NYPD Red (21 page)

“KABOOM!” GABRIEL SCREAMED at the top of his lungs.

The semi-comatose man on the engine room floor snapped alert.

“Did you hear that, Charlie?” Gabriel said. “That was the kaboom of justice.”

Connor gave him a quizzical look.

“As of three seconds ago, the bitch cop who killed my girlfriend, and her asshole husband, who stole my identity, just got blown to hell. I wish I could have watched them go up in smoke, but I have bigger fish to fry. Namely your cronies on the top deck.”

Connor tried to talk through the duct tape, but all that came out was a shrill whine.

“You want a speaking part?” Gabriel said. “Okay, but you raise your voice, and I will stick this stun baton down your pants and fry your junk like a Jimmy Dean sausage. Understood?”

The man nodded, and Gabriel yanked the duct tape from his mouth.

Connor gulped air. “Thank you,” he wheezed.

“Don’t thank me, Charlie. I’m going to kill you in about half an hour.”

“Why me?”

“Don’t take it personally. I’m blowing up an entire boat. You just happen to be on it.”

“I don’t
have
to be on it,” Connor said. “Cut the tape and let me jump ship. I’ll take my chances in the river. Come on, man, give a brother a break.”

“Bad news,
brother.
This is just makeup. Underneath, I’m as white as Vanilla Ice.”

“Even so, you said we had a lot in common. You’re right. Those guys upstairs are not my cronies. I’m just a working stiff busting his balls for the man. Don’t let me die down here, too.”

“No can do, but kudos on presenting a noble argument. And thank you for not trotting out the old ‘I got a wife and six kids’ routine. It’s so overdone.”

“I don’t have kids, and my ex won’t even notice I’m gone,” Connor said. “The only ones who are going to miss me are the Alley Cats.”

“I hate to break it to you, but cats don’t have feelings.”

Connor laughed. “These cats do. The Alley Cats is the name of my bowling team. If you won’t do it for me, at least do it for them.”

“You crack me up,” Gabriel said. “I wish I could stick around for the whole show, but I’m done here.” He stepped back to inspect the final charge. “Not bad for an amateur.”

“That’s cell-phone-activated,” Connor said. “I’d say that’s a notch or two above amateur.”

“Credit where credit is due, Charlie. I had a great teacher. Mickey Peltz. I hated to have to kill him. I feel the same way about Adrienne, the catering chick upstairs. You too. It totally sucks that good guys like you have to die.”

“I’m touched. Your compassion means a lot to me in my final moments.”

“If it’s any consolation, it’ll be painless. Mickey was right. Sixty pounds is more than enough to split this hull like a ripe melon. Especially with the charge I put under this fuel tank. How big is it, anyway?”

“Each one is five thousand gallons. One blows, and they’ll all go.”

“Then I have twenty pounds all rigged and ready to go that I don’t need down here. I think maybe I’ll take it upstairs and find a nice little spot for it in the main salon.”

“Or maybe you could just shove it up your ass and give yourself a call,” Connor said.

Gabriel laughed. “Charlie, you have no idea how much you’ve brought to this film,” he said, tucking the remaining C4 into his jacket pockets. “When I came up with this scene, I always pictured it as high drama—me sweating like a pig, molding the plastic, scared shitless that I’d blow myself up. But you added just the right touch of comic relief. You’re like the black Quentin Tarantino.”

“So let me get this straight,” Connor said. “You’re making a movie?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s the camera?”

Gabriel tapped a finger to his head.

“Oh boy,” Connor said. “And this movie in your head—I die in it?”

“It’s an action movie. Lots of people die in it.”

“Including you?”

“Oh, no. I’m the hero. I escape.”

“How?”

“That’s a spoiler, Charlie. I can’t tip the ending.”

“First of all, the name’s not Charlie. It’s Charles. Second of all, there’s no way in hell you’ll escape. If the explosion doesn’t kill you, Harbor Patrol will fish you out of the drink before you can swim fifty feet.”

“Oh, I escape. It’s in my script. The problem with you,
Charles,
is that you’ve got no imagination.”

“I got plenty of imagination. You want to hear
my
script? You’re no hero. You’re just another one of those nut-job suicide bombers who thinks he’s going to wind up with seventy-two virgins.”

