I, Michael Bennett

“Coward,” he said, and then strong hands were helping me up as the sound of helicopter blades whapped at the late-spring air.

CHAPTER 17

WHEN THE REST of the task force team arrived, they were very concerned about me. The line-of-duty death of a close colleague was reason enough by itself to be worried about a person’s emotional health, and on top of that, I had shot two suspects. They took away my gun and buttoned me up in the SWAT van until an ambulance arrived.

I listened through the door of the van and learned that the waiter in the Macy’s restaurant was dead. When he’d tried to stop Perrine from coming in, the drug dealer had snapped the twenty-three-year-old kid’s neck in front of fifty witnesses. That bothered me almost as much as Hughie’s death. I should have killed the son of a bitch when I had the chance.

I guess my colleagues were right to be worried about my stability because the second the ambulance pulled away from the curb to go to the hospital, I jumped off the gurney and put the med tech in the back in a headlock until the driver agreed to let me out.

I hit the corner of Broadway and just started walking. It was a nice day for a walk. Three o’clock; in the low sixties with a blue sky; the clear light sparkling off the glass midtown buildings. I didn’t know where the hell I was going. I just needed to move.

First, I went up to Times Square, then crosstown, past Bryant Park, then up Madison Avenue.

A dazed couple of hours later, one of the security guys at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral gave me a look as I pushed in through the large bronze doors on Fifth Avenue.

No wonder he was concerned. With my friend’s blood still flecked on my cheek and my hair standing up, I’d been turning heads all afternoon. Like I was a movie star. Charlie Sheen, maybe. Or Jack Nicholson from The Shining.

When I showed the guard my shield, he still looked worried, but in the end, he let me walk past him up the cathedral’s center aisle.

I collapsed in a pew halfway to the altar. I could hear a tourist Mass going on, the soft melodious voice of an African priest. I took comfort in it, in all of it. The still, silent darkness. The jewel-like light of the stained glass windows. I sat there for a long time, thinking about Hughie and about friendship and sacrifice.

Who would take Hughie’s place? I thought. But I knew the answer. The answer was no one.

I was tired. My body, my mind, my heart, and my soul so weary. I was not in a good place. I thought about calling my grandfather Seamus up at the lake house, but I was afraid I’d get Mary Catherine or one of the kids. I just couldn’t talk to them now. No way—not like this.

I looked up high into the cathedral arches, toward the heaven that no one wanted to believe in anymore. I took out my shield. I turned the golden piece of metal through my fingers before I placed it down on the pew beside me and spun it.

“God bless you, Hughie. God bless you, Church Boy,” I whispered as it came to a stop.

Then I put my head down on the fragrant wood and I cried like a baby as I prayed for my friend and for the world.

CHAPTER 18

AFTER ANOTHER TWENTY minutes or so of having a nervous breakdown, I wiped my eyes and got the heck out of there before the guys from Bellevue showed.

Outside, I decided to make another pilgrimage through the rush-hour crush. It was to one of Hughie’s favorite places, O’Lu

Absolutely shot from the arrest and all my walking, I took a cab home to my West End Avenue apartment. As much as I love my huge family, I was very happy to find it silent and empty. The day I’d just had and the horrors I’d just seen were things I didn’t want to share with anyone. Not ever.

I went back to my room and took the longest, hottest shower in history. Then I did what any self-respecting stressed-out cop would do. I got dressed and made myself a cup of coffee and went back to work.

First on my to-do list was to drive out to Woodlawn in my unmarked PD car to tell Hughie’s family. By the time I drove down the street, I knew from all the cars and the lights blazing that Hughie’s family had already been told, thank God.

Coming out of the car, I saw two of his brothers, Eamon and Fergus, smoking on the stoop in their FDNY uniforms. I remembered sitting on the same stoop on Saturday mornings in my polyester Little League jersey waiting for Hughie so we could walk up to Van Cortlandt Park for our games. I hugged both brothers and offered my condolences before I explained what happened, how Hughie had saved my life.

“Out like a man,” Fergus said, wiping a tear. “He always had balls. Too many, maybe. Well, he’s with Pop now.”

“But is that such a good thing?” Eamon said, wiping his eyes and flicking his cigarette out into the street. “The crazy old bastard probably already has him training, making him do chin-ups on Saint Peter’s gate.”

We were laughing at that when a frail and haggard old woman in a flowered housecoat appeared at the door.

“Michael Be

Hughie had told me that she had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and they were trying to make arrangements for her to move in with one of them.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. McDonough,” I said, gently taking her tiny hands.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said, staring at me with her rheumy blue eyes. “The party is just starting. Is he with you? Is Hughie with you? All my boys are here except for my baby, Hughie.”

I stood there speechless, holding her ski

CHAPTER 19

IT WAS ABOUT nine o’clock when I finally pulled up in front of the Thirty-Fourth Precinct again. I spotted two news vans on the corner as I went inside. After the broad-daylight midtown shootout and the deaths of three cops, I had a fu

Upstairs, the cops on the task force team were filling out paperwork. Every eye in the room swiveled on me as I came through the door, as though I’d just come back from the dead.

“Okay, what’s the scoop, troops?” I said, ignoring the gawking.

After someone gave me back my gun, they told me the feds had Perrine in the federal lockup downtown, near Centre Street. He’d already lawyered up and wasn’t talking to anyone. Of the attractive young woman who had murdered Hughie, Detective Martinez, and the Midtown South beat cop at the booth, there was no sign.

“Press conference is set for tomorrow down at Fed Plaza,” the SWAT leader, Patrick Zaretski, told me. “Everyone will understand if you don’t want to be there.”

“You kidding me? I love press conferences. I mean, never waste a crisis, right?” I said. “It’s just too bad Detective Martinez and Hughie won’t be able to make it.”