Run for Your Life (18 page)

The Teacher had also changed into a suit, tasteful black, appropriate funeral attire. He tucked the bottle of whisky into the inside pocket of the dead man’s jacket.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, leaning down to kiss the pale, lifeless forehead.

Back in the kitchen, he took his Colt pistols off the counter and quickly loaded and holstered them. The cops would be here anytime now.

He removed a full red plastic fuel can from beneath the kitchen sink and carried it into the dining room. The strong, faintly sweet smell of gasoline filled the entire apartment as he soaked the body, making the sign of the cross — starting at the forehead, spilling fuel down to the crotch, then shoulder to shoulder across the chest.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he said solemnly.

He looked at the face one last time, the sad blue eyes, the half frown on the rigid mouth. Sobbing quietly, he backed to the apartment’s front door, sloshing a generous gasoline trail across the hardwood floor behind him.

The Zippo he took from his pocket had a marine insignia on it. He wiped his cheeks with a deep breath and placed the cool brass of the lighter to his forehead for a moment. Had he forgotten something?

He booted the empty gas can back toward the dining room, thumbed back the lighter’s starter, and tossed it with a deft casualness, a winning card onto a gigantic pot.

Not a thing, he thought.

The loud basslike whump blew his hair back as a ball of flame shot back into the apartment like a meteor. The dining room went up like a pack of matches.

For another few seconds, he stared, mesmerized, at the ink–black smoke freight–training from the doorway.

Then he closed the door, took out his keys, and locked up tight.

Chapter 63

The doorman of 1117 Fifth Avenue wore a suit and hat that were the same exact hunter green as the awning.

“Can I help you, sir?” he asked as I walked into the lobby.

“Detective Bennett,” I said, showing him my badge. “I need to see Mr. or Mrs. Blanchette.”

Erica Gladstone, the murdered wife in the Locust Valley mansion, had turned out to be one of the Blanchettes. Her father, Henry, ran Blanchette Holdings, the private equity and takeover firm that made companies, and even hedge funds, tremble.

I was there to notify them of Erica’s death, and maybe pick up a lead on their berserk son–in–law.

The elevator up to their penthouse apartment had fine wood paneling and a crystal chandelier. An actual butler in a morning coat opened the front door. Behind a wall of French doors to his right, steam rose from a rooftop swimming pool — an Olympic–sized, infinite–horizon number that seemed to meld into the unspoiled, twenty–story vista of Central Park trees that lay beyond.

“Mr. and Mrs. Blanchette will be downstairs in a moment, Detective,” the sleek butler said with an English accent. “If you would follow me to the living room.”

I stepped into a silk–wallpapered chamber the size of an airplane hangar. A gallery’s worth of professionally lit paintings hung from the double–height walls above designer furniture and sculptures. I gaped at a Pollock the size of a putting green, then exchanged eye contact with a massive stone Chinese dragon that could not, no way, have fit into the elevator.

The duplex would have been the slickest, most opulent, luxury apartment I’d ever laid eyes on without the pool. And I read Architectural Digest. Well, at least every time I went to Barnes and Noble.

“Yes? Detective Bennett, is it? Henry Blanchette. How can I help you?” The speaker was a short, amiable man in running shorts and a sweat–soaked New York Road Runners T, coming through a door. I was happily surprised that he seemed more like a kindly accountant than the Gordon Gekko type I’d been prepared for.

“What’s this about?” an attractive, fiftyish platinum blond woman demanded sharply, stalking into the room behind him. She wore a makeup bib over a melon–colored silk dressing robe. Both Mrs. Blanchette’s appearance and her attitude were more like what I was expecting.

I inhaled deeply, bracing myself. There’s no easy way to tell someone that their child is dead.

“There was a shooting,” I said. “Your daughter, Erica, was killed. She died instantly. I’m terribly sorry.”

Henry’s mouth and eyes seemed to triple in size. He stared at me, confused, as he stumbled back against the edge of a mod–looking mohair club chair. His wife sank, dumbfounded, onto an antique chaise.

“What about the girls?” Henry said softly. “I haven’t seen them in years. They must be grown now. Do they know?”

“Jessica and Rebecca were murdered, too,” I had to tell him. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

His wife gasped, her eyes filling with tears. Henry brought his hand up as if to say something, then lowered it.

