I, Michael Bennett

I hopped in and slammed the accelerator against the floor as I dropped the Lincoln into reverse.

“Out of the way! Move! Move!” I screamed as I sped backward with my hand on the horn, knowing what a challenge it was to navigate the impenetrable gridlock of midtown Manhattan in the correct direction.

I slalomed around a double-decker tourist bus and a Nissan Altima yellow taxi, then drove on the sidewalk until I finally arrived at the corner of Seventh Avenue, where Perrine had headed.

Through the rear window, I saw Perrine about a block north. He had his head down and was still booking and dodging through the clogged crowd of pedestrians as though he were trying out for ru

I was met with a sheer wall of horn blasts as I carved the vehicle through the onslaught of oncoming traffic. I missed three cars before I sideswiped a plumbing van and then an eighteen-wheeler mail truck. A bike messenger actually took a swing at me through the open window after I came within a foot of putting him under the Lincoln’s back wheels.

Then Perrine was right there in back of me, ru

I revved the engine and was almost on top of him as he dove and made the northeast corner. I was still seriously thinking about just jumping the curb and hitting him with the back end of the car, but then I noticed the hundreds of i

I pulled my Glock, cocking it as I jumped out onto the sidewalk. I watched as Perrine disappeared into the store on the corner, underneath a pair of enormous electronic billboards.

“Shit,” I said when I saw a giant red star appear on the billboard screen and realized where Perrine had just headed.

“Where are you, Mike? Where are you?” I heard one of the arrest team members yelling over my crackling radio.

“Macy’s. Thirty-Fourth Street,” I yelled as I ran. “Send backup.”

And another miracle while you’re at it, I thought as I flung open the door to the world’s largest department store.

CHAPTER 15

IT TOOK ME a couple of moments of blinking like mad to adjust to the store’s dim mood lighting. I sprinted up a short flight of stairs, cosmetics counters and jewelry cases blurring on both sides of me. Between the displays, shocked-looking shoppers and tourists stood staring, most of them women and kids.

“NYPD! Get out of the store!” I yelled, waving my Glock as I ran.

I was ru

There was a clatter of metal behind me, and I turned around to see the glass entrance to the store’s basement restaurant. The sound must have come from the restaurant kitchen. I rushed inside the wood-paneled space.

“Oh, my gawd! Oh, my gawd!” a massively overweight blond woman kept saying. She was kneeling beside a slim blond waiter who was laid out on the floor by the bar. The guy’s head seemed wrong. It was twisted too far around, almost looking over his own back.

“Where?” I yelled, and saw a dozen shocked customers pointing toward the still-swinging door to the kitchen. I ran past a sizzling flattop grill toward an open door at the kitchen’s opposite end. There were dusty metal stairs on the other side of it, with heavy footsteps hammering up them. I followed up the stairs, and as I made the top, I finally saw Perrine again, the back of his dress shirt soaked through with sweat, as he bolted down a corridor piled with folded cardboard boxes.

“Freeze!” I yelled.

He didn’t listen. An alarm went off and daylight flashed as he slammed open a fire-exit door on the street level. I was coming through that same exit onto Thirty-Fifth Street a split second later when I got kicked in the face. My right cheekbone felt shattered as my Glock flew from my hand. I watched it ricochet off the base of a pay-phone kiosk before skidding across the sidewalk and coming to rest under a sanitation department Prius.

I was diving for it when Perrine dropped from the awning over the door where he was hanging and kicked me in the kidney. I whirled around, swinging at his face. I just missed as he bobbed his head back. He bounced back again on the balls of his feet, and before I knew what was going on, he kicked me on the inside of my thigh so hard I thought he broke it. He made a high kind of karate scream as he elbowed me in the face and knocked me to my knees.

As he grabbed the back of my head and kneed me in the forehead, I remembered something important. My hand went to my ankle, and I pulled free the backup pepper spray canister I always carry. I depressed its trigger and proceeded to mace the living crap out of him. As he backpedaled, clawing at his burning eyes, I reached for the collapsible baton I carried on my other ankle and flicked it open. With a loud, whip-cracking sound, the ball on the metal baton’s tip made contact with the bridge of Perrine’s nose.

He didn’t seem in the mood for any more karate after that. He dropped to his knees, blood from his broken nose spraying the sidewalk, as he screamed and blinked and shook his head.

CHAPTER 16

I FINALLY BROUGHT him all the way down to the concrete with a knee to his back and cuffed him. As Perrine moaned and thrashed around helplessly, I fished my Glock out from under the city-approved, low-carbon-emission sanitation vehicle.

I stood up and looked around. There had been hundreds of people on the corner of Thirty-Fourth Street, but here at the dirty service entrance at the back of Macy’s, there was absolutely no one. I knelt on Perrine’s neck and jammed my gun in his ear.

I thought about things for a little while then. Mostly about my friend Hughie, back in the medical office, with his head blown apart. Dead.

No more beers. No more Yankees games. No more deep-sea fishing trips on his City Island rust bucket with his twenty nieces and nephews. The life of the party was gone now. Forever gone. Forever cold.

I moved the barrel of my gun to Perrine’s brain stem. Two pounds of pull on the trigger under my finger, two measly little pounds here on this dim, narrow, deserted street, was all it would take to avenge Hughie and rid the world of this instrument of evil.

I looked up. It had been overcast earlier in the morning, but now I saw through the gaps of the dark line of rooftops above me a sky of immaculate bright blue. I could also see the top of the Empire State Building, iconic and massive, its constellation of set-back windows like a million square eyes staring down at me, waiting to see what I would do.

But I couldn’t do it. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I took the gun off Perrine’s skull pan after another second, and then arriving squad cars were screeching behind me. Over the sirens, I heard Perrine say something. He leaned up from where I sat on top of him and craned his neck around to look into my eyes as he uttered one word.