NYPD Red (19 page)

“ARMANDO,” ONE OF the women called out to him as he jogged across the parking lot. “I was worried about you. You almost missed the boat.”

It was Adrienne Gomez-Bower, the pretty one with the curly jet-black hair, and the blatantly obvious crush on him. He doubted if she’d even look twice at Gabriel Benoit, but she totally had the hots for Armando Savoy, the brown-skinned, intense young actor, born in Buenos Aires, raised in Marseilles, and trying to make it big in New York.

“Adrienne,
ma
chérie,
” he said as he leaned toward her and gave her the traditional French
faire la bise,
a kiss on each cheek. “Sorry I’m late. I had a callback for the new Mamet play. It’s down to me and two other guys.”

“Oh my God, Armando—a David Mamet play?” she said. “How awesome would that be? I swear, if you get the part, I will be front row center on opening night, even if I have to sell my body to pay for the tickets.”

Another time and he would have enjoyed kicking up the sexual tension a few more notches. Lexi wouldn’t mind. She knew it was all part of his act. But now with her gone, coming on to Adrienne felt too much like cheating.

“Anyway, boss,” he said. “Sorry I’m late.”

Adrienne was the crew chief, and she smiled. “I’ll let it slide,” she said. “But next time I may have to come down hard on you.”

Gabriel pretended not to notice the innuendo and stepped to the back of one of the catering trucks. “Who’s hosting this little soiree?” he asked.

“Shelley Trager,” Adrienne said. “He’s a multizillionaire TV producer. You see the yacht we’re working on? It’s not a rental. He
owns
it. He’s got a hundred and twenty-seven guests, most of them connected to the biz. Maybe one of us will get discovered.”

“I hope it’s you,” Gabriel said, wheeling a dolly under eight racks of wine glasses. He took off his white dinner jacket and laid it across the top rack. The jacket weighed eighty pounds. Lexi had sewn sixteen waterproof canvas pockets on the inside, and he’d stuffed each one of them with five pounds of C4. He’d used only twenty pounds at Harrington’s apartment, so this was way more than enough.

“I’m flattered that you hope that it’s me,” Adrienne said. “But what about you? Don’t you want to get discovered?”

Gabriel tipped the dolly and began to push it up the ramp of the waiting yacht. “Not tonight, boss,” he said. “Not tonight.”

TRAFFIC SCRAMBLED TO get out of our way as we tore down Seventh Avenue at autobahn speed. “Thank you,” Kylie said, eyes glued to the road.

I didn’t respond.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?” I mumbled.

“What do you think? Come on, Zach—Cates asked you to ride herd over me, and three days later, you’ve gone off the reservation. That’s my fault.”

“It was my choice not to answer the phone,” I said.

“Okay. But thank you. I mean it. I owe you big-time. Spence and I both owe you.”

“Great,” I said. “Maybe he can help me find a job in security at Silvercup.”

She turned and smiled at me, nearly plowing into a cab that couldn’t get out of her way fast enough.

Under ordinary circumstances, it would have taken twenty minutes to get to Kylie’s apartment in Tribeca. But with lights, sirens, and an absolute madwoman behind the wheel, we made it in eight and a half.

The Caprice screeched to a hard stop at the corner of Washington and Laight streets in front of an elegant eight-story redbrick building that had long ago been the Pearline Soap Factory. Tens of millions of dollars later, it had been transformed into a symbol of the ultimate chic that now defines lower Manhattan. No one on a cop’s salary could possibly afford to live there. Spence was obviously a good provider.

“Seventh floor,” Kylie said as we raced into the lobby. The elevator was right there, doors wide open, but she ran past it and into the stairwell.

I followed.

“Elevator’s too slow. This is the fastest way,” she said, giving the obvious answer to a question I hadn’t even bothered asking.

“Do we have a plan?” I said as we got to the fifth-floor landing.

