Part 13 (1/2)

Without just cause and a warrant, my new duffel bag might as well have been Fort Knox with two side pockets and a shoulder strap.

Good thing.

Because I wasn't about to fill that duffel bag with jelly beans.

CHAPTER 39.

WALKING INTO a bar with a gun tucked under your s.h.i.+rt is one thing. Doing it in a bank?

One block shy of my Chase branch on the Upper West Side, I dumped the Beretta M9 in a trash can. I didn't need it. Trust me.

”Do you have your key?” asked the safe-deposit box attendant on the lower level.

Maybe the woman picked up on my vibe, or maybe this was how she acted with everyone who came through the bank, but her monotone delivery was music to my ears. There would be no polite chitchat. No delay. In fact, she even had her guard key raised in her hand, ready to go.

Quickly, I reached for my key-sandwiched between the one for my apartment and the one for my office up at Columbia Law-and showed it to her. The irony. I never used to keep it on my key chain. Then, one day, I'd asked Claire about a certain key on hers.

”This way I don't have to remember where I put it,” she'd told me.

I never knew what Claire kept in her safe-deposit box. I never asked. That was because I didn't want her asking what I kept in mine.

She hated those ”d.a.m.n things” even more than I did.

Standing alone in the small viewing room with nothing but white walls and a shelf, I opened the lid and removed an original SIG Sauer P210. Steel frame, wood grip, locked breech. Old school. And, in the right hands, still the most accurate semiautomatic pistol in the world.

Then out came my Glock 34 with a GTL 22 attachment giving it a dimmable xenon white light with a red laser sight. As a weapons instructor during my first year at Valley Forge once declared with the kind of sandpaper voice that only a lifetime of smoking unfiltered Lucky Strikes will give you, ”Sometimes s.h.i.+t happens in the dark.”

Both guns went into the duffel along with four boxes of ammo, one shoulder holster, and one s.h.i.+n holster, the latter being custom-made to accommodate the light and laser sight on the Glock 34.

Like I said, I didn't need the Beretta M9.

Finally, there were some paper goods. Two wrapped stacks of hundreds totaling ten grand. Cash for a rainy day. Or, in this case, when it was pouring.

And that was that. Everything I'd come for, everything I needed. Before zipping the duffel closed, I took one last look inside it. Then I took one last look inside the safe-deposit box.

If only I hadn't.

Sticking out from underneath my birth certificate was a 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle rookie card. My father had given it to me after my very first Little League game. ”Take good care of it,” he told me. ”It's your turn.”

The card was far from mint condition. One of the corners was dog-eared, and there were a couple of creases along the side. But it had been given to me by my father, who had gotten it from his father, and that made it absolutely perfect.

I picked up the card, staring at it in my hands, and suddenly it weighed a million pounds. My knees buckled and my legs gave out. I fell back against the wall, sliding slowly down to the floor. I couldn't stand up. I couldn't breathe. I could only cry.

”The autopsy ...” Sebastian had begun.

Claire was an organ donor, so it had already been performed. He'd seen the results. He'd had to. Leave it to the Times to need a corroborating source before reporting the cause of death of one of its own.

”What?” I asked. ”What is it?”

Sebastian hesitated, his eyes avoiding mine. But it was too late for second thoughts; he had to tell me.

”Claire was pregnant,” he said.

CHAPTER 40.

READY OR not, you sons of b.i.t.c.hes, here I come ...

I took the stairs, walking the six flights up to my apartment on the top floor. The SIG Sauer was in my hand, my hand was hidden in the duffel, and the duffel was hanging off my shoulder.

Fog or no fog, there was a small part of my brain that knew exactly how stupid I was being. Whatever fine line existed between risky and crazy, I was nowhere near it. What I was doing bordered on insane. I was a walking death wish, and if it hadn't been for the rest of my brain, I would've surely turned around and hightailed it out of my building.

But the rest of my brain was consumed by one thing, and one thing only. Love of justice perverted to revenge and spite. That was how Dante defined it during his tour through h.e.l.l.

Vengeance.

I shared the sixth floor with only one other tenant, a trader at Morgan Stanley who left each morning at the crack of dawn. His apartment faced the back of the building; mine faced the front. I got the natural light, he got the quiet.

Fittingly, there was nothing but silence as I pa.s.sed his door, heading toward mine at the opposite end of the hall.

Out came the SIG Sauer from the duffel, leading the way. All the while, I kept waiting for a sound, a noise, something up ahead to let me know I had company. But that would be too easy, I thought.

Sometimes you just have a feeling you're about to catch a break. This wasn't one of those times.

Which was all the more reason why I wasn't expecting the door to my apartment to be wide open, or kicked down, or hanging off its hinges like some giant calling card. And sure enough, it wasn't.

The door was closed. Locked, too. Easing my back against the wall and out of the line of fire, I reached over for the k.n.o.b. It barely budged. Maybe the whiz kid, Owen, was wrong. They never came. They weren't inside.

Maybe.

I took out my key-everything was one key or another now-and unlocked the door as quietly as possible. It was a losing battle. There was simply no preventing the audible snap of the dead bolt retreating. In the silence of the hallway, the way the sound echoed, it might as well have been a giant gong announcing my arrival.

I waited for a moment, trying to listen again into my apartment while staying clear of the door. I could hear every beat of my heart, every swallow, every breath I was taking-but nothing more. Each second pa.s.sing was all the more reason to believe no one was waiting for me on the other side.

Still, that didn't stop me from putting the duffel down on the floor and pulling out the Glock to go with my SIG Sauer. I was like the t.i.tle of a bada.s.s wannabe country song. ”Double-Fisted with Pistols.”