NYPD Red

Chapter 44



THE WALTHER PPK was Gabe’s gun of choice, the perfect little pocket pistol—the same one James Bond used. But right now his was too hot to carry. Still, he wasn’t about to transport $45,000 on the subway unarmed.

He went to his closet and dug out the Glock 23. It was a .40-caliber, bigger than the PPK .380, so it was harder to conceal, but on the off chance that a cop stopped him, it wouldn’t connect him to the robbery-homicide on West 62nd Street.

He took the number 6 local uptown, got off at Grand Central, and transferred to the number 7. The ride was uneventful—pleasant, actually. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lexi. The girl was a genius. When he asked her to help him come up with a scenario for using the extra fifteen thousand, he was just trying to make her feel wanted. He didn’t expect much.

And then she came up with an absolutely mind-blowing idea. It made the script a thousand times better.

“I want to supersize my order,” he said to Mickey when he got to the loft.

“What kind of weapons of mass destruction did you have in mind?”

Gabe had sketched Lexi’s idea out on a notepad. “I’m not sure of the exact layout, but best as I can tell, it’s something like this. What do you think?”

“Whose place is this?” Mickey asked.

Gabe told him.

Mickey let out a slow whistle. “You got balls, Benoit,” he said.

“It was my girlfriend’s idea. Can we do it?”

“I can get as much plastic as you’ll need,” Mickey said. “What kind of detonators are we talking about?”

“I don’t know yet, so mix it up—timers, remotes, something I can set off with a trip wire. Just keep it simple and idiotproof. Remember, I’m not a pro.”

“You got a budget for all this extra stuff?”

Gabe nodded. “I got a number in mind.”

“How much?”

“What can I get for another fifteen grand?”

Mickey’s eyes widened, and he coughed up a phlegmy chuckle. “My boy, for fifteen thousand dollars more you can get one hell of a lot of noise.”

Gabriel took the three stacks of hundreds out of his backpack and set them down on the table. “This is forty-five thousand.”

Mickey picked up a bundle, fanned the bills, and put it back. “I wondered how much Jimmy Fitzhugh had in his safe.”

Gabriel stiffened. “Who said anything about Jimmy Fitzhugh?”

Mickey lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke up toward the ceiling. “Nobody said anything. It was all over the police scanner. Robbery-homicide over at one of Bob Levinson’s production trailers on the West Side. Two perps involved. James Fitzhugh, producer, shot dead. What am I—stupid? You told me you knew where to get the money, but you needed a partner. I put one and one together. So, who did you team up with?”

“Your mother. And she sucked at it,” Gabe said. “You need the work or are you more interested in meddling in my private life?”

Mickey held up a hand. “Easy there, Gaby baby. I’m not meddling. Not meddling is the first thing you learn when you’re up there in Ray Brook. I was just making small talk. Forget I asked. Let’s talk about delivery.”

“Part of the deal was you said you could deliver tomorrow,” Gabe said.

“No problem. I still can.”

“Okay, but no later,” Gabe said. “I got a crazy production schedule.”

“Tomorrow, first thing. Right here. Forty-five thousand worth of boom.”

“Actually, one of the packs is shy a hundred bucks,” Gabe said. “My girlfriend used it for groceries.”

“No problem. Tell the little woman the groceries are on me,” Mickey said. “Deal?”

Gabe didn’t hesitate. “Deal,” he said.

And they sealed it in the time-honored old-school Hollywood tradition. With a handshake.