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Damn it, Zach, we don’t need an NYPD Red master plan for every little thing. I just want to get in, get Spence out, warn the neighbors, and get our asses out of the building. If it blows, it blows.”

It made sense.
In, out, run.
Simple. There was no time to try to disarm a bomb.

We crashed through the stairwell door on seven, and turned right. There were only two apartments on the floor. Kylie’s was in the front.

She pulled a key out of her pocket and jammed it into the lock on Apartment 7A.

In, out, run,
I kept saying to myself. Simple. But something wasn’t sitting right.

Kylie turned the key, and in that split second I knew. Nothing that came from the twisted mind of Gabriel Benoit was ever simple.

I lunged at her and threw her to the floor.

“What the fuck?” she screamed.

“It’s booby-trapped,” I said.

She stared at me, half believing, half in denial, because undoing a booby trap takes time, and we were running out fast.

“How do you know?” she said.

“I don’t. But I know Benoit. He gave us more than enough time to get here. He
wants
us to barge through that door.”

“We have to get in,” she said. “Spence is in there.”

“Quiet.” I stood right up against the door and yelled. “Spence!”

He responded with a series of high-pitched shrieks. I knew from the Skype call that his mouth was duct-taped. He couldn’t utter a word, but it was clear from the urgency and the inflection in every cry that he wasn’t just asking for help. He was giving us a warning.

“Spence,” I said, “is it safe to open the door? Grunt once for yes. Twice for no.”

The answer came back loud and clear. Two muffled, yet distinctly separate, penetrating sounds.
No.

“Is the door wired with explosives?”

A single grunt.
Yes.

Every ounce of confidence and bravado drained from Kylie’s face. She had made all the calls—no bomb squad, no backup, just storm the castle and save the day on her own—and now it looked like every single call she had made was wrong.

“Zach…,” she said, looking as vulnerable and helpless as I’d ever seen her.

Suddenly saving Spence’s life was all on me. I shut my eyes and tried to picture every square on the chessboard.

“We have seventeen minutes,” she said.

No time to overthink.

“Spence!” I yelled through the door. “Can I come through the window?”

One grunt. And then…nothing.

Yes.

It was the answer I’d been hoping for.

“That’s it,” I said to Kylie. “I can get in through the window.”

She looked back at me—fear, disbelief, disappointment, and a slew of other negative emotions in her eyes. “Zach,” she said, “we’re seven stories straight up. How the hell do you plan to get in through the window?”

GABRIEL HAD TIMED it perfectly. The catering crew had almost finished loading in, most of the guests were on board, and Trager’s yacht, the
Shell Game,
was ready to get under way.

He busied himself in the galley, artfully arranging mini crab tostadas, smoked salmon barquettes, and coconut shrimp on black lacquered trays.

“You do brilliant work, Armando,” Adrienne said. “Mamet is lucky to have you.”

“I don’t have the gig yet,” Gabriel said.

“You will. Till then, you can feed the rich and hungry. Buffet is at seven.” She walked behind him, gave him a pat on the butt, and whispered in his ear. “Dessert is at my place around midnight.”

“I believe this is what you Americans call sexual harassment on the job,” he said.

She smiled. “And what do you call it in Argentina?”

“Foreplay.”

He winked, picked up a tray, and carried it into the main salon, working his way slowly through the crowd, smiling and passing hors d’oeuvres as he went. The guests were a typical show business mix of men and women, young and old, straight and gay, but they had one thing in common. Every one of them knew how to dress for a cruise—except for the two swarthy Latino men who were both wearing brown blazers, Kmart ties, and cop shoes.

The Chameleon smiled.
If this is Trager’s idea of private security, either he has no respect for me, or he wants to help me blow up his boat.

He walked up to one of the rent-a-cops and held out his tray. The man shook his head.

“Oh, please,” Gabriel said. “You don’t know what you’re missing. The shrimp are to die for.”

The guy shrugged, took a napkin, plucked a shrimp from the tray, looked left and right, then grabbed three more.

