Run for Your Life by James Patterson Page A

although the way my luck was running, the horn would go any second now, like on the VW in Little Miss Sunshine.
    I was on my way to 72nd Street, steering with one hand and knotting my tie with the other, when Chief of Detectives McGinnis called my cell.
    “Where the hell are you, Bennett?” His voice was forceful enough to burst a blood vessel.
    “Moving as fast as I can, Chief,” I said. “I’ll be there within five. What’s up?”
    “The maître d’ at the Twenty–one Club just got popped!”
    I felt an all–too–familiar twisting in the pit of my stomach. The Polo store and now 21? Two murders, at two of the city’s highest–profile places, within an hour of each other? This was starting to look as bad as last night, and maybe worse.
    “You got any take on it?” I said.
    “Maybe Donald Trump finally went postal. Maybe there’s a roving shooter, maybe a couple of them and it’s a coincidence. We’ve mobilized the Counter–Terror Unit, just in case that’s involved. That’s your specialty, right — terrorism? No, I’m sorry, catastrophes.”
    I shook my head. The cat was all the way out of the bag about my working for the CRU, wasn’t it? Pretty soon the whole NYPD would learn my dirty little secret. Michael Bennett had once been a Fed.
    “I wouldn’t call it a specialty,” I said.
    “I don’t care what you call it. You’re the commissioner’s handpicked expert. Now get your ass over here and figure it all out for me, huh?”
    So that was why McGinnis’s britches were in a knot, I thought. I wasn’t his first choice to handle this, but he’d been overridden by Commissioner Daly.
    “You think I volunteered for this, Chief?” I shot back. But he’d already hung up.
    I stomped down on the Dodge’s gas pedal, sending a tangle of errant soccer cleats and Happy Meal castoffs rattling around in the passenger–seat footwell.
     
    Chapter 15
     
    The front of the Madison Avenue Polo store looked like a police vehicle sales auction. There were cop motorcycles, Emergency Service Unit heavy rescue trucks, dozens of blue–and–whites.
    I’d seen hot crime scenes before, but this was way over the top. Then I realized it must have been part of the NYPD Counter–Terror Unit’s new surge tactic, which I’d heard about but hadn’t yet seen. At the first hint of a threat, as many as two hundred cops would be sent in to blanket an area with an overwhelming shock–and–awe presence.
    Maybe Daly was right, I thought for a moment. The lights and cops and chaos, the adrenaline rush stiffening my spine. What I was seeing was definitely reminding me of the disaster scenes I once worked.
    It was impressive, all right. As I badged my way past the Emergency Service Unit guys on the sidewalk, I blinked warily at the cut–down M16s they were strapping on. Those had been issued after 9/11, but I still couldn’t get used to them, and I probably never would. If we could just go back to the good old days when only the drug dealers had assault rifles, I thought.
    The inside of Polo’s flagship store looked satanically plush, especially to a guy who did most of his shopping at Old Navy and the Children’s Place. A sandy–haired man at the top of the mahogany staircase came forward to meet me — Terry Lavery, a very competent Nineteenth Precinct detective. I was glad to see somebody who I knew I could get along with, and who was smart, to boot.
    “What do you think of the army out there, Mikey?” he said. “I haven’t seen this much NYPD blue since the DC convention.”
    I snapped my fingers, like a lightbulb in my head had just gone on.
    “So that’s why I want to get naked and slide down this banister,” I said. “Hey, right off, I just want to let you know that it wasn’t my idea to come tromping on your turf. I actually called in for a personal today. But the PC insisted. He wants me out of the way, so I can’t be questioned about that debacle up in Harlem last night.”
    “Sure, sure,”