“I’m not one of them,” Gabriel yelled, pulling the stun baton from his holster and pointing it at Connor. “I’m the star of this whole show.”

“Oh yeah,” Connor said. “And nothing says ‘action hero’ like a young white guy using a cattle prod on a poor old black man who’s duct-taped to a steam pipe.”

Gabriel holstered the stun baton and knelt down next to Connor. “Charles, trust me. This is a great movie, and I really do have a brilliant way of ending it.”

“But since I’ll be dead, I’ll never get to see it. How convenient.”

“You think I’m lying?” Gabriel said. “I got the escape scene right here in my pocket. It’s mind-blowing.”

“Show it to me,” Connor said.

“Show you? You ever even read a movie script, old man?” Gabriel asked.

“I work for Shelley Trager. He leaves scripts in the bathrooms, and believe me, that’s where a lot of them belong.”

“Well, mine is pure gold.”

“Prove it,” Connor said. “Let me read it. Right here. Right now.”

Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t usually show it around. In fact, except for my girlfriend, I haven’t shown it to anybody.”

“Hey, man, I’m not just
anybody.
I’m the black Quentin Tarantino.”

I WAS FLAT-OUT wrong. I felt a little stupid, but it’s a hell of a lot better than being dead wrong.

Not only do I not know squat about explosives, but I totally underestimated the New York City Department of Buildings.

Somewhere, somehow, someone, bless his bureaucratic little heart, foresaw my predicament, and had the vision to insist that all garbage chutes in the city of New York must extend six feet above the roof and be equipped with a safety valve called an explosion cap.

The ball of flame I was afraid would travel up the chute and burn us both to hell never did. Instead, a deafening explosion rocked the building and released a pressure wave of hot expanding gases, most of which blew straight through the roof.

Some of the blowback billowed through the hole in the wall we had created, but at least the little incinerator room we were trapped in hadn’t turned into a blazing coffin.

Neither of us moved for a solid fifteen seconds as ash, soot, and chunks of hot garbage fell around us.

And then, silence.

My mouth was pressed to Kylie’s ear.

“Are you alive?” I whispered.

“No,” she said.

“Me either,” I said.

I rolled off her, and the two of us sat up. We weren’t quite ready to stand.

“You have absolutely no bomb experience, do you?” Kylie said, shaking plaster dust out of her hair.

I stood up and grinned down at her like an idiot, thrilled to be alive. “I do now.”

I helped her to her feet, and she put her arms around me, clasping her hands behind my neck. I wrapped my arms around her waist, and, as the dust settled around us, we stood there, gazing into each other’s eyes.

I remember the first day I saw her at the academy. She was heart-stoppingly beautiful back then and, ten years later, with her face marbled with grime and her hair streaked with gray ash, Kylie MacDonald was still the most beautiful woman in the world.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “If you hadn’t stopped me from unlocking that front door, Spence and I—and you—we’d all be—”

She either couldn’t finish, or she just decided that words weren’t enough. She leaned into me and kissed me gently.

Kylie has the softest, sweetest lips I’ve ever kissed, and feeling them pressed against mine brought on that rush of anticipation I felt back in the days when I knew the first kiss was only the beginning of a night of tender, passionate, soulful lovemaking.

But that was ten years ago. Right here, right now, I knew that it all would begin and end with a single kiss.

“You’re welcome,” I said, lowering my arms from around her waist.

She stepped away, and the moment was over.

“Wish I could stay,” she said, “but I’ve got a homicidal maniac to catch, and my poor husband’s got both feet nailed to the floor.”

“How many times have I heard that old excuse?” I said as I followed her down the hallway so I could aid and comfort the lucky bastard with both feet nailed to the floor.

THE SECOND THAT KYLIE and I walked through the door of the apartment, Spence burst into tears.

“I thought you were dead,” he said, his body still in trauma, now shaking with gratitude and relief.

“That makes three of us,” Kylie said.

She grabbed an afghan throw from the sofa and draped it over his legs. Then she knelt beside him, cradling him in her arms, kissing his forehead, his cheeks, and finally his lips.

I squatted down behind him and cut away the duct tape that bound him to the chair.

