Tick Tock - James Patterson [15]
“What the heck is this? It isn’t my birthday.”
“Since you couldn’t be here for a day at the beach,” Mary Catherine said, stepping out of the shadows and handing me a gigantic Day-Glo blue plastic margarita glass, “we thought you might like a night at it. It was all the kids’ idea.”
“Wow,” I said.
“We love you, Dad,” Jane said, dropping a plastic lei around my neck and giving me a kiss. “Is that so surprising?”
“Oh, yes, Daddy-Waddy. We wuv you so much,” said Ricky, tossing a soaking-wet Nerf football at my head. I even managed to catch it without spilling a drop of booze.
After a few more stress-killing margaritas and laughter from watching Seamus dance to “Wipe Out,” I was ready for the water. I gathered everyone up and drew a line in the sand with the heel of my bare foot.
“Okay. On your mark, get set…”
They were already bolting, the little cheating stinkers. I hit the ocean a second behind them. I collided with the water face-first, a nail bomb of salt and cold exploding through my skull. Damn, I needed this. My familia was awesome. I was so lucky. We all were.
I let the water knock me silly, then got up and threw someone small who smelled like a s’more up onto my shoulders and waited for the next dark wave. Everyone was screaming and laughing.
I stared up at the night sky, freezing and having an absolute panic. There was a roar, and another wave came straight at us. We howled as if to scare it away, but it was having none of it. It kept on coming.
“Hold on tight!” I screamed as tiny sticky fingers dug into my hair.
Chapter 15
IT WAS DARK WHEN Berger pulled the Mercedes under the cold, garish lights of a BP gas station at Tenth Avenue and 36th Street back in Manhattan.
He’d bagged his bloody clothes and changed back into jeans and a T-shirt immediately after the stabbing. Directly from the scene, he’d driven over the Throggs Neck Bridge, where he’d tossed everything, including the knife and the wig. For the past several hours, he’d been driving around the five boroughs, winding down, blowing off steam, and, as always, thinking and planning. He actually did some of his best thinking behind the wheel.
He’d pulled over now not just to fill his tank, but because his braced left knee was starting its all-too-familiar whine. Hey, greetings from down here, big guy, his knee seemed to say. Remember me? Iraq, RPG, the piece of shattered rebar that burned through me, cooking all my muscles, ligaments, nerves, and blood vessels into tomato soup? Yeah, well, I’m sorry to bring it up, but I’m starting to hurt like a bitch down here, bud, and was just wondering what you were planning to do about it?
Gritting his teeth at the pain, Berger popped the gas cap and dragged himself up and out of the car, rubbing his leg. He dry-swallowed a Percocet, or “Vitamin P,” as he liked to call it, as he filled the tank.
Twenty minutes later, he was piloting the convertible uptown near Columbia University in the Morningside Heights neighborhood. He went west and found meandering Riverside Drive, perhaps the coolest street in Manhattan. He passed Grant’s Tomb, all lit up, its bright white Greek columns and rotunda pale against the indigo summer night sky.
He smiled as he cruised Riverside Drive’s elegant curves. He had a lot to smile about. Beautiful architecture on his right, dark water on his left, Percocet in his bloodstream. He started blowing some red lights just for the heck of it, cutting people off, putting Stuttgart’s latest V8 incarnation through its paces.
He really couldn’t get enough of his new $100,000 toy. Its brute propulsion off the line. How low it squatted in the serpentine curves. Like Oscar Wilde said, “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best,” he thought.
Tired of screwing around, Berger picked it up. Slaloming taxis, he hit the esplanade at 125th doing a suicidal eighty. When he spotted the full moon over the Hudson, he actually howled at it.
Then he thought of something.
Why not?
He suddenly sat up on the seat and drove