Run for Your Life Read Free

keeping tabs on that, while also scanning the rooftops, in dread of more gunfire. Then, what felt like a baseball bat with knuckles slammed into the back of my head. It sent me reeling and spun me clear around.
    “You lyin’ pig, you killed my baby!” Miss Carol screamed. She came after me, moving very fast for a woman of her age and size, and rammed another punch into my chest, knocking the breath out of me.
    “No, we didn’t do it,” I croaked out, but she was already winding up for a haymaker that would have knocked me silly. I managed to duck that one, only to have D–Ray’s emaciated uncle grab my lapels and try to head–butt me. As I pried off his hands, his equally fragile–looking wife walloped me across the shoulders with her cane. I’d taken some thumpings in my life, but this set a new record for bizarre.
    As I backpedaled frantically, I realized that the news camera lights weren’t on the crowd anymore, but now were spotlighting my geriatric ass–whooping. That inflamed the crowd further, and people at both ends of the block started to converge, tearing down the barricades and leaping over the hoods of the patrol cars. A couple of uniforms came to my rescue, forcing my attackers aside, and Joe Hunt grabbed my arm and yanked me along with him in retreat to the TARU bus.
    “Call for backup!” he was yelling. “Get the Two–five, the Two–six, and the Three–oh over here. I mean everybody, and I mean yesterday!”
    In the distance, I could hear the wail of the reinforcement sirens already starting.
     
    Part One
     
    The Teacher
     
    Chapter 1
     
    It was coming on three A.M. when I finally managed to get myself smuggled out of Harlem by a uniform who owed me a favor.
    As we negotiated the gridlock maze of news satellite vans, barricades, and mounted crowd–control cops, there still wasn’t the slightest hint about who had killed D–Ray.
    Any standoff that led to a death would have been bad enough, but this bizarre shooting was the department’s worst nightmare come true. No matter how much evidence suggested that the NYPD wasn’t responsible, it looked like we were. The rabble–rousers, conspiracy theorists, and their many friends in the New York City media were going to have a field day.
    And if that wasn’t enough to make me rip into a blister pack of Prilosec, there was the mountain of reports and other red tape I’d be facing come morning. I’d have gladly accepted another caning from D–Ray’s grandaunt instead.
    When the cop dropped me off in front of my West End Avenue apartment building, I was so burnt out from fatigue, unresolved tension, and worry about what lay ahead that I almost stumbled to the door. I craved a few hours of peaceful sleep as a man who’d been crawling for days through the desert craves an oasis.
    But the oasis turned out to be a mirage. Right off the bat, my crazy Dominican doorman, Ralph, seemed pissed off that I had to wake him up. I liked Ralph, but I was in no mood for petty surliness, and I gave him a look that told him so.
    “Any time you want to trade jobs, Ralph, just let me know,” I said.
    He lowered his eyes apologetically. “Rough night, Mr. Bennett?”
    “You’ll read about it tomorrow in the Times.”
    When I finally made it into my darkened apartment, the Crayola products and Polly Pocket debris that crunched underfoot were actually welcoming. I mustered up enough energy to lock up my service weapon and ammo in the pistol safe in my front hall closet. Then, totally wiped, I collapsed onto one of the high stools at the kitchen island.
    If my wife, Maeve, were still here, she’d be standing at the stove right now, handing me an icy Bud while something wonderful fried — chicken wings or a cheeseburger, heavy on the bacon. With divinely sent, cop–wife wisdom, she knew that the only panaceas for the grim reality of the streets were grease, cold beer, a shower, and bed, with her warm beside me.
    A strange moment of clarity pierced my