As soon as his arms were free, he hugged her tight, and I watched as she quietly rocked him back and forth.

“You guys have got to stop Benoit,” he said, breaking the hug abruptly.

“We will,” she said. “But first we have to do something about getting those nails out of your feet.”

Spence sat back in the chair. “
We,
” he said, “do not have to do anything. I love you, Kylie, but I don’t need a cop with a crowbar and a claw hammer prying me loose.”

“I love you, too,” she said, “but I can’t just leave you sitting in the middle of the living room. My mother is coming next weekend, and you know what a neat freak she is.”

The love between the two of them was palpable. I couldn’t imagine how much pain he was in, but just having her near made him smile. She was also frustrating the hell out of him.

“Dammit, Kylie, listen to me. I’m fine. He didn’t hit an artery. I’m not going to bleed to death. I can wait till the fire department shows up. They can cut the floor out from under me and take me to the hospital. After that, all I want is the best foot surgeon in New York and maybe a week on the beach in Turks and Caicos. You have more important things to do than hold my hand.”

“Do you have any clue where Benoit was going next?” she said.

“I’ve got more than a clue. He has a shitload of explosives, and he’s headed for Shelley Trager’s yacht.”

Kylie was blindsided. She’d convinced herself that Shelley’s little sunset cruise was a low-priority target. “Why Shelley?” she said.

“Not just Shelley. Shelley and me. Benoit calls himself The Chameleon, and he thinks we stole his persona and used it for my TV show.”

“That’s insane,” she said.

“I think we’ve pretty much established that the guy is a psycho,” Spence said. “He knows Shelley is screening the pilot on his yacht tonight. Benoit is planning to get on board, wait till they’re somewhere out on the open water, and then blow it up.”

“Did you convince Shelley to bring any security on board?” Kylie said.

“You know how stubborn he is. He finally signed on two rent-a-cops just to humor me. I doubt if they’re any better than a couple of school crossing guards.”

“We have to warn him,” Kylie said. “Maybe we should radio the captain.”

“You do that,” Spence said. “I met him. His name is Kirk Campion. He’s a retired merchant marine, used to be chief mate on one of the Maersk container ships. And guess what—he pitched a movie to me about a yacht getting hijacked by a bunch of Somali pirates, and the captain and the crew take them on. You call him and tell him the madman everyone in New York is looking for is on his boat, and guess what he’ll do?”

“Spence is right,” I said. “The last thing we need is some civilian cowboy trying to save the day. You and I need to get on that boat. Spence, where’s the dock, and when does the boat leave?”

“South Street Seaport. Pier 17. What time is it?”

“A little after six.”

“By now they’ve shoved off, and Gabriel Benoit is somewhere belowdecks wiring it with enough explosives to blow it to Weehawken.”

“How does he expect to get off?” Kylie said.

“Beats me,” Spence said, “but after the way he escaped from half of NYPD at Radio City, I bet he won’t have a hard time figuring out how to—”

There was a pounding on the apartment door.

“Police,” the voice on the other side said. “Open up.”

I opened the door. There were at least ten people in the hallway. All of them in uniform, except one: Captain Cates.

“CAPTAIN,” I SAID, “I know I should have taken your call, but—”

“We’ll have plenty of time for repercussions later, Detective,” she said. “Right now, I want the short version of what went down.”

I gave it to her in under sixty seconds. Kylie stood by my side and didn’t say a word.

“And you’re sure Benoit is on the yacht?” Cates said.

“As sure as we can be, but he’s fooled us before. I wouldn’t pull any of the units you have covering the other events.”

“Okay,” she said, “what do we need to catch this son of a bitch?”

“A boarding vessel,” I said. “Kylie knows the layout of the yacht, and we can both spot Benoit. Just get the two of us on board.”

“Three of you,” Cates said. “This time you’re not going anywhere without a bomb tech.”

“Fair enough, Captain.”

“You see any C4, you point it out to the tech. You got lucky once, but you will not—repeat, not—attempt to disable any explosives. Your only job is to disable Benoit. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Get moving. I’ll call you with the details.”

I was about to bolt when Cates held up her hand. She stared at me, stone-faced. “And Jordan…make sure your phone is on.”