“I’m afraid it gets worse still,” I said, dropping the third and final bomb in my arsenal of grief — getting it over with as quickly as I could. “We believe they were shot by your son–in–law, Thomas Gladstone. And that he’s also responsible for the string of killings that have been going on around the city.”

Mrs. Blanchette’s tears stopped like a faucet, and now I could see nothing in her face except rage.

“I told you so!” she screamed at her husband. “I told you marrying that trash would be …” She collapsed again, unable to continue.

The billionaire hung his head, staring into the Oriental carpet between his sneakers as if trying to read something in the pattern.

“We had a falling–out,” he said.

He seemed to be talking to himself.

Chapter 64

“It’s not fair, Henry,” Mrs. Blanchette wailed. “After all my … What did we do to deserve this?”

I had a hard time believing what I heard. But people handle grief in strange ways.

“Is there someplace where your son–in–law could be hiding out?” I said. “Another apartment in the city? A vacation house, perhaps?”

“Another apartment! Do you have any idea how much we paid for the Locust Valley house we bought Erica?”

In her mind, clearly, somebody like me wouldn’t have an inkling about that sort of thing. I turned to her husband.

“What was the nature of the falling–out?” I asked.

Mrs. Blanchette rose from her chair like a boxer after the bell. “What possible business is that of yours?” she said, glaring at me.

“As you can see, my wife’s quite upset, Detective,” Mr. Blanchette said, without lifting his eyes from the carpet. “We both are. Could you question us later? Maybe after we’ve had a little while to …”

“Of course,” I said, leaving my card on the sideboard. “If you think of something that might help, or you want more information — anything I can do — please call, okay?”

As I stepped out of the elevator downstairs, I spotted the green–uniformed doorman talking Spanish with one of the maids, laughing and probably flirting.

They got quiet as I walked over to them and showed him my shield again.

“Detective Bennett, remember?” I said. “Can I ask you a few questions? Won’t take a minute.”

The maid edged away, and the doorman shrugged. “Sure. I’m Petie. What can I do for you?”

“You know Erica Gladstone?” I said.

“Ever since she was a little girl.”

“What happened between her and her parents?”

Petie suddenly looked as green as his jacket. “Ah, I never heard nothin’ about that, amigo,” he said. “You’d have to ask them, you know? I just work here.”

I put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Look, I understand the secret code — don’t talk about the tenants. Relax. I don’t need you to testify in open court. I need you to help me nail this nut job who’s going around shooting everybody. We think it’s Erica’s husband, Thomas Gladstone.”

“Chingao!” the doorman said, his eyes widening in shock. “Oh, my God! For real?”

“For real. Come on, Petie. Let’s get this guy.”

“Yeah, yeah, you bet,” he said. “Erica, okay, let’s see. She was a wild kid. Real wild. Drugs. A couple of rehabs. We’re talking before her sweet sixteen. When she’d come home from Sarah Lawrence, we had standing orders not to let her in if nobody else was home.”

“Then she seemed to straighten out. She married some blue–blood kid from her daddy’s firm, had a couple of daughters. But all of a sudden, she got divorced and took up with the second husband, the Gladstone guy. He was the pilot on the father’s corporate jet, was what I heard. The parents went ballistic, especially the Lady of the Manor, as we call her. She got Gladstone fired, and cut Erica off at the root.” The doorman shook his head knowingly. “Shooting smack when you’re thirteen is one thing, but, by God, you sleep with the help, you’re dead meat.”

“Did Gladstone and Erica ever come here?” I said.

I could tell from his face that he wasn’t happy about answering this one, but he looked down at the gleaming marble chessboard lobby tile and nodded.

“One Thanksgiving. I don’t know, maybe three years ago. Them and the daughters showed up, dressed to kill — bottles of champagne, big smiles. I figured they’d been invited and I sent them on up. But five minutes later, they came back down again, and the girls were crying like babies. Then that old witch actually tried to get me written up because I didn’t call first. Yeah, sorry. My bad for thinking you’d maybe want to see your only daughter and grandchildren on Thanksgiving.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Petie,” I said. “You just told me what I wanted to know.”