“I’ll be back,” Gabriel said.

He worked his way to the far end of the salon and stepped through a teak-framed glass door onto the main deck. There were a lot fewer guests out here, almost all of them smoking.

He found a quiet spot on the port side and got his bearings. The Brooklyn Bridge was behind him, which meant they were headed south toward Governors Island and the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.

They wouldn’t screen the TV pilot until dark, which meant the captain would sail all the way down to Sea Gate, or even Breezy Point, before circling back to catch the sunset over Liberty Island.

He had a little more than an hour to set the charges.

He found a door that said
DO NOT ENTER,
set down his hors d’oeuvres tray, and entered.

He took the two flights of metal stairs down to the engine room.

“Yo,” a voice called out. “Hold it right there, mate.”

Gabriel froze.

The man was a dark-skinned African-American, over sixty, wearing khakis and a faded denim shirt with the yacht’s logo on the left breast pocket.

“Hi there,” Gabriel said.

“Yeah, hi there,” the man said pleasantly. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three.”

“Well, you’ve passed the vision test, so I’m assuming you saw the sign that said ‘Do Not Enter.’ Allow me to interpret it for you. This area is off-limits. So would you be so kind as to go back on deck where you belong?”

“It’s okay,” Gabriel said. “I’m with the caterer. Mr. Trager sent me down to get dinner orders from the crew.”

The man laughed. “Dinner orders? Maybe for the guys on the bridge, but Mr. Trager does not make a habit of serving dinner in the engine room.”

“My mistake,” Gabriel said, “but hey, man, we got food up the wazoo in the galley. You want me to bring you down a tray—shrimp, chicken, fillet of beef?”

The man frowned. “My head says no, but my stomach just chimed in with ‘you can do that?’”

“Can and will,” Gabriel said. “Heck, you and your buddies down here are probably the hardest-working guys on the whole boat. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll bring it to you.”

“Some of everything, heavy on the fillet of beef, and maybe a cold beer.”

“You got it. How many guys are working down here?”

“Three. Me, myself, and I,” the seaman said, laughing. “Name’s Charles Connor.”

“Well, Mr. Connor, you guys deserve at least two beers apiece,” Gabriel said, “so how about I bring you down a six-pack?”

“Thanks, but one’s my limit down here.”

“This is some major setup,” Gabriel said. “How do you run it all by yourself?”

“I don’t run it at all. Captain Campion runs it by computer from the bridge. Normally, once we’re under way, nobody even works in the engine room, but we got a full boat and the booze is flowing, so the captain sent me down here to keep an eye out for happy wanderers.”

“You mean like guys who can’t read the ‘Do Not Enter’ sign?” Gabriel said.

“More like horny couples, three sheets to the wind, who see the sign and figure they’ll sneak down and join the Hudson River version of the Mile High Club.”

“I’ll go get your dinner,” Gabriel said. “Hey, what’s that big noisy thing behind you?”

Connor turned around. “That’s a thruster. It’s what makes the ship—”

Once again The Chameleon squeezed the trigger of the stun baton, dumping an electrical charge of a million volts into his unsuspecting victim’s nervous system. The seaman dropped to the floor, numb and helpless.

“I lied about bringing you dinner,” Gabriel said, putting the baton back in its holster and taking out a fresh roll of duct tape.

Gabriel had no idea how many of the crew would be working down here, so this scene hadn’t been too tightly scripted. But considering it was all ad-lib, he thought both he and Charles Connor had done remarkably well.

“WE CAN’T CLIMB up seven stories,” I said, “but we can climb down one. What’s on the eighth floor?”

As soon as I asked, I saw a spark in Kylie’s eyes. Hope.

“Dino. Dino Provenzano. He’s an artist. He works at home.” She turned to the door and yelled back at Spence. “I love you. We’re coming to get you.”

We took off for the stairwell. “Dino was the first to buy an apartment here,” she said, bounding up the steps. “He grabbed the top floor front, which has the best light: 8A.”

