Run for Your Life - James Patterson [62]
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,