Burn (Michael Bennett 7) (20 page)

I’d been running the length of the city like a beheaded chicken since I’d gotten back to New York, and now the one special night I’d finally planned with Mary Catherine had gone belly-up.

I honestly couldn’t say I was real happy these days with things myself.

CHAPTER
66

THE RESTAURANT HONCHO SAT
in forty-five minutes past noon was on Prince Street in the very center of SoHo.

The modern French bistro was called 82 Clichy, after the address of Le Moulin Rouge in Paris, and like that famous cabaret, it was over-the-top posh, with black satin wallpaper and pale-plum-colored leather banquettes and an antique mirror the size of a billboard over its massive gleaming zinc bar.

Though decadent bordello was definitely Honcho’s style, especially in the tailored black seventeen-hundred-dollar Prada suit he was now decked out in, he wasn’t there to soak in the atmosphere. Sitting by a window open to the sidewalk, he kept glancing at the street through the zoom lens of his Nikon between bites of his scallop ceviche. As he pretended to snap pictures of the area’s charming Venice-like cast-iron loft buildings like some geeky tourist, he kept keen watch on an establishment two blocks west on the southwest corner of Wooster.

Through the camera’s magnifying lens, he could easily read the gold-leaf sign on its door:
WOOSTER FINE DIAMONDS
.

He turned from the window when he finally heard the loud clopping. The tall, curvy platinum blonde who stomped up to his table wore a seemingly painted-on black sleeveless turtleneck Givenchy dress with big black Dior shades and too-high Louboutins. With the not-so-demure diamonds at her ears and throat and the flashy Barbour and Kate Spade shopping bags clutched in her hands, she looked like a high-end stripper who’d bagged a billionaire.

Which was precisely the look Honcho had been shooting for when he hired the mobbed-up Ukrainian looker for this latest job.

“You’re late,” Honcho said, dropping a hundred on the table and quickly leading Iliana back out into the street by her elbow.

“You told me to shop!” Iliana shrieked in her heavy accent, waving the bags as they crossed the Belgian-block street.

“For over an hour!?” Honcho said as they headed west. “I told you we were on a schedule. Anyway, you know what to do, right? Want me to go over anything?”

“Do I look like an amateur to you?” Iliana said, ripping her elbow out of his hand. “I was picking pockets before you had peach fuzz on your nuts, so you worry about your part. And you better have my money in cash right after, like you said, or I’ll
have
your nuts.”

“What a sweet-talker you are, Iliana. Look lively now,” Honcho said as they made a beeline up Prince Street toward the jewelry store.

CHAPTER
67

THE TALLER OF THE
two armed security guards opened the jewelry store door as Honcho and Iliana stopped in front of it.

From casing the joint over the last three months, Honcho knew that the dark-haired, heavyset white guard with the throwback macho-man mustache was named Gary Tenero and that he was easygoing and probably a pushover. It was Tenero’s intense Hispanic partner, Eric Galarza, who was shaved bald and chiseled like an MMA fighter and on the NYPD hiring list to become a cop, who had Honcho much more worried.

Spotting Galarza through the window, stationed in the center of the store, Honcho was racked with a sudden and strong bad feeling. Before his eyes came a prophetic vision of himself down on his hands and knees leaking blood on the luxe retailer’s expensive carpet.

Should I abort?
Honcho thought.

But then Iliana was clicking up the jewelry store’s cast-iron steps and everything was going down.

“Are you effing kidding me?” Honcho said, starting the script.

He put on a pretty convincing Russian accent for the benefit of the guard. Honcho was acting Russian and had chosen the Ukrainian Iliana because of the sudden influx of megarich Russians and Europeans into the super-wealthy SoHo shopping area.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Honcho complained loudly at Iliana’s back. “I am not going into one more store. I am already late.”

“It will just take a minute. Come on,” Iliana barked.

