Kill Me if You Can - James Patterson [7]
He looked down at my medical bag. “Yeah, yeah, Doc,” he said. “Hop in. Let’s get out of here.”
I got in. The driver locked the doors and began to weave his way through the human traffic jam on Lexington Avenue. St. Vincent’s is only a few blocks from my apartment. I was headed home. No charge.
Even if I decide to turn in these diamonds, I thought, I’m definitely keeping this little black bag.
Chapter 8
THIRTY MINUTES AFTER Walter Zelvas bled out on the floor of Grand Central, two NYPD detectives pulled up to his apartment building on East 77th Street. Some cops go by the book, some bend the rules. But Detectives John Rice and Nick Benzetti were considerably dirtier than most of the crooks they busted.
They had finished the day shift in Robbery for the Department, and now they were working for Chukov at a much better hourly rate. Their mission was simple. Find the diamonds.
The doorman looked away as they entered the building. He knew exactly where they were headed. For fifty bucks he had supplied them with a key to the apartment of that nasty-ass Russian who had stiffed him at Christmas: Walter Zelvas.
The two cops entered the elevator.
Benzetti stood six feet tall, with slick black hair and an oversize hawk nose protruding from a small, pinched face. Tall, dark, and ugly. In reality, he was wearing six-inch cheater shoes, and his gray hair was slathered with Just For Men hair dye. The ugly came natural.
Rice, six three and bald, didn’t need help from a shoe company or a hair dye. But the two cops had one thing in common. They were both terrified.
They had met Zelvas once. And he didn’t like them. He didn’t care if they were on Chukov’s payroll. They were still cops.
They’d sat across the table from him at Chukov’s apartment, a bottle of vodka, a loaf of black bread, and a large block of cheese between them.
“Screw me over and I’ll kill you,” Zelvas had said. “And not with a bullet.”
He picked up a stainless-steel slicer and dragged it slowly, menacingly across the top of the cheese. A ten-inch sliver peeled away.
“Do you know how long it takes a man to die if you skin him alive?” Zelvas asked, popping the cheese curl into his mouth. “Six days. Four if you add salt.”
Benzetti and Rice stood to the left and right of the door outside apartment 16E, guns drawn. They knew Chukov wanted to ice Zelvas. What they didn’t know was that he was already dead.
“If Zelvas is there, we take him out quick,” Rice said. “I’ll aim for his head. You go for his heart.”
Benzetti knelt down, slid the key into the lock, and turned it. With Rice standing over him aiming high left, and his own gun pointed low right, he opened the door. Clear. The two men slowly padded into the living room.
The overstuffed sofa and two massive armchairs were covered in a shiny fabric with black and gold geometric shapes. Walter Zelvas was big and ugly, Benzetti thought, and he had furniture to match.
They scanned the room. Clear.
And then they heard it. A noise. Metallic. It was coming from the bedroom.
The two cops froze.
Whoever was on the other side of the door was too busy to know they were in the apartment. They moved silently, expertly, through the living room and flattened themselves against the wall outside the bedroom door.
From his lead vantage point Rice could see the wall safe. It had just been opened. But not by Zelvas.
He signaled his partner, and the two of them rushed in. “I’m guessing Walter isn’t at home,” Rice said, pointing his gun at the safecracker.
She looked up. She was drop-dead gorgeous. Midtwenties, dark hair, long legs, wearing ass-hugging jeans and a tight white blouse with the top three buttons undone.
“Shoot her,” Benzetti said.
“Back off,” the woman said in a voice that seemed to hold no fear. “Do you know who I am? Obviously you don’t.”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Benzetti said. “Shoot her.”
“Maybe we should find out who she is first,” Rice said. “She obviously thinks she’s somebody.”
“I don’t care who she thinks she is,” Benzetti said.
“I see, I see,” she said. “Good cop, bad cop. You’re the