Within seconds, she was banging on the apartment door directly above hers. “Dino, it’s Kylie. Open up. Emergency.”

Nobody answered. Kylie kept banging and yelling. “Dino! Coralei! Anybody? NYPD. Emergency!”

Ten precious seconds later, Dino flung the door open, a paint-stained rag in his other hand.

“Dino, there’s a bomb in my apartment,” Kylie said, pushing her way in. “Get Coralei and get out.”

“She’s not here. She’s out walking the dog. What did you say was in your apartment?”

“A bomb.”

“Jesus,” he said.

“Ring all the bells,” Kylie said. “Warn the neighbors and empty the building. Then call 911 and tell them to clear the streets and evacuate the building next door. And tell them they only have fourteen minutes. You have a cell phone?”

Dino patted his pants pockets. “Yes,” he said, and started to go back inside. “Just let me get my laptop.”

“Get out. Now,” she said, shoving him into the hallway and slamming the door.

The living room was sparse. The furniture and the carpeting were all monochromatic shades of beige and earth tones. It was the walls that brought the space to life. Three of them were filled with color. At least twenty paintings. If they were Dino’s, he was damn good.

Kylie ran to the fourth wall. It was almost all glass. She pulled open a sliding door, stepped out onto a typically tiny New York City apartment terrace, and looked over the railing.

“It’s a fifteen-foot drop to our terrace,” she said. “I can do it. Oh shit—”

“What?”

“Rope. We need rope. Look around.”

There were no drapes—nothing at all in the living room that we could use to lower someone to the terrace below.

“Check the kitchen,” Kylie said. “I’ll try his studio.” We took off in opposite directions.

The kitchen was all stainless steel—neat, organized, orderly—not the kind of place where someone would store fifteen feet of rope. I was going through the motions of opening drawers and cabinet doors when Kylie called out.

“Zach, I’ve got it. In the bedroom. I need help.”

I headed toward the sound of her voice, figuring I’d find her ripping the sheets off the bed and tying them together. But I was wrong. She was kneeling on a dresser, her hands under a flat-screen TV that was mounted on the wall. It was a monster, at least five feet across.

“Help me get this down,” she said, grabbing one side. I jumped up on the dresser, grabbed the other side, and we lifted it up and off its mount.

It must have weighed sixty or seventy pounds. Kylie set her end down on the top of the dresser, and then, without warning, let go. I got caught off balance. I couldn’t hang on to it on my own, and the TV went crashing to the hardwood floor.

Kylie didn’t care. She grabbed onto the cable that was coming out of the back of the set.

“Co-ax cables,” she said. “Heavy-duty, all copper and plastic. It’s probably stronger than rope.”

“
Probably
stronger?”

“We’re about to find out,” she said. “The whole place is wired, but it’s all behind the wall. Help me rip it out.”

She yanked the cable hard enough that three feet of it tore right through the Sheetrock.

I grabbed on, and we pulled together, chewing up the wall from one end of the bedroom to the other, then up to the ceiling and into the next room.

“Get a knife!” she yelled.

I dug a small Swiss Army knife out of my pocket.

“Bigger,” she said, tearing at the thick cable.

I ran back to the kitchen, pulled a large Henckels knife from the wooden block on the counter. By the time I got back, Kylie had at least forty feet of co-ax exposed. I cut through it in one whack.

We ran back to the terrace and lashed it to the metal railing.

“You stay and secure this end,” Kylie said. “I’m going down.”

“No,” I said. “I’m going.”

“Zach, I weigh less, and it’s my husband.”

“Damn it, Kylie, you can’t control every goddamn thing!” I shouted. “When you get into that apartment, do you even have a clue about how to dismantle that booby trap?”

“I…no, but I figured I could…”

“Did you ever take a weeklong course in demolitions at Quantico?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then shut up and wrap this cable around me,” I said. “I’m going down.”