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"Hold on tight!" I screamed as tiny sticky fingers dug into my hair.

Chapter 15

IT WAS DARK WHEN Berger pulled the Mercedes under the cold, garish lights of a BP gas station at Tenth Avenue and 36th Street back in Manhattan.

He'd bagged his bloody clothes and changed back into jeans and a T-shirt immediately after the stabbing. Directly from the scene, he'd driven over the Throggs Neck Bridge, where he'd tossed everything, including the knife and the wig. For the past several hours, he'd been driving around the five boroughs, winding down, blowing off steam, and, as always, thinking and planning. He actually did some of his best thinking behind the wheel.

He'd pulled over now not just to fill his tank, but because his braced left knee was starting its all-too-familiar whine. Hey, greetings from down here, big guy, his knee seemed to say. Remember me? Iraq, RPG, the piece of shattered rebar that burned through me, cooking all my muscles, ligaments, nerves, and blood vessels into tomato soup? Yeah, well, I'm sorry to bring it up, but I'm starting to hurt like a bitch down here, bud, and was just wondering what you were planning to do about it?

Gritting his teeth at the pain, Berger popped the gas cap and dragged himself up and out of the car, rubbing his leg. He dry-swallowed a Percocet, or "Vitamin P," as he liked to call it, as he filled the tank.

Twenty minutes later, he was piloting the convertible uptown near Columbia University in the Morningside Heights neighborhood. He went west and found meandering Riverside Drive, perhaps the coolest street in Manhattan. He passed Grant's Tomb, all lit up, its bright white Greek columns and rotunda pale against the indigo summer night sky.

He smiled as he cruised Riverside Drive's elegant curves. He had a lot to smile about. Beautiful architecture on his right, dark water on his left, Percocet in his bloodstream. He started blowing some red lights just for the heck of it, cutting people off, putting Stuttgart's latest V8 incarnation through its paces.

He really couldn't get enough of his new $100,000 toy. Its brute propulsion off the line. How low it squatted in the serpentine curves. Like Oscar Wilde said, "I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best," he thought.

Tired of screwing around, Berger picked it up. Slaloming taxis, he hit the esplanade at 125th doing a suicidal eighty. When he spotted the full moon over the Hudson, he actually howled at it.

Then he thought of something.

Why not?

He suddenly sat up on the seat and drove with his feet the way Jack Nicholson did in a movie he saw once.

Wind in his face, holy madness roaring through his skull, Berger sat high up above the windshield, his bare feet on the wheel, arms folded like a genie riding a magic carpet. A woman in a car he flew past started honking her horn. He honked back. With his foot.

Nicholson wished he had balls as big as mine, Berger thought.

He really did feel good. Alive for the first time in years. Which was ironic, since he'd probably be as dead as old Ulysses S. back there in a week's time.

All in Lawrence's honor, of course.

Berger howled again as he dropped back down into his seat and pounded the sports car's German-engineered accelerator into its German-engineered floor.

Chapter 16

A SILVER BENTLEY ARNAGE with a Union Jack bumper sticker pulled away from the hunter green awning as Berger came hobbling up 77th Street with the cane he kept in the Merc's trunk.

Did the Bentley belong to landed gentry? he thought. The Windsors visiting from Buckingham Palace? Of course not. It was Jonathan Brickman from 7A, the biggest WASP-aspiring Jew since Ralph "Lifshitz" Lauren.

Berger was only joking. He actually liked Brickman. He'd sat on the board when they reviewed the businessman's co-op application. He had the trifecta of impeccable creds, Jonathan did. Princeton, Harvard, Goldman Sachs. His financials were mind-boggling even for the Silk Stocking District.

Jonathan was a pleasant fellow, too. Amiable, self-deprecating, handsome, and crisp in his bespoke Savile Row pinstripe. The only thing the gentleman financier had left to do was get a Times wedding announcement for his debutante daughter so he could die and go to heaven, or maybe Greenwich.

Berger even liked Brickman's Anglophile Ralph Lauren yearnings. What wasn't to like about Ralph Lauren's Great Gatsby -like idealized aristocratic world, filled with beautiful homes and clothes and furnishings and people? Brickman was attempting to become brighter, happier, better. In a word, more. What could be more triumphant and life-affirming than that?

When Berger entered the bird's-eye maple-paneled lobby, he saw the Sunday doorman packed down with Brickman's Coach leather bags. His name was Tony. Or at least that was what he said it was. His real name was probably Artan or Besnik or Zug, he figured, given the Croatian twang in his voice.

Welcome to New York, Berger thought with a grin, where Albanians want to be Italians, Jews want to be WASPs, and the mayor wants to be emperor for life.

"Mr. Berger, yes, please," Tony said. "If you give me a moment, I'll press the elevator door button for you."

He was actually serious. Literally lifting a finger was considered quite gauche by some of the building's more obnoxious residents.

"I got this one, Tony," Berger said, actually pressing the button himself to open it. "Call it an early Christmas tip."

On the top floor, the mahogany-paneled elevator opened onto a high coffered-ceiling hallway. The single door at the end of it led to Berger's penthouse.

Brickman had actually made a discreet and quite handsome offer for it several years before. But some things, like seven thousand multilevel square feet overlooking Central Park, even a billionaire's money couldn't buy.

As he always did once inside the front door, Berger paused with reverence before the two items in the foyer. To the left on a built-in marble shelf sat a dark-lacquer jug of Vienna porcelain, a near flawless example of Loius XV-style chinoiserie. On the right was Salvador Dali's devastating Basket of Bread, the masterpiece that he painted just before being expelled from Madrid's Academia de San Fernando for truthfully telling the faculty that they lacked the authority to judge him.

Standing before them, Berger felt the beauty and sanctuary of his home descend upon him like a balm. Some would say the old, dark apartment could probably use a remod, but he wouldn't touch a thing. The veneer of the paneled dusty hallways made him feel like he was living inside an Old Master's painting.

This place had been built at a time when there was still a natural aristocracy, respect for rank and privilege and passion and talent. An urge to ascend. There were ghosts here. Ghosts of great men and women. Great ambitions. He felt them welcome him home.

He decided to draw himself a bath. And what a bath it was, he thought, entering his favorite room. Inside the four-hundred-square-foot vault of Tyrolean marble sat a small swimming pool of a sunken tub. On its right stood a baronial fireplace big enough to roast an ox on a spit. On its left, a wall of French doors opened onto the highest of the sprawling apartment's many balconies.

Berger particularly loved being in here in the wintertime. When there was snow on the balcony, he'd open the doors and have the fire roaring as he lay covered in bubbles, looking out at the lights.

He opened the doors before he disrobed and lowered himself slowly into the hot bath.

He floated on his back, resting while staring out at the city lights, yellow and white, across the dark sea of trees.

Tomorrow he would be "kickin' it up to levels unknown," to borrow the words of some obnoxious Food Network chef. This weekend was nothing compared with what people would wake up to tomorrow morning.