The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [88]
Stefanovitch had been tracking him for too long. Somehow the detective had escaped death once; he’d wound up in a wheelchair. The stubborn policeman kept coming anyway.
He had publicly insulted and goaded St.-Germain. He was responsible for a freighterload of heroin’s being confiscated; for the intolerable RICO harassments; for other serious embarrassments during the past weeks.
St.-Germain had encountered diligent policemen before. Sometimes they were driven by some mysterious need for revenge; sometimes by the strictest morality. But in Stefanovitch’s case, it seemed even more than that.
St.-Germain had asked Jimmy Burke to investigate the Homicide lieutenant. Burke had copied records from Police Plaza. The files mechanically reported on Stefanovitch’s past and present. He had been a navy officer, decorated twice in the Middle East. He had entered the N.Y.P.D. in ‘seventy-six, and quickly established himself as a fast-track performer. He was tireless; he appeared to be honest; he was liked and respected by the powers at the top. Even confined to a wheel-chair, he was viewed as a key performer in the police department. Stefanovitch was still a rising star.
Two things were clear from the file: Stefanovitch was bright for a policeman; and Stefanovitch was relentless in his duty. In a way, he was a very old-fashioned police officer, almost an anachronism. He seemed to have an obsessive preoccupation with right and wrong; he had a moral code and work ethic left over from another era.
There was really no choice for St. Germain.
The street law had to resume.
85
Sarah and Sam McGinniss; East Sixty-sixth Street
THERE WAS STILL a small island of serenity for Sarah; a thread of sanity remaining in her life.
Sam stood underneath the formal forest green canopy of their apartment building, talking to his best friend, Austin, another seven-year-old from the neighborhood. Sarah was posted off to one side. They were early for school, which was just around the corner on Park Avenue.
It was a nice way to spend a few extra minutes—Sam yakking about baseball and transformers to Austin; Sarah renewing some casual, New-York-apartment-style relationships with the other tenants. Watching Sam, Sarah felt as if the life she’d been leading lately was completely unreal.
“I think we’d better scoot,” she finally called over to Sam.
He said good-bye to his friend, suggesting they have a hard ball catch out in the back alley after school. The superintendent usually let them play there—unless he was working on the water pipes, which he seemed to paint or scrape down every other week.
Sarah and Sam headed east on Sixty-sixth Street, toward Park. She watched Sam out of the corner of her eye.
He was like a curious little bird sometimes, idly pecking around the home nest. He knew nearly every square inch of the block, in fact. He would comment on the appearance of a new neighborhood face, or somebody’s pet, even on the blossoms of the dogwood trees fenced along the sidewalk.
This morning, he was a little quiet, and Sarah thought she knew why. She was spending too much time on the investigation and on her book. Sam wouldn’t come out and say it, but he was feeling neglected.
“Are you okay? Tell your old mom the truth,” she finally said about midway down the block.
“I’m okay. I’m fine.”
Sarah draped her arm over Sam’s shoulder.
“Hey, guess what? I don’t believe you. You lie, small white man.”
Sam began to laugh. She could usually make him smile.
Sarah figured that maybe if she joked a little with him, Sam might come out of his funk.
“Hey. Have I told you how happy I am that you’re back? I can’t remember. Did I tell you that, Sam?”
Sam laughed again. “Only about a hundred times, Mom.”
“How many out of the hundred did you believe me? About one?”
Sam continued to smile at her joke. That was one of their things together: they could laugh about almost anything.
“How about if we go out to the beach on Saturday? I promise not to work. I’ll make Belgian