“We went through a list of every possible target,” she said. “How did we not think of Spence?”
“We were looking for the big cinematic finale,” I said. “But Benoit just turned this around into a vendetta. You killed his girlfriend.”
“Right,” she said. She turned left onto Seventh Avenue, skidded into the fire lane, and floored the Caprice. “So if Spence dies, it’s my fault.”
My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. “It’s Cates,” I said. “McGrath must have told her we took off on a Two-one-seven.”
“Don’t pick it up,” Kylie said.
“Are you out of your mind?” I said. “She’s our boss.”
“Yes, right now I am totally out of my mind, and if we tell our boss what we’re doing, she might pull the plug. Zach, I know that Spence doesn’t mean much to you, but if you care about me, please, please, please don’t answer the phone.”
If I cared about her? Had I ever stopped caring? And now all that emotional baggage was threatening to drag down the only other thing I cared about. My career.
The phone rang a second time.
Cates’s caller ID flashed on the screen. Below that were two buttons. One green, one red: accept, decline.
They may just as well have said: lose, lose.
I will probably regret this for the rest of my life, I thought.
I pressed one of the buttons.
Chapter 71
EXT. 17TH STREET PIER, NEW YORK CITY-DAY
The Chameleon makes his final costume change and drives his rented Zipcar to the South Street Pier. His crew is waiting for him. Six men, three women, each dressed in the same uniform he is wearing-black pants, white shirt, white dinner jacket, and electric blue bow tie. He’s been working with them for three months now, and they are happy to see him.
“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 cherie,” 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.”
Chapter 72
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.”