Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(3)

PART ONE





SEX, DRUGS, AND HIGH-STAKES POKER





CHAPTER 1



Kylie and I had never been attached to Mayor Sykes’s security detail before, but once she agreed to speak at the Silver Bullet Foundation fund-raiser, she recruited us for the night.

The word came down from our boss. “The mayor wants to do a little fund-raising of her own,” Captain Cates said. “She comes up for reelection in three and a half years, and as long as she’s going to spend the evening rubbing elbows with her biggest donors, she wants to assure them that she’s not just a champion of the unfortunate poor. She cares deeply about the disgustingly rich. And what better way to demonstrate her concern for their welfare than by trotting out a couple of poster cops from NYPD Red?”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Kylie said. “Doesn’t she realize we already spend sixty hours a week overprotecting the overprivileged? Now she’s inviting us to suck up to them at some—”

Cates cut her off. “Did I use the word invite? Because the last time I read the department manual I didn’t see anything about invitations being passed down the chain of command. The mayor specifically instructed me to assign Detectives Kylie MacDonald and Zach Jordan to her security detail. Consider yourselves assigned. No RSVP required.”

I figured it would be the most boring night of the week. And I was right—until the podium exploded.

It was one of those shock and awe explosions. The blinding flash, the deafening boom, the thick smoke, the chemical stench, and the flying chunks of wood, glass, metal, and Del Fairfax.

Mayor Sykes had just come off the stage and returned to her seat when the bomb went off. Kylie and I were only an arm’s length away from her. We yanked her from her chair and, shielding her body with ours, bulled our way through the chaos toward our prearranged exit door.

At least fifty other frenzied people had the same idea.

I keyed my radio and yelled over the din, “Explorer, this is Red One. Vanguard is safe. Egress Alpha is blocked. We’re making our way toward Bravo.”

We did a one-eighty and shoved the mayor toward the kitchen. The path was clear, and the vast stainless steel hub of the hotel’s multimillion-dollar banquet business was almost deserted. Except for a few stragglers, the staff had beaten a quick retreat through a rear fire door and down a stairwell to the employee locker rooms.

At that point, many of them decided that they were out of harm’s way, and at least twenty of them were standing in the corridor, almost every one with a cell phone to his or her ear.

“NYPD. Get out of the way! Get out of the fucking way!” Kylie bellowed as we elbowed our way through the logjam.

A hotel security guard saw us coming and pushed open a metal door that led to the outside world. As soon as she felt the cool night air and heard the sounds of her city, the mayor stopped.

“Please,” she said. “I’m too old for this shit. Let me catch my breath.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Kylie said. “Not here. We only have another hundred feet. Keep going, or Zach and I will carry you to the car.”

The mayor gave Kylie an enigmatic stare that could have been anywhere on the spectrum from contempt to gratitude.

“Nobody…” she said, breathing heavily, “carries…Muriel Sykes…anywhere. Lead the way.”

We single-filed down a narrow alleyway, past a row of Dumpsters, and I radioed ahead to her team.

The alley came out on East 61st Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues. Just as we got to the far end, the mayor’s black SUV drove up onto the sidewalk. Her driver, Charlie, jumped out and swung open the rear door. I offered to help the mayor into the back seat, but she waved me off.

“This is as far as I’m going,” she said.

“Ma’am, this is not the place for you to be,” Kylie said.

“A maniac just set off a bomb in my city, Detective. This is my responsibility.”

“Yes, ma’am, but maniacs have a bad habit of setting off secondary bombs targeting people who have just run from the first,” Kylie said. “And it’s our responsibility to get you to safe ground.”

“Madam Mayor,” Charlie said, “they’re setting up a command center at the Park Avenue Armory. I can have you there in two minutes.”

Crisis averted. The mayor got in the car, shut the door, and rolled down her window. “Thank you, Detectives,” she said. That was it. Three words, and the window went back up.

Within seconds, the oversize, bulletproof Ford Explorer peeled out and, with lights flashing and sirens wailing, whisked Muriel Sykes away to the longest night of her fledgling administration.

“I hate these boring babysitting jobs,” Kylie said. “Let’s go do some real police work.”

The two of us ran back down the alley and up the stairs toward the smoke-filled ballroom.





CHAPTER 2



Kylie and I joined the influx of first responders who raced to help the injured. It was just cops and firefighters at first, but when a bomb explodes in a public place, it sets off a Pavlovian response. Law enforcement agencies everywhere start salivating.

By the ten o’clock news cycle, The Pierre was the most famous crime scene in America, and everyone—Feds, staties, NYPD, FDNY, even the DEA—wanted a piece of the action.