This was the next place that Gladstone would hit, I could feel it. He’d been saving the Blanchettes, especially the mother. He was going to pay her back, make damn sure she realized he existed.

I was nervous about even having the thought, for fear of a jinx, but I was pretty sure I’d finally done it — finally gotten one step ahead of our shooter.

Outside, I called Beth Peters on my cell.

“Good news,” I said. “Get hold of the ESU, and everybody haul ass over here to Eleven–seventeen Fifth. It’s stakeout time.”

Chapter 65

As the Teacher walked along Tenth Avenue looking for a taxi, he passed a bar that had a fake wagon wheel out front and a row of Harleys parked beside it. The sad old Irish song “The Streets of New York” was spilling out from its doorway into the street. Still feeling his own grief after the “funeral,” he decided to step inside.

Maybe that was just what he needed — a drink.

The young woman behind the scarred pinewood bar had the arms of a football player and metal rings piercing various parts of her face.

The Teacher ordered a Bud with a shot of Canadian Club, and nodded to a group of ironworkers having a retirement party in the shadowed backroom.

When his whiskey came, he knocked it back. Here’s to you, buddy, he thought, fighting another round of tears.

He was on his second shot and Bud when news of the spree killer came on the TV. He thought about asking the bartender to turn it up, but then decided no. Attracting unneeded attention was a bad idea.

“Fucking cops,” a gruff voice suddenly said beside him. The Teacher turned to see a monstrous ironworker, with eyes as red as his long, Viking hair. “Here’s an idea, flatfoots. How ‘bout taking your heads out of your fat, doughnut–padded asses and just catch the sick son of a bitch already.”

“Sick?” the Teacher said. “Ballsy, is what I say. He’s only offing rich, yuppie assholes. He’s like a vigilante. Doing this city a favor. What’s the big deal?”

“Vigilante? What are you? His PR guy?” the tattooed welder said, glaring malevolently. “Friggin’ goddamned freak. I’ll rearrange your face. I swear to God, I will. You must be as sick as he is.”

“Jesus, what the hell am I saying?” the Teacher said, clapping his hands to his face in chagrin. “I just came from a funeral. I guess I’m still all fucked up about it. You’re right. I’m really sorry. It’s wrong to even joke about the tragedy that’s going on. Let me buy you a beer.”

“A funeral, huh? That’s tough,” the big guy said, softening.

The Teacher motioned to the Lordess of the Rings for two more. When the drinks arrived and he set one in front of the welder, he seemed to trip clumsily and sent a barstool crashing to the floor.

“Oh, no,” the Teacher moaned. “Sorry. I guess I’ve had a couple too many.”

“Yeah, you better start taking it easy, pal,” the welder said, and bent down to pick up the fallen stool.

The Teacher broke one bottle over the back of his head, driving him to the floor, and the second across his stunned face. The bleeding man hardly had time to groan as the Teacher stretched his forearm across the tarnished brass footrail and broke it with a ferocious stomp. It sounded like two pool balls knocking together.

So much for not attracting attention, he thought as he backed for the exit.

“Repeat after me, carrottop,” he called from the doorway. “Not sick, just ballsy.”

Chapter 66

It took five minutes for the Emergency Service Unit guys to get to the Blanchettes’ building. After Steve Reno and I walked through the exits and entrances, we decided to suit up a cop as a doorman, put another in the lobby’s coatroom, and station a team of commandos in an unmarked surveillance van across the street beside the park.

After triple–checking that our trap was set, I put Reno in charge and decided to quickly do something I’d been needing to do for a long time.

The sun was going down over Jersey when I pulled up my unmarked car beside Riverside Park, behind my building. I walked along a path, crossed a desolate ball field, and crouched down beside an oak sapling in a clearing that faced the Hudson. I cleaned up some cigarette butts and an Aquafina bottle at the base of the tree, tossed them into the bag I’d brought, and then sat down.

The fledgling tree was the one my kids and I had planted after my wife, Maeve, had died. She was actually buried in the Gates of Heaven Cemetery up in Westchester, but whenever I needed to speak to her, which was pretty often, I usually ended up here. Most of the time, I’d just sit, and after a while it would almost be like she was there with me — just out of sight behind me, the way she’d been on the countless picnics we’d had here with our incredibly motley crew.