“I don’t have a minute, you idiot,” Honcho said, going into his pocket and slapping a knot of hundreds into her hand as the wide-eyed white guard watched. “Pick out whatever, OK? I need to be in a cab. If I keep my boss waiting any longer, he’ll cut my dick off. I’ll call you later.”

“No, you must come,” lliana said as she stamped a Louboutin. “How can I pick out my engagement ring by myself?”

“But isn’t it bad luck?” Honcho said.

“No, that’s just the dress, you moron. C’mon,” she said, pulling him inside.

Honcho avoided the gaze of the intense guard as a vampire-pale redheaded female clerk stepped up to them. She reminded Honcho of the curvy carrottop from
Mad Men
, only instead of being plus-size, she had cheekbones you could chop lines of coke with.

“Hello, I’m Rebecca. May I help you?” the clerk said.

“We want to see some diamonds,” Iliana said.

“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” the clerk was beginning to say, when suddenly all hell broke loose by the front door behind them.

“FBI!” someone screamed. “FBI! You with the blonde! Hands up now if you don’t want to die!”

Honcho stiffened and began turning around slowly. He caught a glimpse of two men wearing navy Windbreakers and bulletproof vests with badges around their necks. They were standing in the jewelry store’s open doorway, guns drawn.

“Hands!” one of the FBI agents said. “Don’t move! Don’t you move!”

Honcho ignored him and dropped down on his knees, digging into the Kate Spade bag for his Beretta. The gunshot that followed was deafening in the tight interior of the store. Honcho fell facedown on the carpet.

Over the next thirty seconds, it was hard to tell who was screaming more loudly, Iliana or the redheaded clerk.

“Oh, man. I think you got him,” Honcho heard as the intense guard, Galarza, was suddenly kneeling over him.

“You wish!” Honcho said, rolling over and pressing the Beretta to the guy’s chin.

As Honcho stood, the two “FBI agents,” Beast and Slick, already had the door closed and their guns trained on Tenero and the other male clerk.

Iliana took her own piece out of the bag and placed it between the redheaded clerk’s wide green eyes.

“Keys to the front, now!” Iliana screamed as Slick slipped the bolt closed on the door.

CHAPTER
68

I WAS HEADED TO
the squad room when I heard it. I was stopped at a red light on Broadway and Great Jones Street in the Village when the cruiser’s radio suddenly blew up with about fifteen staccato calls.

I listened intently. Someone had just pulled the silent alarm at Wooster Fine Diamonds on Prince and Wooster!

“That’s five blocks away!” I yelled at myself as I hit the siren and peeled out through the intersection and then pinned it south down Broadway.

“We are on foot pursuit. Caucasian male running east on Prince. No, scratch that. North on Mott! North on Mott!” said the radio as I ran another red light.

I shrieked through the next red light at Houston, almost running over a muscular bike messenger in the intersection before flooring it east to Mott Street. Just as I arrived, a lean white guy with a bulging backpack shot gazellelike straight across all four lanes of Houston and continued north on Elizabeth.

I raced up and shrieked left onto Elizabeth straight after him, staring at his blue backpack as he ran along the sidewalk on the west side of the street.

And almost slammed head-on into the back of a parallel-parking moving van!

I added my horn to the shrieking siren to move the van, but to no avail.

“Screw it,” I said, popping the door and leaving the cruiser stopped dead in the middle of the street as I took off on foot.

My new wing tips were starting to cut the hell out of my feet when the guy reached the end of Elizabeth and went left onto Bleecker. When I got to the corner, I could see that the suspect was all the way west near the corner of Lafayette, where Con Ed had a manhole open.

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.”

“Looks like some real Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Greatest Show on Earth shit so far, from where I’m sitting,” Vonroden said. “But for some strange reason, I don’t feel that entertained. Not even by the clown sideshow you keep putting on.”

Tell me what you really think, Chief
, I thought, biting my tongue.

He leaned in to whisper to me. I didn’t think it would be sweet nothings. I was right.

“Got a call last night from a friend of mine, Bennett. He was asking my help about trying to get you off this case and out of Major Crimes Division, but you know what?”