I definitely didn’t remember this many boarded-up buildings and businesses. Actually, as I passed a 99 cents store and an Internet café that advertised wire-transfer service to “Centro y Sudamérica,” I wondered if I’d made a wrong turn and was now rolling through a grittier section of New York City.
I made some turns and got lost once before I finally found what I was looking for.
Mary gaped out the window as I stopped the bus.
“Hot dogs, Mike?” she said. “We have hot dogs in the cooler.”
“These aren’t hot dogs,” I said. “These are Pete’s hot dogs. It’s a family tradition. My dad always stopped here first thing to kick off the summer. Just you wait. They’ll knock your flip-flops off.”
I picked up a baker’s dozen loaded with lots of Gulden’s mustard and sauerkraut. I sighed as I snapped into the first bite. Tube-steak heaven. The dogs were as perfect as I remembered. Pete’s hadn’t changed one bit. The kids seemed to like them, too. At least they couldn’t complain or aggravate each other while they were chewing.
I closed my eyes as I took a sip of orange soda. When I open them again, I’ll be twelve, I thought. My first summer with braces and E.T. playing in the movie house down the block.
I opened them, but instead of traveling back to the simpler days of yesteryear, I watched as a tricked-out Acura rolled by the hot dog stand, the thump of its megawatt rap music like a heart under a stethoscope. Not only that, but the two tough-looking Hispanic males in the front seat glared at me and my kids with silent malevolence until the light turned green and they peeled away. What was that all about?
I thought about Perrine for a second before dismissing it. It was just a coincidence. Had to be. I was just being paranoid.
“Okay, kids, back in the bus,” I said as I wiped mustard off my chin with a napkin. “This city living is for the birds. Time to get off the grid.”
CHAPTER 40
TWENTY MINUTES AFTER our hot dog lunch, we made a turn off a forested road and rolled the bus over a tree-lined gravel driveway to its final stop.
I couldn’t stop smiling as the old rambling lakeside cabin came into view. It looked the same as I remembered it, as if I’d traveled back in time. Any second, the screen door would creak open and out would come my grandma and uncles and aunts and all my cousins, waving and smiling and sunburned.
The vacation house had been in the Bennett family for a couple of generations, until Seamus’s brother, Cosmo, retired from the fire department and moved in year-round. Cosmo had died a few years before and in his will gave the old girl back to the family as a whole to be used as a vacation place again.
“So what do you think?” I said to Seamus as he stepped over beside me.
Seamus had been a skilled carpenter, among other things, before he had become a priest, and he and his brother, Cosmo, and a few of their friends had built the place over the course of one long summer back in the early sixties.
Seamus took a deep breath as he stared at it. His blue eyes were wet, misted over.
“I remember sitting with Grandma out on the back porch, and we’d hear that sound of tires on the gravel, and you had to see her face light up,” Seamus said. “Thirty years would disappear in a second because the family was together, her children and grandchildren.”
He looked down at the ground.
“God, she was a beautiful woman. I still miss her. This place brings back so many memories,” he said.
“Let’s go make some more, Seamus,” I said, putting my arm around him as we came up the creaky steps.
Even inside, it looked the same. There was the same massive bay window in the back that looked out over a faded dock and the mile-long lake. I smirked up at the old deer head on the wall, which we used for games of hat toss. My thirst for nostalgia ended abruptly in the kitchen when I realized we would be using the same old hit-or-miss 1960s appliances.
In the family room, I walked over to the wall where some old framed photographs were hanging beneath a mounted boat oar. I took down the one that showed two rows of grinning men above the caption THE SHAMROCK HUNTING & FISHING CLUB.
“Kids, come here. Have a look at this!” I yelled.
Everyone ran over. Seamus rolled his eyes when he saw what I was holding.
“Who can guess who this is?” I said, pointing to a strapping, shirtless, handsome young man in the back row of the photo.
“That’s not Grandpa Seamus, is it?” said Mary Catherine in shock.
“Hubba-hubba,” said my eldest, Juliana, squeezing Seamus’s bicep. “Pleased to meet you, Monsignor Stud Muffin.”
Everyone laughed.
“No, Daddy,” said eight-year-old Chrissy, shaking her head at the photo. “That’s not Grandpa Seamus. Grandpa Seamus is old, silly.”
“Yes, Daddy is silly, isn’t he?” a red-faced Seamus said, putting the picture back on the wall. “Who’s ready for some badminton?” he said, making a beeline for the yard.
CHAPTER 41
THE NEXT MORNING, after preparing a late breakfast fit for a king—or a dozen starving wolverines—I took to the water. By a little past noon, the only thing between me and my most natural state was an inner tube and my surfer Jams. Sun on my face, heels trailing in the cool water as I floated gently down the lake, my only earthly concern was keeping the adult beverage prepared for me by the great people at Anheuser-Busch upright on my stomach.
I took another hit of my red, white, and blue Budweiser tallboy, squinted up at the tiny clouds high above me, and smiled. The Mike Bennett stress reduction program was going swimmingly indeed.
Off to my right came the occasional sound of my kids laughing and screaming as they cannonballed off the house’s faded old dock. Seamus, who had already swum the entire length of the lake earlier that morning, was teaching them how to swim. Or at least how not to drown.
Besides a volleyball tournament scheduled for three, I was planning on filling my day with a massive amount of nothing except kicking back and letting the pristine lake take me hither and yon.
But plans change. Sometimes drastically.
It was about two o’clock, as I lay there in a beery, sun-dazzled
state, when I heard the whistle. When I sat up, I saw Mary Catherine waving from the distant dock. I looked over for a panicked moment to see if it had anything to do with any of the kids in the water, but it looked like everyone was in the backyard playing volleyball.
Mary Catherine whistled and waved some more. Something was up.
“I knew it,” I said as I started kicking and splashing back toward the house. It had been too quiet for too long.
“Sorry to bother you, Mike. It’s probably nothing,” Mary Catherine said as I finally made it back and tossed the tube up onto the dock.
Unfortunately, one glance at the concerned look on her face as I pulled my dripping self out of the lake said the opposite.
“Okay. I’m here. What’s wrong?” I said.
“It’s Brian and Eddie. They left to go to the pizza place down the road about an hour ago, and they’re not back yet. I called and texted Brian’s phone, but it seems like maybe the battery is dead. I just sent Seamus down the street to see if maybe they went to the neighbor’s. They weren’t there, but the neighbor said when he passed the pizza place, he might have seen Brian and Eddie talking to two girls and a teenager with a car.”
No wonder Mary Catherine was looking concerned. Brian was sixteen but Eddie was only thirteen, and they were hanging around some older kids and girls? It just didn’t sound right.
“A car? What kind of car?” I said, pissed. We’d had a big family meeting with the older ones about always making sure to let people know where they were.
“A black convertible,” Mary Catherine said, biting at a thumbnail.
“A black convertible?!” I repeated after a frustrated breath. “Oh, well, that’s just great. Maybe they’ll learn how to drag race. Let me get dressed, and I’ll go find them.”
“Do you think they’re in trouble?” she said.
“No, no, Mary Catherine. I’m sure it’s probably nothing. I mean, how much trouble could they possibly get into up here in the sticks?”